No...I'm not talking about an alliance between House Atreides and House Harkonnen. I'm talking about the strikingly visual tie-in between two great series of movies. Two series that I think almost all horror / SciFi fans would say stand great on their own. I'm talking about the masterful job of tying in the Alien saga to the Predator series. It started with 'AVP Alien vs. Predator' in 2004 and I just saw the preview for 'Alien vs. Predator: Requiem' due out this December (saw the preview during my recent screening of 'The Mist' - see my review from 11/22).
Now I know some people didn't like AVP. I actually thought it was quite good, not only from an action and horror standpoint, but from the ingenious way they brought the story lines together. They never departed from the motives or expected behavior of either of the antagonists. I loved the old mining town in the arctic and thought that the location worked perfectly for setting mood as well as being a plausible reason why we hadn't found evidence of their association before. The script was tight, believable and suspenseful. Special effects were on par with the previous films. Sanaa Lathan did a great job as the heroine and of course you have to like Lance Henriksen - he's been great in every movie I've ever seen him in. He was so good playing his character in this movie, that it probably didn't register for most of us that he starred in 'Aliens' as Bishop (the good android) - now that's a testament.
I can only think of one other attempt to bring two separate antagonists together in the horror / SciFi genres and that was 'Freddy vs. Jason' in 2003. Now I know that some of you probably thought that movie was the best thing since sliced bread - but I thought it was a waste of time. After the very first 'Nightmare', I thought the series was tired and lacked any creativity. And for Jason - 'Halloween' and 'Halloween II' were great movies. But then they came out with 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch' which had nothing at all to do with Jason and was just a bad, bad, bad movie. So when I speak of the Halloween series as being great - make no mistake about it, I'm talking JUST about the first two movies. So as you can see, I wasn't a big fan of 'Freddy vs. Jason'.
I'm looking forward to seeing 'Alien vs. Predator: Requiem' this Christmas along with 'I Am Legend'. For my next post I'm going to talk about something that's probably as far away from horror / SciFi and writing as you can get. I'm going to talk about a television show that I've become addicted to - 'Ninja Warrior' which is broadcast on the G4.
Until then, move silently into the night. J/W
