My Thoughts on “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem”

 

(This is the poster for Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.)

I was supposed to get this review out by Friday, and then review Predator 2 tomorrow on Monday and then repost my Prey (2022) review on Friday or Saturday and then review Predator: Killer of Killers, but then I got too caught up in playing Metroid Prime Remastered. Yes, I finally got Metroid Prime Remastered. It feels good to finally have it in my possession. I do plan on reviewing that game after I’m done playing it, so it’s not like I’m just wasting time playing a video game when I should be writing a review. I am actually doing work for another review. And this is just hobby right now, it’s not like I’m getting paid to do this (yet), so it’s not like I need to rush to get this out by a specific time. It’s not like I’m on a deadline or anything. But still, I still like to keep a consistent output, just in case anyone stumbles upon my blog and they’re not reading a post from weeks or months ago where I express an opinion that’s outdated or I talk about something that is already old news, and either already happened or didn’t happen. I do talk about politics and current events on occasion after all, especially in the forewords of my reposts. I don’t just talk about movies, TV shows, and video games, but I mainly focus on those.

Then, on top of that, I had to go to a graduation reception 👨‍🎓 for a relative on my aunt’s side of the family, their from her fiancé’s side of the family, who I guess would be my uncle, so I guess I could see they’re from my uncle’s side of the family, though I’m not related to him by blood 🩸. I mentioned it in the update I recently added to my post requesting/recommending movies for Brandon Tenold to review on his channel. It was held at the Route 66 Casino Hotel which is about 20 miles from Albuquerque, and is apart of Laguna Reservation, it’s owned and operated by the Laguna tribe. It was fun, I enjoyed it. They had a lot of country style food like they had brisket coated in barbecue sauce, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy 🥔, cole slaw, green salad 🥗, peach cobbler 🍑, corn bread, and some other item with green beans, I’m not sure what it was. There was even a dance there though, I didn’t actually get on the dance floor and scream like this: “Nyah!” In case you didn’t know, that was a deep cut reference to the third track on the Serial Experiments Lain: Cyberia Mix soundtrack album, “Professed intensions and real intention,” which features exclusively EDM (electronic dance music) tracks that don’t actually appear in the show itself but were inspired by the show. It’s implied, just from the title alone, that these are supposed to tracks played at the fictional nightclub featured in the show, Cyberia.

 

The song in question actually sampled from a Spanish song 🇪🇸 called “Viva La Revolución” by an obscure Spanish band 🇪🇸 called 2 IN LINE, which was also sampled in a track for a video game’s soundtrack, Jet Set Radio. That’s why if you look up the individual track on YouTube, you’ll see a whole bunch of comments in the comment section mentioning Jet Set Radio and name dropping it constantly. They both sampled from the same source. I just wanted to focus on the party, rather than focus on trying to focus on reviewing a movie, when this is just a hobby, I’m not getting paid for it, and it could wait. I want these reviews to be the best they can be, and not be half-assed jobs, or be halfhearted. I like to give them each my undivided attention and spend as much time writing them I can until I feel that they’re finished and I’ve run out of things to say. Although, I did make so minor alterations to the update I added to my Brandon Tenold post. 

I promise, after I finish with this review, I will review Predator 2 later on this week. My plans for the rest of June have not changed, do still hope to get my reviews for the Predator franchise out by the end of June. After I post my Predator 2 review, I will repost my Prey (2022) review. And then after that, I will review Predator: Killer of Killers. Depending on how things go, I might have to wait until July to review Predator: Killer of Killers because the last day of June is on Monday, and I may get to it in time. I may also have to put it off in the first week in July since Jurassic World Rebirth comes out that week. It comes out on July 2, 2025, which is on a Wednesday, and theatrical movies are usually released on Fridays, so I don’t know how that’ll work 😕. I’m guessing they’re saying July 2 because Friday is July 4, which is of course the Fourth of July 🇺🇸 (Independence Day), and they don’t want to release the movie on a holiday. But, Transformers (2007) was released on the Fourth of July 🇺🇸, the listed release date was July 4, 2007, even though the movie technically released on July 3, 2007 since that was on actual Friday whereas July 4 was on a Saturday (I’m assuming). It’s been so long, I don’t even remember. But, it was still the Fourth of July 🇺🇸 weekend, and it benefited greatly from that. It became the fifth highest grossing movie of 2007 because of that coveted Fourth of July 🇺🇸 weekend spot. We’ll see if Jurassic World Rebirth also benefits from being released on the Fourth of July 🇺🇸 weekend, even each of Jurassic World movie has shown a diminishing return in terms of box office. Sure, they’ve all made a billion dollars 💵 each so far, but each one has progressively made less than the one that came before it. Sort of like what happened with the Star Wars sequels, which began at the same time as the Jurassic World trilogy.  

 

The Force Awakens came out the same year as Jurassic World. Jurassic World came out first, on June 12, 2015, and The Force Awakens came out second, on December 18, 2015, and each dominated the box office when they came out, making billions of dollars 💵 🤑. Jurassic World made over $1.671 billion 💵, becoming the first film in the Jurassic franchise to make over a billion dollars 💵, and The Force Awakens made over $2.07 billion 💵, outgrossing Avatar (2009) domestically in the process. Universal and Disney made a lot of money 💵 that year with their investments 🤑, releasing two high profile legacy sequels to long dormant franchises in the same year. This was still when legacy sequels were still new and special, and were still seen as events that you had to go to, before they became commonplace and people started feeling apprehensive or indifferent towards them. Maybe because the sequels to those movies weren’t very good (although I liked Jurassic World Dominion), and we’ve seen so many bad legacy sequels since then that people are a lot more apprehensive about them, and they’re no longer a guaranteed box office success. Just because you make a sequel to a movie from 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years ago don’t automatically mean that it will make. There are plenty of legacy sequels that have bombed 💣 since Jurassic World and The Force Awakens came out. 

 

So, I don’t even know if Jurassic World Rebirth will even break the $1 billion 💵 mark. I’m not saying that it won’t, but it’s no longer a guarantee that will like it was for the other Jurassic World movies that came before it. And that’s because of the diminishing returns of these movies, this downward trend 📉 with each one making less than the one that came before it. It’s also because people are apprehensive about seeing Rebirth after many of them were disappointed by Dominion.  I wasn’t one of them, I thought Dominion was fine and I don’t share most people’s complaints with that movie. Even if Rebirth ends up being the best of the Jurassic World movies and gets the best reviews and has the highest ratings out of all that due to both Gareth Edwards and David Koepp’s involvement. I mean, I’m not personally wowed or enticed by Gareth Edwards’s involvement because I didn’t like Godzilla (2014) and I didn’t really care for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I mean, that movie wasn’t even really directed by Gareth Edwards, it was half-directed by him and half-directed by Tony Gilroy, the guy ♂︎ who would go onto create Andor, the best reviewed and most beloved Star Wars streaming show on Disney+. And most of the stuff that people actually like about Rogue One was done by Tony Gilroy and not Gareth Edwards. 

I also didn’t watch The Creator (2023) for that reason, even it does have John David Washington (Denzel Washington’s son), and I’m rooting for him to become a big star like his dad, because it was directed by Gareth Edwards and I have a history of not really liking his movies. They look nice, but the story and characters in his movies are usually lacking, at least in the ones that I’ve seen. Maybe his debut feature, Monsters (2010) is pretty good, I don’t know. I’d only check that movie out so I can see the lesser known and less well liked sequel, Monsters: Dark Continent. I’ve been interested in checking out Monsters: Dark Continent for a while, and in order to watch that movie, I’ll have to watch the first Monsters first. Gareth Edwards didn’t direct Dark Continent because he was committed to Godzilla (2014), which is another reason why I’m more interested in checking out Dark Continent than the first Monsters. The first Monsters is just a stepping stone for me to get to Dark Continent. 

 

I also don’t really care about the subject matter. The Creator (2023) about AI gone amok and is about robots and cyborgs, and it’s used as an allegory for racism and oppression, and I feel like it’s going to be one of those movies that will try to portray AI in a positive light. And in this time, where generative AI, or large language models (LLMs), are running amok on the Internet 🛜 and doing more harm than good, we need less movies that portray AI in a positive light, or make AI seem like it’s a benefit to mankind, or even sell the idea that the kind of AI that we see in movies like The Creator (2023), what is now generally referred to as artificial general intelligence (AGI), is possible in real life, when it very much is not. That’s why I’m against The Creator (2023) on a conceptual level, not just that it was directed by Gareth Edwards. But then again, I do like the Matrix movies and I like I, Robot as well as Chappie, and those movie portray AI in a positive light, or at least in a sympathetic light in the case of both The Matrix and Chappie. So, maybe I might consider giving The Creator (2023) a look, but I make no promises. 

 

But, I am intrigued by David Koepp’s involvement because he had a hand in writing the first Jurassic Park and wrote The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which I know a lot of people don’t like The Lost World and think it’s the weakest of the original trilogy, but I liked it and that’s all that matters to me. This is the first he’s written anything for the Jurassic franchise since The Lost World, so I’m curious to see what he came up with, even it does look to be about the same as we’ve seen before in the other Jurassic World movies, but with a little more polish and less schlock. I say less because this movie does look like it has some of that same schlock from the previous three Jurassic World movies because of the hybrid dinosaurs like the D-Rex, or Distortus Rex, (which doesn’t even look like a dinosaur anymore) and the Mutadon, which is a flying creature that is a combination of a Velociraptor and a pterosaur of some kind, probably a Pteranodon. I thought people hated the hybrid dinosaurs from the previous movies, or at least were tired of them, and yet the same fans who complained about the hybrid dinosaurs in Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom are fine with these? Please, make 👏 it 👏 make 👏 sense 👏. 

 

Yes, I know most of the actual critics shown apprehension about the inclusion of more hybrid dinosaurs in this latest entry, but I’m talking more about the actual fans. The fans complained about the previous Jurassic World movies focusing so much on hybrids instead of the regular dinosaurs, and yet a lot of them are showing interest and excitement about the ones in this movie, even though the D-Rex in particular looks even less like a dinosaur than the hybrids that came before. It looks more like an alien 👽 than anything else, it looks like the Cloverfield monster. It falls into that Cloverfield design language, where the designers couldn’t come up with a more creative design for their monster, so they just copied the look of the Cloverfield monster. Gareth Edwards himself even featured a monster in another one of his movies that also fell into this category, two of them actually, the MUTOs in Godzilla (2014). The MUTOs were one of my least favorite things about that movie for that reason. The sound design on them was great, the CGI on them was great, the idea of them was great, but the actual design of them, the look of them was bad. I’m surprised that it didn’t cause as much outrage as the human/dinosaur hybrids did in the original version of Jurassic World, back when it was still called Jurassic Park IV. 

 

This is why Colin Trevorrow went with the giant locusts in Jurassic World Dominion to get away from the hybrids because even he realized that it was getting played out, it’s also why he went with the Giganotosaurus and made it the main dinosaur antagonist that the T. rex (and Therizinosaurus) fight at the end of the movie. And yet, this movie comes along and does dinosaur hybrids again. The only difference this time is that it’s played more straight, it pretends to be more grounded, and there’s no Owen Grady performing superhuman feats and surviving great odds, things that should’ve killed him or incapacitated him, but for some reason don’t. Just because he’s played by Chris Pratt and has some of the strongest plot armor of any character in the franchise. Just because he played a superhero in the MCU doesn’t mean you have to make him a superhero in these movies too 🙄. Here’s hoping they don’t have Scarlett Johansson’s character perform any superhuman feats in this movie. I mean, we all saw what they did with her in Black Widow (2021), so it is possible that they might make her do superhuman shit in this movie too.  Then again, this was written by David Koepp, and he did give us that raptor gymnastics scene in The Lost World that everyone makes fun of, where Ian’s daughter, Kelly kills a raptor using her gymnastics skills, and she even gets the raptor’s attention by yelling, “Hey, you!” at it. 

 

How are people not tired of this sort of thing by now? How are the people making these movies not tired of it by now? I mean, Gareth Edwards is new to the franchise, and David Koepp hasn’t been involved with it for about 28 years, but they probably aren’t as tired of the hybrid dinosaur thing as the other involved in the franchise who have been with it since Jurassic World when they started doing this whole hybrid dinosaur thing. But still, it cheapens the other dinosaurs (the ones that actually existed, albeit in an altered form than their real life counterparts) if they’re constantly pushed to the sidelines, relegated to supporting roles, and overshadowed by these completely made up hybrid dinosaurs. Just do regular dinosaurs and everyone will be happy. Hell, give me more locusts, give me more giant bugs, I know a lot of people didn’t like that in Dominion, but I’d still take that over this D-Rex thing. Or better yet, give me some Cenozoic animals, like mammoths 🦣 and Smilodons. Or, if you still don’t want to do mammals, you could do the Cenozoic era birds and reptiles like Megalania, terror birds, Titanoboa, Barinasuchus, Dentaneosuchus, and Quinkana. Or you could do Megalodon 🦈, one of the largest Cenozoic marine predators and the largest predatory shark species 🦈 that we know to have ever existed. That would really change up the formula, and it would do it without adding yet another hybrid dinosaur 🙄. 

 

Since there are two Predator movies coming out this year, with Killer of Killers already out, after I’m done reviewing Jurassic World Rebirth (if I review it) and Predator: Killer of Killers, I’ll wait until October or November to review the other two Predator movies that I haven’t dedicated reviews for, Predators and The Predator, in time for the release of Predator: Badlands, the second Predator movie releasing this year. Maybe, I’ll even throw in some DNA 🧬 to hold you over until then. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about the 1997 movie, DNA 🧬, which stars Mark Dacascos and Jürgen Prochnow and many people consider to be a ripoff of Predator. It is available to watch on YouTube for free, so it is possible for me to do. Brandon Tenold already reviewed it and I feel like reviewing it too. Both Predator: Killer of Killers and Predator: Badlands were written and directed by Dan Trachtenberg. He’s had a lot of involvement with this franchise ever since he directed Prey (2022), and is the one guiding it in whatever direction he’s guiding it too. Me thinks he’s trying to set up another Alien vs. Predator movie, what with the inclusion of Weyland-Yutani, a Weyland-Yutani android as a main character (pretty much the female lead ♀︎ of the film), and all of the other Alien references in Badlands. Maybe even an Alien vs. Predator vs. Harvester movie since he also snuck in an Independence Day reference in there as well, and yes, the aliens 👽 in Independence Day are called Harvesters. The second movie, Independence Day: Resurgence established that. Which naturally brings us to the subject of this post, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. 

The movie picks up almost immediately where the last one left off, pretty much seconds after. And if you watched the first Alien vs. Predator movie, or you read my review 😉, you’ll know what happened at the end of that movie. Lex and Scar destroy the pyramid and kill all of the Aliens except the queen, they defeat the queen and send her sinking to the bottom of the freezing Antarctic water 🥶💦 but at a terrible price, Scar dies, his tribe shows up, cart his body away, the Elder Predator gives Lex his spear after seeing the scar on her face that Scar left behind using the Xenomorph acid blood and as reward for killing the Alien Queen and showing bravery in the face of danger and working with a Predator and following their ways, the Predators fly away in their spaceship, leaving Lex to have to get back to the icebreaker ship using one of those snowcats they arrived in. Then, the Predators place Scar’s body on an altar, and that’s when it happens, a Chestburster bursts out of Scar’s chest, although it is not an ordinary Xenomorph, it’s a new type of Xenomorph that we, the audience, had never seen before, a Predalien…or PredAlien. Is it spelt with the a lowercase or an uppercase? The back of the Blu-Ray 💿 spells it with an uppercase, while most other sources spell it with a lowercase. So, I’m going to spell it with a lowercase for the rest of this review. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a production still of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, showing the Predalien.)

 

 

 

 

 

Predaliens are not hybrids. Despite their outward appearance, they are fully blooded Xenomorphs, and were not combined Predator genetics 🧬 through genetic engineering 🧬 (or gene editing 🧬 as they call it now because of CRISPR), they are Xenomorphs that were simply born from Predators. They had a Facehugger attach to them, insert the embryo down their throats, the embryo gestated inside of their chest cavity and grew into a Chestburster, which is the larval form of the Xenomorphs, the Chestburster bursts out of their body, and matures into a full-grown Xenomorph and that’s how you get Predaliens. It’s the normal Xenomorph life cycle, except it plays out in Predators rather than humans. It’s not like the human/Xenomorph hybrids in Alien Resurrection where they were purposefully bred to have human DNA 🧬 in them, and even that was an accident since the only reason why the Xenomorphs in that movie have human DNA 🧬 is that during the cloning process, Ripley and the Alien Queen inside her’s DNA 🧬 mixed together, and ended up creating human/Alien hybrids 🧬. The Riley clones had Alien DNA 🧬 inside them, and the Aliens birthed from the queen that was extracted from Ripley 8 (the eighth and final clone of Ripley) have human DNA 🧬. 

 

That’s why the queen in that movie was able to give birth like a human when she gave birth to that monstrosity that goes under the name, the Newborn that immediately kills her after it’s born. Those were the result of genetic manipulation 🧬 in a laboratory setting 🥼🥽🧪🧫🔬. The Predalien here, and the Predaliens in most of the Alien vs. Predator sub franchise are not. Alien 3 established that Xenomorphs take on the physical characteristics of their hosts. The Alien in that movie was either birthed from a dog 🐕 or an ox 🐂 (depending on which version you watch, the theatrical version or the assembly cut), and therefore,  it walked on all fours (quadrupedal instead of bipedal), it was speedier and had more agility, it didn’t have the traditional worm-like Chestburster larval form, and it was a bit more animalistic and aggressive than even the Xenomorph we saw in the first Alien movie and Aliens. So, it stands to reason that if a Xenomorph birthed from a Predator (or Yautja), it would take on some of the physical characteristics of a Predator. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a maquette of one of the earlier designs for the Predalien in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, it would be way bigger than a normal Xenomorph since the average Yautja is larger than the average human, standing at about 7 feet tall, whereas the average human stands at about 5 feet tall, they’d be much stronger than a normal Xenomorph since Yautjas are way stronger than humans, with their strength being comparable or possibly even exceeding that of a gorilla 🦍 or a chimpanzee, and it would have mandibles like a Yautja, and even dreads like a Yautja, or locs, or whatever the respectful term for that kind of hairstyle is. I saw a video where this white guy ♂︎ (he was a political YouTuber) say that white people shouldn’t adopt that hairstyle because it’s offensive, because it’s cultural appropriation, it’s colonialist in certain respects, and it doesn’t look good on white people (most of the time) due to their hair not being made for it like black people’s hair is. He said that the proper term of that type of hairstyle is either dreads or locs, and not dreadlocks, and that dreadlocks is an outdated term that has racist connotations and has a history steeped in colonialism, and that the black peoples who do have that hairstyle don’t refer to it as dreadlocks, they either refer to it as dreads or locs. Dreads and locs are not even the same hairstyles, there are differences between the two, but for the sake of brevity, I will be referring to that hairstyle as dreads for the rest of this review, and in other reviews involving the Predator. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a fan art image showing a fan design for a Predalien. It was done by an artist on DeviantART called fastleppard, and the reason why he left out the mandibles or dreads, is that he felt it didn’t make sense for it have those. Sure, the Aliens take on the physical characteristics of their hosts, but that doesn’t mean they inherit everything. Like, Xenomorphs born from humans don’t have ears 👂 like humans, or noses 👃 like humans, or hair like humans, nor do ones born from four-legged animals have that many of their features, mostly just their quadrupedal stance, more streamlined body, and animalistic behavior and aggression. So, his interpretation of a Predalien is that it looks mostly like a regular Alien, but it’s just bigger, and has larger fangs, and the head had these triangular ridges on top. 

 

I actually don’t mind the mandibles or the dreads on the Predalien designs we’ve got in official Alien vs. Predator media, I think they still work and make sense. It does make sense for them to have mandibles, and the hair is not like human hair, it has a different biological unction and is made of different material than human hair is so it would carryover when an Alien gestates inside of a Predator and takes on its form. My only problem with a lot of Predalien designs is that they place the mandibles too far apart. Like, with the actual Predator designs, people have a tendency to place the mandibles far apart so they’d open wider when the Predator or Predalien roar, and they treat them almost like tusks rather than actual mandibles. Ignoring the actual biological function of the mandibles which is to protect their mouths and keep them moist. They’re in the place of lips 👄, Predators don’t have lips 👄, so they use these mandibles as substitute. So, that should be reflected in the Predalien design, with the mandible much closer to the mouth and covering it up to keep it moist like lips 👄 do.) 

 

 

 

 

They even display behaviors we often associate with Predators, like ripping spines out, which I guess is an instinct and not a learned behavior if Predaliens inherit that from their hosts, and they don’t learn it from observing and imitating Predator behavior or being taught to do that through training, since they’re animals that mostly operate on instinct and are not as intelligent as a human or a Yautja, don’t really use technology, and don’t hunt for sport and glory like Predators do. And if you’re thinking, “Well, that’s just something they made them do in this movie,” it’s not because the 2010 Aliens vs. Predator game also had a Predalien that ripped out spines, a Predalien that was nicknamed “the Abomination” I kid you not. The Predalien in this movie is nicknamed “Chet,” which is a name used by the crew members, and not in the actual movie itself. They gave it the most douchebag name possible 😆. It’s a really a toss-up between Chet and Jarek in terms of which name is douchier. Parents out there looking for a name for their baby, don’t name your kid Chet or Jarek. Though, it would be a bit funny if the characters in the movie kept referring to the Predalien, Chet. I will not referring to the Predalien in this movie as Chet, instead I will just be calling it, the Predalien for the rest of this review. The Predalien in this movie is also notable because it is not a standard Warrior Alien. It is also a Praetorian, a transitional in-between stage between a normal warrior and a queen that a Xenomorph will enter into if there is no queen present, or if there is a queen, they will enter that stage so they can eventually turn into a queen and establish their own hive. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the Abomination Predalien from Aliens vs. Predator (2010). The first image is just the Abomination standing idle, and the second image is of it holding a person’s head with their spinal cord still attached.) 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s what happens here, because the queen in the last movie was frozen in the Antarctic Ocean 🥶🌊, and the Predalien was all alone up there in that spaceship, except for a few Facehuggers kept in tanks (sort of like in Aliens), there was no queen. The species couldn’t propagate itself. So, the Predalien immediately transitioned into a Praetorian form as soon as it was born and matured into an adult, and it did this very quickly because remember, this Predalien was born from a Facehugger that came from the pyramid below Bovetøya Island, and the Aliens there were bred by the Predators to gestate and then mature faster so that they’d be ready for the hunt. So, it practically matured in no time. And it spends the rest of the movie, trying to establish a hive of its own, so it can finally transition into becoming a queen, grow a huge egg sack and start laying eggs by the hundreds or thousands, and is no longer in a position where it can defend itself and will have to be protected by the Warriors. Warrior Aliens, that is, not the gang, the Warriors from the 1979 movie, The Warriors. Though, that would be interesting it was them. 

 

But, in the mean, while it still is in this Praetorian stage, the Predalien reproduce by directly depositing embryos down women ♀︎’s throats, and instead of them bursting out of their chests, they burst out of their bellies, hence why they’re called Bellybusters instead of Chestbursters, and instead of only one coming there, there are multiple, about three or four of them at a time. The reason why the Predalien only targets women ♀︎ for this is that women ♀︎ have uteruses, it can sense it, and because it can’t produce eggs yet (since it’s still a Praetorian and not a Queen) and therefore doesn’t have Facehuggers to deposit embryos into potential hosts, it deposits them directly into the woman ♀︎’s uterus through her mouth it implants the embryos orally rather than vaginally like in IVF (which would probably happen in the porn parody 🔞 if this movie had one) and sees the uteruses as a perfect place for the embryos to gestate, and keep them safe from the host’s immune defenses. What better place for your offspring to gestate than in an actual womb? And it’s these Aliens, these Bellybursters that will form the foundation of her new hive, not the Aliens that came from the escaped Facehuggers. That’s why the Predalien acts so aggressively towards the other Aliens and pushes them aside when they’re in her way because they aren’t her offspring, they don’t entirely respect her and she doesn’t entirely respect them. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is an image from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, showing the Predalien about to attack a pregnant lady 🤰 at a hospital 🏥.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, because we have Bellybursters, we get some pretty brutal kills in this movie on the Alien side of things, particularly in the hospital scene 🏥 where the Predalien shows up at the hospital and starts impregnating all of the already pregnant women 🤰 at the hospital 🏥 with its own offspring. The embryos gestate inside their wombs, kill their babies inside, and then burst out in bloody and gory fashion 🩸. The gestating Aliens inside the hosts’ wombs kill their babies by essentially eating them and then taking their place inside the womb. So, these Bellybursters receive extra nutrients that a normal Chestbursters do by virtue of having something to eat before they burst out. It’s not something normal Bellybursters would experience if the Predalien impregnated a woman ♀︎ that wasn’t already pregnant 🤰. Needless to say, the victims, the hosts, experience tremendous pain while all this is happening inside of their bodies until the moment when the Bellybursters quite literally explode out of their bellies, sending blood 🩸, guts, and fleshy chunks flying everywhere, killing them pretty much instantly. 

Yeah, this movie gets pretty gruesome at times. When they said that this movie was R rated, they weren’t kidding. They made sure that you knew right away that this was R rated, since a guy ♂︎ loses his arm pretty early on at the beginning, and they pushed the R rating as far as it would go. The first film was rated PG-13, and that caused a lot of fan backlash, both on the Alien side of things and the Predator side of things. Because Alien and Predator are both R rated franchises, so it didn’t make sense to make the crossover movie PG-13, when the people who would actually go out and see it were adults who grew up with the older Alien and Predator movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. There was one Alien movie in the 70s (1979), one Alien movie in the 80s (1986), one Predator movie in the 80s (1987), two Alien movies in the 90s (1992 and 1997), and one Predator movie in the 90s (1990). No kids (except me) or teenagers born after 1990 were gonna want to see an Alien vs. Predator movie, so making it PG-13 was kind of pointless. 

 

So, when it came time to make the sequel, they had to assure the fans by saying, “Don’t worry guys, the next one’s going to be R rated, we learned our lesson. See? We even used an R word in the title so that it could be abbreviated as AVPR just so that you’ll know that it’s R rated.” And they’ve never made that same mistake again, as every Alien and Predator movie since the first AVP has been R rated. Though, because it was rated PG-13, a lot of people saw the first AVP when they were kids or teens, and that was their first exposure to one of or both franchises (it wasn’t my first exposure to the Predator franchise but it was my first exposure to the Alien franchise), and are kind of nostalgic for it. So, making it PG-13 did sort of work in drawing in a new audience and creating new fans, but it probably shouldn’t be done again. If they do make another AVP movie, if those Alien references in Predator: Badlands lead to anything, it should be R rated like this one. Alien: Romulus proved definitively that people will see an R rated Alien movie in theaters if it’s good enough, if the word of mouth is good. In other words, just make them good and people will see them. Let’s see if Predator: Badlands does the same thing but for Predator.

 

And if you thought I was kidding about that being the reason why the movie was called Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I wasn’t, that’s literally the reason. They just wanted an R word in the title so that they could abbreviate it and the acronym would spell out AVPR so that you’d know that this was the R rated one. The title Requiem has real meaning beyond that, other than that one of definitions of the word is a mass held for the repose of the souls of the dead, and another definition is an act or token of remembrance. And there is lot of death in this movie and a lot of dead people will have to be remembered, but probably won’t since the town gets destroyed, but more on that later. This is a hard R film just from the gore alone, though like with the first Alien vs. Predator, I watched the unrated version for this review. Like, with the unrated version of AVP (2004), the one for AVPR adds a bunch of extra scenes that weren’t in the theatrical version and even rearranges or re-edits scenes. But, because this movie was already R rated, they didn’t have to add any extra blood 🩸 or gore in the unrated like they did for the unrated version of AVP (2004). Though they did add some extra gore, like in the scene where Jesse gets impaled by the Predator’s shuriken, in the unrated version, you can see her guts visibly falling out from where the shuriken hit her because it right in her belly, whereas you didn’t see that in the theatrical cut, you just saw her bleeding out 🩸 from the wound. Though, she definitely got the least painful belly death of any of the women ♀︎ who die in this movie from something bad happening to their belly. Her death was pretty instantaneous compared to those other women ♀︎. 

 

Speaking of which, another extra gore scene the unrated version adds was the scene where Bellybursters burst out of Carrie’s belly. Though, we don’t actually see it, we just see her unconscious face and hear the sound effect of the Bellybursters bursting out of her belly while it happens, and then we see the aftermath, with the three or Bellybursters poking out of the huge gapping wound from where they bursted out of her belly and just shrieking like Chestbursters do after they’re born. Carrie was pregnant 🤰 BTW, so it does fall in line with the Predalien’s pattern of behavior of targeting women ♀︎ and specifically pregnant women 🤰 to impregnate with Bellybursters. Though, Carrie’s pregnancy 🤰 was not as far along as the women in the hospital 🏥. I didn’t know she was pregnant 🤰 until I saw the Wikipedia page saying that she was. Oh, and then there’s that scene in the cemetery 🪦 where Wolf blows this asshole guy ♂︎’s head off with his plasma cannon after he notices him carrying a gun. A scene that exists for no other reason than to show the Predator killing someone besides the deputy, Deputy Ray Adam (the husband of Carrie Adams, the waitress who got impregnated by the Predalien and got Bellybursters burst out of her belly that I talked about earlier), so that the movie’s body count didn’t all go to the Aliens. 

 

But, like with the unrated version of AVP (2004), I do consider the unrated version of AVPR to be the definitive, or close to definitive, version of the movie. It makes it clear that the ship that crash lands in the forest 🌲 near Gunnison, Colorado is different than the one that flew away with Scar’s body from Antarctica 🇦🇶 at the end of the first movie, by including a scene where the smaller ship detaches from the larger ship and flies back to Earth 🌎 with the Facehuggers. What they were planning to do with the Facehuggers before the Predalien crashed the ship, the movie never makes it clear, but we do at the very least that is a different ship than the one that left Earth 🌎 at the end of the last movie. Scar’s body is still on that other ship, the larger one, presumably heading back to Yautja Prime, or perhaps heading to some other planet to start a new hunt, and you’re probably wondering how the Predalien got on the other ship when Scar’s body was on the bigger ship. Well, it’s simple, the Predalien jumped ships before it detached. It stowed away on board without being detected until it was too late. And the scene where Wolf sees the footage that the one Predator recorded of the Predalien attacking that other Predator through the dead Predator’s biomask plays out much better in the unrated version than it does in the theatrical version. It plays out more organically here in the unrated version than it does in the theatrical version, where the footage is sent directly to Wolf in that distress signal sent back to Yautja Prime by the dying Predator (the one who tried to kill the Predalien but failed), the lone survivor on the crashed ship (until he himself gets snuffed out by the Predalien shortly after sending that distress signal), and Wolf sees that footage while he’s still on his chair. It just gives it a lot more breathing room for these events to play out 😮‍💨 instead of rushing through them like in the theatrical version.

 

This is a movie that didn’t pull its punches, nobody was safe. Anybody could die, kids, babies, and  pregnant women 🤰, groups of people who would normally be safe in these kinds of movies. They aren’t safe here. They kill a kid pretty early on by having him get Facehugged along with his dad after they stumble upon the crashed Predator ship in the woods 🌲, and then have a Chestburster burst out his chest, and then later on of course, as I explained in detail, the Predalien attacks a hospital 🏥 and immediately shoves Alien embryos down the throats of unsuspecting pregnant women 🤰 ready to deliver their babies, where they then reach their wombs and immediately gestate, grow, and develop into Bellybursters that kill the mothers’ babies already inside by eating them, and then burst out of the mothers’ bellies, killing them instantly and allowing the Aliens to overrun the hospital 🏥 and use it as the base for their new hive. 

 

And if you were thinking that was something the “sicko” directors came up with to add shock value to the movie, no, the Bellybursters were already a thing in the script before the Strause Brothers got there. So, if you’re against that whole scene or the idea of that scene, blame the writers that came before the Brothers Strause came on board. To be fair, we don’t actually see the Bellybursters eat the babies, as most of that happens off screen, and the only part we see is when the Bellybursters burst out of that one pregnant woman 🤰’s belly. The only thing they didn’t kill that’s usually considered “off-limits” in a horror film is an animal, they didn’t kill a dog 🐕 or a cat 🐈, even though there is a dog 🐕 that we see in that scene where the homeless people get attacked in the sewer. But, even if they don’t kill a dog 🐕, the scene where the Bellybursters burst out of the pregnant woman 🤰’s belly is just as gruesome and horrific as when the Runner Alien bursted out of the dog 🐕 in the theatrical version of Alien 3, if not more so. I argue it’s a bit more gruesome and hard to watch when it happens to a person, especially a pregnant woman 🤰 than it is when it happens to an animal. Oh, and the boy ♂︎ who gets Facehugged and Chestbursted is played by the same actor that was in 2012 (2009), the one that played Jackson Curtis’s son, Noah. This was one of his earlier roles before landing the role as Noah in 2012 (2009). I didn’t even recognize that it was the same boy until years later. 

 

 

 

 

(This is yet another production still showing the Predalien from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.) 

 

 

 

 

I like the Predalien, I think it works pretty well as the main antagonist of the movie. Can you believe they were going to kill it off right at the beginning? Yeah, originally, they were going to have the Predalien die at the beginning in the crash, and then the rest of the movie would just be the Predator facing off against normal Aliens I’m assuming. But at some point, they realized that without the Predalien, the movie wouldn’t have a main antagonist and a nemesis for the Predator to face at the beginning, so they decided to keep the Predalien alive for the rest of the movie and make it the antagonist and adversary for Wolf, the main Predator in the movie. And I think they might the right call because the Predalien is one of the best things about the movie, and is easily the standout element besides Wolf himself. The people hated this movie would’ve hated it more it if it didn’t have the Predalien or didn’t have it for very long, since it was teased at the end of the last movie and the fans would’ve been disappointed that had we only got the Predalien for the first 5 or 10 minutes and then it was out of the movie. There would be no reason continuing the movie right where the last one left off if that were the case. Might as well have had the movie take place centuries into the future like fans wanted at that point. 

 

 

 

 

(These are images of Wolf fighting the Predalien in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.) 

 

 

 

 

 

And because this Predalien was born from Scar, it’s like we’re seeing his death be avenged. It makes you want to see Wolf kill this thing even more than you already do because it also had a hand in killing a character from the previous movie that you loved. It’s also a great way of maintaining a connection to the first movie because there really aren’t a whole lot. It would’ve been cool if we got more references to the previous movie, like maybe they could’ve had a news report play on the TVs in the background talking about how an expedition to Bovetøya Island in Antarctica 🇦🇶 held by Weyland Industries went bad, and the company’s founder and CEO, Charles Bishop Weyland was pronounced dead along with everyone else on the expedition except for the lone survivor, mountaineering guide, Alexa “Lex” Woods. But, despite the lack of references to the first movie, you could still believe that this takes place in the same world. Can you imagine what Lex’s reaction might’ve been once she heard the news reports about what happened to Gunnison, Colorado? How it was wiped off the map by a missile. 

 

She must’ve thought, “Damn, those ‘serpents’ somehow reached the surface and made it to Colorado. Was this on me? Did I fail?” Well, if she did think that, I say to her, “You didn’t fail, you prevented the Aliens from the pyramid from reaching the surface, and this infestation was caused by the Predators, because their ship crash landed and set loose Facehuggers which infected the entire town. And even then, the infestation didn’t last long since the US military 🇺🇸 dropped a bomb on the town and killed all of the Aliens, the Predator, and everyone else left in the town when it hit, before the infestation was truly able to get out of hand and reach a population center and destroy the entire world. The only thing that you missed was that Predalien, but you didn’t know about that since Scar didn’t even know he was carrying one of them inside of him, and it’s dead now so you don’t need to worry.” Still, it was cool to seeing the opening scene of this movie and seeing how it matches with the scene at the end of the previous movie, even if the aesthetics of the ship look at all the same as it did in the previous movie and isn’t as brightly lit as it was in the previous movie (more on that later). To be honest, the aesthetics of the Predator ships and the Predator weapons and technology do match up better with the Predator movies than they did in the previous movie. Paul W.S. Anderson a lot of aesthetics of the Predator, and that was down to him not being as much of a fan of the Predator franchise as he was clearly for the Alien franchise. He was clearly more of an Alien fan than a Predator fan. You could tell because in pretty much every interview he did about that movie, he kept talking about how he loved Alien and wanted to make an Alien movie ever since he saw that original movie. He didn’t really talk that much about liking Predator. 

But, the Strause Brothers, or the Brothers Strause as they’re credited as on this movie and some of their other movies, in contrast, were more Predator fans than Alien fans and it definitely showed in this movie because the Predator gets a lot of love ❤️ here. A lot more love ❤️ than you’d probably expect going in. Not just the fact that they brought back a lot of the old Predator sound effects from Predator and Predator 2, and brought back the old infrared vision color (that blue and rainbow 🌈 colored one that was sorely missing in the first AVP), but also the fact that they created possibly the best Predator character we’ve ever gotten on screen, Wolf. Unlike the three Predators in Alien vs. Predator (2004), Chopper, Celtic, and Scar, Wolf is not an unblooded teenager in training trying to prove himself by making his first Xenomorph kill, he’s actually an Elite Predator who has had a lot of experience hunting and killing Xenomorph. 

 

 

 

 

(These are image of Wolf in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.) 

 

 

 

 

 

His specific job is clean up after Xenomorphs, preventing them from spreading and wiping out a species that the Predators regularly hunt, in this case, humans, and also cover up their existence by destroying all of the evidence, any and all trace of the Xenomorph’s existence so that their prey items will be none the wiser and their development as a species won’t be affected by the knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrials, especially ones that could easily wipe out their entire civilization in a matter of days or weeks. That’s why he carries around a vile of blue substance that he pours onto the remains of dead Facehuggers, Xenomorphs, and people killed by Xenomorphs to make them dissolve instantly, he’s destroying the evidence, any trace of the Xenomorph’s existence on Earth 🌎. It’s also why he was named Wolf, he was named that after the character in Pulp Fiction, Winston Wolfe, who was also a “cleaner” who disposed of dead bodies left behind by assassins working for the mob to cover up their crimes so that they won’t be discovered by the cops or by rival crime syndicates. 

 

 

 

 

 

(These are images of a replica of Wolf’s biomask in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of his behavior doesn’t exactly line up with his job as a cleaner though as Wolf does a couple of things in the film that would go against his mission. He kills a police officer, Deputy Ray Adams (the police officer I mentioned earlier and whose wife ends up getting killed by the Predalien), who was apart of search party looking for the boy ♂︎ and his father that got Facehugged at the beginning of the movie and are the first human victims of the movie, after he stumbles upon Wolf disposing of the father and son’s bodies with that blue liquid he brought with them. Him killing him is not what doesn’t make sense, it does make sense to some degree, so he prevented from potentially telling his superiors and them discovering that aliens 👽 exist, though the truth is most of them probably wouldn’t have even believed him anyway if he told them, but Wolf is better being safe than sorry, so he kills the guy ♂︎. 

 

If he had simply killed him and then disposed of his body with the blue liquid like he did with the father and son, that’d be one thing, but the fact that he then skinned him and then hung his body from a tree 🌲 doesn’t make any sense. That directly goes against his mission perimeters of covering up the existence of Aliens by destroying any and all evidence of it. I think people would figure out that something was up if they saw a skinned human body hanging from a tree 🌲. Even if they didn’t think an alien 👽 did it, they’d still think a serial killer was on the loose. Wolf was being pretty reckless by having that body up there instead of disposing of it as soon as he killed the man. The fact that he was disposing of the bodies while being uncloaked despite knowing that there were humans nearby and he could hear them was also pretty reckless. 

 

I guess maybe he thought he’d be in and out of there before any of them would notice, but still, better safe than sorry. Then he does something else that would compromise his mission, when he shoots a guy ♂︎ in a cemetery 🪦 simply because he was carrying a gun. Sure, that guy ♂︎ was being asshole yelling at Kelly and her daughter Molly simply for her being scared, but there was no reason for Wolf to kill him and potentially give away his possession. Like with the skinning and hanging from a tree 🌲 thing, the shooting people who are carrying weapons thing is treated as an instinct that Predators do instantly and compulsively regardless of the situation that they’re in or what their mission is, rather than a learned behavior they do when they hunt, and I don’t think it works. It weakens Wolf’s characterization as something different from the Predators we’ve seen up to this point and even after rather than strengthen it. 

 

But, regardless of those two moments, Wolf is a really great Predator character. Again, possibly he greatest we’ve ever gotten. They do a good job at showing that he is no amateur, he’s a highly skilled, highly professional, and experienced veteran who’s been at this hunting and killing Aliens thing for a long time, as he’s able to take on multiple Aliens at once and kill many of them almost effortlessly, whereas Celtic and Chopper struggled against one (the same exact one in fact) and weren’t even able to kill it. Even Scar only managed to kill a couple on his own and struggled against many others and had to bailed out by Lex with that light gun that they had to used to leave lights down the tunnel that the Predators drilled to get down to the pyramid. The skill difference between Wolf and the three teenage Predators in the last movie is vast. 

 

And if you’re thinking that Wolf failed in his mission, he didn’t actually, since he did manage to kill the Predalien, and the Xenomorph infestation was wiped out before it could threaten the entire world, even he wasn’t the one to do it. So, he did succeed in his mission even if on a technicality. I’m sure he knew there was always a possibility that this was a suicide mission, and was willing to take that chance, and he did it, he saved the entire planet 🌎. And even if the face design on him isn’t that great (still couldn’t get the mandibles right, but it is better than the face design in the first AVP), I do like the overall design of his body, how they gave him a more slender and athletic build with minimal armor which more in line with the Predator movies as opposed to the body shapes of the teenage Predators in Alien vs. Predator (2004), which were much more bulky and armored. And this movie was the first to show us the Predator homeworld, Yautja Prime, so that was a plus 😁. I’m sure there are people out there would’ve liked it if the whole movie was focused on Wolf instead of the human characters, and I do see where they’re coming from, even if I don’t hate the human characters in this like a lot of other people do. 

 

 

 

(This is an image of the Predator homeworld, Yautja Prime in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.) 

 

 

 

 

I think the human characters in this are fine. I like the two brothers, Ricky and Dallas, I like the sheriff (who’s played by the same actor from Kong: Skull Island, the guy ♂︎ who gets picked up by the Leafwings and gets his arm cut off by one of them), and I like Kelly. Sure, the wife of the dad who gets killed at the beginning is a bit annoying, and some of other townsfolk are a bunch of assholes, especially Dale, his friends, Mark and Nick, Nathan, the pizza guy 🍕♂︎, Drew Roberts, and that one guy with the gun who gets his head blown up by Wolf, but they aren’t enough for me to write off the human characters entirely, there are still some good ones here. Instead of focusing on scientists on an expedition in Antarctica 🇦🇶, this movie focuses on a normal everyday Americans 🇺🇸 living in a small town in Colorado, doing what normal everyday Americans 🇺🇸 living in a small town in Colorado do and being completely thrown off by the arrivals of Aliens and Predators tearing their town apart. And in case, you’re wondering, yes, Gunnison is a real town in Colorado. It’s so small in fact that it doesn’t even have a flag, so I will only be able to show the Colorado flag in this post. Was the movie actually filmed there? No, it was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦 like a lot of movies are because Vancouver is a pretty cheap location to shoot movies in, and there are tax incentives there. A lot of them being blue collar individuals, the kind of people that your average audience member could probably relate to more than an archaeologist, a linguist, a chemical engineer, mercenaries, drillers, a tech billionaire, and a mountaineer. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Colorado.)

 

 

 

 

 

It was smart of them to go with human characters who were as far removed from the ones in the previous movie, so that we’d get a different experience than them than we did the scientists in the first movie. They’re less prepared and less equipped to deal with the threat that lies in front of them than they were, as they would have no frame of reference for what they were, no hieroglyphs to tell them what’s what, and little-to-no scientific knowledge to make an educated guesses about what they are. To them, they’re just monsters that just randomly showed up and started fucking up their town. Kind of like how they went focusing on soldiers in the military, an elite special forces unit, in the first Predator movie to focusing on cops in the second Predator movie. The thing that Colin Strause said in one of the featurettes featured on the Blu-Ray 💿 sums this up perfectly. He said it about space, but it implies equally to Antarctica 🇦🇶, what’s scarier? Something that happens out in Antarctica 🇦🇶 or something that happens in your backyard? 

 

Kelly is clearly meant to be the Ripley of this movie, with her daughter, Molly acting as the Newt for this movie. She’s a soldier who’s returning from active duty in Iraq 🇮🇶 to reunite with her family, and it seems that they purposefully picked an actress who looked the most like Sigourney Weaver. Like, this actress could probably play a younger version of Sigourney Weaver in a movie if she was asked to. I mean, she’s probably older now, back then when she filmed this movie she could. But, even with the obvious Ripley comparisons, I still think Kelly’s a great character. She’s likable, she’s tough, she ends up being proven right in the end, and her military background does come in handy since she ends up being the one to fly everyone out of there even the military drops the bomb on the town. Her husband, Tim O’Brien is okay, there’s just not that much to him, other than he’s a nice guy and a good father, and he’s a bit bland. But, it’s okay because he dies right away, in fact, he’s the only one of the O’Brien family who gets killed as Kelly and Molly both survive. Molly reprimands Kelly for leaving him to die, but that’s about all he hear about his death, and he’s quickly forgotten about it. 

 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, showing Tim O’Brien being attacked by a Xenomorph. Though, I actually got these from the trailer rather than the actual movie.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though, I’m sure if they did make another Alien vs. Predator movie and focused on the same characters from this movie, they would’ve had a scene where Kelly was mourning her husband’s death and missing him. All that adrenaline and wanting to keep her daughter safe kept her from really processing Tim’s death and mourning in her own way. She won’t even get to bury him since  whatever was left his body after that Alien attack was vaporized in the explosion 💥 caused by the bomb dropped by the military. Though, they do sort of imply that Dallas might have feelings for Kelly, as he looks at her a certain way when they’re at the diner in that one scene, and he’s all friendly towards her and protective of her, and it’s not simply because she can fly a helicopter 🚁 and that helicopter 🚁 on the roof of that hospital 🏥 is their only chance of escape. But, whether those feelings are in anyway mutual, I really don’t know, the movie never delves into that enough for us to really know for sure. I wouldn’t be opposed to them being couple since they do have great chemistry. 

 

The part where the military drops the bomb on Gunnison did give me some serious Resident Evil vibes, with how the military dropped a bomb on Raccoon City to prevent the t-Virus 🦠 from spreading any further and turning more people into zombies 🧟‍♂️ than it already did, which is probably what the Strause Brothers were going for. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Resident Evil fans too, and wanted to reference it by having their movie end the same way as the third game in the series, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (even though that game is technically a prequel that takes place before Resident Evil 2 until the last few minutes where we see Raccoon City get destroyed by the missile), and also to honor Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of the previous movie and of the most of the Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies except for Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction, which he couldn’t work on because he was committed to Alien vs. Predator (2004), and because he wanted to take on a more superior role overseeing the project before deciding to direct the fourth movie, Resident Evil: Afterlife (which was the original title for the third movie before settling on Resident Evil: Extinction). 

 

Like with Resident Evil, they don’t exactly say what kind of bomb they used. According to the Wikipedia, they used a nuclear weapon ☢️ to destroy the town, a tactical nuke ☢️ to be exact, and while that might be the obvious choice, again, they don’t actually say, and radiation ☢️ doesn’t seem to be that big of a concern to anyone after the bomb hit. It could easily be a non-nuclear weapon like a fuel-air bomb, or thermobaric weapon like the one in Outbreak 🐒 or even Resident Evil, since they used fuel-air bomb to destroy Raccoon City in that as well as Tall Oaks years later. That’d probably be a lot safer than using an actual nuke ☢️ since there’s no risk of radioactive fallout ☢️, and you’d think the top military brass at the Pentagon would suggest it to the President and tell him that specifically to convince him and reassure him that bombing the town as the right move. 

 

But, like in Resident Evil, bombing an American town 🇺🇸 and killing all of its people, regardless of the reason, would probably have some serious political implications for the US government 🇺🇸 and US military 🇺🇸, both at home and abroad. But, this was 2004 technically still (even if the movie came out in 2007, it takes place immediately after the last one, seconds after in fact, so it still takes place in 2004), and George W. Bush was the president back then (if these movies even go by real presidents), so it’d be his problem. He’d probably just blame Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, even if that wouldn’t work since the buck stops with him when it comes to making any decision about bombing any city or town with any kind of weapon (regardless if it’s nuclear ☢️ or nonnuclear), especially if that city or town is on American soil 🇺🇸 and Americans 🇺🇸 could and would be killed. 

Some people didn’t like the ending where the colonial brings the Predator gun to Yutani Corp. headquarters after some soldiers confiscated it from Dallas, who was using it as his primary weapon after Wolf dropped it in an altercation with an Alien, and he took it, or they were confused by it. The idea that the Brothers Strause had for this ending was that this Predator gun would be reverse engineered and this is how we got all of the technology that we see in the Alien movies. And that Ms. Yutani character that the colonel talks to is supposed to be the same Ms. Yutani who is the head of the Yutani Corporation pre-merger with Weyland Industries. So, we’re not just seeing the beginning of the future tech in Alien, but also the the beginning of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. But, it doesn’t really matter anyway since Ridley Scott retconned this ending and its implications in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant 😒. Another reason why those movies suck and probably shouldn’t exist 😤. 

I do appreciate this movie for being bringing back the ridged bony head design for the Aliens that was in the second Alien movie, well, Aliens. I used to not like that design and I used to like the smooth dome look a lot better, but since it’s been featured so little in the franchise since then, I’m actually starting to like it. The Brothers Strause do like Alien too, they’re not just Predator fans, but they’re clearly more fans of Aliens by James Cameron than they are of Alien by Ridley Scott. So, they went with the same head design that Jim Cameron did for his movie. It’s why the movie’s called Aliens vs. Predator, and not Alien vs. Predator like the previous movie, it takes way more after Aliens than Alien. Much of the Alien vs. Predator sub franchise is called Aliens vs. Predator and takes more from Aliens than Alien. It’s also why the movie used many of the same sound effects as Aliens, such as the sound of the tracker that the Colonial Marines use in that film, and the same sounds that the Aliens made when they died in that film. That’s not to say that they didn’t use anything from Alien, they did, they use the same computer sound effects from Alien in the scene where the colonel is in that AEW&C plane, looking at the screens displaying the town and the spread of the Xenomorph infestation. And the idea on focusing on blue collar individuals is lifted straight from Alien. 

 

The ridged head design has appeared in the ancillary material like the comic books and the video games, but it hasn’t really appeared in the movies that often. To this day, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is the last movie in the Alien franchise to use that ridges head design. Every Alien movie before and since then besides Aliens has used the smooth dome head design. This likely owed to the fact that Ridley Scott has taken over the franchise, and hates the ridged head look that Cameron introduced. In fact, he’s not shy about admitting that he didn’t like Aliens and many of the things Cameron did in that film, redesigning the Aliens, changing the life cycle, making more of an action movie than a horror movie, and has been trying to move the franchise away from that, more towards his vision of what he thinks the Alien franchise always was and what it should be going forward. So, the ridged head design has all but been erased by Scott, and the only Alien head design we see now is that smooth dome look that H.R. Giger came up with. 

 

I mean, I don’t like Ridley Scott and James Cameron, I think they’re both pretty insufferable men ♂︎, but I do like some of their movies and I do like some of their ideas, and in this case, I think Ridley Scott is wrong and James Cameron is right. Or at least, Stan Winston was right since let’s be honest, he was the one who actually redesigned the Aliens in Aliens, and not James Cameron. But, the differences between these two men ♂︎ and their conflicting philosophies surrounding the Alien franchise is probably a huge reason why their attempted collaboration on the first real attempt at an Alien 5 fell apart and was always destined to fail. They had irreconcilable differences as filmmakers and as contributors and stewards of this franchise that couldn’t be resolved and hey probably clashed a lot while working with each other. These were two men ♂︎ with big egos, especially at that point in their careers, of course they were going to clash. So, the the only way we’ll ever see this ridged head design again in an Alien movie of any kind is if the franchise is taken away Ridley Scott and is given to someone else, someone who is more open minded about what visions people have about the Alien franchise. If I was doing an Alien movie or an Alien vs. Predator movie, I’d use that ridged head design. We’ve seen that domed head design too much. 

There is one common complaint that I see for this movie, even amongst people who like it, or view it as a guilty pleasure, and that’s the lighting. People have complained about this movie being too dark and too hard to see, and not being able to tell what was going on. Which is not because a lot of this movie was shot at night, a lot of it is in the dark, and that’s on purpose. As the Strause Brothers said, this is more of a straight up horror movie than the first movie was, and the lighting was meant to reflect that. Things tend to scarier at night and in the dark than they do during the daytime, though I reckon there’s pretty good daytime horror out there, and things like Resident Evil 5 showed that even things in the daytime can be scary. If I was making a horror film, I’d set it during the day, unless it was set in a cave, then it would have to be dark. But, the Strause Brothers wanted to go with nighttime for this movie, and that’s the right move for this film. It was also to hide the imperfections in the CGI and practical effects. You can’t give something away as just being a guy in a suit if obscure it in darkness. It’s not just this movie that does this, it’s pretty much every movie that has special effects, CGI or practical. 

 

A lot of them are set at night, or obscure everything in rain 🌧️ or smoke 💨, or other elements to hide the imperfections in the effects, hide the seams, and sell the illusion that it’s real, even though it obviously is not. But, they went too far with it on this film because a lot of people thought it was too dark and they couldn’t see what the hell was going on most of the time. This was a complaint I expected to agree with going in and revisiting the movie for this review, but I didn’t. I didn’t think the movie was too dark or dimly lit. I was able to see what was going the entire time, and there was never a moment where I was, “What’s that?” or “What’s going on? I can’t see anything,” and I never once thought about adjusting the brightness on my TV. The lighting issue must’ve been corrected, at least on the Blu-Ray release 💿 that I have, as it is a lot more brightly lit than I remember it being on the original DVD release 📀. Which is why I worry if this movie ever gets a 4K release, and the 4K transfer ends up dimming the movie again as that has happened to some movies that been transferred to 4K resolution; they become darker. Not always, but sometimes, especially if it’s not optimized for HDR (high dynamic range) or if you’re watching it on something that isn’t optimized for HDR like my laptop 💻. Then, we’d just hear the same complaint again.

There are clips of this movie on YouTube where people tried to re-edit and fix the lighting so that it would be more brighter and you can see what’s going on. And, at least when it comes to the scene at the beginning on the Predator ship, it makes sense why they chose to make it so dark. It was to hide the imperfections in the CGI. The entire interior of the ship was CGI and all of the suit actors playing the Predators as well as the Predalien were filmed in front of a green screen. The only time the interior of the ship is a practical set is after it crashes, and Wolf enters it and investigates what happened after he lands on Earth 🌎. And the CGI in that opening scene on the Predator ship doesn’t look very good. It aged pretty poorly, if it ever looked good at all. So, it makes sense why they’d want to hide it with darkness. The movie was made on a much lower budget than that of the first AVP. The first AVP cost somewhere between $60 million-$70 million 💵, whereas this one cost $40 million 💵, a significant budget decrease from the first film to this film. So, of course the CGI wasn’t going to be as good as it was in the first one, even if this one came out 3 years after.

The Strause Brothers, or the Brothers Strause would go onto direct one more movie after this, Skyline, and then would take on a producer role for two of the direct-to-video sequels, kicking off a franchise of their own in the process. It’s a shame that they haven’t really gone to direct anything else after this and Skyline because I think they did a pretty good job this movie and Skyline, considering that they were first time directors on this movie and Skyline was their second feature film ever. It did lead to something, they did start their own franchise, even if they didn’t end up directing any of the sequels, and only produced two of them. That’s an achievement, not many directors can say they’ve started a franchise, at most, only being able to say they’ve worked on one. Regardless of whether they have an effects background or not. I do plan on reviewing Skyline in the future because I like that movie, and I think it’s pretty good (I liked it more than Battle: Los Angeles, which came out after), and it’s a childhood favorite. I have fond memories of that movie, and the nostalgia factor is strong with that one. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is the DVD cover 📀 for Alien vs. Hunter, the mockbuster to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.)

 

 

 

 

It did get a mockbuster called Alien vs. Hunter, which is an actual bad movie. Like, if you’re someone who doesn’t like this movie, go watch Alien vs. Hunter and then come back to me about how Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is a shitty movie. The first Alien vs. Predator didn’t get a mockbuster out of it because The Asylum wasn’t in the mockbuster business yet, as the first one they would make would be for King Kong (2005) called King of the Lost World, which was like if you combined King Kong with the TV show, Lost. It also got a video game believe it or not, developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Sierra Entertainment (hence the Sierra Entertainment logo on the bottom right corner of the cover), though it was only available for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), which is probably why a lot of people haven’t heard of it or played it. 

 

 

 

(This is the cover for the Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem video game, available only for PSP.)

 

 

 

 

 

There hasn’t been another Alien vs. Predator movie after this, likely due to the poor reception of this movie, and they’ve seemingly been erased from canon, relegated to the dustbin of history, and being nothing more than a non-canon excursion for both franchises. But, maybe we might get another Alien vs. Predator movie in the future, especially if Dan Trachtenberg has his way, and all the Alien references he included in Predator: Badlands actually mean anything. If you’re someone who didn’t this movie a chance because of all the bad word of mouth you heard about it, give it a watch, it really isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s a lot better than you might expect. Maybe not as good as Alien vs. Predator (2004), but still pretty good. But, like with Alien vs. Predator (2004), make sure you watch the unrated version and not the theatrical. 

 

 

 

(These are individual character posters for Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, one showing the Predator, Wolf, and the other showing the Alien.) 

 

 

 

 

I got the Blu-Ray pack 💿 that I own of both movies a long time ago at a decent price. I got for about $20 💵 at most, maybe even $15 💵, I don’t remember the exact price but it was for a good amount. I looked on Amazon recently, and it’s going for $59.95 💵 brand new and $39.75 💵 used 😧. It’s crazy how much it jumped it price since then. That’s almost as much as buying a 4K 💿, maybe even more, and I don’t think either of these two movies will be getting a 4K release 💿 anytime soon, though I could very well be wrong. So, if you want that Blu-Ray pack 💿, you might have to look elsewhere to find a better deal, or if you’re okay with spending that amount, go ahead and  buy it from Amazon. You won’t be disappointed, especially since the picture quality on this movie is brighter than on the DVD release 📀, so you will be able to see what’s actually going on this time. The only disappointment for me is with the Blu-Ray 💿 of Alien vs. Predator (2004), it lacks special features except for a couple of audio commentaries, unlike the one for Requiem which does come with a lot of special features. I don’t know why that decision was made to exclude any and all special features from this particular Blu-Ray release 💿 for Alien vs. Predator (2004), but it was, so be aware of that if you go out and buy this. The Blu-Ray 💿 for Alien vs. Predator (2004) also only comes with one disc 💿, a Blu-Ray disc 💿, and doesn’t come with a DVD 📀, whereas the one for Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem does. 

 

 

(These are pictures I took of the AVP Unrated Blu-Ray Pack 💿 that I own. I took my own pictures because the pictures of it that I saw online weren’t very good and weren’t to my liking.)