This Movie SUUUCKS: Alien Versus Predator: Requiem
I’ve been pretty sure that anybody who’s seen this movie hated it. If you didn’t, you should have. I myself, watched it in theaters with a friend pretty soon after it came out and laughed at it’s cheesy lines, terrible script, and overall lack of actual aliens versus predators. But it recently sprang to mind and seeing as how I’m not the same man I was some four years ago, I thought, “What the heck? It might be good for the action.”
In retrospect, I’m an idiot. This movie is even worse than I remember. Nonetheless, it made nearly 160 million dollars and some reviews actually pegged it as a “slam, bang action-thriller!” I have yet to meet anyone who really talks like that and I’m pretty sure the person who wrote it was either paid or threatened to say it.
The movie begins as the first one ended (still sucking): a dead Predator has an Alien/Predator hybrid burst from its chest, mandibles and all. If you cared about the first one (which you didn’t unless you were about thirteen), you were wondering what happens next.
COVERING THE PLANET, THEIR WAR…is actually isolated in a small Colorado town.
Well, this movie covers it. The “Predalien” as it’s called, gets out and somehow manages to make the ship crash back into Earth. In Colorado of all places, my guess being that the crew just wanted to visit. The picture implies, “Ooh yeah! All out WAR! BATTLE TO THE DEATH! NO SURVIVORS! NO ONE IS SAFE!” But no, unless you’re in this tiny Colorado village, you’ll be alright. As the hybrid is making it’s way around Colorado impregnating everything it sees, a Predator is sent to “clean up.”
This alone sounds somewhat cool but I want you to take a look at this little list I’ve compiled.
- The Sheriff
- His friend, the former convict.
- HIS little brother, the pizza boy Ricky.
- Ricky’s love interest.
- The love interest’s bully ex-boyfriend and his two cronies.
- A female marine who has just returned from duty.
- Her husband and their daughter.
- A woman whose husband and son have been missing.
This is how I feel listing this.
Do you know what that list is? That’s the list of all the characters we get to know throughout the course of the movie. You will notice that list has exactly 0% Alien and 0% Predator because we see much less of the title characters than we do the ones listed above. Do you know how much I care about the sheriff trying to keep the town in order? I can’t tell you how much I didn’t care. Ooh, or how about the former convict who has to keep his angry little brother out of trouble all while trying to find a job after getting out of jail?? Wait, that’s not Alien or Predator related either.
Would you have watched the first Predator if it had consisted of Arnold the pizza boy getting treated like crap at his job all while having to (Oh no!) deliver pizza to his high school crush? But her boyfriend is there! How embarrassing! And he’s the jealous type! Nope, I didn’t give a crap. Arnold would have stuck his machete in their chests himself. “Stik avoun.”
Ricky, please…it’s just your hormones. No reason to fret.
And yet there’s more. The marine lady has been gone so long she’s having trouble re-connecting with her daughter. Good thing her husband is so supporting- GAH! I DON’T CARE. I COULDN’T CARE had there been even less Predator and this was on the WB or Lifetime or whatever other channel that shows really sucky shows.
I wanted to see ALIENS. VERSUS. PREDATORS. It’s in the freaking title, how do you mess it up? No, seriously- HOW DO YOU MESS IT UP?
“We need to find a way for the Alien and the Predator to meet again so they can fight again…Also, people will want to see whether or not Ricky can deliver his pizzas on time before his super mean boss decides he’s had enough of Ricky’s rebellious attitude.”
Did you think that last part was a joke? I think you’re supposed to care.
In one scene, a few characters are in the same diner at the same time and a pretty waitress is serving them all. I started joking that we’re now going to find out that she’s a struggling college student/single mom who’s just trying to pay her loans and make it through this crazy little thing called life.
Well, as it turns out, her husband is one of the local deputies assigned to finding out what happened to a couple of missing persons and the sheriff has to console her that her husband is probably still out there. Her name is Carrie and she’s not convinced that her husband is okay because “He always calls…” Then I drifted into a coma.
“…BUT WHAT ABOUT MY BROTHER? DID RICKY DELIVER THOSE LAST PIZZAS?”
Dang, man, I’m not even sure we found out Ripley had a daughter until the second Alien movie, at which point she’s sad, but we don’t have to suffer through her emotions the entire movie. Because while I’m not the biggest fan, James Cameron knew what we wanted to see and he knew how to set it up. The so-called “Strause Brothers” who directed this, did not. I’ll get to them in a second, don’t worry.
At one point, in a couple scenes before the diner, the deputy who has a wife that works in that diner, is actually killed by a Predator. He is stabbed, skinned, and left hanging in a tree.
First off, this is wrong from a character standpoint, being that Predators only kill what is a challenge or even a threat to them and the man was running away. Secondly, the sheriff is later drinking at a bar and tells his ex-convict friend, “He was, uh…he was skinned alive.” I have a problem with this line alone, being that nobody was with the man when he was skinned, so how would you know he was skinned alive?
Also, we see that man after Predator stabs him as he falls to the ground, clearly dead. So next movie, let’s think about things like this before we throw’em in.
“Think? Nah. YOU think.”
Oh no, too late! The directors have already made Skyline (2010)! If AVP:R and Skyline aren’t enough to convince you the directors shouldn’t ever touch the director’s chair again, you haven’t seen these movies, or you just have something more important going on in your life. I’m good though, thanks.
Skyline and this Alien/Predator abomination suffered from similar problems I think; a lot of potential, cool aliens, terrible acting, and WAAAAY too much focus on people you just don’t care about. I would even be willing to give the filmmakers a little more credit if they went through and killed their main characters by the end, but nah: they save the deaths in this movie for little boys and pregnant women.
Hadababyitsaboy
Oh, yeah, baby, that’s what I like in my R-Rated movies. They market it as “NO RATINGS! NO MERCY!” I just think “No taste.” Ooh, there’s a nice little Arnold-like pun for you. “Now Tayst.” There we go, that’s better.
Deese puhn is Ahnuld ahproofed.
Zombies Ruin Everything 
06/26/2014 at 9:05 am
Actually I believe it’s fairly elementary to tell if skinning was post mortem or not but anyway…
Thank you for writing this piece. GOD this movie just made me wanna cry. AvP is a guilty pleasure of mine, and both commentaries are gold, so how could they mess this up worse than construction workers in an underground pyramid with aliens in it??? But they did. Sad. Oh and the art sucked. At least the Preds in AvP had that sexy hero look, and they even let you get familiar with Grid the alien as a character. AvP:R was justsodisappointingjeeze.
But I really wanted to say that I win money off my friends by taking bets on Skyline. I say “I bet you [X amount] that I can show you arguably the worst big budget scifi in the last 10 years and you will like it by the end. An hour and a half of an eyeball-drilling Jersey Shore atrocity will have you wanting a sequel due to the last 10 minutes and credits.” Yeah I win everytime.
It’s like they had this idea “DUDE let’s have aliens invade L.A. but one of the dudes ends up taking over am alien unit thing and fights the aliens from the inside to save his pregnant wife!” That’s some romantically derpy shit there. I’d pay for that.
What would he do? The brains burn out…would he be on borrowed time? Would he have to periodically kill people for brains to stay alive? Would he be willing to sacrifice himself to stop the bloodshed but his wife isn’t ready to let go, forcing him to between death or life as a murderous alien? He’s an alien that “eats” brains. Freaking vampire alien zombie with a kid? Honey, this is your daddy, he wasn’t like this when we conceived you I promise. Ah the fanfics I could write. I need it.
06/26/2014 at 7:52 pm
Yeah, I know what I was thinking when I wrote this but now that you bring up, it probably would be pretty easy to see if someone was skinned alive or skinned post mortem. I thought it was like, “We found his body hanging in a tree with no evidence of anything or anyone- and here’s something else horrible!” …But I guess not.
I’d heard they were doing a sequel back when the movie first came out but it looks like it’s been dropped. Yeah, so the guy becomes an alien, saves his wife, eats brains and all to some sweet rock’n’roll. I guess…that’s…cool? It was like at that point they said “This ain’t getting a sequel. Do whatever you want here, let’s just end the freaking thing.”