Verdict
Summary
AVP: R tries to homage the original Predator/Alien movies without remembering what it was that made them great: tension & characters. Brian Tyler’s score and the opening 15 minutes are fun but the rest of the movie is pretty forgettable.
Plot: Warring alien and predator races descend on a small town, where unsuspecting residents must band together for any chance of survival.
Review: So we come to the end of Predator week with Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem; can they fix the problems from the first movie? Sort of, but now we have some different ones to deal with. First let’s take a look at some of the good stuff…
The best thing about the film is Brian Tyler’s bombastic score, which uses hints of the original Predator/Alien themes which was sorely lacking from the first AVP. The Main Title Theme is almost ridiculously exciting and really adds to the atmosphere of the film.
The opening 15 minutes are everything you’d want from an AVP movie; we get to see the Predator home world and the Predalien kicking some ass in a spaceship before it crash lands on Earth. That unfortunately is where the problems begin.
What starts off promisingly as an exciting Aliens vs. Predator movie then turns into I Know What You Did Last Summer. The protagonist is… the pizza dude? OK, I don’t know what they were thinking by doing that as it feels more like a teen slasher movie; it loses the tension and build up of the Alien and Predator movies with characters even more forgettable than the first AVP.
The female soldier Kelly, played by 24’s Reiko Aylesworth is just trying too hard to be like Ripley except minus any of her personality.
Setting these films on modern day Earth just isn’t all that interesting either, unless they were to do it in a city and show some real chaos. Personally, I’d rather see it on a space station and create scenes which are claustrophobic and genuinely scary with some big guns on the side.
What AVP:R lacks in tension it almost makes up for in R-Rated gore though, which is something. We’ve got exploding heads (awesome) and some decent action set pieces; I especially like the Predator setting those laser bombs in the sewers and the Aliens exploding in spectacular fashion.
The biggest flaw with the film though (which I think we can all agree on) is how dark it is; I don’t mean in tone but the way it’s shot. You can’t see ANYTHING during the action/fight scenes which totally takes you out of the movie.
It’s like everyone involved hadn’t watched a Predator or Alien movie before and thought “Well, this is probably what it’s like”; we also have an equally forgettable script with no decent dialogue.
People sometimes look back at 80’s action movies and laugh at them but guess what? They’re a damn sight better than crap like this because directors like John McTiernan knew how to film an action scene and create characters we care about.
There is a scene in this film which isn’t scary or exciting, just disgusting and that is the pregnant woman being attacked by the facehugger, then giving birth to aliens. It doesn’t add anything to the film and is merely there for shock value.
Overall, AVP: R tries to homage the original Predator/Alien movies without remembering what it was that made them great: tension & characters. Brian Tyler’s score and the opening 15 minutes are fun but the rest of the movie is pretty forgettable.
