Review: Aliens Vs Predator - Requiem

When this film came out in the theatres just under a year ago (Christmas 2007, as a matter of fact), I really hoped that it would warrant some good reviews so that I could justify going to see it on the big screen. Instead, the critics generally made like a chest-burster and ripped it a new one (14% on Rotten Tomatoes). Having now watched Aliens Vs Predator - Requiem on DVD, I can see why.

I should first say that I'm a sucker for Alien-related stuff, and have a soft spot in my heart for Aliens Vs Predator because of the first video game bearing that name (also known around here as the product that introduced me to online gaming). We've now had six editions in the Alien lore on screen, counting both of the AVP movies. Of that half-dozen, two were truly great (the first two, obviously), while the rest have fluctuated between entertaining-but-flawed and just downright bad. AVPR doesn't waste any time at all fitting into that last category.

The whole production is a mess, from scenes that are shot so darkly as to be indecipherable, to characters who seem like they just stepped out 90210. Consider the gravitas of the members of the Nostromo, back in the original Alien, and then look at the cardboard cutouts that we get here. There's the bully, and the over-protective big brother, and the teenage beauty queen with the heart of gold. Dallas, the commander of the Nostromo, certainly had his flaws, but he was a thousand times more believable and interesting than the paperweight of a Sheriff that AVPR has to offer. Even Reiko Aylsworth (Michelle, of 24 fame) is mostly wasted in her Ripley-lite duties as a military mom home just in time to see her husband eviscerated by an Alien while her young daughter looks on.

While I'm no expert on the length and breadth of the mythology, having skipped most of the comics and all of the books based on Alien, I thought I sort of understood how they worked... until I watched AVPR. Specifically, I was under the impression that full-fledged Aliens came from face-huggers (after being implanted in a host), face-huggers came from eggs, and eggs were laid by a queen. Simple, right? Except, as far as I could tell, there's no queen in AVPR, and yet the handful of face-huggers that arrive on Earth via a Predator ship somehow grow into thousands of marauding adults. There are lots of disgusting scenes in the film, but the worst has to be the one that showed a maternity ward in which full-term women were somehow used to produce "litters" of newborn Aliens... which made no sense whatsoever to me. Were the expectant mothers all carrying triplets or something?

The film also sports a Predalien, which is to say a hybrid of the two species. We've seen and heard of those before (including in the AVP video games) but this one's simply thrown out there with no real examination as to what it is or why it seems to act more intelligently than a regular Alien. Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm already putting more thought into the script than anyone involved with the actual production did

I'd have to say that this was the worst installment in the saga so far, and yet I still cling to the forlorn dream that someday, someone will rehabilitate it, just as Christopher Nolan did with Batman after Joel Schumacher drove that beloved franchise into the ground. Hope springs eternal, as they say!

Rating: *