.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

The year was 2004 and trailers for AVP (Alien vs. Predator) were hitting the big screen and making my heart pound more than the evening I lost my virginity. The previous year, Freddy vs. Jason pitted two of horrors great icons together and although the movie never took off the way most thriller enthusiasts would have liked, it was still an enjoyable and very watchable slash flick with a body count that was enough to give it a recommendation grade with this critic.

Taking my fond memories of the early Alien and Predator films and having them duel against each other while humans try and eke out a survival in the process was, to me, a genius stunt that would have me buying my ticket weeks in advance.

The end result was a film that was a disappointment (although, I must admit that countless viewings since, I have come to appreciate it a bit more and overlook the obvious flaws). Alien vs. Predator was PG-13 which - as horror film aficionados will agree - was a bigger no-no than having Jamie Lynn Spears speak at contraception convention. If the ratings board felt fit to give the film the same classification as Gremlins, then you knew that the violence, nudity and gore factors would all be mitigated, and those three categories are what most horror/thriller franchises are built upon. When I left the theatre in 2004, the word that came to my mind over and over again in the parking lot heading towards my car was 'predictable'. Unfortunately, the film did nothing to help generate those feelings I had through the decades when seeing these creatures and their sequels entertain the living snot out of me.

To my surprise, Aliens vs. Predator : Requiem got my juices flowing again in commercial and print ads. Maybe I was hoping that they would have realized their mistakes in the first incarnation or maybe I was just holding desperately on the hope that it would recapture the glory of the beasts, but either way, I was pumped.

Aliens vs. Predator : Requien (AVPR to save some strain on my keyboard), starts with the crash landing of a Predator ship in a small Colorado town. The craft was carrying both Aliens and Predators and once the ship does a header into a remote area just outside of a town's populace, the Aliens quickly seize their opportunity and kill all Predators on board. This action is recorded and soon a Predator back on his home planet leaves for earth to hunt down the escaped Aliens, avenge his fallen comrade and eventually confront a Pred-Alien spawned for reasons that I still can't quite figure. Of course, much like the first film, the war between these two creatures will be fought with humans taking the brunt of the body count.

AVPR was directed by the Strause brothers, Colin and Greg who seem to understand the rules of sequel (i.e. upped body count, more action, more things going boom) but unfortunately, the script written by Shane Salerno doesn't rise above mediocrity. The opening sequence was of high production value and set the stage for what I was hoping would be 90 minutes of edge of my seat thrills. Instead, I sat through something that was mildly entertaining but does not have me with any high expectations for a third go-round.

So what went wrong? Well, after I got annoyed with all the sweeping camera shots, I think the mistake was in the lack of character or creature development. With the first two Alien films and the first Predator, the beasts had a personality that - as strange as it sounds - had you understanding (almost rooting) for the being. In AVPR, they just kill, run and destroy. Usually not a complaint from someone like me, but I just didn't feel any connection like I did years ago.

The human characters didn't fare much better. There is a female, Kelly who even looks a bit like Ripley (and even utters some of the same phrases - "Hang on!"), but I can't recall another characters screen name and I am just 20 minutes out of the screening. The characters are flat which is ok since the not many of them are going to survive, but caring which ones lived or died might have been nice.

Next on my checklist of problems were some of the fight scenes between the Alien and the Predator where I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. The fight in the sewer was a good example where things were so dark that I didn't know who was kicking who's ass (I had the same complaint with the end scenes in this summer's Transformers movie).

Lastly, there was the new creature. The Pred-Alien. We don't know why or how it was created but most scenes didn't even give us a clear view of what the thing looked like. Introducing a new breed can work if done correctly (see Blade II), but in AVPR, it was if it was created just so that the special effect and creature make up artists could have some fun. It really wasn't necessary in the story as they could have just focused on the town's attempts at survival during the infestation.

There is an ending to AVPR that I didn't comprehend either. I imagine you have to be collector and reader of the comic book series to understand what happens right before the final credits.

AVPR was just like AVP and I expect it to have the same effect on me months later. I will surely buy the DVD and watch it countless times and slowly it will wear me down to a point where I accept it for more than what I respected it on the big screen. Maybe even like it more after repeated viewings. After all, it had plenty of good kills (a woman impaled on a wall with one of the Predators weapons, heads are blown off and pregnant ladies have their chests explode). These are all good things and maybe watching them again and being able to pause, rewind and zoom will give me a different perspective.

In the meantime, until the films eventual DVD release, AVPR remains at a rating that has me not pointing my thumb either up or down. Just stretching my hand straight out and tilting it from side to side.