Alien Vs Predator: The Politics of a Action Movie

Well, I went into this movie expecting... well... something exciting, maybe a little suspense, not as good as the first two movies (obviously), but which might offer an hour's diversion. What I didn't expect was to walk into something that might be better titled "The Primitivist Manifesto". Fair warning: spoilers lie below that will probably destroy your enjoyment of the movie. I'm not saying you shouldn't go out and see it if you want to -- but what I'm about to tell you will for damn sure prevent you from enjoying the movie, so if you're going, go before you read this post.

That means stop reading now if need be.

OK, everyone gone who's going? Here we go.

The setup in the movie is simple: the Predators have created a temple in Antarctica, where in ancient times humans worshipped them as gods. The Predators treated us as cattle, using us to breed Aliens in a ritual sacrifice. The Predators would send three warriors of their own race into this temple, where they would battle the Aliens and hopefully emerge victorious -- a rite of passage, in other words. Into this ancient temple to wake the two evils come a small team of humans lead by a rich asthmatic and a spunky ice-climber who doesn't like guns.

"Never saw one of those save a life on the ice" is what the lead has to say to an unnamed spunky female who prominently packs a handgun into unexplored territory. Those words turn out to be prophetic, as the spunky unnamed female dies by chest-burster -- without firing a shot. The message? "Guns don't save lives."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The whole temple is part of a timelock, you see. If you turn the appropriate ancient clockwork dials, three appropriate and ancient but very high-tech firearms emerge. "Wait -- don't!" shouts the spunky female protagonist, as the over-eager bodyguard types eagerly yank the firearms from the crypt. Like children, they don't recognize them as firearms, they just want to pick them up and play with them. So to speak. Of course, removing the firearms triggers another clockwork mechanism that traps the chosen sacrifices in their chamber to be facehugged. The message? "Don't leave firearms lying around, because ignorant children will pick them up without knowing what they are and then bad things will happen."

Granted, that's not bad advice. But it goes a step beyond that, as the spunky unarmed female slowly puzzles out. You see, those guns weren't meant for the humans. They were meant for the alien overlords -- excuse me, Predators -- who would use them in their ritual combat. Humans taking those guns early somehow disturbs the order of the universe, ensuring that the humans and their alien overlords will die at the hands of the Aliens.

Let's let that one sit for a while and ponder what's happening on the surface, while the idiots in the temple are setting themselves up as a living obstacle course for predatory teenagers. You see, "only the chosen ones" can be allowed to enter the temple, so the predators have to kill off anyone left on the surface. Apparantly their very presence is somehow cheating.

Now, if you'll recall, in the original Predator, our dear Governator was the sole surviving member of an elite combat team, and he managed to kill the single Predator sent after his team. He did it mano a' mano, hand to hand, with primitive weapons after his team tried their firearms and failed. There's a message there, too, but their firearms weren't entirely ineffective. At any rate, my point is that an elite combat team with their firearms is at least in the same league with a Predator.

But that's in the first movie. In this movie, the battle on the surface lasts no more than 2 or 3 minutes, and the firearms carried and used prominently by the elite military unit are basically worthless. That's not really a surprise, since the script pretty much demands it, but it's also another message: "Guns aren't useful for self-defense."

So let's go back down under the ice, where we left our spunky unarmed protagonist wondering what to do with the ancient firearms belonging to our alien overlords now that she has realized there are beasties eager to eat the tasty humans and that little interlude from the surface has reminded the audience that firearms aren't useful for self-defense. While she's been thinking about this, all the members of the elite military team with their fancy firearms in the temple have been killed by Aliens or Predators, usually without firing a shot, and universally without doing anything effective.

The only member of the team other than the spunky protagonist to rate more than a contemptuous death is the aging asthmatic, who turns his inhalor and a flare into an improvised blowtorch. That's effective enough to get the Predator to notice and bestow a quick death -- apparantly because it's not a firearm.

Shortly after this incident, the spunky female protagonist sees the light. She realizes that, by taking the guns from their time-locked safe, the humans have interfered with the master plan of the alien overlords to use them as cattle. The only way for the humans to make it right is to give the guns back to their alien overlords, who will use them to defeat the Aliens and protect their cattle human friends.

Amazingly, when she proposes this idea, none of the surviving humans shoot her. Of course, they didn't have any guns at the time, so I can't blame them. And by the time she is in a position to put her brilliant plan into action, there are no other humans to protest.

So, she kneels before the alien overlord and offers it back its gun, which as a child an ordinary human she is unworthy to possess or wield. (In point of fact, she made no effort to do so before handing it over). Of course, since she is following the script, the alien overlord accepts her offering of submission and sexual gratification warrior comradeship and spares her life so they can fight the Aliens together.

An exchange of lives saved and ritual scarification later, the sole surviving Predator and it's human cow pet companion fellow warrior go off in search of the Alien lair. You know, the inevitable place with all the eggs and the inevitable enslimed human. But before they can do that, the human -- now an anointed warrior by our alien overlord and permitted to possess weapons -- must find some sort of weapon.

But never fear, our alien overlords have the traditional weapons for victorious human warriors: a spear made from the Alien's tail and a shield made from it's head! Yes, that's right, our spunky female protagonist lickspittle to the alien overlords is privileged to fight Aliens with a spear and a shield! Privileged to do so, when there are two perfectly good alien-overlord firearms still around.

I should mention that the alien overlord's restored firearm lasted about five minutes and verifiably destroyed only a single Alien. Apparantly, firearms aren't useful even for the the alien overlords.

So it's off to the Alien lair. But before they arrive, there's a cut scene to the token sympathetic but doomed human in the Alien lair, who wakes up entombed in slime and watching his designated egg open. But wait! There's hope! One of the other, mercifully unconscious, enslimed humans has a handgun still in their holster, and it's just barely within reach! Let the drama build as the human stretches for the gun while the egg opens, stretches, stretches... and gets it! A human with a handgun! And he fires! And the facehugger is splattered in mid-leap! Score one for the armed humans!

But this is Hollywood. You see, firing the gun sets off all the other eggs... and there are only 4 bullets left in the gun. The message: "Guns don't save lives; firing a gun in self-defense only makes things worse."

Our alien overlord and his pet human arrive just in time for the sole human to make effective use of a firearm to explain that they have to kill him, he's got an Alien about to burst his chest. Did I mention that this was the only other sympathetic character? The pet uses the last bullet in the gun (convenient, that) to execute her friend before the Alien can emerge. Except it doesn't work, and the alien overlord must rescue his pet human from the proto-alien when it emerges.

The message: "If you get a gun, you'll only use it to shoot someone you care about and/or commit suicide. Although someone you care about will die, the gun and their death won't actually solve anything." (The dual shoot-your-friend and suicide angle is especially subtle propaganda; I was impressed).

After that bit of emotional heartstring-tugging, the alien overlord drops a bomb into the Alien nest and the familiar countdown-until-nuclear-detonation takes place, with the Alien queen escaping the blast as usual. The predictable final battle takes place on the surface, with victory being achieved only due to the spunky female protagonist alien lickspittle having the wits to tie the Alien queen to a collapsing tank -- none of the alien overlord's guns or sharp pointy things (or, for that matter, the pet's spear and shield) are of any particular use. The message? "Weapons don't win fights, your wits do."

The alien overlord died in the battle, of course. He used a gun, and everyone who used a gun in this movie died horribly. But his alien overlords are watching from their invisible ship, and give their pet a spear of the alien overlords as their form of honor, thus demonstrating the worthiness of their human lickspittle who betrayed her species and got her whole team killed because of her inane attitude towards firearms.

In case you're wondering, the game on which this movie was based was a first-person shooter that included a human marine who could obtain firearms and try to blast his way out of the trouble area. Firearms were the human's big advantage, being unable to compete in close combat with either type of aliens. But Hollywood has never worried too much about sticking closely to its source material.

I can't say I was surprised to get this sort of propaganda effort from Hollywood. I was surprised to find it in an action movie, where the bad guns using guns are offset by the good guys using guns. And I was surprised to find it so extreme. This movie goes far beyond the casual anti-gun efforts common to television and movies; it reveals a deeply pathological fear of taking responsibility for your own defense, preferring to preach an almost religious submission to a brutal dictator race. Combined with the message of dependency and reverance for the spear-and-shield of tribal cultures, the telltale odor of Luddite sympathies is clearly present.

The message being pressed upon us by this film is that remission to our tribal past in a life of deliberate technological ignorance is the only thing that can save us from a horrifying threat that we ourselves have created. And it's scary how easy it is to accept that message, when it is cloaked in the drama of an action film. Like all good propaganda, the message is obvious to all those who watch, and so outrageous when stated forthrightly that none would accept it. Yet when cloaked in entertainment, it goes down so easily that few notice the message they are swallowing along with everything else.