1.01.2008

AVPR Review

Title: Alien VS Predator: Requiem (2007)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tagline: “This Christmas there will be no peace on Earth.”

My Tagline: “A requiem of Predalien head explosions.”

Favorite Quote: “Directed by the Brothers Strause.”

Plot Synopsis: Picking up right where the last one left off an Alien/Predator hybrid or “Predalien” sends a Predator vessel crashing into Earth near the little Colorado town of Gunnison. Before the ship goes down the Predators aboard sent out a distress call that makes it back to the Predator homeworld and reinforcements are dispatched, in the form of one dude that the makers of the movie refer to as "The Wolf." It isn’t long before the Predalien beast and it's "facehuggers" start trouble by impregnating a hunter and his son as well as some bums living in these drainage tunnel things. Not only does this process kill the hosts but it also brings to life those familiar xenomorphs from the Alien movies. Why aren’t they also illegitimate Predalien love children? You tell me. The Predator, the wolf one, makes it to Earth in record time and begins his hunt. After salvaging some weapons from the crashed vessel the Predator gets down to business and the hunt is on. From there on the poor humans of Gunnison are caught in the middle between one species that wants to use their bodies as hosts and another who doesn’t want the humans to be aware of their existence and has no problem blowing up their heads or skinning them alive if they are in his way.

Review: This movie is a though one because it makes you fall in love with these beautiful, complex characters and just as you really start to care and give your heart to them they get gutted, exploded, mangled, or disemboweled. It’s simply gut-wrenching. In addition to half the movie being people looking for other people out in the woods our scary Predalien monster sounds like the name of some perennial flower and looks like…well, pretty much like what you’d think a Predator/Alien hybrid would look like. (you get twice the mileage with a Predator/Alien hybrid by the way) The Predator’s equipment is so sophisticated that committing genocide against the aliens is as simple as microwaving a burrito and it slightly takes away from the terror of the previous Alien movies. Then the final melee between the guy in the Predator outfit and the guy in the Predalien outfit was such a lumbering mess that it made a fist fight between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla look like a swift-footed battle out of a Bruce Lee movie. There are some funny shots, some funny lines, some great moments, lots of head explosions and other fun gore and of course the whole thing makes almost no sense whatsoever. So overall it's a good fun-bad movie.

Questions: -What’s the deal with the Predalien being able to impregnate only already pregnant women? That doesn’t make any damn since! For one thing the stomach isn’t the path to the uterus fellas! Get yourself an anatomy book.

-Isn’t that little plasma gun the Predator had really stupid? I mean, you have to sit there and let in charge up while these quick and agile aliens are running circles around you. I’ll take a good old fashioned, rapid-fire, extremely customizable, human-made gun any day. And wasn’t his targeting system a little simple? And at the end of the movie they basically indicated that the capture of that stupid little thing was somehow responsible for almost the entire future technological advancement of mankind. Come on!

-And what’s the deal with the “Requiem” part of the title? It makes it sound like some independent movie or student film.

2 comments:

zerbebuth said...

Actually the Predalien wasn't just using pregnant women, it also used the female bum, and the two people in the diner. And anatomy matters very little to an organism that lays eggs in a living host (like the desert wasp), the young aliens came out of the stomach because they were breed in litters, instead of just one at a time. Seems bizarre as well, unless your a geek (like me) who knows the alien life cycle. The reason for the litters (I know you'll question it) is that the Predalien was a Pretorian. A Pretorian is a class of alien just below the Queen, they produce the royal jelly used to feed the Queen, or in the case of no Queen eaten themselves to become a queen. However Pretorian also have the ability to breed in litters due to the creature being vulnerable alone. Understandable since the Aliens are little more than cockroaches on their homeworld. For full info on Alien life cycle check out wikipedia or better yet read the comics.

The predators "stupid" gun was actually quite impressive if you take it for what it is. It was actually a quick rigged zip gun made from his broken shoulder cannon. I'd sure like to be able to build one in my garage from spare parts.

The gun was then taken to the Yutani corporation, who merges with Weyland Enterprises to become Weyland-Yutani the company who runs the planet by the time of the first Alien movie. It is easy to see how this "stupid" gun could bring about an advancement in technology. Think about it, how much power did that little gun put out? How many advancements could be made just from figuering out the power source? Think a technology company doesn't have reverse engineers?

Archenon said...

zerbebuth. You are right with the alien lifecycle. I'm a geek too but this movie had flaws. I want to add i read all 3 Alan Dean Foster book and i have several AVP book and ... just makes you sik how much i read.

Now to get to the point. Don't you think that it is interesting the Predalien after bursting out of the chest a few minutes he was on its leg killing well trained predators. Alien lifecycle doesn't contain any feeding process?

And come on One predator against predaliens. In the first AVP movie a single alien killed 2 predators. So i was waiting for doezons of them.

The part with the babies was sick. I think who aprooved that part has a problem in his head.

About the Weyland Yutani corp you are right. I think they want to connect it with the first movies.
and i'm sure something like "they sent the Nostromo on porpuse there .." is coming up.

When Alan Dean Foster described the Alien Ships captain in the fosrt movie it was much like a predator guys so the even have the background to do that.

BTW second Predator movie in the Predator mothership had an alien skull in int it is viewable for 1 second. But i don't get why predators were hunting humans when the ultimate prey are the aliens sinse the Mayans.