Ah, my second review. This is starting to actually be fun, and if nothing else helps my writing skills. For this review I have chosen the un-anticipated sequel Aliens vs. Predator II: Requiem.
I figured going into this that with a title like that the movie was going to be right up there with Resident Evil: Extinction/Apocalypse in its level of pretentiousness and douchebaggery. Why? Because most movies that attatch words like Requiem, Extinction, Apocalypse and other cool sounding biblically emo words tend to so full of themselves you expect projectile diarrehea to squirt out of the film projector at every frame.
That being said, AVP II shocked me in a number of ways. 1st, in my opinion it was better then the first film. Yes, you heard me, it was better. It wasn't a great film on its own but if a sequel can in fact be better then its original then it IMO has done its job.
This film was rated R, a step up from all of these franchise movies rated PG-13. The reason most companies do this is to rake in the largest demographic, i.e. kids and their greenback wielding parents who will pay any price to get their spawn to shut up for an hour and a half. AVP II was NOT meant for kids...Hell, I'm not even sure it was meant for anybody at this point. You'll see what I mean in a minute.
The film starts off right where the previous movie left off. Which means most people won't know what the fuck is going on because not many saw the original...Or if they did they tried desperately to block out said memory with a power drill. Anyway, we see dead Predator badass from the first movie giving birth to a new alien/predator hybrid. This little bastard proceeds to kill EVERY predator on the ship, causing the ship to crashland back on earth.
Enter generic white father and his child, out sharing in the proud American tradition of killing defenseless animals with big guns. They see the ship crash and cautiously investigate only to get a face full of alien wing-wong, if you'll pardon the VG Cats referrence. Yes, within 10 minutes you see a father and son get their chests ripped open by xenomorphs in full gory detail. Just wait, it gets better. Well, worse then better.
The next half-hour or so of the film is all about the main human characters, of whom you don't give a flying shit about. Well, except maybe the hot blond if your of the male persuasion. You have generic teenage nice-guy, hot girl, hot girl's asshole boyfriend, the token black guy, cool older brother ex-con, fair but tough small-town cop, cute perky waitress, soldier returning home to family etc. I shit you not they are ALL here. This town is a cesspool of every stereotype you've ever seen in a horror/scifi film. If you see this film and can name a stereotype NOT in it, I will give you a hundred dollars. Seriously.
Meanwhile, far away from Generictown, U.S.A. we get a glimpse of the predator homeworld and an Pred sitting on a REALLY fucking awesome chair getting footage of the ship crashing to Earth. Well, this Pred isn't going to take that lying down, and immediately launches a ship to deal with situation...BY HIMSELF. No backup, no elite branch of hunters. Just him.
Well, he has balls. At least, I think Preds have balls. Pretty sure they do.
From here, the film splits into three seperate stories. You have the humans, who by now have revealed that their only role in the film is to be killed in every gory way imaginable by aliens and cry for help from the impotent government and national guard. Literally.
A quote from one of the townspeople.
"The government would never lie to us!"
The entire theater broke into laugher, which is on some level actually kinda sad. The woman that said this was alluding that the government would send in troops, kill the aliens, save the town, and take full responsibility for not responding quicker.
...
...
...
HAHAHAHA!
Forget it, that actually is funny.
The Aliens proceed to rape and pillage the town for all it's worth. Again, literally. The new breed of alien/pred can impregnate people like a face-hugger, skipping the queen breed of xeno entirely. He seems to have a taste for taken/married/pregnant women.
There is a particularly gruesome scene where the alpha pred/alien takes over a hospital and we get to see a pregnant woman in the prenatal wing giving birth to a litter of little aliens.
Yeah, they went there.
Finally, we have the Predator who's main mission is clean-up. I don't think I need to say literally anymore, you've pretty much figured that out on your own. Any evidence of the Aliens or Preds that he finds he blows up, or destroys using a nifty blue goo that melts any living tissure it touches. He even takes every Predator weapon that he can salvage from the ship, until he is armed to the teeth with E.T. hardware. Bond has nothing on this special agent in terms of gadget envy.
While the stories in the film were at best mildly entertaining I found myself wondering just where the film was going the entire time. I realized that this film didn't have as much thought put into it as I thought it had. It kind of fooled me in that aspect. It's like watching Gundam Wing all over again. You think there will be some depth in there somewhere but eventually you realize it's just a bunch of fags running around in giant robots for about 3 seasons.
On one hand, it didn't flinch and showed you just how cruel, or rather uncaring the xenos can be to a species once it gets foothold. I liked those parts of the film, but the horror aspect of the xeno's was dumbed down because of it. I've seen every ALIEN film. I know that when xeno's show up you're quite thoroughly boned. Yet it went into detail showing me the scared reactions of people when those double jaws came out. It seemed like it was just rehashing the same shit I'd seen 5 films ago.
The Predator, unlike the other film doesn't align himself with humans in this one, and in fact even seemed to see them as equal quarry. He was not afraid to pull the whole "skinning a human and hanging them upside down" bit that we'd seen in the first two Predator films.
And the humans...Fuck the humans. After the blond girl gets-Well, maybe I should reveal too much of the story, in case you haven't seen it. Suffice to say, you don't care what happens to them. They provide comic relief and nothing else. You can only watch a group of plucky townspeople make the same damn mistakes over and OVER again before it gets old.
All this means that your watching a tripod, three stories all weaving the plot together. Two of them are done well, but not well enough, and the third is almost non-existent, meaning the film just doesn't stand up on its own.
That being said, it wasn't as bad as the first film, but this is the kind of movie you and a group of close friends should rent while ordering large amounts of pizza with a certain someone's hundred bucks...
I figured going into this that with a title like that the movie was going to be right up there with Resident Evil: Extinction/Apocalypse in its level of pretentiousness and douchebaggery. Why? Because most movies that attatch words like Requiem, Extinction, Apocalypse and other cool sounding biblically emo words tend to so full of themselves you expect projectile diarrehea to squirt out of the film projector at every frame.
That being said, AVP II shocked me in a number of ways. 1st, in my opinion it was better then the first film. Yes, you heard me, it was better. It wasn't a great film on its own but if a sequel can in fact be better then its original then it IMO has done its job.
This film was rated R, a step up from all of these franchise movies rated PG-13. The reason most companies do this is to rake in the largest demographic, i.e. kids and their greenback wielding parents who will pay any price to get their spawn to shut up for an hour and a half. AVP II was NOT meant for kids...Hell, I'm not even sure it was meant for anybody at this point. You'll see what I mean in a minute.
The film starts off right where the previous movie left off. Which means most people won't know what the fuck is going on because not many saw the original...Or if they did they tried desperately to block out said memory with a power drill. Anyway, we see dead Predator badass from the first movie giving birth to a new alien/predator hybrid. This little bastard proceeds to kill EVERY predator on the ship, causing the ship to crashland back on earth.
Enter generic white father and his child, out sharing in the proud American tradition of killing defenseless animals with big guns. They see the ship crash and cautiously investigate only to get a face full of alien wing-wong, if you'll pardon the VG Cats referrence. Yes, within 10 minutes you see a father and son get their chests ripped open by xenomorphs in full gory detail. Just wait, it gets better. Well, worse then better.
The next half-hour or so of the film is all about the main human characters, of whom you don't give a flying shit about. Well, except maybe the hot blond if your of the male persuasion. You have generic teenage nice-guy, hot girl, hot girl's asshole boyfriend, the token black guy, cool older brother ex-con, fair but tough small-town cop, cute perky waitress, soldier returning home to family etc. I shit you not they are ALL here. This town is a cesspool of every stereotype you've ever seen in a horror/scifi film. If you see this film and can name a stereotype NOT in it, I will give you a hundred dollars. Seriously.
Meanwhile, far away from Generictown, U.S.A. we get a glimpse of the predator homeworld and an Pred sitting on a REALLY fucking awesome chair getting footage of the ship crashing to Earth. Well, this Pred isn't going to take that lying down, and immediately launches a ship to deal with situation...BY HIMSELF. No backup, no elite branch of hunters. Just him.
Well, he has balls. At least, I think Preds have balls. Pretty sure they do.
From here, the film splits into three seperate stories. You have the humans, who by now have revealed that their only role in the film is to be killed in every gory way imaginable by aliens and cry for help from the impotent government and national guard. Literally.
A quote from one of the townspeople.
"The government would never lie to us!"
The entire theater broke into laugher, which is on some level actually kinda sad. The woman that said this was alluding that the government would send in troops, kill the aliens, save the town, and take full responsibility for not responding quicker.
...
...
...
HAHAHAHA!
Forget it, that actually is funny.
The Aliens proceed to rape and pillage the town for all it's worth. Again, literally. The new breed of alien/pred can impregnate people like a face-hugger, skipping the queen breed of xeno entirely. He seems to have a taste for taken/married/pregnant women.
There is a particularly gruesome scene where the alpha pred/alien takes over a hospital and we get to see a pregnant woman in the prenatal wing giving birth to a litter of little aliens.
Yeah, they went there.
Finally, we have the Predator who's main mission is clean-up. I don't think I need to say literally anymore, you've pretty much figured that out on your own. Any evidence of the Aliens or Preds that he finds he blows up, or destroys using a nifty blue goo that melts any living tissure it touches. He even takes every Predator weapon that he can salvage from the ship, until he is armed to the teeth with E.T. hardware. Bond has nothing on this special agent in terms of gadget envy.
While the stories in the film were at best mildly entertaining I found myself wondering just where the film was going the entire time. I realized that this film didn't have as much thought put into it as I thought it had. It kind of fooled me in that aspect. It's like watching Gundam Wing all over again. You think there will be some depth in there somewhere but eventually you realize it's just a bunch of fags running around in giant robots for about 3 seasons.
On one hand, it didn't flinch and showed you just how cruel, or rather uncaring the xenos can be to a species once it gets foothold. I liked those parts of the film, but the horror aspect of the xeno's was dumbed down because of it. I've seen every ALIEN film. I know that when xeno's show up you're quite thoroughly boned. Yet it went into detail showing me the scared reactions of people when those double jaws came out. It seemed like it was just rehashing the same shit I'd seen 5 films ago.
The Predator, unlike the other film doesn't align himself with humans in this one, and in fact even seemed to see them as equal quarry. He was not afraid to pull the whole "skinning a human and hanging them upside down" bit that we'd seen in the first two Predator films.
And the humans...Fuck the humans. After the blond girl gets-Well, maybe I should reveal too much of the story, in case you haven't seen it. Suffice to say, you don't care what happens to them. They provide comic relief and nothing else. You can only watch a group of plucky townspeople make the same damn mistakes over and OVER again before it gets old.
All this means that your watching a tripod, three stories all weaving the plot together. Two of them are done well, but not well enough, and the third is almost non-existent, meaning the film just doesn't stand up on its own.
That being said, it wasn't as bad as the first film, but this is the kind of movie you and a group of close friends should rent while ordering large amounts of pizza with a certain someone's hundred bucks...
