Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Official poster for the film
Directed by	Colin Strause Greg Strause
Produced by	John Davis Wyck Godfrey
Written by	Characters: Dan O'Bannon Ronald Shusett Jim Thomas John Thomas Screenplay: Shane Salerno
Starring	Steven Pasquale Reiko Aylesworth John Ortiz
Music by	Brian Tyler
Cinematography	Daniel C. Pearl
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	December 25, 2007[1] December 26, 2007[2] January 18, 2008
Running time	86 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40,000,000
Gross revenue	$47,893,127 (worldwide)
Preceded by	Alien vs. Predator
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (also known as AVP-R) is the 2007 sequel to 2004's Alien vs. Predator. Filming began on September 25, 2006 in Vancouver with Tom Woodruff, Jr. and Alec Gillis from Amalgamated Dynamics handling the special effects (as they did for the previous installment) and Daniel Pearl as director of photography. The Brothers Strause (Colin and Greg Strause) directed the movie^[3] from a script by Shane Salerno.^[4] Actors Steven Pasquale and Reiko Aylesworth play leading roles in the film.^[5] Unlike the PG-13 rating of the original, which garnered some criticism, the film is rated R for violence, gore and language.^[6] The BBFC's classification decision for the movie is the same as the original, whilst the Australian OFLC rated the film MA, up on the original's M rating. Justifying this rating is the fact that this is the first film in the Alien and Predator franchise in which children are brutally killed onscreen. A game has also recently been released for the PlayStation Portable.^[7] The game centers on the lone Predator cleaning up the mess left by a crashed ship.^[8]

Plot

The film picks up immediately after the events of Alien vs. Predator. A smaller ship is dispatched from the large clan ship seen in the first film. This smaller ship contains the Predator ("Scar") who had been impregnated by a Facehugger and killed by an Alien Queen. He gives birth to a Predburster, which quickly grows into the Predalien and begins a killing spree through the vessel. A Predator attempts to kill it with his plasma caster and inadvertently shoots a hole through the ship's hull, causing it to crash in the forests outside of Gunnison, Colorado. The Predator who caused the crash landing survives and activates a distress signal, but is immediately killed by the Predalien. A boy and his father who are hunting deer see the crash and go to investigate. Both discover the wreckage of the ship and are shortly impregnated by Facehuggers that escaped from the damaged vessel. The distress signal reaches the Predator homeworld, contacting a veteran hunter, "Wolf". He sees a recording from the Predator's mask who caused the ship to crash-land. Wolf watches how the Predalien killed crew members, the ship's crash, and knows Aliens are loose on Earth. He prepares his gear, selects a mask, and departs. Meanwhile, ex-con Dallas Howard has returned to Gunnison after time served in prison. He is greeted by the town's sheriff, Eddie Morales. Ricky Howard, a local high school student who is Dallas' brother, is jumped by bullies after delivering a pizza to his love interest Jesse.One of the attackers was Jesse's boyfriend Dale, who takes Ricky's keys and throws them into the sewer drain, forcing Ricky and his brother Dallas to look for them in the sewers. Ricky catches sight of a Chestburster and both leave rattled after hearing a series of hisses and screeching. At this point, the hunting pair give birth to their Chestbursters and a few more Facehuggers impregnate several homeless people in the sewers. Kelly O'Brien comes home after serving her time in the U.S. Army, to an estranged daughter and waiting husband. Wolf's ship arrives mere hours after the distress signal is received. He is tasked with eliminating the Aliens and destroying any evidence of the incident. Inside he finds no survivors and momentarily mourns the body of a fellow Predator. He then takes whatever equipment left in the ship that he can carry and detonates the ship to eliminate evidence. Among the salvaged equipment, is a vial of blue, extremely corrosive liquid used to erase biological traces of Aliens and their victims. The local community searches in earnest for the father/son hunting pair, which Wolf manages to find first. He immediately uses the vial to remove evidence of the hunting pair. An officer comes across him just as this happens, and flees once he is discovered. Wolf kills him, skins him and ties him to a tree top, to be found the next morning by Sheriff Morales. Wolf locates the nearest area of possible contamination, the city sewer near the forest. He is ambushed by several Aliens, and after a brief fight in which Wolf encounters the Predalien (apparently the dominant Alien of the infestation), the Aliens spread throughout the city through a hole in the sewers leading up into the streets, starting a rampage that eventually leads to the nearby power plant, forcing the city into darkness. After barely escaping the local swimming pool with their lives, Ricky, Jesse and Dale manage to meet up with Eddie and Dallas. They head to a sporting shop for weapons, contacting the incoming National Guard; within minutes, however, the entire force is eliminated. Kelly, having lost her husband and barely escaping an Alien, arrives with her daughter Molly. They are forced to flee when Wolf arrives, attempting to destroy as many Aliens as he can. Dale is killed when a dead Alien's acidic blood burns through his face. Wolf's shoulder cannons are damaged in the attack, but he is able to modify one into a makeshift plasma pistol. Meanwhile, as the small group attempts to escape the town, they make contact with Colonel Stevens, who radios that air evacuation will arrive at the town's center within half an hour. Kelly is unconvinced that there will be a rescue, as the town's center is a prime position to keep the infestation focused on the survivors, where a nuke could be dropped. Eddie breaks from the group to join a small collection of fighting survivors who plan to wait at the center of town, while the remainder of them make for the hospital, believed to have a helicopter. Unknown to them, the hospital is under attack and has become a hive for the infestation - the Predalien's ability to inject embryos into females allows the hive to be created within mere hours. A brief altercation results in Jesse panicking and fleeing - she inadvertently runs into the path of one of Wolf's shurikens and is killed. Ricky retaliates, and Wolf is knocked down an elevator shaft, dropping his plasma pistol. Ricky is impaled by the Predalien, but manages to live through the encounter as it is driven off. Dallas retrieves the plasma pistol as the group makes for the helicopter. On the roof, Dallas stays behind briefly to fight off their pursuers with the plasma pistol, until he is cornered . Wolf appears only a moment later to brawl against the creature, leaving Dallas to escape just as the Predalien arrives and attacks Wolf. As the two extraterrestrials battle, the helicopter lifts off, carrying an injured Ricky, Dallas, Kelly and her daughter, just as the Air Force arrives. Both Wolf and the Predalien mortally wound each other just as the nuclear device lands in the middle of town, vaporizing the entire city and all that still live within it including Wolf and Predalien. The helicopter crash-lands in a clearing after the shock wave causes it to lose control. Dallas wakes to find Kelly, Molly and Ricky still alive and outside the crashed craft. After hearing threatening noises, they find themselves surrounded by camouflaged soldiers. Dallas gives up the plasma pistol, while med-evac tends to his still injured brother; Kelly reassures her daughter that the monsters are finally gone. The scene shifts elsewhere, to a corporate building in the U.S., where Colonel Stevens approaches a "Ms. Yutani." He opens his briefcase that he was carrying, revealing the plasma pistol. Ms. Yutani states that the world is not ready for the new technology, while Colonel Stevens makes it clear the technology is "not for our world."

Cast

Reception

Released on December 25, 2007, AVP-R grossed $10 million on its opening day for an average of $3,707 per 832 theatres.^[9] AVP-R has earned mostly negative reviews from critics with 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, 5 positive to 27 negative with an average of 3.6 out of 10 and a user rating of 57%. The film has grossed $47,893,127 worldwide.

Creatures

Both creatures have gone through design changes since Paul W. S. Anderson directed the original Alien vs. Predator.^[10] These include a return to the ridge-headed aliens last seen in Aliens (though not to the same extreme)^[11] and a slimmer, more athletic Predator, nicknamed Wolf, as seen in Predator and Predator 2. The Predator's weapons have been somewhat modified for the new film. The Predator now carries two plasma casters, after taking one from the body of a deceased predator, and uses a bladed disk as seen in the second film, as well as multiple Predator shuriken. The Predator has received a new weapon, a whip, made from Alien teeth. And of course, the Predator CombiStick (spear) makes a return. The predator also uses one of his plasma casters in a hand-held manner, which is used by a human later on in the film. The Predator also has a blue liquid, similar in appearance but not to be confused with the type briefly seen during the bathroom scene in Predator 2 in which the Predator mixes the fluid with dry wall to be used as a cauterizing agent while performing self-aid. This liquid is poured on corpses, which causes them to rapidly dissolve (However, it only eats the meaty part of the alien away, leaving a skin behind). It is also used in one instance as a weapon as it is poured down an alien's mouth and throat, killing it. This film was the first in the series to show a glimpse of a Predator city. Early in the film, when Wolf receives the distress call, the audience is shown Wolf's chambers. Inside are seen many Predator masks, weapons, and a large viewing screen. As Wolf leaves his chambers, he is shown flying over a large city. Several ships can be seen in the background taking off. The film also shows the best view of the inside of a Predator ship. Before the ship crashes the audience can see several trophy walls, facehugger storage areas, and a Predator "skinning" a defeated Alien with a strange "laser-blade" device.

The Predalien

The Predator variant of the Alien, the PredAlien, appears in the film, after being set up prior in Paul Anderson's Alien vs. Predator.^[12] The inclusion of the Predalien was confirmed when IGN released an image showing Wolf and the Predalien fighting. ^[13] The Predalien as shown in early production stills, released by Twentieth Century Fox, has a large tail, several times larger than that of normal aliens and with several barbs, ending in a heavy club. The creature has the ability to produce and spread Chestburster embryos to hosts through a similar process as the Facehugger, but it does not die once passing on the embryos. In the one instance when it was shown doing this, it passes four embryos into a woman about to give birth, the resulting Chestbursters burst out of the abdomen and not the chest due to not enough room in the chest region to gestate in. Prior to this, throughout the film, the Predalien is shown approaching female victims while the regular Aliens have killed male victims - it is implied that the Predalien only impregnates females. The directors stated that this is a new feature in the mythos that they have invented and hinted that the reproductive method may be inherited from the Predator DNA. After successfully creating a nest, the Predalien would then mature into a full-grown Queen, grow an egg sac, and stop directly implanting embryos and begin producing eggs.

References

http://www.substance001.net/avp2_trailer/avp2_trailer_850k.wvx

External links

• Official Website
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem at the Internet Movie Database
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem at Rotten Tomatoes
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem at Metacritic
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem at Box Office Mojo
• DVD Talk discusses the R-rating of AVP-R
• Review