Alien vs Predator (& Ares vs Athena)
As uni holidays come to a suffocating close, I find myself holing up in the air-con and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist. A lot of that process includes watching movies that I've been told I should watch. (I have healthy coping mechanisms. No comments, please.)
Two of these movies are Alien (1979) and Predator (1987) (in this post I'm going to talk about the first movie in each franchise only). Alien was amazing, I'm not going to lie. I had very low expectations going into it (mostly because I had the very wrong belief that there were no good movies made between the years of 1960 and 2000 with the exception of Star Wars, which was definitely an erroneous belief) but it was actually an amazing movie. The tone and pacing were tight and it felt like hurtling towards the inevitable gory end. The villain was real and as fleshed-out as an alien monster could be and I actually enjoyed the acting and the characters, which is rare for me for movies of that era.
Predator, well, definitely felt like a let-down. I feel like Alien raised the bar so I was incredibly disappointed to find plot holes and characters that I couldn't have cared less about (and thus little to no stakes). I had no idea what the motivation of the predator was (besides collecting skulls?? At least the alien wanted food and to reproduce). Granted there were a lot more explosions and shooting in Predator but I feel like I lost a few brain cells while watching the film.
TL;DR I definitely liked Alien better than Predator.
Upon reflection, I realised that Alien and Predator reminded me of the dynamic between the Greek gods Ares and Athena. As Wikipedia says (because I am nothing if not lazy), "[Ares] often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war and is the personification of sheer brutality, in contrast to his sister, the armoured Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship".
It's fascinating how well the two movies align with these Greek gods. Predator is nothing but Ares. It's has an untamed violence to it, a brute force that mows down anything in its path. There's little strategy to it, nothing new, something I've seen a thousand times before but seemed to have worked anyways.
On the other hand we have Alien. There's an intelligence to Alien, a calculated building of suspense and the film makes the audience wait for the pay-off. Characters with agency and motivation who are easily distinguishable from each other and a gritty realism that puts the viewers in the claustrophobic spaceship with the monster.
Neither movie is perfect (despite my glowing review of Alien there are still problems) but they both work in what they're trying to achieve. Predator is a slasher, gory, violent, and effective. The film isn't going to wait in the shadows for a jump scare, it's going to smash you over the head and be done with it. On the other hand, Alien will wait in the air ducts to drag you into the dark.
They're different ways of doing movies. Both are effective, although I know which one I enjoy more.
Two of these movies are Alien (1979) and Predator (1987) (in this post I'm going to talk about the first movie in each franchise only). Alien was amazing, I'm not going to lie. I had very low expectations going into it (mostly because I had the very wrong belief that there were no good movies made between the years of 1960 and 2000 with the exception of Star Wars, which was definitely an erroneous belief) but it was actually an amazing movie. The tone and pacing were tight and it felt like hurtling towards the inevitable gory end. The villain was real and as fleshed-out as an alien monster could be and I actually enjoyed the acting and the characters, which is rare for me for movies of that era.
Predator, well, definitely felt like a let-down. I feel like Alien raised the bar so I was incredibly disappointed to find plot holes and characters that I couldn't have cared less about (and thus little to no stakes). I had no idea what the motivation of the predator was (besides collecting skulls?? At least the alien wanted food and to reproduce). Granted there were a lot more explosions and shooting in Predator but I feel like I lost a few brain cells while watching the film.
TL;DR I definitely liked Alien better than Predator.
Upon reflection, I realised that Alien and Predator reminded me of the dynamic between the Greek gods Ares and Athena. As Wikipedia says (because I am nothing if not lazy), "[Ares] often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war and is the personification of sheer brutality, in contrast to his sister, the armoured Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship".
It's fascinating how well the two movies align with these Greek gods. Predator is nothing but Ares. It's has an untamed violence to it, a brute force that mows down anything in its path. There's little strategy to it, nothing new, something I've seen a thousand times before but seemed to have worked anyways.
On the other hand we have Alien. There's an intelligence to Alien, a calculated building of suspense and the film makes the audience wait for the pay-off. Characters with agency and motivation who are easily distinguishable from each other and a gritty realism that puts the viewers in the claustrophobic spaceship with the monster.
Neither movie is perfect (despite my glowing review of Alien there are still problems) but they both work in what they're trying to achieve. Predator is a slasher, gory, violent, and effective. The film isn't going to wait in the shadows for a jump scare, it's going to smash you over the head and be done with it. On the other hand, Alien will wait in the air ducts to drag you into the dark.
They're different ways of doing movies. Both are effective, although I know which one I enjoy more.
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