Here’s what I would do for an Alien vs. Predator flick, as if anyone cares. I would completely forget about putting humans in this movie first and foremost. No horny teenagers, no weeping widows, and no strong chinned hero dudes. None of that mess. I would simply have Predators looking for Aliens. Possibly a single Predator as our protagonist, which these AvP movies kinda want to do, but are afraid of doing for some reason or another, and just focus in on Alien and Predator killing mayhem. Maybe make the fate of the universe at stake or something to give my Predator a purpose, which could be setup at the Predator town meeting at the start of my movie. That’s what I would do. I certainly wouldn’t have written off on this thing I just saw, that’s for damn sure.

"Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" begins on what I’m guessing is a Predator ship which soon gives birth to what one would think is the worst of the worst, a hybrid of these two brutal creatures. You would think, but the PredAlien ain’t as tough you would imagine it to be. The PredAlien kills the captain of this ship, which unfortunately is cruising around in our galaxy for some reason, and crashes into a little town in Colorado. The ship I think was filled with a bunch of face huggers which upon crashing are now on the loose in this town and are giving birth to new Aliens at a remarkably rapid rate. I remember watching the original ‘Alien’ and I think it took John Hurt’s character at least a few days before the baby Alien popped out, and few more for it to mature into a full grown goo drooling carnivore but these things in this flick multiply seemingly instantaneously. On the Predator homeworld our Predator of note is chilling on his Barcalounger witnessing these occurrences on his closed circuit and jumps on the red eye to earth to exterminate this thing. Why I’m not sure. To save earth? Doubt it. To do some hunting? To preserve the purity of the species? To get away from his bickering wife? This is why the Predator would be star of MY movie because HE’D let us know what his ‘motivation’ was.

Then we have our humans. Dallas (Steven Pasquale) is back home after doing a stint in the joint and finds his old running partner Morales (John Ortiz) is the town sheriff. He has a troubled little brother in Ricky (Johnny Lewis) who likes the town hottie Jessie (Kristin Hager) who has an asshole boyfriend with two buddies, one of them African American – poor dude, who like to kick Ricky’s ass. We also have returning war vet Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth) who has a young distant daughter. Kelly is a war vet because we need to justify why somebody knows know how to drive a humvee and fly a helicopter later on in the proceedings. At this point the Alien infestation is pretty much out of control with Aliens every freaking where killing everything they can find leaving our poor Predator scratching his head wondering why his homeboys back at the crib don’t sent some help. But then he saw these silly humans taking out Aliens with a handgun, the same Aliens that just wiped out the National Guard, and figures he might be okay. Now the race is on to see if our few survivors, because the rest of this town in Colorado is pretty much toast, can escape – not the Alien / Predator menace - but evil atom bomb dropping gubment, and save their wretched lives. Sheesh.

My initial response after seeing "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem", that is after I realized I just wasted 85 minutes of my precious life, is to ask somebody to turn on a light! Please! This film was so dark and so murky that it was at times almost impossible to make out what was going on. There’s dramatic lighting and then there’s saving on the electric bill on AVP:R was certainly the latter. Top that off with all of the big fight scenes being shot a real close quarters making it even MORE difficult to make out who was what and what was going on. THEN the Predator freaking took out the town’s power plant thus encasing a film shot in low light to a film shot in no light. I realize I’m not functioning at 20-20 anymore but come on fellas. However, what I was able to see was certainly pretty pointless. The reason I think they might as well just throw out the human element is because people served no purpose in this movie except to get slaughtered. The character development in this film was below zero, so why even bother to put them in. Since fans of Aliens and Predators were disgusted with the first films PG-13 level of violence, the new directors of this installment, going by the moniker of The Brothers Strauss, amped up the gore and violence to near pornographic levels. At least for the parts we could see. Children, once off limits to horrible screen deaths, were fair game here, including a nursery full of babies and a pregnant woman whose water just broke getting orally injected with PredAlien life seed.

I again question the Predator’s motivation because at first it looked like he just wanted to take out the Aliens, but he still found time to kill and skin the occasional human for fun. Focus Man! Focus! And I realize that the Predator is a tough mofo, but you would think 800 or so Aliens might be able to take his ass out. You would think.

I thought AVP:R was A). just plain bad nonsense and B). and insult to the Alien AND Predator franchises, and that includes Predator 2 which is one my all time favorite guilty pleasures. If one’s idea of a good time is watching phallic Aliens explode from the guts of pregnant women, then go see this flick and when you get home log on to www.ineedashrinkbad.com.  Just Sayin'.