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“I Like It” – James Cameron On Alien: Earth & More

In the latest issue of Empire Magazine, James Cameron while doing the promotional rounds for the next Avatar instalment also answered a few questions regarding the Alien franchise. When asked about his thoughts on the new FX show, Alien: Earth, he had this to say:

I like it. I think they took a lot of the DNA from my movie, Ridley’s movie. And a couple of things from some of the later movies – they’ve got a little bit of that crazy POV thing racing down corridors from Fincher’s film. I think it’s good. It’s great creative recombinance in action, but with its own swerve, which is basically what I did. You gotta celebrate the new with the old.

One of the other questions was regarding how the iconic Pulse Rifle sound came to be. First, Cameron gave some context about his time during the making of the film:

I was dissatisfied with my sound-effects team on Aliens. They were sort of phoning it in. So I called over a couple of my friends from LA that had done sound effects with me on The Terminator. We cleared all the furniture out of my living room in this little house that I was renting near Pinewood Studios and we put in synthesizers. I blew over the top of a beer bottle to get that weird, eerie that’s in the colony when they show up and it’s all empty. And I stuck the microphone way down my throat and went (Alien hiss) for the Alien Queen – I can’t do it as well now as I used to be able to!

 "I Like It" - James Cameron On Alien: Earth & More

Later, Cameron explains how the mentioned gun sound was produced:

Bob Garrett, one of my friends that had come over to do the sound with me, took a recording of a rifle – I think it was probably a Thompson machine gun, which had a very kind of guttural kind of attack and decay and a slower cyclic rate of fire – and then processed it, added a little flanging a put a little secret sauce on the waveform, and then that became the pulse rifle.

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  1. RIP77
    Nolan loves Fast and Furious and said Gladiator II was the best film of the year.

    Paul Thomas Anderson loves the Transformers movies.

    Directors are also spectators who can enjoy sagas or questionable films ( not for me, Earth is fantastic ).

    Fans  can be more hardcore and cynical than directors.

    So it's not surprising that Cameron likes Alien Earth.
    Cameron isn't saying it to look good, especially since it's an 100%  FX product, not Fox/Disney.

    -Fans hate the prologue of Dark Fate and the death of a character.
    Cameron came up with the idea because it was his project, as he said he was in charge.

    Miller said he would never work with Cameron again because he wasn't allowed to be the director, but rather his puppet.
  2. reecebomb
    Episode 2, I think that was less than a second. But ep5 did show it quite a bit during that hilariously dumb chase scene - totally forgot about that. Still, I reckon Cameron hasn't actually watched the season.

    If he did, and still liked it, it wouldn't be the first time where I completely disagree with him.
  3. skhellter
    pov thing is in the show proper a few times.
    Ending of Ep 2 as Wendy and Hermit find the eggs and activate the blue mist.

    Then in Ep 5. as it chases the Maginot's acting captain.

    probably more, but these are the ones that come to mind.
  4. reecebomb
    Pretty sure Cameron never actually watched the series, let alone the whole season. The pov thing was in the first teaser that never ended up in the actual series.
  5. Local Trouble
    Quote from: Local Trouble on Jan 01, 2015, 01:48:20 AMT3 and Salvation never should have happened.

    A proper T3 should have begun with a prologue showing us Cyberdyne execs expressing relief that they had off-site backups and disaster recovery servers at a data center in Houston.  Then we'd see Sarah Connor watching C-SPAN in horror as the Skynet Funding Bill passed right on schedule.

    Judgment Day still occurred on August 29, 1997.  Not despite Sarah's actions, but because of them.

    That's my head canon and I'm sticking with it.
  6. SM
    Quote from: Valaquen on Dec 03, 2025, 11:39:22 AM
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 06:23:20 AMThe events of T2 ensure T1 can never happen

    We're getting way off track here but I wanted to add my two pence, which is that T2 ends on an ambiguous note, very deliberately, and Cameron removed the ending where the future was shown to have changed. It retains its 'hope for the future' theme while also making you wonder if anything will still come to pass.

    I always wanted a third movie to loop back, show the future war, Skynet's defense grid being smashed up, the time travel, old Sarah Connnor, looping back to T1. But the time passed.

    Dark Fate made me ill, lol  :laugh:

    Yes T2 does end on an ambiguous note versus the alternate 'old Sarah' ending.  But even the ambiguous note still has 'the unknown future' because they've destroyed the chip that brings about Skynet's creation.

    I think everyone just wanted robot terminators stepping on skulls for the sequels.
  7. skhellter
    Same. If it's useless to destroy whatever AI the military industrial complex creates, then changing it with Carl's gained knowledge about humanity, would've been a good move.
    Maybe it would involve freeing Legion on the internet, so it could always serve as a counterbalance against any mil-industrial AI that surfaces.

    Maybe it would act a bit like the Puppet Master in ghost in the Shell (and James loves that movie).
  8. Nightmare Asylum
    Quote from: skhellter on Dec 03, 2025, 11:52:25 AMI liked Dark Fate a fair bit.
    the big problem with Dark Fate isn't that it sets up its own time loop with a new villain (due to skynet being terminated), etc.. 

    It's that it's trying to set up a whole trilogy. It should've just been self contained.

    Best idea in Dark Fate is that humanity is drawn like a moth to a flame to AI, and that the AI related judgement day feels inevitable due to that attraction. Sarah Connor can take down cyberdine, Skynet etc.. but the attraction will always remain and the military industrial complex will adapt.

    So keeping that story self contained should've shown them dealing with Legion directly, in a very different way than how they handled Cyberdine/Skynet.

    I still have a gut feeling that Carl's "redemption" was a sort of thesis statement for what the trilogy was going to be about, and that it would have ended this time with some sort of alliance/peaceful resolution being reached between humanity and Legion, in contrast to John and Sarah's utter destruction of Skynet.

    I'd love for the treatments for the Dark Fate sequels to leak. I'm very curious about what was in those.

    Given the current climate around "AI" in the real world, I don't expect quite that from whatever Jimbo is cooking up this time around. Guess we'll find out, if/when it happens.
  9. skhellter
    I liked Dark Fate a fair bit.
    the big problem with Dark Fate isn't that it sets up its own time loop with a new villain (due to skynet being terminated), etc.. 

    It's that it's trying to set up a whole trilogy. It should've just been self contained.

    Best idea in Dark Fate is that humanity is drawn like a moth to a flame to AI, and that the AI related judgement day feels inevitable due to that attraction. Sarah Connor can take down cyberdine, Skynet etc.. but the attraction will always remain and the military industrial complex will adapt.

    So keeping that story self contained should've shown them dealing with Legion directly, in a very different way than how they handled Cyberdine/Skynet.
  10. Valaquen
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 06:23:20 AMThe events of T2 ensure T1 can never happen

    We're getting way off track here but I wanted to add my two pence, which is that T2 ends on an ambiguous note, very deliberately, and Cameron removed the ending where the future was shown to have changed. It retains its 'hope for the future' theme while also making you wonder if anything will still come to pass.

    I always wanted a third movie to loop back, show the future war, Skynet's defense grid being smashed up, the time travel, old Sarah Connnor, looping back to T1. But the time passed.

    Dark Fate made me ill, lol  :laugh:
  11. Acid_Reign161
    It's a temporal paradox; Skynet can't be created unless the T-800 is first sent back; the T-800 can't be sent back unless Skynet is created to send it back. T2 sets the main characters on an alternate path; the future which originally caused them all to be where they are no longer exists by the end of the movie, at least from their perspective, setting history on a new path/timeline (no fate); but it still had to have happened for Kyle to be send back to conceive John (so we are now in a new parallel timeline forged by the main characters decisions).

    The 'Terminator Zero' animated series on Netflix addresses multiple timelines.
  12. Oasis Nadrama
    Yeah, a perfect loop even: the photography being taken in the final scene, the same photography that comes back "later", earlier in the movie, in the Kyle Reese flashbacks, assures us that it is a stable loop. Time travel in The Terminator does not change history, it was always part of it.
  13. Xenotaris
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 06:23:20 AM
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 04:10:12 AM
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 03:40:57 AMIt's more Back to the Future than 12 Monkeys.
    Yes, I understand the malleable future aspect of Terminator. But you don't understand one thing, I wanted the good ending where John and Sarah had successfully wiped out all terminators so T2 could be the definitive ending. I wasn't having trouble of understanding the concepts of time travel.

    Also I dislike how time travel works in 12 monkeys were everything is fated.


    Maybe I should have left it at that and moved on

    Perhaps.

    The events of T2 ensure T1 can never happen so the "lore" changed in the very first sequel. So maybe you were misunderstanding time travel?  And also misunderstanding when movies become franchises.
    Maybe.
     I mean T2 was roughly made by the same people that did T1, I just thought that was what was intended to happened. Also I hate when time travel stories become endless loops.
  14. SM
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 04:10:12 AM
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 03:40:57 AMIt's more Back to the Future than 12 Monkeys.
    Yes, I understand the malleable future aspect of Terminator. But you don't understand one thing, I wanted the good ending where John and Sarah had successfully wiped out all terminators so T2 could be the definitive ending. I wasn't having trouble of understanding the concepts of time travel.

    Also I dislike how time travel works in 12 monkeys were everything is fated.


    Maybe I should have left it at that and moved on

    Perhaps.

    The events of T2 ensure T1 can never happen so the "lore" changed in the very first sequel. So maybe you were misunderstanding time travel?  And also misunderstanding when movies become franchises.
  15. Xenotaris
    Quote from: solace97 on Dec 03, 2025, 05:30:24 AMI almost think it's like alternate universes and timelines playing out. Like the events of T1 and T2 stop there, but then also they don't on another timeline.

    Idk it's too whack for me to follow now. I'm not invested in terminator like this franchise so it ends after T2 for me even though I do like the one with Christian bale despite the hate.

    Guess this all counts as head cannon tho so don't take my perspective.
    I'll go with this take
  16. solace97
    I almost think it's like alternate universes and timelines playing out. Like the events of T1 and T2 stop there, but then also they don't on another timeline.

    Idk it's too whack for me to follow now. I'm not invested in terminator like this franchise so it ends after T2 for me even though I do like the one with Christian bale despite the hate.

    Guess this all counts as head cannon tho so don't take my perspective.
  17. Xenotaris
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 03:40:57 AMIt's more Back to the Future than 12 Monkeys.
    Yes, I understand the malleable future aspect of Terminator. But you don't understand one thing, I wanted the good ending where John and Sarah had successfully wiped out all terminators so T2 could be the definitive ending. I wasn't having trouble of understanding the concepts of time travel.

    Also I dislike how time travel works in 12 monkeys were everything is fated.


    Maybe I should have left it at that and moved on
  18. Xenotaris
    Quote from: Spo0ky on Dec 03, 2025, 03:13:39 AM
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 03:09:55 AM
    Quote from: SM on Dec 03, 2025, 03:03:50 AMAny "lore" in Terminator is immediately out the window because time travel constantly allows you to change everything.  It's written into the text with 'no fate but what we make'.
    So I should give up on this one?

    Since you don't seem to "get" causality as it pertains to travelling backwards through time, probably, yes.
    I understand time travel perfectly, please do not be so condescending. The problem I was having was my interpretation of what I understood was the canon/lore to Terminator.
  19. SM
    Any "lore" in Terminator is immediately out the window because time travel constantly allows you to change everything.  It's written into the text with 'no fate but what we make'.
  20. Xenotaris
    Quote from: Acid_Reign161 on Dec 03, 2025, 01:56:44 AM@Xenotaris

    Basically, a T-800 CSM-101 is sent back to 1984 to target Sarah, as well as a T-1000 prototype sent to 1995 to target John. Now future war John knows how these events play out, so Kyle is sent through the displacement field to 1984, believing it will be destroyed once he is through... a reprogrammed T-800 CSM-101 is then sent after him to 1995 to protect young John. The machine was then destroyed.

    There is another possibility however that John and the resistance may not be aware of; Skynet may be well aware that it's terminator will be defeated, and may not expect to succeed; it may be sending them to ensure its own creation, knowing full well that Sarah will crush the T-800 in the press and its cpu will be used by cyberdyne as a model for its skynet program, with the superior t-1000 sent back to target John as the actual mission. If the T-800 isn't defeated in 1984, skynet will never exist (in its respective timeline).
    But how would Skynet predict that Sarah Conner was capable of destroying a T-800? Is Skynet psychic?


    Wasn't the whole goal in the first movie was to kill off Sarah Conner? Unless the future war seen at the beginning of T1 isn't the "original" timeline.


    I think I'm overdue for a Terminator marathon
  21. Acid_Reign161
    @Xenotaris

    Basically, a T-800 CSM-101 is sent back to 1984 to target Sarah, as well as a T-1000 prototype sent to 1995 to target John. Now future war John knows how these events play out, so Kyle is sent through the displacement field to 1984, believing it will be destroyed once he is through... a reprogrammed T-800 CSM-101 is then sent after him to 1995 to protect young John. The machine was then destroyed.

    There is another possibility however that John and the resistance may not be aware of; Skynet may be well aware that it's terminator will be defeated, and may not expect to succeed; it may be sending them to ensure its own creation, knowing full well that Sarah will crush the T-800 in the press and its cpu will be used by cyberdyne as a model for its skynet program, with the superior t-1000 sent back to target John as the actual mission. If the T-800 isn't defeated in 1984, skynet will never exist (in its respective timeline).
  22. Nightmare Asylum
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:42:44 AMAh, I was confused about that part but still weren't the sending back of the terminators a last ditch effort on Skynet's part? The first movie's terminator was from what I think was the original Timeline and so the Second movie was from the revised timeline created after the T-800 failed.

    The second movie isn't from a "revised timeline." It's the same exact future from T1, with the T-1000 having been sent on the very same night that the T-800 was; T2 just expands things from the first film, retconning it to say that Skynet dumped both the T-800 and the T-1000 back in time that night, and the Resistance dumped Kyle and the T-800 in response.

    And then DF came along and said that actually Skynet dumped a few more T-800s into other points in the past in addition to those on the very same night.

    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:42:44 AMI thought the T-1000 was to completely replace the T-800s, so why would Skynet send back several obsolete models in the first revived timeline?

    They only sent the one T-1000 because it was a prototype. The T-800s were the next best thing they had.

    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:42:44 AMAlso Judgement day can't be prevented if there are any Terminators left in the current present timeline.

    There are no Skynet Terminators left by the end of Dark Fate. Even while Carl was around, though, he was irrelevant. He was outdated tech from a dead future that couldn't hold a candle to the tech that's leading to the Legion future.
  23. Xenotaris
    Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 03, 2025, 01:36:22 AM
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:31:34 AM
    Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 03, 2025, 01:29:02 AMJohn successfully prevented Skynet/Judgement Day in T2. None of that is invalidated. The straggling T-800s in Dark Fate (including Carl) are remnants of that aborted future that will never come into being because John successfully prevented its existence. His death doesn't change or undo that.
    If it was prevented then how come that future is still sending back T-800s? Wouldn't it make more sense that Skynet could not send any more terminators back because it got completely erased? Like the cut ending for T2

    It isn't "still" sending them. They were sent at the same time that the T-800 in The Terminator and the T-1000 in Judgement Day were sent, they were just dropped into different points in the past. They're arriving from a future that has been completely snuffed out.

    The only real retconning happening in Dark Fate is them saying that a handful of Terminators were sent back on that night, but T2 already retconned that in a similar fashion anyway (according to T1, it was just the T-800 and Kyle. T2 expanded that to say that the T-1000 and the reprogrammed T-800 were also sent back at the same time. DF then came along and said that actually a few more T-800s were dumped into the time machine that night as well).

    Nothing else can come from the Skynet timeline in Dark Fate because the Skynet timeline has been erased (as of the ending of T2), and the totally unrelated Legion timeline looms ahead of everyone in it now.
    Ah, I was confused about that part but still weren't the sending back of the terminators a last ditch effort on Skynet's part? The first movie's terminator was from what I think was the original Timeline and so the Second movie was from the revised timeline created after the T-800 failed.


    I thought the T-1000 was to completely replace the T-800s, so why would Skynet send back several obsolete models in the first revived timeline?


    I feel like I need to make a timeline chart


    Also Judgement day can't be prevented if there are any Terminators left in the current present timeline.
  24. Nightmare Asylum
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:31:34 AM
    Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 03, 2025, 01:29:02 AMJohn successfully prevented Skynet/Judgement Day in T2. None of that is invalidated. The straggling T-800s in Dark Fate (including Carl) are remnants of that aborted future that will never come into being because John successfully prevented its existence. His death doesn't change or undo that.
    If it was prevented then how come that future is still sending back T-800s? Wouldn't it make more sense that Skynet could not send any more terminators back because it got completely erased? Like the cut ending for T2

    It isn't "still" sending them. They were sent at the same time that the T-800 in The Terminator and the T-1000 in Judgement Day were sent, they were just dropped into different points in the past. They're arriving from a future that has been completely snuffed out.

    The only real retconning happening in Dark Fate is them saying that a handful of Terminators were sent back on that night, but T2 already retconned that in a similar fashion anyway (according to T1, it was just the T-800 and Kyle. T2 expanded that to say that the T-1000 and the reprogrammed T-800 were also sent back at the same time. DF then came along and said that actually a few more T-800s were dumped into the time machine that night as well).

    Nothing else can come from the Skynet timeline in Dark Fate because the Skynet timeline has been erased (as of the ending of T2), and the totally unrelated Legion timeline looms ahead of everyone in it now.
  25. Xenotaris
    Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 03, 2025, 01:29:02 AMJohn successfully prevented Skynet/Judgement Day in T2. None of that is invalidated. The straggling T-800s in Dark Fate (including Carl) are remnants of that aborted future that will never come into being because John successfully prevented its existence. His death doesn't change or undo that.
    If it was prevented then how come that future is still sending back T-800s? Wouldn't it make more sense that Skynet could not send any more terminators back because it got completely erased? Like the cut ending for T2!


    Logically there should have been only two Terminator movies, the first two because the bad future should have been completely erased, no new T-800s, no new evil robots, John Conner lives end of story. (no exceptions)
  26. Nightmare Asylum
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:15:41 AMWell I think having John Conner, the chosen one, F'n die is a huge violation to the original lore. Also the fact that any remnants of Skynet's technology remains in the past ensure Skynet's future.


    I'm a lore heavy guy, yall should know me by now. I'm fine with the occasional retcon as long as it makes sense to me.


    I know the current good guy T-800 in DF is blowing up the rogue T-800s but still... its the principal of the thing. The real reason why they wanted John out of the way is so they can have a female Chosen One.


    I'm all for a female chosen one if she was John Conner's daughter.

    John successfully prevented Skynet/Judgement Day in T2. None of that is invalidated. The straggling T-800s in Dark Fate (including Carl) are remnants of that aborted future that will never come into being because John successfully prevented its existence. His death doesn't change or undo that.

    Legion's existence in Dark Fate, and the new future that that film presents, is wholly independent of anything to do with John or Skynet.

    Also, by the end of Dark Fate, Carl (the last remnant of Skynet) is completely out of the picture.

    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:15:41 AMI also think James Cameron gave up on the Terminator series

    He has notes for a new sequel (completely unrelated to Dark Fate or any of the other post-T2 films, I'd imagine) that he seems to intend  to want to start writing in earnest once the Fire and Ash promotion winds down:

    QuoteLast year, James Cameron mentioned that he was working on something in the Terminator franchise but that it was "totally classified."

    "I don't want to have to send out a potentially dangerous robotic agent if you were to talk about it, even retroactively," he joked. Well, this week, io9 spoke to Cameron for his new film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and asked if he could provide any updates. Which he did.

    "I'll have some time to write and to consider my next projects and the order in which I do them and so on once we're done with the marketing on this in a month or so," Cameron said. "I've got a stack of notes this thick [holds fingers about three inches apart], which is how I start all my scripts, on what I want to do with a new Terminator film. I'm going to pour myself into that as a writer."

    "It's difficult. I have to tell you," he continued. "Science fiction has caught up and is actually overwhelming us at this point. We're living in a science fiction world, and we're literally having to deal with problems that in the past only existed in science fiction books and movies. Now we're living it for real. I'll never be as prescient as I was back in 1984 of imagining this one because I don't think anybody knows what's going to be happening a year or two years from now. But I at least want to future-proof myself by being a couple years out."

    https://gizmodo.com/james-cameron-new-terminator-film-reality-2000694235
  27. Xenotaris
    Well I think having John Conner, the chosen one, F'n die is a huge violation to the original lore. Also the fact that any remnants of Skynet's technology remains in the past ensure Skynet's future.

    I know the current good guy T-800 in DF is blowing up the rogue T-800s but still... its the principal of the thing. The real reason why they wanted John out of the way is so they can have a female Chosen One. I'm all for a female chosen one if she was John Conner's daughter. I also think James Cameron gave up on the Terminator series

    I'm a lore heavy guy, yall should know me by now. I'm fine with the occasional retcon as long as it makes sense to me.
  28. Nightmare Asylum
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 01:06:27 AMBuddy I changed my response

    Sorry, I was already typing my response and didn't see your revised post before my own post went through.

    That being said, I'm not sure what lore is being screwed up here unless you count the lore from RotM, Salvation, and Genisys, which this film does cast aside. Nothing from the first two films is screwed up, it's just being used as a foundation to build upon for a new story/trajectory (with help from the guy that made those first two films, at that).
  29. Nightmare Asylum
    Quote from: Xenotaris on Dec 03, 2025, 12:59:03 AM
    Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 03, 2025, 12:23:16 AMDark Farts is also (IMO, of course) the best/most watchable Terminator film post-T2, and by a pretty significant margin.

    What?! That shit complicates the Timeline!


    How? The timeline was already convoluted as all hell; I still can't even make out which, if any, movies Genisys considers to be canon. I think that one is doing some kind of multiverse thing? I honestly forget.

    Dark Fate is just a sequel to T2, and nothing except the first two films count. It's pretty straightforward in that regard.

    But anyway, the timeline/continuity isn't really where my mind was even going with any of this. I just happen to think that Dark Fate is a better movie than Rise of the Machines, Salvation, or Genisys. Miller's directing isn't really a patch on Jimbo's, but on the whole the movie is doing things that I find to be pretty interesting.
  30. THEXEN0PLAYS
    Still feels bizarre that we're in a world where Cameron enjoys the show. As I've said publicly before, the show is so well crafted...the production elements and on-screen dollars really show. As for the Foley and auditory SFX, I always love learning about the techniques used to create some of our iconic noises.
  31. Nightmare Asylum
    Dark Fate is an entirely different situation than something like Genisys or Alien: Earth. He was actually involved in the making of Dark Fate. He assembled the writer's room, helped crack the ill-fated trilogy's story, convinved Linda Hamiltion to return, hired Tim Miller to direct, extended his reach into the editing suite a bit when he and Miller had a bit of a falling out/butting of heads, etc.

    Dark Fate is also (IMO, of course) the best/most watchable Terminator film post-T2, and by a pretty significant margin.
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