I just got back from the New Years Day screening of Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (AvP-R), and I can tell you without a doubt that the cinema was an excellent way to beat the 40 degree heat today!

Being a massive fan of both the Alien and Predator franchises', I had been itching to see AvP-R from the moment I first read news on it going into production. After seeing the first Alien vs. Predator film I felt as if there had been a whole lot of potential wasted. Whilst AvP was watchable, I'd hoped for a lot more. Fortunately AvP-R steps up to deliver what I'd hoped for.

The film begins at the ending of the first film. The Predator ship sailing off into space when a face hugger/alien bursts from the chest of the Predator killed at the end of the first film. Mayhem ensues, one thing leads to another, and the space ship takes a nose dive toward earth, crashing outside a small town near Colorado. As the Aliens run free from the crashed vessel, a sole surviving Predator is able to transmit a distress signal to his home world before he is killed.

On the Predator home world, a bad ass Predator packs his gear and head to earth. It is quickly established that he is the "Winston Wolf" type Predator, in that he travels to earth to clean up the mess the rookies have left behind. He hunts down Aliens, and removes the evidence, but before too long, the Alien numbers have increased, putting Wolf at a disadvantage.

The first third of the movie, plays out like a standard survival film (think Dantes Peak), and builds up some of the human characters, whilst setting up for the action to come. The moment when the Predator/Alien hybrid and the Predator burst from the sewers onto the main street, signals the start of the real action.

To be honest, this movie was always going to live or die based on the battles between the Aliens and the Predator. The human stuff was nice, but almost seemed to be on the peripheral of the main ass kicking.

PredAlien vs Predator fight

I liked AvP-R far more than AvP for a few reasons, but the main one was that the Predator was not a pushover. The Predators in AvP seemed to keel over and die a little to easily for my liking, whilst the Predator in AvP-R was able to take more punishment, as well as deliver it. AvP-R also ramped up the gore factor in comparison to the first film.The seeds for another sequel were planted at the end of the film, with Ms. Yutani making a brief appearance at the end, but I won't say any more than that.

As a fan of both the Alien and Predator movies, it's hard to give this movie an unbiased rating. Never the less, I'll try. For fans of the Alien and Predator movies, I'd give this flick a 4 out of 5 pickles. For the average film goer, it's probably more like a 3 out of 5 pickles.

As a side note, I kept an eye out for Leo Chiang, but given that the National Guard get slaughtered relatively quickly, I didn't have any luck spotting him. ;)

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