I grossly underestimated the lameness of this movie.

We all knew the first Alien vs. Predator was going to be lame. It was. But it was still ridiculously fun. And we all knew AvP: Requiem would be lame. But I think many of us underestimated just how craptastic this movie would be. I’m one of them.

You know what? I don’t even care. This movie is just too lame – I’m going to give everything away, so if you want to be “surprised” then you might as well leave now because for the first time in my life of writing Epinions reviews, I’m dishing it all.

The Story: If you’ve seen the first AvP then you should remember that the last Predator was on his ship when the Alien in him popped out. Now, that Alien gets out, grows up, and does to the Predator’s ship what the first one did to Ripley’s ship so many years ago (or ahead, depending on how you look at it). Lucky us, it crashes in Colorado. We’re then introduced to several characters of different walks of life. We’re given their back stories, all the while minor things happen to get the ball rolling; facehuggers escape and lead to the hatching out of new Aliens; the main Alien hybrid who sports dreadlocks and funky fangs like his Predator surrogate bounces around and kills people, all the while baffling the police. One (that’s right, one) Predator gets the signal about the downed ship (I guess) and heads on over to Earth. From then on, Aliens kill people, the Predator kills the Aliens, some of the main characters escape, the Predator has a showdown with the main Alien hyrbid, and everything goes down in a ball of flaming nuclear fire. That’s right – someone dropped a nuke on the town. The End.

*snort*

Ok, what’s good about this movie? Very little. The biggest “yay” of the movie is the special effects. I was glad to see that the Aliens weren’t just skipping around, 100% computer graphics. Instead they brought them back Aliens style, with the great prosthetics and necessary mechanics to make them realistic. While nothing will ever touch the awesomeness that was Aliens, at least the baddies running around in this movie were as realistic as possible, and likewise the Predator was his usual awesome self (plus we get a glimpse at the Predator homeworld). It was fun to watch him kick Alien tail and try to think of new ways to kill them when his toys started going out the window. And for once, for once, the characters followed the three cardinal rules of monster invasion: 1. Leave, 2. Arm yourself, 3. Don’t wander in dark places without a light. You may also see a few people you recognize, Tom McBeath and Rainbow Francks from their respective Stargate series, and Gina Holden of Blood Ties (or Flash Gordon if you’re so inclined).

Right. That leaves everything else. You know what? I’m just going to list them.

1.) Dark. Really dark. Everything was dark. The color was dark. It was hard to see pretty much everything a lot of the time.

2.) One Predator. I know the title is singular, but I expected an all out Alien/Predator war. That would have been so much cooler. I expected total action mayhem. I got jack. In that same vein, what the heck was the Predator doing with the blue goo disintegrating people/Aliens? Getting rid of evidence? In which case, why was he killing/hunting people? Why take the time to take a skin trophy? Aren’t you busy? Contrary actions added to the movie’s stupidity.

3.) We’ve gone from adult action/horror/thriller (emphasis on the “adult”) to teens getting butchered in typical teen slasher fashion. Ok, not all the characters are teens, but most of them are young enough not to qualify for the former slot. Ugh. Automatic movie dumb-down.

4.) Too much focus on characters and not enough psychotic action. I wanted Aliens and Predators just pounding the crap out of each other. Come on, that’s what we all wanted, and with a group of humans just trying to make it out alive. Instead, in a 101 minute movie we get at least an hour of “character development” and buildup. I could have written this better. You probably could have written this better.

5.) Bad timing/continuity. Some props to the writers for thinking of an original way to get a lot of Aliens into the mix in record time. All props removed for the speed of the nest creation. Props head into the negative area for the speed at which Aliens popped out of people through facehugger impregnation.

6.) The creep-out factor, while effectively rather high, was there for exactly that, to gross/freak people out. No other real/good reason. i.e. A child getting facehugged and the result. Pregnant women dying from emerging Alien kiddies. And you know what? If you're going to do that, you need to go all out - those people need to be in so much more pain than they offered. Instead it was more like a major "OW!" and then Boom! dead. Even the stupider Alien movies had people screaming more than this. And, while we never see the result, the Alien hybrid looking in at all the human babies in the maternity ward. I’m willing to bet he ate them.

7.) Feel the copycatting/clichés. If you remember Aliens at all, you may remember some of the blood-rushing music by James Horner. James wasn’t available for this score (thank goodness), so they got someone else to mimic his music. Oh, it wasn’t exact, but it was close. Couldn’t even think up an original score. Then there’s the near-final line given by the little girl, who, by the way, screams often (rightfully so) and hides behind the legs of her gun-toting mom. Sound familiar? Anyway, what’s her last line? “Are the monsters gone mommy?” Shove a fork in my eye.

8.) The Suit and Nuke. There’s a guy who is obviously in charge of the nuke strike, and while overall I’d be in favor of a nuke strike on a ton of Aliens (especially since there’s only one freaking Predator trying to do cleanup), this is extremely problematic because it happens way too fast. The decision wouldn’t happen that quickly, and do you really think they'd admit to an Alien invasion that fast? Sure, there’s a branch that deals with Predators as seen in the second Predator movie, but other than that? Not believable in the least. Especially with the kind of aftermath they’d have to deal with later trying to explain it.

9.) “Requiem.” Seriously? Wtf? So is this movie a hymn to the dead – the people, the Aliens, and the Predator? Whatever. Especially since the movie ended in a “there might be another one” manner, what with the Predator’s gun lying around Terminator-arm style.

Don’t waste money seeing this, unless you really, really have to see a Predator fight an Alien. Even then, just go get the first one because it’s better than this one by far. This atrocity ended and I sat there and said, “Man, I can’t believe I just wasted an hour and a half of my life on this.”

Actual star count: 1.5 stars.

All right. I have to go watch Aliens to wash the taste of this pathetic excuse for a movie out of my mouth.

NT

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD