I recently saw AvP:R(ectum) again with my brother, and damn, is it a horrible film. Like, Plan 9 bad. We couldn't stop laughing, yet at the same time I was sad; sad for what had happened to these two iconic movie monsters. I shall now rant in a disorderly fashion about what I hated in this film.
First of all, the story. Well, not much I can say about it, as there wasn't really one. All I know for sure is that what little there was, was incredibly stupid and resulted in many an expression of merriment. Many things that seemed like they would be very important and interesting were just thrown in at random moments, without any hint earlier in the film that they were there. Seriously, why couldn't they have made the movie about the people in a standoff in the centre of town, or about the soldiers trying to retake it? That would have been infinitely better than the pizza-boy. Also, how, if trained soldiers with advanced equipment were taken out in about 2 minutes, did the populace with greatly inferior weapons manage to survive? As my brother pointed out, the entire thing seemed like it was written by a five year old, simply wanting to have a lot of "cool" things, whilst completely ignoring stuff such as coherent plot. I could write something better!
Now the editing. This was a real shit-fest. Scenes would suddenly end and you'd just appear in another one with entirely different characters. Every thing was very choppy and sporadic, going wildly from one locale to another without any transitions or logical flow. I can honestly say the story was worse in this than in Plan 9, as was the editing. Think about that for a bit. This movie had worse transitions and writing than what is often considered the worst film ever made. I shall now let that sink in.
Another thing that was terrible was the score; it was way too loud. In order for us to have the music at a bearable level, my brother and I had to turn the volume down so low that we could barely hear what the "characters" were saying. It was horribly done, and it just made us laugh some more at how bad this film was. The lighting was also way too dark, especially in the last third. We'd see something move, something else would fly through the air, and it would just leave us completely baffled at what just happened.
The characters weren't even at the level of one-dimensional. Seriously, there was nothing about them that distinguished them from each other, and there were way too many. The only one I could reliably tell apart was the sheriff, and that's because he was the only one that wasn't white! They spent way too much time developing too many characters, only to have most of them killed in a few minutes. Why not just develop a few, and have them last the entire movie?
Now for the creatures themselves; this was where they really screwed the pooch. My brother, who isn't a big fan of either series, was able to tell that they'd f**ked up big time. They gave us a severely incompetent Predator, fighting fodderized Aliens. This film was awful, terrible, and completely removed every element that made the other films in the series unique and compelling.
/rant
