AvP: Requiem

On Christmas night, the inner nerd in me decided I just had to see Alien Versus Predator: Requiem.

Sometimes, I feel like I want to strangle my inner-nerd.

This film was so bad I couldn't believe it. I knew the first one was terrible. The first one was beyond terrible, but I figured how could this one be any worse? Well, it might not be worse, but it certainly isn't any better.

The film opens where the first left off, ending with Aliens and face-huggers getting let loose in Colorado and then cuts to a Predator living room, where he watches everything we just saw, but with a different filter. And, for some inexplicable reason, he decides that he has to go to Earth and singlehandedly clean up this mess.

Why? I don't know. He only speaks in purrs and clicks.

Interspersed with this interstellar janitor are scenes of personal strife in a small Colorado town. None of these characters are believable, likable or even acted with any naturalism. The writing and pacing felt like they were going for a ham-fisted, teenage version of Robert Altman's masterpiece "Short Cuts". It just comes off as stupid.

It's startling to me how Fox seems to be trying to abort these franchises as quickly as they can. They hired people who didn't know about, care for or love either franchise. They had as little understanding as Paul W.S. Anderson had for the first AvP movie. At least, though, you could tell that they'd watched the other films in the franchises. But that served as a detriment since they aped most of the cool shots they could think of without any of the context, build up or suspense. The Brothers Strause should probably be drawn and quartered for this abortion.

For instance, remember the moment in Alien 3 when the Aliens are sniffing out Ripley and her head is turned and they won't do anything to her because they know the Queen is in her? The moment had a tensity and drama to it that is unrivaled. They redid the series of shots in AvP:R for no apparent reason with a waitress whom we don't know or care about. Why? Because it looked cool. And that handful of shots in Alien 3 had more drama, fear and depth to it than five AvP movies combined could ever hope to have.

That example fairly sums up the entire AvP world. It's all the flashy visuals and NONE of the substance of the original materials.

I wish someone would pay Elias and I to write an AvP movie. We could remind people why Aliens and Predator movies are great. At the same time we can remind everyone that the Aliens movies happen hundreds of years in the future and not fashion our movie like a shitty zombie-picture, but with Aliens and Predators instead of zombies. It wasn't even an ape of a good zombie movie. None of the events made any sense or had any relevance and they fill you with such an ambivalence toward the characters, you're simply counting the minutes until the movie ends so you can just go home and forget what you've seen.

And to add insult to injury, they named one of the main characters Dallas. Who the hell do these assholes think they are? What makes them think they could take Tom Skerrits name from the first film as an homage? Were they even aware of the similarity? Who knows...

Overall, I would rate this movie a chilly <-10> out of 10. It's pretty fucking bad.