Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

As a fan of the franchise, I was massively disappointed. AVP-R tries to be suspense-horror, sci-fi action, and campy fan-flick all at once, but failed to satisfy as any of those. **Spoilers Below** Suspense-horror: Both Predator and Alien were suspense films at their roots. Part of the horror of the films was the repeated question: WTF is this thing, man? Instead, my overriding question throughout the movie was, "But...why?" The place the film succeeded (sort of) was by preserving the nature of the Alien (sort of). Targeting pregnant women is pretty gross, and the Alien should be awful, reprehensible and gross. But...why pregnant women? Is the Predalien a new sort of Queen Alien? Do the baby aliens eat the fetus? Does the Predalien somehow mutate the fetuses into aliens??? Argh! Too many questions! A diagram is not necessary, just a one-liner from an extra would have suffice. "Gee, doctor. It's almost like the alien babies are eating the human babies and then exploding out of the stomach. This must be a new, self-fertilizing, predalien queen kind of Xenomorph." There, done. Fans are happy. Science fiction fans are more willing than most to suspend belief and just enjoy a story; but when departing completely from well established canon and creating a new one, some explanation is in order. Action: The monsters in this movie were perfectly rendered. Big, realistic and perfectly within canon. But...who cares! So they rip the humans to shreds. So what? The humans were stupid, weak, and too pretty. If a character is reprehensible, we thrill to his death, as the monster becomes an agent of karma. If a character is likeable, we are fearful and shocked by his death, and hate the monster all the more. But no one could relate or hate these cardboard Abercrombie kids. They just weren't important enough. The movie touched repeatedly on the question of leadership in survival situations. Had they explored that more in depth, they might have had a movie. The sheriff is weak, and the ex-con clearly a natural leader, but their conflict went something like this: "I'm going this way," "Well, I'm going this way." "Okie dokie, bye." "Later." The young mother is perfectly poised to take the reigns, considering her combat training and vested interest in surviving to protect her daughter (a la Ripley and Newt), but she remains in the background, limiting herself to chauffering the main characters around. Proponents say, "Hey dude, its not Humans vs. Aliens/and Predator. We came to see alien gore, and AVP delivers." The human deaths are less meaningful because they are not center ring of this circus. Well, fine. Then the final fight between the headliners should have been a Battle Royale, a bloody death match that whipsawed back and forth between two monstrous titans. But it wasn't. It was a ten minute slugfest with little gore and no suspense. And then the outcome became moot when both disappeared in an atomic flash. The audience is left with a pointless outcome to a brief struggle. Fan-service: Missing from the film is the complex and iron-clad Yajuta honor-code. In Predator 2, the terrifying alien killer spares the life of a police officer (apparently realizing she is female when his infrared vision detects she is pregnant), then almost kills a boy-child, before realizing his "weapon" was a toy gun. We glimpse the "no women, no kids, no unarmed men" rule that allows us to admire the alien hunter. AVP-R takes even that from us. Granted, the death of the teen girl was clearly collateral damage (and no one ever accused the Yajuta of being chivalrous). Still it was a wasted opportunity. The Predalien's blatantly non-canon method of reproduction could have been forgiven, had they used the ick-factor effectively. Contrasting the fetus-eating female spider-things with the more sympathetic, anthropomorphic, hunter-killer superman from outer space would have made for a really engaging conflict. As it was, the aliens were illogically awful and the Predator was kind of dull. The audience had nothing to root for. Yutani's cameo at the end of the film, while interesting, really underscored the thrilling potential of the concept, and how thoroughly it had been wasted.