Alien Vs Predator: Requiem Review
Hey Kiddies! It's me! Joshiebear! Ok I'm back. I've finally graduated and thus will (hopefully) have more free time to post stuff for your reading pleasure. Today, as you might have guessed from the title, I'm going to review the sequel to the crap-tastic silver screen grudge match known as Alien Vs Predator. Is Requiem better? Worse? As good? Read on!
Since I was a little booger eater I read the dark horse comics featuring these two deadly species scrapping through the universe and jacking up whatever humans got in their way. I loved all the movies when I was a kid, and crapped my pants when I saw the Alien skull on the predator ship in Predator 2. That's why I was there opening day when Aliens Vs Predator came out in theaters a few years back, despite the PG13 rating. I had faith. Oy.
My heart was broken. The movie was so tame and the predators, for the most part, sucked, getting their noob-ish space-asses handed to them left and right, which is very un-predator-esque. When they said they were doing a sequel, I reserved my judgement, and last night, I went out to see it. Before I get into this movie, let me tell you what was wrong with the first movie, in case you haven't seen it. In a movie called BLANK vs BLANK, your really want to see those two blanks fighting a considerable amount, and that just didn't happen. It was more like BLANK kills BLANK without incident repeatedly. That and it was really central on the humans, not really showing too much of the perspective of the Predator, who I believe is a viable protagonist in the story. And it was PG13. Every single Alien and Predator movie is rated R. All of them. When you put them together, you'd expect that the blood and gore Fit would REALLY hit the Shan, but alas, it was all very hum drum.
BUT ENOUGH about the movie that isn't the movie I'm reviewing. Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem is a vast improvement on it's predecessor. It is not flawless, but at least it holds true to the title. There are Aliens. There is a Predator. They do 'Vs', lol. Here's the setup. It picks up right where it left off at the last movie. The Predators are leaving the Alaskan facility when the 'Predalien' pops out of Red Claw, or whatever the main Predator's name was, and starts jacking things up on the Predator's ship, effectively taking out all Predators and causing the ship to crash land in a remote town in Colorado in the woods. Before you can say 'Chestburster' 2 facehuggers find their way onto the faces of a father-son hunting team. Meanwhile, far away on the Predator homeworld, the distress signal of the ship is received by what we can only presume is the Predator version of a badass, because he immediately hops onto his ship and leaves all on his own. Don't worry, I haven't spoiled anything, this is all in the first five minutes of the movie. What follows is one Predator taking on a ton of Aliens and indeed, the Predalien, who acts as sort of a mini-queen in this flick, while the town is effectively gang-raped by all the Alien hulabaloo, which is pretty fun to watch.
The Brothers Strause did a pretty good job at pulling this franchise out of the muck it's been in and returning it to the realm it should be in with what they were given. No more CG aliens, no more quick cuts disguising dismemberment. It's all back to it's roots, thank God. It's monsters just getting all up into the guts of your innermost squeemish fears. They even have some great callbacks to older movies with lines like "Get to the Chopper!" which made me squeel like an Alien you might hear over a com-link while in the midst of a firefight. There is a pesky story, but it doesn't really get in the way of the action. It's just some people drama in the form of bully picking on nice but troubled kid, but that just sets it up nicely for the moment you know the bully is going to be on the receiving end of a secondary retractable jaw.
It's not exactly where an Alien Vs Predator movie should be in my own opinion, because I've always been a fan of the whole "Future Space" setting with the Space Marines and Power Loaders, but it's good for sweeping the last movie under the rug and moving onward. I really hope that someday they make another movie and do it in the future, but just like this one, just add some space marines into the mix. All in all I'd give this movie a B. It's no cinematic masterpiece, it's just a grudge-match that delivers on the VS.
