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Ever since the rise of internet fandom, one debate has raged on: Who would win—Xenomorph or Predator? Two legendary sci-fi icons, born from Alien and Predator, finally collided in a crossover that should’ve launched the next big cinematic universe. But instead of greatness, we got disappointment.
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Those who choose may enter
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It's chosen. Only the chosen ones may enter. This is Alien vs. Predator
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Both it and its sequel, Alien vs. Predator Requiem, are nothing short of terrible
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And yet here we are, all these years later, still talking about them. There's something special about the idea of taking two titans of cinema and smashing them together
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An idea so enticing, in fact, that Fox was attempting to use it to launch a shared cinematic universe
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Too bad these films fail at that as well. What did you say this room was called
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Sacrificial chamber. These two films served a simple purpose, to answer a question that had been murmured across
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back-issue bins and dollar theater cheap seats for close to four decades. Who would win in a fight
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the alien or the predator? The concept of these two movie monsters duking it out was solidified
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with the Dark Horse comic series from 1990. Screenwriter Peter Briggs read the comic and
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instantly thought, this is a fantastic idea for a movie. He wrote a spec script titled The Hunt
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Alien vs. Predator. A loose adaptation of the comic, the script was genuinely considered for
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production, but ultimately the risk of combining the two money-making franchises was deemed too
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great, and this project spiraled into development hell for close to two decades
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Ancient warriors would mark themselves with the blood of their kill. it's a rite of passage. Then in 2004, the stars aligned. The Predator franchise was in the toilet
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after the misfire of Predator 2, and the Alien franchise was adrift after Resurrection failed
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to rejuvenate the adventures of Ripley in outer space. Thanks to the interest in Versus films
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solidified by Freddy vs. Jason, as well as both solo franchises being at low points
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there was nothing holding Fox execs back. It was finally time. You sure this is going to work? I don't know
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Alien vs. Predator sees a group of engineers traveling to the Arctic in order to investigate
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a recently uncovered pyramid Little do they know that this is a Predator coming ritual They not hunting us We in the middle of a war It time to pick a side Is the film what longtime AVP fans wanted Frankly no It takes place in modern day
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has an ensemble of characters that are wooden as hell, and fails to execute basic levels of
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storytelling. To add insult to injury, almost every in-universe easter egg or cameo that people
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would have wanted to see is there, but just done poorly. Machiko, the protagonist of the comics
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series? No, she's not there, but a much worse, more boring archetypal stand-in is there. Is there
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a human-predator team-up? Yep, it also sucks. Do we get predators taking out loads of aliens
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Yes, but only in flashbacks. The redesigned predators look boxy and clumsy, and the film
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feels like it has the narrative ambition of a 1999 video game cutscene. The film was produced
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on a budget of close to $70 million and pulled in close to $177 million, so even though it got
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savaged by critics and fans, Fox greenlit a sequel, much to everyone's chagrin
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It's a bomb. Well, I hope it kills every f***ing one of them
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Next up, we have Alien vs. Predator, Requiem. Does this movie feature or thematically deal
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with the concept of a Requiem? No, not at all. It's just a cool word that we can slap on the
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end of a trailer, and that's pretty indicative of the level of thought put into this movie
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which is deeply disappointing. You thought it couldn't get any worse than the first installment
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and you were so, so wrong. You are an ugly mother... This time out, Fox was hedging their bets
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They gave the film an even lower budget, gave the writers the editorial edict
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that the film would take place in modern-day Colorado and feature a cast of teens and 20-somethings
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that would fill the young adult heartthrob box that was gaining cultural cash
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And yet they also were trying to give fans what they wanted by allowing the film to be R-rated
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If that sounds like conflicting motivations that would ultimately result in a boring confusing mess of a film you be right on the money The film final prints were accidentally color to be ostensibly pitch black
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which caused the film to be almost impossible to visually comprehend. Obviously, it was utterly lambasted by critics and fans alike
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and did the film still make over $130 million at the box office
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Yes. Yes, it did. Did it also illustrate quite clearly that Fox did not understand how to make these films
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in any way that would satisfy anyone? Yes, yes, it did. Are the monsters gone
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They're gone. The Alien vs. Predator duology, in many ways, feels like a franchise in search of a purpose
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When looking at what Marvel accomplished with the MCU and what their many imitators failed
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to do, it's so apparent that the key differentiating factors are vision and passion
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And you'd think the AVP world would be perfectly suited for a shared cinematic experience
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They even literally have the history of selecting visionary directors to chart bold new directions
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for their franchises. This seems perfectly set up for building a new shared universe of films
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during a time when that's exactly what everyone was attempting to do
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And yet it didn't happen because Fox just couldn't get out of their own way
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After this, they were presented with a fork in the road to produce some version of AVP3
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or allow Ridley Scott to return to the franchise and produce a prequel
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They obviously opted for Scott in his prequel project that eventually evolved into Prometheus
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If you created me, who created you? This new continuity established a Weyland ancestral tree that removed AVP and Requiem
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from continuity. And at the time, most fans thought, yeah, that's probably for the best
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You s killed the entire town. We're just following orders. However, in the ensuing years, public opinion on the shared alien and predator world has
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gained traction again. Just because Fox failed to generate a long-term interconnected web of films doesn't mean they're
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done trying. In the new Predator Badlands trailer, we see the eyes of Elle Fanning's character, Go
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showcasing that she's a synthetic human, just like Bishop and Ash Also prominently featured in the film marketing has been the interior of a Predator vessel housing the skulls of many recognizable creatures most notably a harvester
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skull from Independence Day. Is this a cheeky homage to Predator 2's inclusion of the xenomorph
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skull in the Predator ship? Yes, but it also features some very exciting narrative possibilities
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as well. This could be the first real step to fixing the biggest mistake that the AVP movies
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made, not adding anything new to the universe. The Predalien had existed for decades in the
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comics before he appeared in Requiem. Those films had a real opportunity to deepen and evolve the
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complexity of their respective universe, and they just didn't. If the hunters lost
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they made sure nothing survived. And from what it seems like, the new regime at the Disney-controlled
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20th Century Studios seems to understand the importance of doing this right. When asked about
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the potential of AVP3, studio exec Steve Aspel was recently quoted as saying
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it wouldn't be in the way you think. That's the thing, not in the way that it will just be called
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Alien vs. Predator or anything like the original movies. If we do this, they'll be organically
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created out of these two franchises that we've continued with characters that we fall in love
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with and those characters will combine, perhaps. Ultimately, the concept of taking these two
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modern icons and mashing them up against each other is a great idea, in theory. Much like the
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Universal Monsters that only met during their cultural nadir, the crossover attempts only came
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when their respective franchises were creatively bankrupt and ever so close to financial ruin
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That's no way to produce quality longstanding work. That's a cash grab
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With all this, this bullsh** you think is so important, you can just kiss all that goodbye
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We currently live in a filmic landscape that's vastly different from when the original films
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were released. However, now you have filmmakers like Dan Trachtenberg and Fede Alvarez literally
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talking about co-directing a project together set in the AVP universe. And with the actual
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creative momentum that their projects seem to have, maybe a new AVP film is just what
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these already lightly connected series truly need