RATING: F

Starring: Lance Henriksen, Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner, Colin Salmon, Tommy Flanagan. Written by Paul W.S. Anderson, Shane Salemo. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.

Rated PG 13 for violence, language, horror images, slime and gore

Alien vs. Predator is disaster cinema.

Paul W.S. Anderson, second only to Joel Schumacher as the internet's most hated human being, has made a product and not a movie. Looking back after the last few hours, I have never been so upset after a screening. Imagine reading your favorite book, and then finding out that it was to be turned into a feature film. Your mind wanders, thinking over who will be in the lead role and the possible director. Before the product was announced, I began to think of a couple possibilities. One such idea was to give the job to James Cameron, have Arnold Schwarzenegger return as Major Dutch Schaeffer, and let the director run loose with a budget of $200 million. The only rule would to make it close to the arcade game, which had the aliens landing on a metropolitan city (possibly New York City) and the Predators show up to do battle. Eventually, the humans (Schwarzenegger in the lead) would team up to do away with the alien menace.

Before I get too sidetracked from my fan boy dreams, I must repeat that this is quite possibly the worst film of the year and definitely the biggest disappointment. There are so many levels of negativity to this product, my mind began to drift about other things as I was watching it. For example, Garden State is coming out at my movie theatre next week. That’s a good thing, at least. Anyway, so you all want to know about the movie and that’s understandable.

Okay, so there are a few of the usual Anderson subtitles to start things. Paul does this crap all the time, and as soon as I saw the first sign of it, I wanted to throw up. Does he have to explain everything to us? Then, the guy from the James Bond films and the one who gets cut up into pieces in Resident Evil shows up as this worker for the Weyland Corporation. I thought he did great work in the James Bond films, but for some reason his voice is way too high and gives the impression of a T.V. movie. The same goes for the lighting. Every scene looked like it was lit up like Christmas. Maybe this has something to do with being able to clear up the picture as most of the product was done on computers and not in front of a camera.

A group of human cattle shows up on the least interesting place on Earth (Antarctica), and are about to start drilling for this pyramid that was discovered by Weyland’s super satellites. Of course, the Predators are coming to Earth and already made things easier for the silly script by blowing a hole straight into the pyramid. It doesn’t take long before more than half the human cast gets killed off, as three Predators show up and start killing everybody like a video game.

This is where things get totally out of control, too, for Anderson makes amazing use of the PG-13 rating (insert sarcasm). It seemed like everybody was killed off-screen, and even the lone chestburster scene had a bizarre editing pace to it. Sanaa Lathan is the only person in the product that I will bother talking about. She did an okay job, given the nightmarish nature of the script. Besides the pacing of the death scenes, everything about Alien vs. Predator was shouted out (such as when the James Bond guy talked) or had to be forced onto the screen. The aliens don’t even show up until an hour into the movie, and kill off two of the three Predators within minutes of each other. That leaves the task of the hunt to the warrior Predator, who teams up with Lathan for the most hilarious buddy flick of all time.

To wrap up things, do not see Alien vs. Predator. Make it a point to 20th Century Fox to give the fans something other than some deranged individual’s idea of pleasing studio executives with a kid-friendly product to two near-brilliant series of science fiction films. Toward the end, I was reminded of even Jurassic Park in the movements of the Alien Queen, who I last checked moved slow and methodical in Aliens. Oh well, though. I guess nothing is sacred to the fans.

What’s next, Grand Theft Auto: The Movie, as directed by Uwe Boll?