Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

~Cast~

Steven Pasquale..................Dallas

Reiko Aylesworth ...............Kelly

John Ortiz...........................Morales

Johnny Lewis......................Ricky

Robert Joy..........................Col. Stevens

Directed By.........................Greg and Colin Strause

My Rating:

    "Dale, you're too stupid to talk. Shut up."~ Dallas
 

   What do you think of when you think about Sci-Fi films? Which films come to mind? Star Wars of course tops the list followed by Star Trek. Those are no brainers right there, you may even think about Blade Runner as well you should cause that film owns the shit out of everything. You also think of ALIEN or even the highly debatable superior sequel ALIENS, you also think of Predator. Why do these films come to mind and why have they stuck with us for so long? Memorable scenes that's why! Let's face it, you know that you always think about the infamous chest bursting scene from Alien or even the infamous power loader "GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH" finale from ALIENS. Who can ever forget Arnold going toe to toe with the Predator and totally covered in mud while the Predator stood not but 3 feet away from him but couldn't see him. How about the heat vision heart beat of the Indian guy who stands on the bridge and sacrifices himself to save the others (Forget his name but that's besides the point) Fuck, even Predator 2 has the awesome finale with Danny Glover being spared and him telling the Predator "Fuck you", how much better can it get. The reason these films have stood the test of time is because they have memorable scenes that stuck in people's minds for years and years. They were original ideas and bad ass scenes and because of that, both the ALIEN and PREDATOR series have been loved and admired for generations. The only thing that could be better than that would be the combination of both series in one giant VS. movie that would be loaded with so many bad ass scenes and lines of dialogue that it would make any fan boy cream his shorts. Unfortunately FOX didn't get the memo about that and not only made one AVP film that let the fans of both series down, but now have a second film in the series that not only doesn't even deserve to dawn the name of those characters...but doesn't even deserve a theatrical release! There is nothing memorable about AVP 2, the instant the credits rolled, my memory of that film dissipated and I have only thought about it in terms of writing a review. In 20 years from now...nobody will even remember this movie being made solely because this second serving doesn't offer anything in terms of originality. I have seen the same shit, same scenes, same deaths, even the same battles before and better than they were done in here. This was solely made to cash in on the name and because of that...Fox fucked us over...again.

 So Alien Vs. Predator 2 has finally come out and yes, it is indeed rated R so one would think that seeing these two legendary sci fi/horror icons confronting (again) in a glorious blood bath would be amazing as all hell right? I mean, the reason the first AVP sucked was because of the PG-13 setting and the up close camera angles so how could it suck now especially when the ONLY thing I expected out of this was to see those two fuck people up. I wanted gore, I didn't care if it had any coherent plot to be honest, if the Alien came on earth through being shit out Lance Henriksen's asshole and the predator just appeared like Scott Bakula did on Quantum Leap, I would have been happy. I didn't care if we even had characters, all I wanted was to see the aliens and the Predator fuck people up as well as each other. I also want to state that I went into this WANTING to like this movie, I really did cause I love the concept and I was hoping that it would work this time around. Well...remember how last time you couldn't see anything that was going on because Anderson got the brilliant idea to film the entire thing 2 inches from the actors? Well they fixed that which is good; however this time around we seem to have forgotten one of the single most important aspects to a visual film and that being able to FUCKING SEE WHAT IS GOING ON!!! I haven't seen such shitty lighting since FEAR DOT COM's idea to make anyone who has dark skin color be able to blend in with the background! I couldn't see shit in this movie and since half the film is shot at night in buildings where the power is gone, it makes it even that much harder to see ANYTHING.

    For those of you who remember the ending of AVP where the alien bursts out of the slain Predator's chest, this one picks up right from there with the all new breed of Alien running a muck on the Predator's ship. It kills every predator except for one, causing the ship to crash on earth and escaping to infect a small rural hick town that nobody but the townies know about. (Funny how things like this ALWAYS happen to small no name towns huh?) So now the Predator of course has to avenge his fallen crew and goes on the hunt for this hybrid while the alien/predator thing (which is never fully shown in enough light to see what the fuck it actually looks like) infects hunters and bums all over the town. Sounds like it would be a bad ass plot huh? Well...it sounds allot cooler than it is for you see...while the alien is killing bums, the predator is just going around killing all the offspring that pops up and then pouring glow stick fluid to destroy the evidence. See, apparently in this film we are supposed to be more entertained by the asshole town folk instead of the war that is SUPPOSEDLY going on between the Aliens and Predator. Of course right? I mean, who wouldn't find a half assed Dawson's Creek group of rejects to be more interesting than ALIENS AND PREDATORS dueling it out!? Anyway...the film goes from there with the Predator hunting this hybrid down and the hybrid making more aliens from humans it finds until the big battle at the end that you already knew the outcome from before the film began. Picture a fight between Jason Voorhees and Jason X; that is pretty much what you get with the Hybrid and the Predator...yeah...I wonder who will win THAT fight!? :-\ 

I want to ask you all something, how fucking hard is it to make a GOOD...alright fuck good; how hard is it to make an ENTERTAINING ALIEN VS PREDATOR movie!? Seriously, it's not brain surgery here people...it's bad ass aliens fighting bad ass predators and after two films FOX still hasn't been able to get it right. What the fuck!? I'm not saying this film is all bad because it has good parts to it but the bottom line is that this could have been so much more fun. I don't want to say better because lets look at what we are dealing with here...it's a franchise sequel to a VERSUS film, how good can we expect this to be? FREDDY VS. JASON was awesome simply because it was FUCKING FUN, it delivered the gore, the nudity and one bad ass over the top bloody brawl between the two heavy weight legends. I left the theatre happy and satisfied knowing I just saw those two fuck each other up which is all I wanted to see in the first place. AVP 2 seems to think that we actually care about the characters which we don't because they are the run of the mill cliché characters that every horror film seems to have only this time, we are forced to deal with them for longer periods of time. Also, could they throw enough characters at you in this film? 30 minutes in, we are still doing introductions to new characters like some poorly made soap opera and I don't remember a single one of these people 5 minutes after the scene ends. As I am watching this film, I am reminded of the cheesy jokes of the 80's films like the old lady watching Jeopardy in Predator 2 and how much that has stuck in my mind. Sure it's random but it's FUN and sticks out in the memory of this reviewer more so than anything in this film. There is a scene of the aliens and predator coming out of the sewers and onto the main street, a Papa John product placement joint is lit up in the background. All I could think of was how funny and awesome it would be if they had a scene in this where the Predator entered the Papa Johns and had some confrontation with a pizza boy or something. Sure it would have been random and probably broken the moment from all the deep storylines we had going on but it would have been something I could have remembered. Of course...NOTHING comes of that except the knowledge that PAPA JOHNS paid FOX to be in this piece of shit film.

There has to be good in this film though and there is, I didn't find myself hating the characters although I would have liked it if they cut half of them out. We have like 5 separate clichéd storylines going on that end up becoming intertwined together when the shit hits the fan only to have the already pre-determined outcome that we all knew would occur even before this movie began. There is ONE outcome I didn't see coming but it happens so late in the film that I didn't really give a shit about it. I did like some of the deaths and while they weren't as awesome or gory as people had been going on about, it was still nice to see some plasma get tossed around in this second round. Also, the movie had some balls with all the kids and pregnant women getting killed and for that, it earned points because it took some chances with that. Also dug the idea of a Predator/Alien hybrid but the concept was NEVER explored enough, in fact, we go back to the lack of lighting in this film so we never get a clear shot of the hybrid EVER. I have an idea of what it looks like but in reality, I couldn't tell you if it was awesome or shitty because we never see the damn thing in a well lighted area. You already know the outcome of the big battle as well and if you don't then your a fucking idiot and should stop sniffing glue.

    You have to look at the acting in this aspect, the Alien and Predator series have always contained good actors especially in the sequels. These franchises have seen Sigourney Weaver, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny Glover, Lance Henrieksen, Winona Ryder, Bill Pullman (who was in both sequels to the original films ironically) and Gary Busey (before he went insane...well...more insane) Now we come to the AVP 2 and we have NOBODY in this film that is recognizable except for Robert Joy who has all of 4 lines in the entire fucking film. To say this project was rushed and had next to no money to toss for name value actors is like saying the Atlantic Ocean is damp. Steven Pasquale plays Dallas the older outlaw brother who is supposed to be the uncaring no good bad boy but of course, does the right thing. Steven actually did a solid job and he was one of the only people I even gave a shit about in this film, no idea why but I just did. Reiko Aylesworth plays Kelly, a mother who just got back from "a" war (I assume it was the war in Iraq but it's never specified further than her wearing army clothes and having all the abilities and knowledge of a marine) and is trying to get her life back in order. She does good for being a character who has no real purpose other than to solve those problems like "Who can fly the helicopter" and "who knows how to drive an army tank"  John Ortiz plays Morales, Dallas' friend from long ago who has now become a cop. I thought he was good but I hated where they made his character go, I thought it was a horrid transition that really made no sense whatsoever. Makes me wonder if there was more to the storyline that ended up on the cutting room floor. Johnny Lewis plays Ricky, Dallas' younger brother who likes a girl and of course, is a weak geek who gets beat up by her boyfriend. He did okay but I felt that his character in the second half of the film was lost. Robert Joy plays Col. Stevens and while he is the biggest name actor in this whole film, he probably has the smallest role out of anyone that wasn't an extra. He does good in his 2 scenes but I wish he was in it more. Directing wise, Greg and Colin Strause take over for Paul Anderson whose films I usually enjoy on a guilty pleasure level except for AVP. They took some notes from people and unzoomed the camera which was nice, but the fact the film is so poorly lit makes it just as bad. I couldn't tell how many aliens were on screen at a time, I couldn't tell which Alien was actually fucking who up and I couldn't tell if the Predator was on the screen either especially in the first scene in the sewer. Another thing is they seem to shy away from showing the most brutal gore shots in the film, someone gets skinned alive and they barely show the cadaver which made me think I was watching a PG-13 film with some F-bombs thrown in to get the R-rating. Can't say if they did a better job directing but I can say that neither film is really watch able.

    Gore wise we get more of the red stuff but to whoever has been saying this film is gory as hell needs to shut the fuck up and watch a real horror film. What we get is a step up from AVP but not half as cool as the deaths could have been if they were shown in AVP (Still am pissed at the cut away of the acid net scene!) We get the classic chest bursting done via CG this time around, sliced off arm, little boy getting killed, stoner heads exploding, aftermath of someone who was skinned alive, Predator's dual arm knives stabbing someone in the back, face melting, blood splattering, Predator impaling someone into a wall, Aliens getting fucked up, Predators getting fucked up, some stabbings, pregnant women's stomach bursting, and I think that's it. Nudity wise we get pretty much nothing but teased in the PG-13 fashion by the extremely hot Kristen Hager in a bathing suit...makes me wonder if they pulled the SNAKES ON A PLANE bit where it was a PG-13 film originally and filmed scenes and F-bombs in post SIMPLY to get an R-rating...

    I say, AVP 2 should have been a step up from the last one especially since we are finally on Earth now in a regular town. Predator 2 has our buddy fucking people up left and right in the city, why are we downgrading to a small rural town with not only a predator lurking, but also a shit ton of aliens on earth which is what we have been DYING to see ever since the ending of ALIEN: RESURRECTION. This film was a step down, it had the solid set up in the first 10 minutes but then it becomes one giant soap opera that moves at a snails pace and doesn't seem to pick up till the end but by then, I couldn't give a flying fuck. To quote the Angry Video Game Nerd, "This movie is a shitload of fuck, and you know what really brings my piss to a boil?!"  It's the knowledge that I had going into this film that Fox opted to continue with this franchise and make Alien Vs. Predator 2 INSTEAD OF ALIEN 5 and PREDATOR 3 which had Dan O'Bannon and James Cameron involved...WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT IS THAT!?!? Seriously...who in their right mind thought that passing up a chance to do ALIEN 5 with James Cameron's involvement was a good idea!? I want to meet the person who decided that so I can beat the living shit out of them for every single horror/sci-fi fan out there in the world. Are you people smoking dope!? How the fuck could you pass up ALIEN 5!? It would make a fuck ton of money and be amazingly bad ass! ITS BACK ON EARTH! ALIENS EVERYWHERE! It would be an all out and out war with Ripley back in action and Cameron hopefully directing what could and should be the final chapter in the series. Plus, we are all over due for a Predator 3 and let's face it, we all want to see it...wake up Fox! Fuck AVP 2, fuck it straight to hell.

Special Guest Complaint:

    The other opening is of course the one that several years later FOX decided to go with. Once Harrigan makes it on the ship, he finds the trophy room where skulls are strewn out all over the place including human skulls, what appears to be a dinosaur skull, a couple of random skulls and of course...an Alien skull which meant that the Predator's had come in contact with that species before. FOX several years later and after exhausting themselves with the ALIEN series, decide to combine the two and make ALIEN VS. PREDATOR which has a good enough storyline but PG-13ized and made it gay. Now...both series are back and we have AVP 2...so FOX...all I can say to you is...WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING!?!? SERIOUSLY!? Stop making these shitty ass AVP films that are just Vs films by name only and make a GOOD fucking sequel to the series your butchering. FANS want ALIEN(S) 5! FANS want PREDATOR 3 whether it be a prequel, sequel or whatever...THE FANS WHO ARE GOING TO SEE THIS SHITTY VS FILM WANT SEQUELS TO THE ORIGINAL FILMS! INSTEAD YOU ARE ROBBING THEM OF THEIR MONEY TO MAKE A SHITTY SEQUEL TO A VS FILM THAT NOBODY EVEN LIKED!!! Please...do the right thing. DON'T make Alien Vs. Predator 3! As a fan of both series it kills me to see you destroy both franchises simply for the purpose of getting an extra buck.

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