84 - Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

    A Predator is dispatched to Earth to clean up an Alien that was left behind.  A small town becomes the battleground.

    I was remarkably bored when I watched this.  I mostly felt pretty indifferent.  Then I felt annoyed.

    We get some characters set up in the town.  This sequence reminded me of a similar setup used in 8-Legged Freaks.  Then we establish that some facegrabbers have managed to latch onto two people.  From those two Aliens, who go on to hide in the sewers, we gradually accumulate a few more Aliens.
    Then by around the halfway point, it turns into pretty solid action.  People around the town running into either the Aliens or the Predator, and dying.  Yawn.

    The things that bothered me more were the convenient changes made to the rules that governed how Aliens work.  It seems that it now only takes a few minutes from facehugger to chestburster.  This is a completely dumb idea.  I understand why they did it - the whole movie is supposed to take place over the course of a day or so.  Then there's an Alien (who is supposed to be some variation of a queen) who can somehow inject baby Aliens into a captive human, leading to that captive birthing them almost right away.
    Who did this makes sense to?

    There was another aspect of the story that bothered me more afterwards.  This movie takes place in the present day.  While that fits with the Predator movies, it doesn't make sense for the Alien franchise.  Most of what made the Alien movies work is that they were set in a unique vision of the future.