AVP: Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem Reviews

I was appalled after watching ”the brothers Strause’s” Aliens Vs. Predator : Requiem last weekend. As a big fan of Ridley Scott’s original 1979 phallic imagery-filled sci-fi horror, I couldn’t understand how a movie like Requiem could ever have been thought of as a good idea to make. After James Cameron’s Aliens, which was essentially Full Metal Jacket in space without the satire, it was expected that each subsequent sequel would be brawn over brains. Sure, Aliens is an exhilarating and very enjoyable film, but the intellectual intensity of Alien is missing. David Fincher’s Alien3, which in my opinion is a very underrated but flawed flick, at least took the Alien Saga away from the fanboyish but fun elements of Aliens and remained similar in tone to the original. Not content with that, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet took the fourth film, Alien Resurrection, back to the balls-to-the-wall action of Aliens. So, 4 films in, we have a tie at brains 2, brawn 2 and it’s been a thrilling match.


And then we get to Alien Vs. Predator, an ill-fated idea to merge two horror icons together in one film adaption of a comic book. The ideas are good (ancient civilisations for one) but the lack of characterisation, excitement and genuine horror, missing since Alien3 is woeful. And thus came Requiem, a horrible, horrible mess of a film. It’s so far removed from it’s inpspiration it’s hard to imagine just quite what the filmakers were thinking of, other than money of course. No plot. No characters. No acting. No anything. Not to mention, Requiem is so dark, that if you were to watch it with the sound muted, it would be like watching a blank screen. Where are the excellent cast members like John Hurt, Ian Holm or Yaphet Kotto of the original? Where are the characters we can emotionally connect with like Newt, Hicks or even Bishop from Aliens? Where is the dark gothic tone and thrilling climax of Alien3 ?. Hell, I’d even settle for the muddled satirical elements of Resurrection. The Alien series has become an instant cash-in. No matter the quality, it’s assured that any film tagged with the Alien or Predator name will make a hell of a lot of money. Still, there’s hope on the horizon; Ridley Scott’s prequel is in the works, but to counter that, so is AVP 3. Bet whatever happens, at least we won’t go from ‘chestbursters’ to ‘headbursters’ like in Italian rip-off Alien 2 : On Earth. It’s time for the Aliens’ true resurrection.

''What the fuck are you?''

Warring alien and predator races descend on a small town, where unsuspecting residents must band together for any chance of survival.

Steven Pasquale: Dallas Howard

Gunnison County, Colorado faces an incredible crisis of galactic proportions..A Predator-alien hybrid, Pred-lien, has birthed on a Predator ship, causes the space vessel to crash-land in a forest region on Earth near the Colorado town posing a thread to humankind. We watch as the Predalien spreads eggs into the human populace while the face-huggers, which escapes the crashed Predator ship, attach to human faces. The birthing process, unlike in previous Alien films, is much faster it seems and they soon grow into the monsters that go on a murderous rampage leaving bodies piled up. Soon the National Guard moves in only to be eliminated in quick fashion, leaving a motley group of surviving citizens to fend for their very lives as menacing baddies are at every turn. A Predator warrior, who finds his fallen comrades, silently vows vengeance, and any human in this path will die.

Glossy dumb cartoon action-horror flick is a fun way to waste 100 minutes. Characters are given just enough exposition to establish them before they face the trials of being in between a war of a Predator warrior and slimy alien walkers. Yes, a lot of the film takes place at night and within darkened places(such as a sewer during which alien face huggers attach themselves to derelicts' faces and Predalien attacks a female hobo who finds her buddies under unfortunate conditions, while we also see the Predator warrior setting up hi-tech booby-traps and blasting them before exploding through the city street above)so the action can be hard to place which is a shame. I didn't have a problem others, it seems, have with the CGI used in the film. CGI granted is obvious in areas. The filmmakers found clever ways to use Predator warrior's night vision to display the violent wake of their victims' dead bodies. There was also an amusing scene where a citizen's head is taken clean off by the Predator warrior's helmet laser. And, the Predator warrior uses a large , hi-tech forms of daggers which, when thrown, slice off alien heads(..one even sticks a human to the wall). The Predalien is a funny hybrid which can actually lay eggs down the throats of victims(..as is the case when the things fills the body of a pregnant woman in a hospital). It has the face of a Predator, yet has the alien walker's whipping tail. As in any of the previous films that came before this, there are human casualties, in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as a father and his son hunting, nuclear power plant technicians who find themselves trapped at work while the Predator warrior does battle with an alien walker, a sensitive father whose killed right in front of his returned soldier wife and frightened daughter, etc. You have two brothers, with a troubled relationship, who must set aside their differences when terrors are threatening them.
One's gorgeous girlfriend gets the goofy clichéd lines that have become standard dialogs for these kind of films, such as "We're not gonna make it, are we?" or "Maybe, they're all gone." You have the typical governmental corruption, as humans expect an airlift to rescue them with a plane under different orders. As you've probably read elsewhere, with a fine-tooth comb, you could pick this film clean because there are an endless foray of holes which pop out to snap you faster than an alien walker's second mouth..but, it goes by so fast that I barely had enough time to care. Certainly a guilty pleasure, but isn't a classic by any means of the imagination. If you can somehow turn your brain off...this might be entertaining.

If anything, we get little aliens bursting from the stomachs of women, acid melting away human faces, and a combat between a Predator using the gadgetry at his disposal against a growing number of nasty, slimy-mouthed aliens. What's not to love? Cue awkward silence...

"In space, no one can hear you scream. On Earth, it won't matter."

A great take on the classic tagline from Ridley's Alien but this is all that this film has to offer. Yeah! We get it. Alien, Aliens & Predator were great films, inconic and cult classics in everyway, but do they have to feel the need to reference them in almost every single scene? Apparently, they do! The Strausse have made it abundently clear that they are HUGE fans of both franchises but they didn't feel the need to stand on their own.

AvP:R is set in modern day USA. Thats the first mistake! Carrying on from a film that was an abysmal failure is exactly what made this film start at a minus! Nobody wants to see some quaint little town getting on with their lives and have a big ol' interstellar crisis at their doors! Also, the future couldn't deal with the Xenomorph threat so what made anyone think that their ascendants could! IDIOCY!

Every human character was immediately forgettable. No tears, all sighs. They should have just removed them or replaced them with a redundant currency! The story was made as a chronicling of how much the Aliens and Predators go to extreme lengths to usurp the other. The human characters are meant to tell the story! You find out things as they do, but evidently in this they are so unimportant that they barely find anything out about their foe. The Directors must have known how pointless they all were so just left them in the dark (visually aswell!) to compliment their already non-existent IQs.



THIS WAS THE MOST RIDICULOUS SCENE OF THE FILM! The Predator can lift up two aliens with one hand on each, I can buy that. He works out! But the fact that the Aliens don't use their razor sharp tails to cut him a new one is absurd! If the Strausse Brothers knew anything about the mythology, the Xenos use their tails like a limb. Constantly! They wouldn't be pancing thats for sure.

The only reason this film received my rating was because of the visual aspects. Puppets still being used for the close encounters and the vibrant and inspiring sound effects. They pretty much used the SFX from Aliens to help it win back the fans. They didn't...but I enjoyed the old Motion Tracker sounds. New Ringtone anyone?

Also, the gore was extremely satisfying. Nothing like watching people melt due to acid spiilages or explode from impregnation. Essentially it brought back the series' to a standard horror rating with more blood than the human body can handle! This was the only improvement. These creatures don't mess around, when they kill you they do it as brutally as possible and this film displayed that in a serene fashion that made it feel soo natural. Welcome back!

The Predalien made its debut in this movie. Can't say I felt overwhelmed but its presence. It was giving a unique ability seeing as it was an immature Queen, although most casual viewers think that all Predaliens can do this. They can get bent. It might aswell not have been there considering the film was so dark. Classic gag from my AvP forum, the film was shot entirely like this:



Alien 5, Predator 3? Impossible. Sigourney, Cameron and Ridley had all expressed making a new title in the future for their respective stories *sigh* Both series have been diluted by the other now. You can't expect one of these films now without a cameo from the other species. This film has made me sad but not in a good way.

This movie sucks. Don't waste your time. The first one was much better. This one seems to be made in a hurry, bad-done... it's a crap.

Requiem for a franchise? Probably not, seeing as how the ending of AVP-REQUIEM was set-up for another sequel (which is already in talks at 20th Century Fox). The best thing I can say about REQUIEM is that it's not quite as boring as the first one. There was at least a little more action in this sequel; but the movie was so darkly photographed that you couldn't really make out what was going on during the action sequences. There's hardly any character development either, so you don't care much about what happens to them. I don't usually mind this in a horror film, but if you're not going to have any real plot construction or character development then at least bring on the carnage and bloodshed. While it's true this movie has a little more gore than the first one, it's not nearly enough (considering the DVD is unrated). And most of the gore FX that are in the movie are ruined by the lighting (or lack of lighting). I'm a big fan of the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise, but so far I've been disappointed with both attempts at combining the two on film. For a much better combination of the franchises check out the Aliens vs. Predator series by Dark Horse Comics.

The year had barely started and I believe I've seen one of the worst films of 2008, this one manages to be even worse than the first one.

Completely predictable from the first minute of film, as soon as the characters are introduced to us, we already know who is going to live and who is going to die.

Not to mention the indcrediblly stupid and cliche catch phrases that are dropped all the time.

Finally, one more proof of lack of originality from the writers, the film ends with an opening for yet another sequel. Paraphrasing one of those easily-forgotten characters from AVP-R: "God help us all!"

Thank God I still have Charlie Wilson's War, The Dark Knight, Blindness, There Will Be Blood, The Bucket List, Indiana Jones 4, Cloverfield, Shine a Light, Sicko, Wall-E, The Kite Runner and many others to look forward this year.

AVP R i went to see this as there was no other good movies on in the cinema and i never seen the first movie but this was pretty good. The death scenes are pretty violent like Predator shots a blade at Alien then goes straight to the girl and pins her to the wall. There is death scenes that have children as well including the Aliens kill a bunch of baby's in the hospital but that is off screen.
My favorite scene is when Predator blowing the 2 stoned guys heads off it was funny. The acting was alright I think Predator is better then the Aliens i find the Predators have a lot more respect. It is well worth checking out for some gory action but it also made me laugh for some strange reason. The worst part is the ending it sucks and it was a little to retarded.