misguidance | Alien Vs Predator: Requiem.

So... Andril and I went to the cinema today (Orange Wednesdays- buy one get one free on all tickets. Yay! ^__^) and discovered that Sweeny Todd isn't showing until next week. Boo. So we decided to see AVP: Requiem instead, because everything else looked even worse.

Welll..... I'm glad I saw it. But only becuase it was raining outside and was cold, and inside the cinema was warm and dry. >_> Below the cut you will find my general musings on the film. Beware. Some of it could be called ranting. Some of it is just down right silly. Most of it is just epic spoilers, though.

That's right: SPOILERS AHEAD for AVP: REQUIEM.

You know.... like anyone really cares..... ^_- My version is probubly more worth your time, which says a lot given that I am hyped up on diet coke and gummi bears. >_>

So, we all knew that AVP 2 was going to be a big pile of poo anyway, so it's not like I am actually dissapointed in it at all. The first film was so mindnumbingly bad that the only thing to do in it was name all the aliens and predators, turn off the volume, and dub in all the dialogue with a bunch of mates to try and make it make more sense. At least the special effects were good, and I'm happy to admit that AVP 2 also has some stunning visuals, and- while it is still dire in the extreme- a better story line.

You see, this film is actually a documentary about a guy called Bob.

This is Bob:

Bob works in an office on some strange looking alien planet. He works for the Department of Environmental Health, and frankly, for a guy who earns minimum wage, Bob kicks ass.

I kid you not.

No- really.

The opening sequences of AVP 2 goes kind of like this- we see the Predator ship from the end of AVP, and the chamber where the dead Predator has been laid out to rest. We see the nasty little Predator/Alien hybrid (from now on called the Prailien- mmmm.... nutty...) pop out and wiggle it's madibles. We see a chamber where- for some unknown reason- the Predators have collected up some facehuggers in jars.   Then we some some human guy teaching his nine-year-old kid how to kill deer. Boooooring.   Back on the ship, the Prailien is now full grown, and jumps on some poor Predator (who we can only assume is some tech guy on the ship- if he was one of the kick-ass warrior Predators, he would have seen it coming and beaten the Prailien to hell and back.) The Prailien- not happy with one random act of violence, then goes after the ship's pilot, who seems to be the only other person on board.

The funny thing is, I am pretty certain that there were four or five other Predators around, helping move stuff onto the ship and clean up the spattered remains of their fallen friends at the end of the first AVP film. Apparently, though, they have vanished. Oh well. Never mind.

Anyway, the pilot gets wise to what is happening, and activates something that looks like it might be a nuke, like the Predator had in the first Predator film. (Incidentally, that Predator was called Jessica. Just so you know. >_>) However, before the activation is complete, the Prailien turns up and eats the poor guy, and the nuke never goes off. On the up side, the ship crashes in the middle of the forest where the man is teaching his kid to shoot helpless animals, there is a big explosion, and everyone is happy. Mainly because we already know that the kid is going to die. ^_^

Anyway, it is at this point that we meet Bob.

We get a nice shot of the amazing alien homeworld of the Predators- all dusty and barren, with some amazing looking buildings. We see the shot pull in to a view through Bob's office window, where the man himself is sitting at a strage, almost Aztec looking control panel. He doesn't seem to be doing much, which is how we know he is some kind of council worker. >_> And then a small red light starts to flash on the panel, and Bob springs into action!

That is to say, he pokes the button, and ponders over the console as it shows him a (remarkably detailed) map through the galaxy to earth, a few internal shots of the Prailien killing the ship crew in orbit over earth (all done in jazzy not-quite-heat-sensitive-but-close Predator Vision), and then a map of where the ship landed. Bob mulls this over, checking out a nice Predator Vision shot of the Prailien, then gets up with the noticable air of a man thinking 'Oh well- guess I better actually do some work for once....'   and wanders over to a rack of helmets on the far wall. He takes his time over picking one (probubly trying to work out if Jack in accounting would notice if he borrowed his one, seeing as it nicer than standard issue ones the government gives them, and might- you know- actually protect one's face from acidic blood spatter.... ah- who cares! Jack isn't back in the office until Monday anyway, and if he didn't want people to use his helmet he shouldn't have left it here.....) and once he's gotten that, he strolls over to pick up the tools of his trade: A belt, some kind of metallic blobby thing, and a bottle of radioactive bleach.

Again- I kid you not. More on that later.

Thus armed, Bob sets out to do what he has been doing ever since he left school and got an NVQ in pest control: kick some xenomorph ass.

For those of you who are not entirely up to date with the premise of AVP, Aliens, and the general universe to which it all belongs, this handsom creaturer is a Xenomorph:

Isn't he a cutie? ^_^ Xenomorphs are a species of being that colonates planets and scary looking dilapidated space stations by bursting out of the chests of hard working employees and unsuspecting extras, and then sits on it's collective butt looking confused, because they haven't yet figured out what to do once they've taken over. Normally, a hive contains an Alien Queen, too, who looks much the same but is bigger, moodier, and eats more chocolate. Xenomorphs are also generally slimy- they often work in call centres trying to sell you double glazing an insurance.

Now, Bob is an expert in dealing with Alien infestations on various planets. Its his specialty. So he's not all that bothered by the prospect of heading out alone to take care of this little problem. After all- if he waits for someone else to get back from their lunch break he'll get caught in rush hour trafic leaving the planet, so better to just go alone and work a bit of overtime. No worries. I'm guessing he might have been a little disturbed by the look of the Prailien, but Bob is a grown man, and the only thing that really frightens him is the gap under his bed when it's dark and there might be something under there, but he'll never admit that anyway, so it's all good. Besides, the Prailien doesn't look nearly as bad as the half-xenomorph/half-duckman monster he faced on Alderbern 5, and that thing was nearly as hard to kill as it looked.

At this point in the film, we have to wait for Bob to arrive on earth, so the directors decided to put in some stuff about a bunch of fairly standard people living in Denver, USA. This is apparently where the Predator craft crash landed, you see, so we get a tour of the town and some happy stereotypes to while away the half hour or so it takes Bob to hail a cab, argue about the rout to earth, and cover the god-knows-how-many light years to get to us. Such stereotypes include: the caring and serious town sherif, a local ex-con who he is trying to get back into the community (as any good sherif should- the guy deserves another chance, after all) the ex-con's teenage little brother, some booby girl the little brother has a crush on, her assholish boyfriend, and a tough but pretty army lady who has just come home from active service to find that her young daughter is wary of her.

To comemorate these poorly concieved characters, here is a picture that turne up on Google when I typed in AVP: Requiem:

GOOD JOB, GOOGLE! GOOD JOB!!

*facepalm*

Its worth mentioning that both the man and his kid have died by this point. You see, they- rather foolishly- descide to run to spaceship crash site to investigate, then get creeped out and decide to go tell the Sherif what they have found. On their way back, they get facehugger-ed.   Oh- and these are no ordinary facehuggers, either- these ones are extra spicy. The man manages to shoot one and even though only a few tiny drops of blood land on him, it is somehow enough to burn his whole lower arm off in a matter of seconds. >_> Nice.

Also, is it just me, or are the AVP aliens some kind of fast-breeding variety. >_> I recall from the Alien films that the time between the hot facehugger alien wing-wong happy fun time action and the actual birth of the baby-xeno was about 24 hours, but in AVP and AVP 2 it seems to be just a few hours- or maybe even less, seeing as it only takes about half an hour to get to Earth from Bob's office. O_o

So, now we have several fully grown Aliens and the Prailien roaming the woods in Denver. We have a bunch of people that the directors have tried (and failed) to make emotionally engaging. Now is the time to take bets on how many of them will die, and how fast.  Sadly, this is the most fun I have ever had in a cinema- the guy in the row in front of us was waaay off with his bets, and I actually won 50p from him.

Again, I kid you not. XD The film really was that engaging.

Anyway- Bob arrives on Earth (cue awsome semi-slow motion striding out of the lake shot) and does a quick initial assesment of the crashed spaceship. Alas, he cannot help the poor pilot (who is very, very dead) put Bob- like most people- takes a moment to poke the corpse experimentally, just in case. But no- this poor man has crashed his last ship, so Bob gets on with his job and searches the place for anything he can loot. Having done that, he finishes activating the Pilot's bomb, and legs it out of the ship to avoide being immolated.

Out in the woods, the Sherif and some other locals are looking for the man and his kid. They have been called out to search because some homeless guy living in the storm drains found the severed arm. His dog brought it to him. We can only assume that the dog dies, but we never find out for sure, and there is no dog-alien in this film like there was in Aliens 3. Which is a shame, because I was really, really hoping we would see some non-humanoid aliens in this movie, seeing as it is the perfect opportunity for it. Seriously- who wouldn't want to see, say, a Cow alien? Or maybe if there was a zoo nearby, we could have Lion aliens and Giraffe aliens. Or a Hamster alien? ^_^  Cute, evil, and naturally acidic....

Bob doesn't care about the searching humans, though. His job is simply to clean out all the aliens, hide the mess, and have the whole thing written up and on his boss's desk (and Jack's helmet returned) by Monday. He doesn't waste any time, either- after roaming the woods for only a few minuets, he finds the two bodies stares at them for a bit, then uncorks his magical bottle of glowing blue bleach and applies it liberally to the area. The bodies disolve at once, leaving no evidence at all. Awsome.   But of course, Bob has observed that two dead hosts = two adult aliens to kill, so he takes a moment to wonder how best to deal with this situation. While he is pondering it (and possibly considering maing himself a cup of tea- he's been working for nearly half an hour now, so it must be breaktime soon), one of the Sherif's men happen to see him and shouts out.

Now, for all his good service for the local council, Bob is still a Predator, and the loud alien babbling the human is making triggers an instinctual response in him: he switches on his camoflage, kills the obviously terrified man, and skins him. He then hangs the body from a tree, in true Predator style, and goes on his merry way.

At this point, my concentration on the film started to waver, and I entertained myself by wondering what would happen in a one on one fight between a Predator and a Power Ranger. I decided it would all depend on which Power Ranger, but I susepct that there would be much LOLZ.   Then I started going over part of my superhero writing in my head, which led to this:

Awsome.

When I look back at the screen, Bob is marauding around the storm drain system setting up traps for the aliens that have taken up residence down there (along with the Prailien, who the others seem to be treating as their leader. Presumably because it is uglier than them.) In all fairness, this is a pretty awsome sequence, with some good action in it, so I will stop being silly for a moment to give this abysmal film some much needed praise: In the last AVP film, one of the things that was sorely lacking was actual aliens fighting Predators. In this film, there may be a slight shortage of Predators, but there is a lot more general non-human violence, which we very much approve of. Not all of it makes a whole lot of sense, but then, there is nothing quite like a pissed off civil servant going on a rampage, so it's all good.

From here on in, the film gets steadily more predictable and there is no tension or real drama at all. Bob does his job (and does it well, bless him), resulting in the shutting down of the local power plant and a gas explosion in the sewers. The local 2dimensional residents panic nicely, and run about in the dark. It starts to rain. The spunky army lady's sexy husband dies in what is possibly the worst horror film 'joke' moment ever, and the littler girl screams a lot. The only thing that really stands out at this point is that there seem to be an awful lot more aliens than there should be, given that there were only 4 face-huggers to start off with. But no worries- that all gets explained in one of the worst scenes I have ever seen in a horror film, ever. And not because it is gorey.....

At some point, the Pralien decides to take his little shiny friends to the local hospital. As a prelude to this, we see a heavily pregnant lady beeing wheeled in to give birth, and lo and behold, Prailien finds his way into the maternity ward.

At this point, all 18 people in the cinema started cheering. Out loud.

However, all cheers and laughter dies out when we get a very graphic insight into how Predators mate. You see- much like Jessica in the first Predator film, the Prailien is actually female, and no doubt wandering through a ward of cute little babies has made her a bit broody, so she decides to have a few of her own.... by latching her face into a pregant woman's head and spitting eggs down her throat.

*wails*

Given that Aleins normally lay eggs, and humans do something else entirely, we can only assume that this sigularly disgusting act comes right from Predator DNA, which means- rather amusingly- that when Predators take off their helmets and bellow at people (which they do quite a bit) they are actually waving their genitals at people. No wonder it starts fights! I mean, talk about being anti-social.... O_o

Oh, and to make all this happy reproducing even better for the (now rather horrified) viewers, when the poor pregnant lady is burst open (ala true aliens fashion) there is not one chestburster in there- there are 4. Apparently, the Prailien Queen spawns her offspring in litters. O_O No wonder there seemed to be far too many aliens about...

Also, it suddenly makes this picture (which me and my friends have laughed over for years, because it looks like they are about to kiss) far more disturbing than it has any right to be:

Really, Jessica, you have absolutely no right to even think about doing that to Arnie. >_> You only just met him, for gods' sake!

Back to AVP: Requiem.

The humans decide to go to the hospital too (well- some of them do, anyway) because the Sherif (he had a name, but I honestly couldn't be arsed to remember it) has been in touch with the military, and they have been told to go to the middle of town to get an evactuation. Army lady decides- when they are half way there- that they shouldn't go there, because she Knows The Army and therefore knows that the Army will bomb them and kill them all rather than evacuate people. I think that at some point when I was thinking about Predator Vs. Power Ranger the national Guard arrvied in Denver and got massacered- I'm not sure. It might just have been some more extras with guns. Who knows. But anyway- Army Lady decides to go to the hospital and steal the helicopter from the roof as a way of escaping. Sherif decides to go with some other survivors to the centre of town. In the audience, there are no more bets: we all know that the people trusting in the government are going to die. >_>

In the hospital (which is of course crawling with aliens) we get a rather nice shot of a fully formed alien nest in a stairwell, and there is some more AVP killing. Bob is still on good form, despite bleeding from a nasty stomache wound, he is still going strong and still determined to clean up all this mess, even though he has run out of magic bleach by this stage (which isn't surprising, seeing how liberally he splashes it about.) There is also a shot where someone shoots an alien and should die from acidic backsplash, but it doesn't happen. Also, some random human gets killed, and I realise that the only reason they picked him up on the way into the hospital is so they could kill someone off who wasn't one of the 'main' characters. Also, boobs dies. There is more cheering from the audience.

At this point, we (finally) enter the last scenes of the film, and things start getting epic. Mr ex-con has a gun that he pinched from Bob, which he uses as a handgun to blast the alien scum as the survivors scrable across the roof to the waiting helicopter. I am immiditately thinking 'Ah- so this will be the most powerful weapon you can get in the soon-to-be-released computer game, eh? ^_- ' There is another moment when alien blood fails to burn through everything in it's path, which is unfortunate becuase it would have been a perfect opportunity to get rid of the helicopter and leave the humans to die. Call me uncaring, but I think that would have been awsome. But no- they escape.

And in the meantime, Bob discovers that he really is not getting paid enough for the work he does- not even at overtime rates:

Again, I cannot fault this film on it's monster design and visuals. The end fight is really well done, and well worth waiting however long it will take for someone to upload it onto YouTube. Once it's over, though, I couldn't help feeling rather sad. Not just becuase of the outcome, but becuase the film ends with a trully silly (and rather cryptic) finally scene that seems to completely ignore the premise set out in the original Alien films (actually, the whole of AVP does that anyway- what the hell am I talking about? Its all complete bull!). And now we are left to weep at the fact that they will inevitably make an AVP 3.

;_;

Anyway, it was still and interesting look into the day to day life if a Predator civil servant. Perhaps the people at Bob's office will use this film as training material for the new recruits- which is something they really aught to have done in the first AVP film, because those Predators were dumbasses from start to finish. Goddamn trainees, messing it up and taking their helmets off in infested areas..... Retards! >_< In fact the only person- human or otherwise- in that entire film who had even half a brain was Larry. This is Larry:

larry proved his mental superiority by turning down a starring role in AVP: Requiem, becuase he took one look at the script and knew it would kill his career dead. >_> If only the other actors had had the same insight....

For anyone who might be wondering, I name horrorshow monsters in the same manner than I name my dolls. If you would like a demonstration of this, feel free to drop by with a DVD and some booze, and I'll show you how I do it.

TL;DR:
Its a sad day when the most amusing part of a horror film is making bets with the people sitting in the row infront of you, and you don't even care when other people are talking through the film. The special effects were nice, though, and Predators are still sexy. But now I wouldn't want to kiss one. >_>

In Other News:
Still no job, but still looking. Doll pictures tomorrow, I promise- because I ahve finally found my camera. It was behind the TV. Which makes no sense. O_o