I really enjoyed Alien vs Predator, the first film in the crossover-franchise, where the two species who have done battle for centuries fight to the death in an underground pyramid. As the film ends with a nuclear explosion flattening the town and the countryside around it, and as only a small group escape in the hospital’s only helicopter, I think we can assume the babies didn’t survive.

Soon after, a small ward of pregnant women are impregnated (we actually see the eggs pushed down one victim’s throat), later to be found cocooned but still alive. At one point the alien is seen breathing heavily over a row of adorable newborns, swaddled and wearing little hats, in their clear plastic cots in the hospital nursery. A boy in a forest sees his dad’s arm lopped off with acid. This is a bleak and dark (in both senses) film, set to a soundtrack of predator growls, alien squeals, and the screams of humans.Īnd while this is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, it does have an impressive determination not to be waylaid by sentimentality. We’re also probably predisposed to find some humanity in a creature with arms, legs and a head where we’d expect them – like a feelz version of pareidolia, where one’s brain sees familiar patterns and faces in something non-human or inanimate. Whereas with the alien, it’s the actual task in hand (remember Ash’s description in Alien: “It’s structural perfection is matched only by its hostility… I admire its purity”)

We can recognise something in them can’t we? For instance, their similarity to Earth’s own hot-but-dim guys – sexy, until they open their big mouths.Īnd predators seem less of a threat to humanity – partly a case of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, and partly as predator kills of humans in this franchise-of-a-franchise often seem to be collateral damage. When it comes to predators vs aliens, I always find myself rooting for the predators. Warning: spoilers ahead, though only of the ending as I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening during the actual film.

Alien vs predator full movie