Rating:
0.5 out of 5
By Vic Holtreman
Short version: I didn’t think it was possible, but AVP-R is worse than the previous Aliens vs Predator movie.
Abandon all hope ye who enter a movie theater that is showing Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.
It’s that bad. I kid you not. As first time directors, “The Brothers Strauss” (as they are referred to in the credits) are great visual effects guys. Honestly, I’m having a hard time coming up with ways to tell you just how depressingly awful this movie is, but I’ll do my best.
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Within minutes of the start of the film I was bored and my mind started to wander. It opens aboard a Predator ship, where a dead comrade is presumably being transported to the home world directly after the events of the last film. An Alien bursts forth from the dead Predator, shortly taking out the entire crew and crashing the ship on Earth.
Immediately I wondered just how this could happen so easily. In the last film the premise was that Predators had been using Antarctica as the location for a rite of passage or training ground for Predators. For many years (was it centuries?) the Predator race had been doing this very thing.
So how is it that they could be so oblivious to the possibility that a dead comrade might be home to a gestating Alien? How is it that one Alien was able to take down the crew of a Predator ship (these guys ARE hunters, right?) so easily?
Once the ship crashes one of the mortally injured Predators manages to send a distress call which is pi,cked up by an elder on their home world. It was marginally cool to get a glimpse of their world, but that’s about it. He heads out for destination Earth.
Once the story cuts to the residents of the small town it gets even worse. We meet a variety of characters whose lives will clumsily come together as the movie progresses. We have an inexperienced (and inept) sheriff, the rebel/criminal brother of a local teen who comes back to town, that teen lusting after the local hottie who is dating a jerk/bully.
We also have Reiko Aylesworth as Kelly: a mom returning home after some unspecified amount of time to an estranged little girl and stay at home dad. The whole role reversal thing here creeped me out a bit for some reason.
She is probably the only person in the entire film who demonstrated any acting ability above what you might see in a high school play. We don’t really care about what happens to any of the characters despite the weak attempts at trying to connect the audience with them.
Oh, who cares about the acting, right? You want to see this for the action. Well I’m sorry to report that 90% of the time the scenes were shot in such a way that between the low lighting, rain, extreme close ups and quick cuts you can’t even tell what the hell is going on. Nor do you care much, as the whole thing seems assembled with less reason for being than a video game plot.
Then there were the really vile bits, like Aliens invading a hospital and finding easy hosts for their “little ones.” Beyond the idea of using the sick and helpless for this were a couple of scenes in the maternity ward where a woman who is going into labor is attacked by an Alien and has eggs deposited inside her in a repulsive manner (no, not THAT, but it was still disgusting).
Seriously, if I wasn’t going to review this I was so bored and disinterested I would have walked out 20 minutes in. It seems that my initial reactions to AVP-R turned out to be right after all. Of late I had been getting cautiously optimistic that there might be some chance that this would actually redeem the first, but it’s actually worse.
While I gave the first on only 1.5 stars, at least it got to be a bit of fun in the second half, but this one is almost completely without any value. There were a couple of very brief moments that were cool between the Pred-Alien and the Predator, but I’d count those at no more than maybe two or three eye-blink moments, tops.
I know the Strauss brothers are big fans of both franchises and had good intentions, but Aliens vs Predator: Requiem proves that being a big movie fan does not necessarily mean that you can make a good movie.
Folks, seriously, don’t bother. This thing is going to tank hard at the box office and if you see it anyway don’t come crying to me because YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I can only hope this will sound the death knell for this sci fi movie franchise merger.
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95 Comments
No, a small thing does not. However the abuse in this thread has been cumulative and patience has worn thin.
Vic
Both the AVP movies were good. Everyone knows the Predator would win hands down.
There was something Aliens (2) had that every other Alien/AvP movie lacked. I can’t seem to put my finger on it, but I think it had something to do with the valor of several of the actors in Aliens (2), where the rest of the movies have either a single hero or several frightened people and a predator. Aliens (2) showed changing major protagonist leadership roles between Ripley, Bishop, and several of the Marines, where the other movies centered such leadership on Ripley or the Predator. I am not sure if the predator in AvP2 could be considered either an antagonist or protagonist but there was no clear leadership among the human actors in the protagonist role in AvP-R.
The betrayal aspect in the first two Alien movies was far more personal than the betrayal in Alien 3, AvP-R, and did not appear to exist in AvP and Alien 4. Not that it is necessary, but it helps to be internal betrayal rather than external. (one of the main characters instead of an unknown Colonel or company)
I think the AvP concept is good, but there is not enough background for the predator and the void is filled with plotless human characters leaving both without sufficient influence to achieve a meaningful part. There needs to be sufficient scenes to introduce the viewer to the protagonist or there is no connection with the plot.
The maternity ward scene truly was a work of art for horror. I can not think of a more emotion clutching scene, this portion of the movie was perfectly written to inspire hate for the alien. I believe this is the single best written horror clip I have ever seen. It practically included pregnant woman rape in with baby mutilation, fetus mutilation, and plain old people mutilation. I don’t think it could get any worse.
AvP-R also lacked the fear leading up to the appearance of an alien. Previous movies allow anticipation of the alien appearance; here we saw the camera quickly move to a number of alien scenes until the alien became repetitious and boring. The Predator was obviously tough, but his weaponry was inadequate and there was too much hand to hand fighting between the predator and the aliens to make the alien appear scary any more. They were simply too easy to kill with the predator’s bare hands to make them seem scary. It could have been balanced by introducing more soldiers and a battle scene that was more than a radio transmission and a few seconds of muzzle flashes. The movie should have encompassed three days instead of a single day. The fear of sleep is part of the horror this movie lacked.
I am glad that the authors did not fire up a joint at the end of this one like in Alien3 and 4. Those two really killed the brand equity of the Alien title. This one was well written for a realistic approach to the classic Alien theme, but truly lacked proper plot development. Most importantly, this is supposed to be a SciFi flick. Why was this not based on a future earth? Better yet, why not show a clip of aliens on the Preadator home world taking over? That would explain why Predators are not seen in the earlier Alien movies…
As for the gestation rate issue:
This movie included a hybrid predator/alien that was not required to lay a large egg that would produced an parasitic alien, which would in turn use a human to incubate an alien fetus. This alien had the ability to implant aliens directly into humans without the parasitic gestation. If it were implanting a viable alien fetus, the growth rate of the alien would conform to the growth rate in the original Alien movie (the time after the parasite released). The new method would lend question to why the hybrid alien’s offspring were identical to the original aliens and did not have any traits of the hybrid alien. That is the true question…
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