7) Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
When 20th Century Fox decided to square off its two best characters it must have seemed like a masterstroke, until the movies started getting made and audiences couldn’t forget them fast enough. Though comic books and video games have the Aliens vs. Predator formula down pat, filmmakers have had a harder time delivering an end product that’s watchable.
Perhaps the issue lies with said filmmakers. First, Paul W.S. Anderson did a number on Aliens vs. Predator, adding another hatchet job to a resume that that includes Mortal Kombat and Death Race (like Zack Synder, it’s a wonder he keeps getting work), then two unknown visual FX artists, the Strause Brothers, cobbled together a sequel and asked unsuspecting fans to cough up for the privilege of watching it.
That sequel is Requiem, a turgid mess that was critically panned and single-handedly killed the Predator-Alien matrimony, but not before the Strauses raked the franchise over the coals and landed a few stinging blows for good measure.
For no good reason, Requiem abandons the claustrophobic locales so central to the Alien franchise and sets the action in a Colorado town beset by an predator-alien hybrid dubbed the Predalien (I’m not making this up). Alongside several of its Xenomorph cousins, the unwanted love child attacks the local Colorado populous and a lone predator is dispatched to clean up. As you’d imagine, several witless humans join in to save the day, but they’re so facile I’m not even going to talk about them.
No, you can level any number of damning indictments against this film: terrible acting, awful visual effects (from FX artists turned directors, no less) non-existent character developments, a boatload of immersion-breaking references….the list goes on. But perhaps Requiem’s biggest crime is that it makes the fearsome Xenomorph seem like a pitiful nuisance; a hapless puppy dog that humps your leg and won’t let go. That’s quite an achievement, and the less said about the Predalien the better.
