Film Summary DLVI (Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem)


Do you know what the last Alien versus Predator didn't have.
Dudebros, that's what the last movie didn't have and that's what this movies covered in.
We have to deal with the escapades of the dorky kid who totally wants to impress the girl next door but he gets made fun of by the other dude bro because he has the audacity to have a delivery job.
Yep it's really entertaining watching these 30 something year old idiots harass each other over mundane stupid crap.
Also one of our protagonist. This dorky white guy that got out of prison; I thought was the same kid who was delivering the pizzas and got beat up later.
But it turns out no they're two different people.
Could have fooled me they all look exactly the same.

I've made some references now that both the alien and the Predator movies are in a way glorifying slasher films with science fiction and action elements. And in this case it's the most absolute. Alien versus Predator 2 is a movie and we're all you want to do is watch a bunch of monsters rip these stupid American yoga counties apart. They're not interested in the characters you don't care about any of them you don't like anybody and you're rooting the whole time for the aliens in the Predator. They my case it's the Predator because he's the only one that seems to have anything going on. What do I care about dorky prison kid trying to get a job or military girl who's just there as a fill-in character for the inevitable Buffet.

So there's a lot of stupid in this movie and most of it I'm able to overlook because who gives a crap at the Alien versus Predator 2. You just kind of want things to happen so  the entertainment can continue. But I am generally confused as to how more aliens are born.
Like does the Predator alien hybrid creature* have the ability to just directly impregnate humans with more spawn creatures?
Cuz last I checked you either needed eggs or a queen to make the eggs. The aliens themselves couldn't impregnate people.
I don't know it's a dumb thing to ask, but it's just kind of weird to me.
It's one of the fundamental stones of the entire Alien concept and you'd think they'd want to stick with that.
I think a good way to get around all of that is by having one sort of the super Facehugger creature. Instead of just laying one alien embryo into a human it could lay several or it could lay embryos more than just once. Therefore it's able to attach itself to other people. They do play with this concept later on in the film with this pregnant woman that's impregnated thus giving birth to several alien babies I think something like this should have come about a little earlier.
anyways this movie also falls into a weird category like the original Alien versus Predator only it's the opposite in every regard. That one took its time to get to the action and the whole thing just felt kind of underwhelming. Where is the action this one comes about immediately but all the default characters are underwhelming. As I stated above it's a straight slasher flick you just want to watch these people get slaughtered by a bunch of monsters and you don't care about their plight. You have absolutely no engine because you have no care for the characters involved.

In a way I almost wonder if this film could have been done without the human characters at all. Just have a story between the Alien and the Predators. Maybe still have it set on Earth with people just running around in the background but never really pay them any mind.
Could you imagine it.
A mainly silent film where we have to learn everything from the Predators perspective through Visual assessment. It'd be a movie taking advantage of what movies should be doing; Showing us information and letting us the audience discover the story through action as opposed to dialogue. Maybe one day somebody will we be able to do that.

There's a really fun concept this movie could have played with. That is the conflict between having a weapon and not having one.
On the one hand not having a weapon makes you incredibly defenceless and almost completely susceptible to the alien monsters.
You have no way of Defending yourself hand to hand against those things.
But possessing a weapon makes you a Target letter.
So now even though you might be better defended against the Xenomorph, you'll have to deal with the double threat of being killed off by The Predator.
There's a great idea in this film that could have been played with there.
How to arm yourself and learning from your mistakes several times over as two entirely different threats simultaneously come after you while fighting each other. It's like a horrible game of rock-paper-scissors and it's never addressed in this movie. Or by anyone else for that matter.

Overall it's an incredibly mediocre film.
It starts weak, limbers about and in the last 20 minutes to get kind of interesting, along with a okay sightseeing between the alien and the predator. But it just doesn't have any punch to it.
There's no one to root for and the whole thing just feels pointless.
I can't say that I hate the movie by any means. But I'd be very content never seen it again.
Also trying to link it with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.  It's just a waste of time.
This is a problem that done in other alien and Predator movies as well.
All this continuity hooked up to a larger world or bigger story but it never truly connects and it never pays off.

At no point in this film was there ever a mass of the dead or any sort of paying respect the people that have passed on. Think you'd want to throw something in their given the title of the movie, then again it's just a throwing title isn't it.
You know what the word ''Requiem'' has meaning.

*It is kind of implied at one point in the film that the hybrid creature can lay several alien embryos inside one person. So what does kind of cover the bases about I was mentioning earlier with trying to get around not having any eggs. But it does raise the secondary question of why taking over a Predators body and involving their DNA would somehow give you super pregnant capability. The best of our knowledge we don't even know how the Predator species breed. If they breed. There's nothing to indicate that there's gender or even sex within the species. For all we know they might be born like a fungus.

Comments