AVP:R Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) d. Strause, Colin / Strause, Greg)
Picking up immediately after the close of the previous film where the union of the two galactic goliaths seemed inevitable – and not in an olive branch kind of way, this latest installment features a Predator “cleaner” (shades of Harvey Keitel’s “Wolf” character from Pulp Fiction) sent to erase any evidence left behind on earth of either race. A relatively intriguing jumping-off point, but the whole endeavor goes south in a big, big hurry, thanks to Shane Salerno’s mean-spirited body-count screenplay and the ham-fisted, sniggering, “see how they splatter” direction by siblings Colin and Greg Strause.
With nary a sympathetic character in sight, be they human, Alien or Predator, the viewer is left with little to do but watch helplessly as myriad human inhabitants of a rural Colorado mountain town are trotted out, given perfunctory two-dimensional background information before being face-hugged or laser-blasted into oblivion.
What our nimble scriveners seem to have forgotten is that the keys to success for both franchises’ early installments were the realistic and appealing characters that we grew to care about before they met their messy ends. Not so here. We have stock figures so thinly drawn that to call them stereotypes would be an insult to stereotypes – we don’t care one iota about any of them, making this the equivalent of a slick and mindless slasher flick, with monsters in place of machetes. Having no real plot to speak of, gorehound immaturity reigns supreme with a nihilistic sense of “Heh, heh, watch this” pervading throughout.
You knew it had to happen: The PredAlien. Sigh.
Refrain from buying popcorn for this one as you’ll probably not be able to resist hurling it at the screen. A requiem is called for indeed, because the filmmakers’ intentions to bury the series (not to praise it) are all-too-evident.
I hate to admit it, but I saw this in the theater. To be fair, it is significantly better than the first one, which could have used some of that gorehound immaturity. Then at least it would have had *something*.
ReplyDeleteI'm not defending this movie, just suggesting that if you really want to bring the pain, watch the one by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Oh, I saw this in the cinema as well. Actually, I've seen all the ALIEN flicks in the theater, now that I come to think of it. One of the few franchises I can say that about.
DeleteMan, as much as I thought the first AVP was fairly lukewarm, I didn't hate it nearly as much as I did this one. This one is just dumb on a stick. It's so clearly a response to the "how dare you make a PG-13 rated movie," but they just went overboard.