Reviewed by Johnny McNair

Twentieth Century Fox – 94 minutes – 2007 – Unrated – 1080p Widescreen 2.40:1 – DTS HD 5.1 Lossless Audio – Digital Copy

When the first Alien vs. Predator movie was announced, fans of the two movie monsters were thrilled because the idea having both of the best creatures in cinema history battling each other on screen was a dream come true. Well, this dream quickly turned into a nightmare because the 2004 release of AvP was a complete letdown because it completely missed the mark on what makes these two screen icons so cool. The film made enough money to make the gang at 20^th Century Fox greenlight a sequel titled Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, now available on Blu-ray. Did they get it right the second time around…or is this a bigger mess than the first? Unfortunately, they’re both a mess.

THE MOVIE

AvP: Requiem picks up directly where the first film left off with the birth of the half-breed PredAlien being born on a Predator spacecraft. It then goes ballistic, killing the entire crew, causing the ship to crash land on Earth in some small town, where other PredAlien experiments are let loose to hunt prey. A close-by Predator satellite craft receives a warning beacon that the ship has gone down and a lone Predator soldier travels to Earth to eliminate all the PredAliens.

AvP: Requiem doesn’t have the cool space Marines featured in Aliens, or the super buff commando team from Predator, instead the heroes are a pimpled-faced pizza delivery boy, his ex-con brother who has just been sprung, a second rate sheriff, and a blonde cheerleader with big boobs. Yes, this is how 20^th Century Fox chose to keep the franchise going; and on top of that they let two special effects guys, Colin and Greg Strause (yes, brothers), who have no real directing experience take the helm.

There really is not much of a story to follow, and you will not even care if someone lives or dies. It’s just a series of scenes with aliens killing people off, and a few spurts of the Predator battling the aliens. That’s it. (Yawn!) The only thing the film has going for it is that where the previous movie played it safe with a PG-13 rating, but AvP: Requiem delivers an R rating and the Blu-ray offers both the rated and unrated versions on one disc via seamless branching. Sure, there are one or two cool thrill-kills, but unfortunately, even with the extra unrated gore, nothing can save this dying horse.

The main problem with the film is that what was promised was never delivered. There are fans of the Aliens and there are fans of the Predator, but here you never get to choose a side to root for. It’s like having Superman fight Batman, but they’re being totally half-assed about it. There has to be a director out there who can bring life to this series, especially since with the movies, comics and games, there is so much reference material to draw from. If they make another AvP film, they should just avoid using Earth as the battleground, and just eliminate a human cast all together. Sure there won’t be any dialogue in the film, because neither creature can talk, but at least it would be a challenge to tell the story and it would highlight the main reason you came to see the film, which is to watch the Aliens and Predators kick each others asses.

The only good thing about AvP: Requiem is that it may actually make you appreciate the first film, which doesn’t look so bad now in comparison. Despite being a bad movie, the sequel still made a good amount of money worldwide showing that there is a huge interest in seeing this done correctly. If Fox ever greenlights another sequel maybe they’ll really give fans a gift by putting a better director and writer in the control seat. If a Aliens vs. Predator movie were ever done correctly, it would be so big that Fox would have to get dump trucks to carry the money back to the studio. If that alone isn’t an incentive for the suits at the studio to take this seriously, then pizza boys fighting Aliens and Predators is all we’re going to be stuck with.

VIDEO

AvP: Requiem offers a full 1080p image with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, and fortunately this is the saving grace of the film. The film has many dark scenes, but the blacks hold up very well so there is never a point where the Predator or the Aliens get lost in the dark backgrounds. The few daylight shots in the opening scenes also look good, capturing solid color tones. With so many dark scenes there are times when you see grain pop up, but overall the image quality stands out.

SOUND

Like the video, the sound also makes this Blu-ray worthy delivering a DTS –HD 5.1 Lossless audio mix. Whether it be the Predator’s space craft racing towards Earth, or the sound of the face huggers sucking face with another victim, the sound raises the bar on an otherwise lame movie. In the moments that the Predator and the Aliens do actually fight, it is a speaker buster that will have your room echoing with explosions and that ear-piercing scream the Aliens make when they attack.

EXTRAS

There are a good variety of extras packaged on the main movie disc, and a second disc includes a digital copy of the film that can be downloaded onto a portable device.

There are two audio commentary tracks available. One features the directors Greg and Colin Strause, and the producer, John Davies. The second audio track is features the visual effects supervisors Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. who discuss the films Special FX. Both of these commentary tracks offer nothing that will change your opinion of the movie, and are filled with various areas where no one is speaking at all.

There are five making of mini featurette diaries that add up to about a an hour running time, all presented in standard definition, going into details about the script, casting, production, creature design and visual effect for AvP: Requiem.

– Preparing for War: Development and Production

– Fight to the Finish: Post Production

– The Nightmare Returns: Creating the Aliens,

– Crossbreed: Creating the PredAlien

– Building the Predator Homeworld

There’s some good information here making to pass the time, but nothing that any fan of the series wouldn’t already know.

Oddly, there are no deleted scenes, which means these guys probably scraped together everything they had to get this thing into theaters for the Christmas 2007 deadline. A still gallery is available, showing off some nice high definition pix from the movie, plus trailers for both the Alien v Predator movies.

Weyland-Yutani Archives allows you to watch the film and via the profile 1.1 feature you will be bale to see information about the Aliens and Predators via picture-in-picture. It’s mainly all text and super geeky, but die hard fans of these iconic monsters may learn something that will make this worth it.

A second disc allows you to download a standard definition copy of the full feature, which you can watch on your PC or in various portable media players. This is something that many studios are appearing to adopt, and it’s a welcomed feature.

BOTTOM LINE

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is actually a step down in the series, which may make you feel cheated in the end, but as a Blu-ray disc it does offer great picture and sound quality and a nice variety of extras including the digital copy. Here’s a bit of advice to make this movie worthy of ending up in your high-definition collection. The next time Amazon offers one of those tempting BOGO offers (By One Get One Free), buy the first Alien vs. Predator film and get the second one for free. The original Arnold Schwarzenegger Predator movie is now available on Blu-ray, and 20^th Century Fox will eventually get around to releasing the Sigourney Weaver Alien movies, so for you fans, just hang in there.

SCORES (Out of 5):

The Movie: 2.5

Video: 4.0

Sound: 4.0

Extras: 3.5

Bottom Line: 3.0