Alien Vs Predator 2 (AVP2) Film Analysis

AVP2 starts off where the original Alien Vs Predator leaves off, with the dead predator aboard the spaceship and an alien bursting out of it’s stomach. The alien grows into an alien/predator hybrid and then kills some of the other predators and escapes to earth. A father takes his boy hunting in woods in America and discovers the crashed ship. The alien creatures infect them both and soon a pandemic starts in the town next door. The aliens go around town killing and infecting humans and a predator comes to Earth to eradicate them in order to save the human race. The predator causes a lot of damage and kills many humans in order to accomplish this. Soon the aliens are widespread but are rapidly being killed by the predator. The original alien hybrid goes into the town’s hospital and infects the pregnant women, causing them to reject their unborn babies and give birth to many aliens instead. A group of people survive and try to escape. The military are called in but are all slaughtered by the aliens. The group splits in two-one trusting the colonel and waiting for a military helicopter to pick them up from the middle of town, and the other not trusting the colonel, drives to the hospital to steal the emergency helicopter and ride out to safety. Meanwhile Predator having killed the other aliens catches the original hybrid and they battle to the death. The team escape in a helicopter and immediately after the colonel nukes the town to kill the aliens. All of the team survive, but the town is dead and the film ends with one of Predator’s key weapons being found by the government and it is stated that man is not ready for that technology yet. The credits role on. The narrative of the film is typical of the Toderov film narrative theory. It starts off with equilibrium until an enigma is thrown in (alien) a quest is undergone and the equilibrium is resolved. However in this film the quest is split in two. The humans are trying to escape and survive and the predator is trying to eradicate all traces of the alien. These separate quests take us on two separate paths throughout the film. The antagonist in the film is Alien, so although Predator kills and skins humans for sport, we know that Predator is trying to kill Alien so we as the audience side not only with the humans but Predator too. Although Predator has no value for human life and kills us like animals, he is initially ready to sacrifice himself for the survival of the human race. So in a way Predator is both the Antagonist and the ‘good guy’. We reach a new equilibrium in the film when Predator, the original Alien and the rest of the Aliens are killed and the final group of humans survive. The audience with this film were fairly sure of what was going to happen as this is a sequel to Alien Vs Predator, which in its self was carried on from the original Alien Franchise which included a round total of four films, and the two predator films. In the first film the audience saw the humans being dragged into the battle between alien and predator, and like with the sequel, we sympathised with the predator for killing the aliens. However in the first film the Predators deliberately draw the humans in as bate intending for their deaths so that they can hunt the aliens as sport, in this film the single Predator comes purely to destroy the alien before it becomes an epidemic and wipes out the human race-and we as the humans are accidently caught up in the battle. The film has many features in it that make it a horror. To start there is lots of gore and graphical violence. This happens both between the Predator and the Alien and from them towards the humans. The graphic violence towards the humans is really what makes it a horror though because we instinctively put ourselves in the human’s positions. There are also several ‘shock moments’ which makes the audience jump. An example of this is when the Alien burst through the window and attacked.An example of this is when the hobo looks into the water and a face hugger leaps out of the water and hugs onto his face. The tension then builds as the other unsuspecting hobo is attacked by one of these creatures-but manages to fight it off until we see the Alien Hybrid, and his strength fails him. There is a pause and then the female hobo enters and sees first the face huggers and then the alien. We know her fate and it is simply a tense waiting game before she gets eaten alive. Both Alien’s and Predator’s faces are ugly and horrific to look at however, the audience who watched this were made up mostly of people who had already seen the Alien and Predator films before and so would not have been initially shocked like the audiences of the first films. The image here, despite being horrific would probably be looked upon as ‘cool’ rather than scary. The characters in this film are quite unique because the two main characters, obviously aren’t human or even from this planet, in fact, they don’t even say a word throughout the whole film. Also although we tend to side with Predator they are both antagonists. Alien tends to be the villain in this movie, despite Predator also being an antagonist. Alien is not as much a character as a wild creature, however still acts as the main antagonistic body within the film. Predator in a weird way is the hero because it’s job is ultimately to vanquish the Alien before it becomes an epidemic thus saving the human race. However, despite this act, it could be argued that it is only doing this in revenge for it’s fallen comrades, or it is simply trying to contain the evidence of the aliens, in a sense covering up it’s own loose ends. It also shows no regard for human life, killing any humans which get in it’s path. There are also several hero-personas within the groups of humans. Mainly are male but there is also a final girl in the film however, unlike most horror films the plot does not revolve around her or any one of the protagonists. In this film we see them all act as a team to try and escape and destroy what they can of the invading creatures. At the end of the film the colonel issues the command to nuke the town. This both kills the aliens and Predator but also the thousands of innocent human beings. It could be argued that he is the hero by Prop’s definition, however because he technically slaughters also the town full of people it could also be argued that he is the villain or antagonist. All in all the characters in this film do not represent the characters of Prop’s theory. All in all Alien Vs Predator 2 is a classic representation of a gory, exciting and action-packed horror movie. It has eye-candy for the male members of the audience and is packed full of the same ideas and character types which made the previous franchise as successful as they were. This sequel both continues with the traditional themes of a conventional horror film as well as questioning the theoretical ideology of the characters of the horror genre.