Before I start I'll say that this is definitley new...
Total Film have a short preview in this months mag plus a big fold-out poster. One side is an
AVPR poster (which we've seen before) and on the other side is the Japanese poster (with the PredAlien/Predator), a Spanish
Alien poster and a German
AVP poster. There also a real small concept painting of Wolf facing off against another design for the PredAlien.
ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM The mad-bastard ET's have smackdown on Earth.
Buzz in Canada to witness the carnage and Paul WS Anderson is nowhere to be seen. Bloody brillaint...
Buzz is standing right in front of a Predator. He's huge. He's armed. He's waring combat gear. He's eating lunch with a fork. What's more, he's a Welshman called Ian. But as your fearless writer scrolls around the Vancouver set od creature-feature sequel
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, no-one pays attention to 7ft 1in Ian Whyte - the Predator himself. The focus is on Greg and Colin Strause. Making their directing deput, the brothers have carved a massive rep in visual-effects whizzes on everthing from
Titanic and
T3 to
Babel and
Syrania. You'd think this means AVP2 is gauranteed to be a CG orgy. They say you're wrong. "I can't really stress grit and horror enough," Greg Strause says, marshilling his crew while rubbing his hands in the chill. "You're not going to see 50 digital creatures running around - an awful lot is real. The studio knew that, although the last movie made a lot of money, it didn't resonate with fans. This is going to be different. We're hoping for the most voilent Alien or Predator film yet."
From the footage we've seen, Strause wasn't kidding. Dissolving faces. Burst heads. Impaled bodies. The Predator has been slimed down into a more agile hunter seen in the first two Predator films, and now comes armed with a new razor whip. "We have a few suprises up our sleeves," smiles Strause. The big suprise, of course, isn't one at all. Set up by Paul WS Anderson right at the death of
AVP, the 'PredAlien' is a deadly new hybrid of both species. In fact, it's the PredAlien who sets the movie in motion, slaughtering Predators and crashing their ship on Earth. As the Aliens onboard esacpe and infect a small town, a lone Predator is sent in. "We call him the Wolf because he's basically Harvey Keitel from
Pulp Fiction." says Strause. "If anybody gets in his way, he'll just cut'em in half."
Before
Buzz can grill Strause further, it's time to roll cameras. "The scene we're doing right now is Reiko Aylseworth running through the rain trying to find refuge from the Aliens." whispers Stause. On comes the rain machine, and dashing througha swathe of frezzing water comes Aylesworth, a tough-girl verteren of
ER and
CSI and our stand-in Sigourney Weaver. So, has she bagged many Aliens yet? "I think my count so far is about three," she nods, huddling up with
Buzz next to one of the set's heaters. "But I plan on killing as many as I can. No Predators so far, but we'll see how that goes..."
'MORALLY QUESTIONABLE VIOLENCE' So brothers Strause, what did you take from the back catalouge for Requiem?
Alien Greg They weren't billionares or evil goverment people; they were just normal blue-coller guys you could relate to. Even though it was in outer space.
Colin We wanted to make sure all our character where real. That helps find the hero. You put someone in a really extreme situation - do they crumble and die, or do they rise to the occasion?
Aliens Greg We saw
Aliens for the first time on pay-per-view when we were kids. Our parents were out, so every time we got scared or we could hear them walking back, we changed the channel. What we didn't know was that everytime you did that. it re-charged you for the movie, so we did it 10 times and it was awful. We were in so much trouble.
Alien3 Greg The music in
Alien3 was fantastic: music is a really big thing for us. From a stylistic standpoint it's beautifully shot. It looks and sounds great.
Alien Resurrection Greg Hmm, interesting... that never really came up... Er.
Colin We have a swimming Alien! I loved the underwater stuff.
Greg It's interesting that the deeper we dug into the fans' internet community the more fractured it was. Theres people rooting for the Aliens. That never happened in Ridley's movie.
Predator Greg This was the performance of the Predator that we drew from. He was athletic, slender and very tribal in the way he moved - mannerisms were ritualistic. Those were the things we missed in
AVP.
Colin We went back to the classic look of the Predator vision. You get muffled sounds, the heartbeat...
Predator 2 Colin P2's vision of the future didn't stand up to time well.
Greg Introducing new weapons and new vision modes, that was the one thing they did well. Also the secret team that was tracking him - we have some elements of that type of storyline in our movie.
Alien vs. Predator Greg We've brought back the original Predator.
Colin Our movie picks up from the PredAlien bursting from the chest of the Predator.
Greg It'll definitley be an eye-opener. It has it's own style, it's ballsy, we didn't pull anf punches. For fans there'll be expanded mythologies, new worlds and some questionable violence.
