Predator‘s chainsaw-like trimming down of ambition and mythos seems rarer than ever. It’s smart dumb - entertainment of the shlockiest sort carried off not just with precision but, most importantly, with glee. He knows what his audience wants to see, and he gives it to them, time and time over, shaking up a frothy cocktail of gore, martial arts-inspired clashes, and giant prosthetic xenomorphs. Anderson gets to it fast, blowing through character backstories like a man on a deadline, and setting up narrative pieces with only the briefest flashback. Rather than tie himself up in knots of mythic backstories, Anderson shaves his film down to the showdown of the title. And that’s precisely the fun of the thing. The stakes of an Alien film have never as low as they are in Alien Vs. His is a process of humbling - with sardonic wit, Anderson reveals that the central fight between the two extra-terrestrial races of beasties is nothing but a middling game, like a test-run for bigger, more serious encounters. With breathless abandon, he redraws the Alien canon, writing a new backstory for the killing machines, and spurning mythos for gnarled action set-pieces. By contrast, Anderson doesn’t take anything seriously.
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