Okay, a little philosophy behind my most recent Predator novel:
Reasonable minds can disagree, and so a lot of what floats one person's boat in an A, P, or AvP story is going to sink somebody else's. Nature of the media. We don't all have to agree on every thing all the time, and if somebody doesn't agree with me, that isn't an automatic promotion to idiot of the week.
I believe that readers or watchers will forgive you a lot if you can tell a good story. If you care about the people in it, and you want to see them triumph in the end, they'll go with you. Ripley is by far and away my favorite character in all the series because the writers have taken the time to make her somebody you want to root for. In A2, every kid in the audience wanted Ripley to be his or her mom -- she fought monsters to save the little girl, and she knew just how scary those monsters were.
Without Ripley, all the A's, they're ijust a fireworks displays. Pretty, fun, maybe, but no heart. And Ellen didn't get served well after A and A2, in my mind.
And that's what some of the the movies have been lacking -- a serious shortage of characters about whom anybody gives a sour owl poot.
I don't always hit the mark, but I'm always aiming at characters I want readers to find interesting, and who they care about enough to worry if they are going to live or die. Doesn't matter how simple the plot or how convoluted, if you don't give a rat's ass about the players, you won't invest any real energy in them.
Oh, dear, look, the xenomorphs wiped out half the town and a whole a bunch of marines. Ho, hum.
Oh, look, Vasquez is going to set off that grenade and take a bunch of the suckers with her. I don't know which matters most to you, but I know which one matters to me. I liked Vasquez. That one line she replies to "Hey, Vasquez have you ever been mistaken for a man?" that is priceless: "No. Have you?"
I fell in love with that bad girl right that second. And I knew she was gonna die, and die well.
Yeah, EFX are nice to watch, and scary monsters get your blood racing, but if there's nobody to root for, so what?
With Turnabout, I went back to a simple story, and I put peole front and center who I found interesting. I liked Sloane. I thought Regal was a pretty good bad guy. Even Mary was somebody to worry about. The Predators went back to the original movie. If readers like my people, I did my job. If they wanted more yautja stuff, I can understand that, but it wasn't the story I got to offer this time.
Two things you look for as a writer: Did I tell the story I wanted to tell? And did I do it well? Sometimes you don't know the answer until it's too late to fix it, but that's what I shoot for. I'm happy with how Turnabout came out. I think it would make a great movie.
