AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) is an Intriguing Point on the Blockbuster Evolutionary Timeline

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If you’re anything like me, you’ll occasionally look at the American box office trends and wonder to yourself “How the hell did we get here?” “Here” being the point at which the only films that can be considered hugely successful—save for maybe whatever Christopher Nolan does—are based on pre-existing intellectual property.* I don’t need to go into any further detail; just check any box office data from the last 25 years or so.

While the situation is evident, the question remains the same: How the hell did we get here? Steven Spielberg essentially created the modern blockbuster with Jaws, but if five of his last six films (and especially the last two) are any indication, even he can’t consistently put butts in seats with semi-original films anymore.** And things start to feel even more hopeless when true visionaries like Barry Jenkins are working on projects like an unnecessary prequel to The Lion King. (Yes, I’m still upset about that.)

Like most things of this nature, the change didn’t happen overnight. But there are some interesting points along the cinematic timeline that can illuminate our present state. And one point that doesn’t get the attention it deserves is the release of AVP: Alien vs. Predator.

This movie hit theaters a few weeks before I hit a college campus. I didn’t know how good we had it back then. By the time I graduated, Iron Man and The Dark Knight were about to dominate the summer box office, and the film industry never looked back. But the tides were already turning by then; The Dark Knight was the sixth Batman film in the span of two decades, and plenty of other franchises like Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious were still going strong.

The Alien and Predator franchises…weren’t exactly thriving though. In 1997, Alien: Resurrection made less money than any of the previous installments—it couldn’t even beat out Flubber in its first weekend—and that underperformance fueled the studio’s decision to scrap the future sequels they had planned. Meanwhile, the Predator franchise hadn’t released a film since 1990 after Predator 2 was both a critical and box office failure, debuting fourth in its opening weekend. These once-beloved intellectual properties that had spawned comics, video games, and toys (yes, for actual children like me to play with) both needed a fresh start.

What they got instead was AVP. But the decision to have these established movie monsters fight each other isn’t the intriguing one. In fact, the Xenomorphs and the Yautja (did you know that’s what they’re called?) had been doing battle away from the silver screen for many years. A series of comic books called Aliens vs. Predator was launched in 1989 when the former had only two films released and the latter had just one. Then an Alien vs. Predator video game debuted on the Super Nintendo in 1993 and hit arcades a year later.*** Heck, it wasn’t even the first major crossover film—Freddy vs. Jason, which had been gestating for over a decade itself, hit theaters the exact same mid-August weekend in 2003.

The plans had been drawn up many years earlier. But it was the studio’s decision to make AVP a PG-13 film that made all the difference—for better or for worse.****

In a way, I understand it. When your franchise creatures shift from R-rated films to comics, video games, and toys, you’re now selling the product to kids—or at least teenagers. So why not make a film that all of the late 80s and early 90s babies who grew up with this lore could go and see? But if I remove my marketing hat, it’s hard to argue that this decision didn’t dilute the product and create quite a challenge for writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson to overcome. No Alien or Predator film to this point had been rated less than R.***** Anderson had to tone down the violence and get creative.

And the results are, well, pretty mixed. The premise actually isn’t bad: A billionaire industrialist lures a group of scientists to Antarctica to investigate an ancient underground pyramid which is actually a gladiatorial arena for the Yautja to battle the “serpents” that have proven to be their most worthy prey. (See? Pretty good.) From there, it’s more of an adventure film than a horror flick. Not simply because the characters are trying to decipher hieroglyphs and architectural oddities but because most of the human deaths happen offscreen—as you do in a PG-13 film, I reckon. By the time the titular face-off happens, there’s fun to be had, but it all feels rather inconsequential.

Perhaps that sums up AVP’s legacy, if it has one at all. Interesting ideas and decent execution that ultimately give way to silliness and pandering. And though this film certainly isn’t an influence on any of the sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots that have clogged our cinematic pipeline since the turn of the millennium (even within its own respective franchise), it may have unintentionally helped set our expectations for what was to come. I’ve been known to enjoy many of these films myself, but there are plenty that fall into that same trap of silliness and pandering, and it feels like we’re getting more and more every year. But, like AVP, they keep making money, and the studios keep learning the wrong lesson.

I mean, just look at that (excellent) tagline. I know at least a few film critics out there were tempted to borrow it for their review of Deadpool & Wolverine. (They should’ve gone with “vs.” too.)

*Even Oppenheimer is technically IP since it’s based on a source text. But you have to respect the name brand he’s crafted for himself that allows films like Inception and Interstellar to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars.

**The most original of that six-film run, The Fabelmans, barely made its budget back. The most IP-drenched film of that crop, Ready Player One, unfortunately made more than $600 million worldwide.

***My local Cicis Pizza had an Alien vs. Predator cab, and I fondly remember playing the hell out of that game at birthday parties and youth soccer dinners. But it’s possible that I never even played it. It’s possible that my local Cicis Pizza never had this cab in its arcade at all. Some of what we consider to be our core memories are merely constructs of our unconscious mind and we’ll never truly know if they actually happened the way we remember them. All of our bodies will turn to dust.

****I buried the lede by a solid 500 words today! In related news, my editor John will be returning from paternity leave soon.

*****And none has since either. Even Alien vs. Predator: Requiem went back to the R rating.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator is now streaming on Hulu, and it is available to rent elsewhere.