Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (cont.)

It is with some alarm that I realise how long ago it was that I first got hooked on the Alien franchise. Back then, of course, it was just the one film. A film that I was too young to see (I eventually caught up with it on its television premiere), but one which caught my imagination and had cinemagoers in a frenzy of horror and excitement.

H.R.Giger's unique design for the alien creature has made it the ultimate movie monster in many peoples' minds. A creature that not only terrifies on the screen, but is unsettling to even look at. This is part of the reason why the Alien franchise has lasted so long. The other part is the incredible foundation that Ridley Scott and James Cameron built - two strikingly different films, each equally influential and career-making.

Sadly David Fincher's much maligned third entry was sorely compromised by, well, that's another story. Suffice to say that Fincher's later output, and the flashes of brilliance in Alien3, have given a clear sign that the third entry could have been just as magnificent as its predecessors.

The same can't really be said for Alien Resurrection, which amply demonstrated how it's possible to make a bad film from a good script. Despite some good ideas the rot had already set in by this point.
Meanwhile the Predator franchise had started promisingly at the hands of John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then also fizzled out with the lacklustre sequel.

It took comic publishers Dark Horse to merge the two and, to all intents and purposes, keep the twin franchises alive. The premise worked perfectly - the aliens were unstoppable killing machines, the predators were hunters out for the ultimate fight - it was as if they were made for each other.

While Twentieth Century Fox stalled on the prospect of an Alien 5 (presumably wary at the thought of making a film that might actually require imagination and creativity) the studio did finally give birth to the Alien vs Predator screen franchise in 2004. The film might have been financially successful but it failed in almost every other area.

Finally this brings us to Aliens vs Predator: Requiem - the second entry in this hybrid franchise. Given the issues many people had with Alien vs Predator there were strong hopes that the sequel would be an improvement. Signs were good at first. Whereas the first outing was sanitised in a bizarre ploy to attract a family audience, the new film would be appropriately targeted at 'mature' audiences. Furthermore, the directors of the sequel - the Brothers Strause - openly voiced their admiration for James Cameron's Aliens, suggesting that an all-out action fest would ensue. Indeed the trailers actually looked quite promising.

Then they made their first mistake - they released the film. (Actually the first mistake was making it at all, but at least audiences could pretend there was hope while the film remained unseen.). Reviews were, if anything, even more scathing than those for Paul W.S.Anderson's awful first attempt.

Of course, the horror genre has a long and notorious history of poorly conceived sequels that have little function other than to make money. This is ultimately a self-defeating process as these sequels are often so poor that the franchise is progressively devalued until it eventually becomes impossible for the studio to make any more money out of it.
Some franchises just about manage to remain immune to this process. The James Bond series has successfully reinvented itself time and again. The Harry Potter films just seem to get better and better. These examples are few and far between, but I'm sure I wasn't alone in hoping that the Alien franchise was somewhat untouchable. I was wrong.

With Aliens vs Predator: Requiem the Alien franchise becomes little more than a slasher film with all the merit of a direct to video movie. The big giveaway is this: most of the principal characters are teens with 'troubles of their own' and 'relationship issues' and various other traits that you can probably tick off on the big movie list of teen characterisation essentials that they dole out at Screenwriting 101.

As is always the problem with inept scripts like this, you simply don't care about the characters. While the acting isn't particularly bad (although I might have switched off my brain by the time anyone started talking), the largely inexperienced cast aren't able to bring anything else to the screen. Compare this to Alien where, despite the sparse characterisation, Ridley Scott's careful casting created a memorable crew for the Nostromo.

With any hope of decent screenwriting out the window, the next hope to be dashed is any sense of logic or continuity. The film opens with the birth of the hybrid alien (an alien creature that has gestated inside a predator) on board the escaping predator ship. This creature grows from infancy to adulthood in a matter of seconds whereas previous films have established that this process takes at least a few hours. Nevertheless, while the predator ship is supposedly racing away from earth, the hybrid proceeds to attack the crew and sends the ship plummeting back to earth. This is surely the slowest spaceship in the history of science fiction.

Fortunately it's one of the toughest as it crash lands (from outer space... through the atmosphere...) into a forest without actually killing anything on board - its left to the hybrid to finish off the crew before making its jaunty escape.

There are a few redeeming factors. The Brothers Strause are bold enough to make one of the film's first chestburster victims a young boy. Unfortunately the scene is handled so curtly and, ultimately, so callously as to make the whole event seem needlessly grotesque. (Equally grotesque is a later scene in a maternity ward which manages to offend on grounds of not only taste but biology and continuity as well - no mean feat.)

One scene which did show a glimmer of inspiration was the swift and unexpected despatching of one of the film's more annoying characters towards the climax. This, at least, was a moment where convention was defied.

Similarly entertaining was much of the film's last act - but only in a 'switch your brain off and let it happen' sort of way.

A small nod must also go to the visuals. The aliens themselves have been progressively less effective with each passing entry in the franchise, but the Brothers Strause do have a reasonable eye for detail. Sadly this isn't matched by any talent for editing as many potentially arresting moments are ruined by excessively swift cutting, even by 'MTV generation' standards.

Ultimately Aliens vs Predator: Requiem marks the final death of the Alien franchise. I tend to think that the Predator franchise never really got started, but the Alien films have an enviable legacy in the history of cinema. That Twentieth Century Fox should let it come to this is unforgivable and yet, sadly, not in the least surprising.