Film / Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is the 2007 sequel to Alien vs. Predator, and was directed by the Brothers Strause in their first feature film.

Taking place immediately after the last movie, the Chestburster that emerged from Scar has now grown into an adult Predalien and causes the Predator ship to crash down by Gunnison, Colorado. Releasing a swarm of Facehuggers upon the town, the simple lives of the citizens are disrupted by the increasing spread of the Xenomorphs. Things don't get any easier when both a lone Predator and the National Guard are sent to contain the outbreak before it spreads to rest of the planet.

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Tropes in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem:

• Actionized Sequel: There's even more brutal fight scenes between the title characters.
• Aliens in Cardiff: The action takes place in the small town of Gunnison, Colorado. Partly justified in that the Predator ship crash landed near there instead of deliberately landing anywhere specific.
• All There in the Script: Although not much background is given on Dallas and his brother Ricky, the original script had Dallas describe himself as a "thief for fifteen years". Their father is away working on a rig, and sends money for the rent each month; their mother is out of the picture. There was also a scene that revealed that Dallas had been in jail for three years for something that Ricky had done, but Dallas took the blame because he didn't want his brother growing up a juvenile delinquent like himself.
• Anachronism Stew: The events of the film take place a short while after the original (which was released in 2004). Despite this, the U.S. National Guard troops in Gunnison wear ACU uniforms, which weren't issued until 2006.
• Anyone Can Die: Nobody is safe, there's a lot of innocent victims, the unrated version of AVP 2 can easily be described as a mix of hardcore gory horror and nonstop bloody action. With the exception of the four main characters, the entire town of Gunnison, Colorado (including several supporting characters, the Predalien and Wolf) are wiped out with a nuclear bomb. The ending also leaves the fate of the four survivors ambiguous.
• Artistic License – Geography: This film is set in Gunnison, Colorado. However, the terrain in the movie is a lot less mountainous than in the real Gunnison, Colorado. Additionally, when the National Guard is summoned from Colorado Springs, they arrive almost instantly. In real life, Colorado Springs is 3 hours away from Gunnison.
  • That is true, but a National Guard response to Gunnison would come from Grand Junction, not Colorado Springs, which saves an hour of driving. Note that the Sheriff calls the Guard in the late afternoon, and the ambush of the Guard happens just at dusk. In a Colorado summer, the sun does not set until roughly 9 PM, giving the Guard unit plenty of time to arrive. The lack of unit/base insignia isn't helping much here either. The later group of soldiers encountered traveled by helicopter, so technically, they should have arrived first.
• Asshole Victim: The Jerk Jock ends up getting his face melted by the Xenomorph acid, and his friends get mutilated by one.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The sewer system underneath Gunnison is big enough that people can walk around inside while standing up. It also becomes a hive for the xenomorphs before Wolf shows up and drives them out.
  • It must be pointed out that Gunnison has a population of just under 6300 people and is in the mountains, where such large excavation is not done due to unstable ground conditions. A sewer this large in a city this small in such a remote area is just impossible.
• Battle in the Rain: The climax of the movie sees Wolf duke it out with the Predalien atop the hospital whilst the human survivors attempt to escape via helicopter, all in the middle of the pouring rain.
• Big Bad: The Predalien takes center stage throughout the movie as the biggest and scariest alien around. It indirectly destroys the Predator ship, creates a Xenomorph army to invade the rest of Earth, and harvests a whole town. It forces the predators to send Wolf after it, as the only one who could take it down.
• Blind Obedience: "The government doesn't lie to people!"
• Bloodier and Gorier: The first film isn't exactly blood-free, but Requiem really cranks up the Gorn, even more so in the uncut version.
• Bullying the Dragon: Whenever the human characters try to mess with Wolf instead of just leaving him alone, it's definitely this. Ricky seems to catch the hint during the finale — he chooses to simply leave Wolf alone, and sure enough, the latter ignores him.
• Burger Fool: Ricky works as a pizza delivery boy. All the other characters go out of their way to tell him how humiliating this is.
• Call-Back: "Get to the chopper!"
• Canon Immigrant: The PredAlien goes from a enemy in the PC game to an official Xenomorph variation in the second movie.
• Captain Obvious: Darcy walks into a pitch black Diner looking for her friend after the power gas gone out. The first thing she calls out? "Carrie? The power's out!"
• Cleanup Crew: Throughout the film, Wolf kills as many witnesses as he does Xenomorphs, making it clear what his purpose is in the movie. He stops killing witnesses to focus on the aliens after the infestation begins to grow out of control.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Much like with its immediate canonical predecessor, the initial presence of even more humans, Yautjas, and Xenomorphs results in countless different deaths on all three sides of the central conflict especially since the former two sides are both armed and therefore dangerous towards one another again for this installment.
• Continuity Nod: The movie ends with the army handing over the Yautja weapon that they confiscated to Miss Yutani, presumably the one calling the shots after Weyland's demise.
• Curbstomp Battle: The National Guard are destroyed within minutes upon them fighting the Xenomorphs.
• Darker and Edgier: As noted under Bloodier and Gorier, the body count and visible violence is very much cranked up. The film also abandons one of the usual concepts of most Aliens versus Predator ventures (including the first movie): humans and Predators forced to team up to take out a bigger threat. Wolf is instead meant to be like a "force of nature" that's as much or more of a risk to the human characters as the Xenomorphs, and is an antagonist all the way through. He never even shows the grudging respect for human characters that has also been a trait of Predator films and the AvP properties (very much likely due to his role as a one-man Cleanup Crew). It's also implied that even the few survivors at the end might be "silenced" by the government. Overall, the tone is a lot more bleak than the other entries in the Predator franchise.
• Death of a Child: Gleefully applied by the filmmakers, as the Predalien and Xenomorphs kill kids and even eat babies. However, most of it actually happens offscreen, with only one child falling victim to a facehugger and dying on-screen; though the babies' deaths were onscreen, they were in their mother's womb at the time.
• Degraded Boss: The Xenomorph Drones seen throughout the film easily suffer from their absolute worst case of this trope yet mainly for the sake of the lone Yautja protagonist who goes by the name of "Wolf", but "Chet" the Predalien is easily the main boss enemy for him throughout the film's runtime.
• Developing Doomed Characters: This movie somehow does an even worse job than its predecessor.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Ricky has pined for Jesse for a long time. After she breaks up with her Jerk Jock boyfriend, she starts a romance with him. In the climax, she panics and gets killed by one of Wolf's blades being launched, bisecting her.
• Dramatic Thunder: The climactic battle in the hospital.
• Double Tap: Exaggerated. The Xenomorph who kills the Jerk Jock's friends is seen "stabbing" the dead body of the friend in the head over and over again, likely because it was feeding. It could be considered Tempting Fate/Karmic Death, since Wolf impales him exactly the same way while he is doing it.
• Downer Ending: By the end the of the film, every character except for Dallas, Kelly, Ricky and Molly are dead, the Xenomorph infestation has resulted in an entire town being nuked off the map with only the aforementioned four surviving (out of a town of over 5,000 people,) and the ultimate fates of said four aren't looking too good considering what the military just did, and also, Wolf's plasma weapon ends up in the hands of the US Government... who then hands it over to Weyland-Yutani.
• Due to the Dead: When he first arrives at the crashed Predator ship, Wolf places his hand on a dead predator's mask and lowers his head in sorrow.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: The homeless guy's dog in the sewers senses the presence of the Predalien and the other Xenomorphs in the tunnels and starts barking in their direction.
• Fate Worse than Death: It's implied that the mother impregnated (in the hospital) by the Predalien can feel the multiple bursters breaking into her womb and eating her child.
• From Bad to Worse: It starts off bad, with a small group of Xenomorphs establishing a nest in the sewers beneath Gunnison. Then they manage to escape into the town above and things go progressively downhill from there. Over the course of a single night, the town is plunged into darkness after the power station explodes, police dispatch stops responding as they are implied to be overrun and the national guard response units that were called are massacred the moment they arrive in town. By the time the military decides to nuke the area to stop the infestation, there are only a handful of survivors left.
• Genre Blind: "The government doesn't lie to people!". Anyone who has seen any Alien or Predator film ever can tell you just how horribly wrong that is.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Generally averted as all of the gorn is put on full display such as when we see "Chet" the Predalien impregnating a pregnant woman and when the "babies" eat their way out of her later on.
  • The one time the film plays it straight is when Ricky narrowly escapes from the school's pool room, diving out the window just as a Xenomorph kills one of the Jerk Jock's friends and causes a spray of blood to hit the window above.
• Hybrid Monster: The Predalien, though it's not truly a hybrid since Xenomorphs always take traits from their hosts.
• Immediate Sequel: Requiem takes place immediately after the events of the first film. It's implied that the Predalien mutated/grew to full size in a very short timeframe before attacking and killing the crew of the scout ship.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: The Predalien is completely indiscriminate in its victims, invading a maternity ward in the town's hospital and implanting pregnant women with its own Xenomorph embryos.
• Instant Sedation: Facehuggers seem to be able to knock someone out within six or seven seconds in this film. People have speculated that they use their tails to knock someone out, but that would require a precise chokehold (a blood choke specifically). The speed of the knock out suggests they sedate their host through some unknown means; the best examples being the two homeless men.
  • Recent sources such as the Weyland-Yutani Report confirm that the parasites use a cynose-based sedation as the method of subduing its victim.
  • This was discussed in dialogue in the original Aliens as Bishop dissected a facehugger, he mentions they secrete an anesthetic to keep their victims in a coma-like state.
• Introduced Species Calamity: As soon as the Predalien and its fellow xenomorphs land on Earth, they immediately begin killing and impregnating the local inhabitants and quickly take over.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Dale's idea is to leave town without guns. He calls out the plan to break into a gun store as stupid, but is ordered by Dallas to shut up. In all honesty, they could have just left town. The chances of the xenomorphs following them were slim, and even on the gridlocked roads, they could get pretty far before that Tactical Nuke came down.
• Just Following Orders: This is how the soldiers react when called out on destroying the town with a nuclear bomb.
• Large and in Charge: The Predalien towers over the human-spawned Xenomorphs given that its host was the already large Predator. The creators reveal that that the Predalien is a young Queen/Praetorian given her depositing Xenomorph embryos into any pregnant human that she can get her hands on who would ultimately have grown even larger than a human-spawned one.
• Leave No Witnesses: Wolf initially kills any human who sees him or the Xenomorphs, in an attempt to keep everything quiet. He ditches this approach when it's clear the infestation has spread too far, and there are far too many witnesses for him to handle.
• Market-Based Title: Requiem is known in some countries as Aliens VS Predator 2.
• Militaries Are Useless: The National Guard fares even worse than the Colonial Marines and end up totally wiped out as the army eventually opts to just nuking the whole town to stop the Xenomorphs from spreading.
• Monster Delay: Intensely averted in this film where the Yautjas, FaceHuggers, "Chet" the Predalien, the ChestBursters, and the adult Drones all appear on-screen for the first time during just the film's very first scene no less, but interestingly, though, the Ovomorphs never even appear on-screen at all during the events of this film.
• Monster Is a Mommy: The Predalien develops into a young Queen capable of orally implanting ChestBursters.
• The Mountains of Illinois: The shot of "Gunnison" clearly is not the same town in real-life. The mountains are far too small and the town is far too big.
• Neck Lift: Wolf does this simultaneously to two aliens who attempt to ambush him.
• Never Found the Body: To hide the existence of the Xenomorphs, Wolf uses a highly corrosive acid to dissolve any bodies he found, both Xenomorphs and humans alike.
• No OSHA Compliance: The power goes out in the town, and it seems that not a single building has emergency lighting. Even the hospital's emergency generator mostly just makes the fluorescent lights flicker.
• One Riot, One Ranger: The Xenomorphs are loose on a planet with billions of people that can potentially spawn just as many Xenomorphs...and only Wolf responds to deal with the problem.
  • It's possible the Predators were thinking it was unlikely they'd spread since humanity doesn't even have manned interplanetary travel yet.
  • Somewhat justified in the Unrated edition as the scenes are changed so that no information is given with the initial distress signal and it's not until Wolf arrives on Earth and watches a recording on one of the dead Predator's mask that he realises what's going on. The film may also suggest that Wolf was unaware that Chet could impregnate victims until late in the film so he may have assumed he was dealing with a finite number of Xenomorphs at first.
• Post-Climax Confrontation: This film shockingly features a rare outright aversion for the franchise that involves a team of National Guard troops coming and rescuing the last remaining human survivors just after the dropping of a lethal tactical nuclear strike against both Wolf and Chet.
• Puzzle Boss: Much like with the Post-Climax Confrontation trope that has already been mentioned directly above, this trope is also outright averted with both Wolf and Chet since a tactical nuclear strike is exactly what instantaneously kills the both of them off near the end of the film.
• Redshirt Army: The National Guard unit sent to Gunnison only gets about a minute of screentime before they're all killed during a Xenomorph ambush.
• Sex Signals Death: Double Subverted. Jesse strips down to almost nothing in the pool scene before making out with Ricky. While she doesn't die to the xenomorphs in the following attack scene, she is inadvertently bisected by Wolf a short while later at the hospital.
• Schrödinger's Canon: With the release of Prometheus (which has an Alternate Timeline that more closely ties into the original film, namely that there was no Charles Bishop Weyland in the 2004 AVP), the AVP series is relegated to Canon Discontinuity.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: After taking some damage to his plasma casters, Wolf takes the remaining one and reconfigures it into a handheld weapon similar to a shotgun. It can only fire one shot at a time, and cocking it activates a recharge sequence.
• Slasher Movie: Some fans complained that Requiem turned both franchises into mere Teen Slasher monsters, screaming blond and all.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: The Predators who were seen laying Scar's body down at the end of the first AVP are killed minutes into the sequel, when the Predalien bursts, grows to full-size and causes the scout ship to crash in Gunnison.
• Tagline: "This Christmas, there will be no peace on Earth."
• Television Geography: Virtually every shot of "Gunnison, Colorado" is wrong. (See The Mountainsof Illinois above.)
• Tongue Trauma: In their final confrontation together, Wolf rips out the Predalien's inner mouth.
• Too Dumb to Live: Several:
  • Buddy shoots an Xenomorph point blank range and gets acid on his arm, and instead of taking off his jacket, he just stands there letting the acid burn his arm off.
  • The homeless men who were staring into the bubbling water in the sewers, which is doubly glaring since their dog found pieces of a corpse down within the sewers.
• Took a Level in Badass: The predators are badass by default, but Wolf goes beyond what has been seen before. It could be justified in that he is on a mission of extermination, and not limiting himself to what is considered honorable for a hunt.
• Vasquez Always Dies: Averted. The Vasquez-like character in Requiem (a female war veteran who's just returned home) survives the film along with her daughter, and has several moments where she mows down Xenomorphs by herself.
• Villainous Rescue: An extended scene shows Kelly and her daughter trying to find refuge at a cemetery, where they find a crazed man wielding a revolver (the same man who ran from the power station.) When the daughter begins to whimper and cry, the man tells Kelly to shut her up, under threat of killing them. Seeing this from a distance, Wolf unintentionally saves them by shooting the man in the head and allowing both women to flee.
  • The scene shows Kelly reaching for the man's weapon and Wolf roves his laser sight over the weapon as a warning.
• Walking Armory: Wolf, especially after taking up the fallen Predators' weapons.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Several characters are practically just alien victims waiting to happen.
  • Buddy, his son, and a group of homeless people living in the sewers are all used to simply bolster the Xenomorph numbers.
  • The National Guard unit is killed off almost as quickly as they're introduced.
  • Two stoner characters are introduced in the gun store only to get killed by Wolf in the same scene.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Wolf kills several humans that get in his way throughout the course of the film, but his ultimate objective is to prevent the Xenomorph infestation from spreading beyond the town and eventually overwhelming the entire planet. Whether this is for any noble reason or simply because one of the Yautja's favored hunting grounds is under threat is never made clear.
  • Colonel Stevens doesn't even bother trying to evacuate anyone. Instead, he lies and tells the survivors to head to the center of town for a nonexistent airlift, possibly to lure as many Xenomorphs there as possible, and then drops a tactical nuke on their heads that wipes out everyone and everything in the area. Sure, this may seem like a dick move, but his overall intention is to ensure that the infestation is contained and that no aliens manage to survive the bombing. His attitude immediately before the nuke is dropped shows that he really isn't happy about what he's been forced to do.
• Whip Sword: Wolf's bladed whip can slice up an enemy by wrapping around it and pulling in. It's also made from a Xenomorph's tail.
• Who Forgot The Lights?: The most common complaints are that the movie is both Darker and Edgier and literally too dark, as it has too many badly lit night scenes (often under heavy rain, as well) that make it hard to see the extraterrestrial confrontation of the title.

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