From: (No Email available)

Date: 2004-08-12 09:09:40

Comment:

To remind ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, why we loved this franchise in the first place... It was really terrifying. Alien (and to a lesser extent Predator) movies were supposed to scare and entertain you, the haunted house theme, the pure animal v our morally corrupt selves, our fear of being hunted, the unknown etc. To take two franchises that should have meshed together perfectly (see the Dark Horse comics for proof of this) and then try and shoehorn the concept of two alien races fighting to the death into a PG13 film says a couple of things about the studio that allowed this. 1) The toy and shirt line must be very lucrative. 2) Studio execs spend money without fully understanding their investment (working out profit and loss on a calculator based on the performace of the last movies, factoring in the new target demographic and any additinal advertising costs doesn't count guys.). Honestly, anyone, if you were personally going to spend any substantial amount of cash on anything, wouldn't you at least find out the detail of what it was you were buying to see it it was really what you wanted. There are franchises of PG13 aliens out there for this kind of thing (Independance Day, MIB) so you can rake in the merchandising buck. This isn't it. Either do the franchise justice or realise that you'll never make any more money out of it (which is the name of the game after all), or do something I haven't seen in the film industry for a while, create an original idea so you can do what you like with it and nobody will be expecting anything different. You never know, you might get a sequel out of it...