Aliens versus Predator: Requiem on DVD
Posted by: admin in Science Fiction Movies, Horror / Thriller
There’s good science fiction and bad science fiction. But there’s also popcorn munching shoot ‘em ups that were born more from a video game concept than an actual storyline. Guess which column AVP: Requiem (Aliens Versus Predator 2) falls under. Yep - movie derived from the stuff that makes video games so fun to play. Terrible science fiction, but fun stupid entertainment, if you’re in to that kind of thing.
AVP is complete in its simplicity. There’s really no plot. The characters are all fairly archetyped. The monsters are plentiful and eager to go kill each other or humans - it doesn’t seem to make much difference. It’s set in Smalltown, USA. Explosions and blood-sprays are more common than lines of dialogue. So, yes, in summary I liked it.
Here’s the plot synopsis - somewhere, somehow, a Predator (you know, those things Arnie fought a couple decades ago) gets infested with an Alien (you know, those things that Sigourney discovered a couple decades ago) and viola, PredAlien. And that’s where the fun begins, because of course our PredAlien somehow gets dropped on to Earth. [Brief sidenote here - this part of the story didn’t make much sense to me until I popped up to Wikipedia which explains the plot for AVP 2 pretty well (spoiler warning, which really doesn’t matter because that would imply there’s something to spoil…)]. So, low and behold, a small little mountain town in Colorado becomes home to angry, human-lovin’ Aliens. And somehow a Predator finds out about this whole thing and decides to come in to scope things out. And, yes, there are pesky humans that get in the way of both species of super-war-monster and end up being fodder for both sides. It’s a loving, warm, family film.
This could probably not be any more masculine if it tried. The women are uniformly gorgeous, and the men are all pretty uniformly brave and noble. Every flavor of firearm is brought out in this one, including a hand-held version of the famous Predator shoulder-cannon. And of course, the movie ends with an enticing suggestion that we’ll even get a third Aliens versus Predator movie - which will somehow bridge the gap from the AVP’s to the Aliens movie line (which follows the Weyland-Yutani “The Company” stuff that setup all of Ripley’s shenanigans in the Aliens series of movies).
The biggest problem with AVP-Requiem, as far as I’m concerned, is that it’s just too dark. I watched the DVD on a progressive-scan DVD player on a decent LCD TV with the lights off at night-time and could still barely make out some of the action in some scenes. Amp up the contrast a little on the next one, guys! Oh yes, and there’s ample blood, gore, violence, a far-too-brief bikini scene, and plenty of profanity as well. So, all in all, if you’re looking to watch a video-game storyline for a couple hours, AVP-R is ideal.
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