Directors: Colin Strause and Greg Strause
Writer: Shane Salerno
Starring: Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, Johnny Lewis, Tom Woodruff Jr., and Ian Whyte

“So…what do you want for Christmas?”

It’s a commonly asked question this time of year. You get it from your family, your friends, maybe even that co-worker who pulled your name in the office Secret Santa drawing. Well, if you love the ALIEN and PREDATOR franchises, and the countless graphic novels and video games that have had the two fanged nasties battling it out for over a decade, you might be hoping for a big-screen match-up that finally meets all your fan-boy/girl expectations. Lord knows, 2005’s ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (or AVP as the marketing geniuses at Fox wanted you to call it) wasn’t it. That movie was a watered down, PG-13 rated action flick for 12-15 year-olds who had never seen either series, and though they may have thought it was cool, it left true aficionados waving their fists and gnashing their teeth at what might have been. Now, on Christmas day 2007, Fox brings those disgruntled fans a present: ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: Requiem, or AVP:R. (Gotta love those marketing guys!)

This new round is an R-Rated, all-out melee designed to thrill everyone who was disappointed in the studios previous offering, and while the film is far from a perfect, it’s a very big step in the right direction.

The action picks up the moment the first movie ends. As a Predator spacecraft leaves orbit, a new kind of alien erupts from the chest of a dead hunter. It is a hybrid, possessing traits of both creatures, and it immediately starts to attack Predators and damage their ship. Soon, the craft falls back through the atmosphere and smashes into wooded mountains outside a sleepy Colorado town. Their stasis tubes damaged in the crash, crab-like facehuggers quickly crawl from the wreckage and begin the process of creating a hive right here on earth. But this infestation will not go unchallenged. The ship’s distress signal reaches a far-off Predator outpost, and a special operative (an extraterrestrial Green Beret, if you will) is immediately dispatched to destroy these multiplying aliens and anyone that gets in the way.

AVP:R has a lot going for it. The directors, Colin Strause and Greg Strause, clearly love these extraterrestrials, and they go to great lengths to pay homage to their previous incarnations. They brought back Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., the creature effects gurus who have worked on every film in both series. This time around, the ALIENS appear just as they did in James Cameron’s classic 1986 film. They crawl across the walls and ceilings as they did in ALIEN 3, and swim like the beasts of ALIEN RESSURECTION. While thePREDATOR goes back the look of the 1987 original, using an inventive mix of old and new weapons to battle the growing alien horde. The editing is fast-paced, but the brothers thankfully resist the urge to use hand-held shaky-cams prevalent in so many action films of recent years. (Yes, I’m looking at you Michael Bay!) Die-hard fans will even thrill to the musical score by Brian Tyler, which features cues from ALIEN and PREDATOR films of the past.

As the title combatants, Tom Woodruff Jr. and Ian Whyte give stellar performances while encased in latex and servo motors. These creatures do not have a single line of dialogue, yet their body language speaks volumes. Whenever there is drooling monster on the screen, the film is engrossing and thrilling to behold. When the humans take center stage, however, the movie suffers. Shane Salerno’s screenplay subjects us to a parade of movie stereotypes. There is the brother (Steven Pasquale), just out of prison and looking to do right; the young kid (Johnny Lewis) in love with the popular girl, bullied by a group of sadistic jocks; and there’s an army officer (Reiko Aylesworth) home from war that exists only because the filmmakers needed somebody who could fly a helicopter during the climax. While the actors who show their faces do a workman-like job with the stock roles they are assigned, they can do nothing to elevate the laughable dialogue they are forced to deliver. At one point, a girl who just watched her father get eaten is seen crying. “Is she gonna be okay?” someone asks. The girl’s mother replies, “She’s had a bad night.” And the audience shook its collective head and giggled when it should have wept. If Mr. Salerno had written a basically silent film, where Predators and ALIENS do battle while humans to nothing more than scream and run away, this might have been a four or five star film.

The original PREDATOR and James Cameron’s ALIENS are classics of modern cinema. AVP:R is not. But then, it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s meant to be a fun, gory rollercoaster, and that’s exactly what it is. Blood, cool gadgets and weapons, and inventive set pieces all rush by at warp speed, and when it came to a stop, I wanted to get right back in line. Merry Christmas, Brothers Strause! Merry Christmas, Amalgamated Dynamics! Merry Christmas, Fox, you old studio! Sorry I didn’t get you anything. Oh, wait…I bought a ticket.

You should too.

3.5 out of 5 stars.