Alien vs Predator - Requiem: the first five minutes

John Moore

The real danger is if this movie tries to pretend to grow a brain

As if to try and prove that it won't be as bad as the last one, the first five minutes of AvP 2 have arrived online. John checks 'em out...

Published on Dec 14, 2007

I’d put good money on the fact that Alien vs. Predator - Requiem - or AvPR to give it the moronic acronym that studios seem to prefer these days - is going to make John McTiernan’s and Arnie’s time as chief Predator-wranglers look like an Ingmar Bergman movie.

I don’t have any form on the brothers Strauss as directors – ‘cause basically they don’t have any. They’re effects guys made good… And having seen the first five minutes of their first attempt at a movie, I’ m pretty sure there’s not going to much subtlety to their work… No, just point it at the Alien and make sure the lighting’s right for the post-production team guys’.

So what goes on in the first five minutes? Alien/Predator hybrids, crash-landing spaceships, a pretty brutal father and son face-grabber double-act (after daddy’s already lost his arm to acid spit) and a glimpse of the Predator homeworld as the stricken ship’s distress call kicks off a rescue attempt - or is it just containment?

It’s not Citizen Kane, but then we wouldn’t want it that way would we? It’s pretty much just a rudimentary piece of exposition for a balls-out dust-up in the backwoods… CGI gore, prosthetic gore, men in suits, spikes-through-the-eye, military-idiot nonsense. Cool.

I loved the jungle-chase mercs-against-the-wall action of the first Predator movie, and I liked the urban rumble vibe of the second. This one kinda hints at a mix of the two – with extra Alieniness thrown into the gene pool for good measure. If, at the end of it, there’s a Predator covered in mud, standing atop of a pile of dismembered National Guardsmen – like First Blood with added dreadlocks and acid – I’ll probably be happy.

The real danger is if this movie tries to pretend to grow a brain; or if its helmsmen can’t keep control of the action and it descends into a mish-mash of flashing lights, shaky-cam shite and incomprehensibly quick cuts.