It happened, our duels are dueling! “Freddy vs. Jason (2003)” (FVJ) and “Alien vs. Predator (2004)” (AVP) both provide a solid, simple, and foolproof premise: take two popular franchises and mash them like two action figures together until one of them breaks.
“FVJ” gives us two horror icons finally battling, after nearly 20 years of solo movies. The eighth movie in the Freddy franchise and the 11th in the Jason franchise, we begin with two fleshed out characters (pardon the pun) sitting in hell as punishment for their crimes.
Freddy is losing his powers because the people he terrorized are forgetting him, so he manipulates Jason into rising from the dead and causing havoc. His plan works until Jason realizes he was duped, and confronts Freddy in the dream world, then in the real world.
The teenagers who Freddy and Jason have been trying to murder set the fighting duo on fire and they explode, landing in the lake, leaving the teens assuming the monsters had died. The movie ends with Jason emerging from the lake with Freddy’s severed head, which winks at the audience and laughs, cheating the audience out of a clear winner.
“AVP” is the fifth Alien movie and the third Predator movie. Explorers visit Antarctica after an energy signal reveals ancient pyramids under the ice, and they walk smack dab into the middle of an old xenomorph breeding center.
As this happens, a predator takes notice, and decides to start picking off explorers, until it notices a much deadlier hunting prize emerge, and we see the bloodthirsty creatures both meet their match.
The humans run for their lives as the two monsters fight each other, resulting in the lone predator successfully taking down the very last alien and being rescued by the larger, looming predator clan in the upper atmosphere.
Just before the credits roll, the dead predator lay motionless around its kind, and a tiny alien bursts out of its chest, showing who got the last laugh.
While the beginning of “AVP” is more contrived, placing both villains near each other by happenstance, the ending finale shows the best part of each fighter. Though the predator is more skilled, the alien survives by planting itself into hosts, and we see the benefit in the very last seconds of the movie.
The strength of “FVJ” is that it finds a creative way for the two villains to meet. Both are in hell, and both have unfinished business on the surface world, in that there are so many teenagers that are just walking around not being slashed. The ending however, is lazy and unsatisfying.
Both fandoms have iffy feelings about each respective face off movie. Each was commercially successful, but may have been a better watch if it were seen 15 years prior, when the franchises were in their prime. As far as fan appreciation goes, both movies underperformed.
AVP was aggressively retconned, meaning the later Prometheus movie focused on an origin of the aliens that had nothing to do with Earth, and omitted any ancient pyramids. Meanwhile, Jason of the Halloween franchise did not have to worry about retconning, as his continuity never made any sense to begin with.
The most common trait of each movie could very well be the endearingly cheesy marketing.
“AVP” used the tagline “Whoever wins, we lose”, which is clunky, but very cool in a self-aware kind of way. At least it feels less cringey than the “FVJ” tagline.
“The ‘Slicer’…The ‘Dicer’…And This Time, They’re Not Any ‘Nicer’!” has to be one of the most corny lines that a movie could come up with. Which one is the “Dicer”? Does either Freddy or Jason specifically dice things? Did the first Halloween movie feature a Slap Chop?
The real loser this week is me, for having to watch these, back to back. They were both made a decade too late, and forgot to give human side characters that made a real difference to the plot.
The winner, however is “AVP”. The ending felt like less of a cheat, and gave us some real consequences for each villain.
Congrats “AVP”! Have a wonderful Halloween and stay tuned for next week’s Movie Duel, where Sky High faces off against Zoom. If you want to read Movie Duels a week early, then feel free to start writing them yourself; I promise I won’t sue.