Lets toss some ideas around about you would do had you the chance to do reshoots, add or remove scenes or storylines to the film to improve it. I guess the most obvious would be improve the lighting, but what else?
For me I would still have it set on the town but I would give it a much more bleak setting. I'd have the town in the middle of a heavy downpour with the town beginning to flood. This would add to the enviornment being dangerous for the human stragglers when dealing with the Alien and Predator. Having the Xenos swimming through flooded streets like sharks and rising up behind people like in Aliens would had been a nice callback. Perhaps instead of the Predator in a hospital I would have it make its way through a flooded grocery store. The lights dim and flickering, aisles sprayed with blood, loose pipes spraying steam from the ceiling. Little things like that. As for the characters, the perspective from the average townie was a mistake for this sort of film. What I would do is have the characters be cops assisting the CIA in investigating the crashed Predator ship. This would give more to work with on making them believable survivors than just a couple hicks with guns. Expand on what was touched upon in Predator 2 of them being known by the government and them trying to halt the trail of murder wherever they appear. The cop would maybe find out about the Xenos with the CIA ignoring the threat and continuing to chase the Predator instead, leading to the two splitting up and being taken down by both sides one by one.
The movie would start with Buddy and Sam hunting witnessing the ship come down, but we don't know why. I would've made it three cleaners instead of one so that the fights scenes with the regular Aliens would've been more balanced. A lot more scenes of the Aliens taking over the town. I'd throw out all the main characters and have the story focus on the National Guard team. OWLF would have more of a role. I'd set the finale in the sewers, with the main Predator fighting the Predalien (that would be a surprise) to destroy the Queen. The town would still get nuked.
I do like your idea of the town flooding while all of this madness is going on.
I would start with Jigsaw from Saw, and a predator enter his game territory, and the tv starts playing and Jigsaw starts talking "mr. hunter, you are so noble in your point of view....*WHOOOBEESHSSSHHHSHSS* predator plasma destroys tv and runs through the wall and is gone, leaving Jigsaw stunned and in awwwww.
One week later in Vietnam, camera moves slowly to the left over a hot jungle and you see a cloaked predator running through the field, and BOOOOMMMM he walks over an old mine one leg missing and green blood everywhere, the predator is in pain and activates his nuke on his arm, but it doesnt work, he looks at it and sees paper rolling out of it, super black predators have sabotaged his arm nuke and switched it with a printer, the humans capture the dead predator and eventually find a virus to wipe out the small predators with predator aids, and the three super black predators are laughing on their planet and drinking wiskey to celebrate.
The end scene is when the guy is in his army jet with the plasma caster on his way to Yutani, and the camera looks in the cockpit and the two pilots are predators, one is flying and the other one is doing his nails, the army guy meoows like a cat and dies from a heart attack.
-Fin-
The first thing I'd change about AVP-R is that it would take place in space. Either on a colony on some planet somewhere or a space station. I understand that the directors were probably trying to nail the target audience by making the main characters in high-school but i would remove that element as well. I think the main story should focus around scientists instead. Perhaps their trying to understand what a hive is, unwittingly release aliens upon the colony/space station and it becomes a survival horror. I loved Wolf in AVP-r one of the most bad ass predators ever. But there should be multiple predators. Feels like more of an even fight when an alien kills a predator sometimes( team predator all the way though) I understand a lot of what is mentioned above might sound familiar but that's because this formula works. Hell turn Tim Lebbons "rage wars" into movies or a cartoon on Netflix because that was probably the most realistic AVP story yet. Just a thought!!
Quote from: Infected on Apr 21, 2017, 08:51:18 PM
I would start with Jigsaw from Saw, and a predator enter his game territory, and the tv starts playing and Jigsaw starts talking "mr. hunter, you are so noble in your point of view....*WHOOOBEESHSSSHHHSHSS* predator plasma destroys tv and runs through the wall and is gone, leaving Jigsaw stunned and in awwwww.
One week later in Vietnam, camera moves slowly to the left over a hot jungle and you see a cloaked predator running through the field, and BOOOOMMMM he walks over an old mine one leg missing and green blood everywhere, the predator is in pain and activates his nuke on his arm, but it doesnt work, he looks at it and sees paper rolling out of it, super black predators have sabotaged his arm nuke and switched it with a printer, the humans capture the dead predator and eventually find a virus to wipe out the small predators with predator aids, and the three super black predators are laughing on their planet and drinking wiskey to celebrate.
The end scene is when the guy is in his army jet with the plasma caster on his way to Yutani, and the camera looks in the cockpit and the two pilots are predators, one is flying and the other one is doing his nails, the army guy meoows like a cat and dies from a heart attack.
-Fin-
oh wow, there's not really any way to follow up on this. It's too good.
Pure f**king brilliance... :laugh:
man, everything is wrong in that movie, i would have to make a long-ass list, it is really complex, they have thrown some good ideas here already
Page 1 re-write. PredAlien slaughters the Predators on the ship and egg morphs them. A century or two later marines come across the ship drifting in deep space. Carnage ensues.
Quote from: SM on Apr 25, 2017, 07:22:36 AM
Page 1 re-write. PredAlien slaughters the Predators on the ship and egg morphs them. A century or two later marines come across the ship drifting in deep space. Carnage ensues.
Good idea, except for the marines 'finding the ship' part.
Quote from: blood. on Apr 24, 2017, 08:57:05 PM
Quote from: Infected on Apr 21, 2017, 08:51:18 PM
I would start with Jigsaw from Saw, and a predator enter his game territory, and the tv starts playing and Jigsaw starts talking "mr. hunter, you are so noble in your point of view....*WHOOOBEESHSSSHHHSHSS* predator plasma destroys tv and runs through the wall and is gone, leaving Jigsaw stunned and in awwwww.
One week later in Vietnam, camera moves slowly to the left over a hot jungle and you see a cloaked predator running through the field, and BOOOOMMMM he walks over an old mine one leg missing and green blood everywhere, the predator is in pain and activates his nuke on his arm, but it doesnt work, he looks at it and sees paper rolling out of it, super black predators have sabotaged his arm nuke and switched it with a printer, the humans capture the dead predator and eventually find a virus to wipe out the small predators with predator aids, and the three super black predators are laughing on their planet and drinking wiskey to celebrate.
The end scene is when the guy is in his army jet with the plasma caster on his way to Yutani, and the camera looks in the cockpit and the two pilots are predators, one is flying and the other one is doing his nails, the army guy meoows like a cat and dies from a heart attack.
-Fin-
oh wow, there's not really any way to follow up on this. It's too good.
Thanks man, appreciate that.
Better yet....not making avp requiem in the first place :laugh:
But if I did and it had to be a follow up from the first. I would have the predalien kill a few predators but they fought back in a more competent way, driving the predalien off for awhile, however, damage to the ships means it just floating there in space within earth's radar range. The surviving predator seal of areas to try and contain the Xenomorph, meanwhile the predalien frees the contained facehuggers, which scatter throughout the ship. After some time, the Predalien queen fully evolves and starts laying eggs.
Unable to risk further confrontations with their advanced weapons due to the ship's current status, they send a distress signal to Wolf. Meanwhile after a week or so, the government sends some humans to investigate and they discover the damaged ship....things progress from there.
Quote from: SM on Apr 25, 2017, 07:22:36 AM
Page 1 re-write. PredAlien slaughters the Predators on the ship and egg morphs them. A century or two later marines come across the ship drifting in deep space. Carnage ensues.
That I would have been able to get behind! Just steer the series back into the direction most of us wanted it to be in in the first place. If they do another AvP (and I still hope they do), I want it to be more in line with this vision of the film a lot of people have.
Step 1. Get it off Earth, especially a present day neighborhood
Step 2. You know that brightness bar you use to adjust your phone lighting? Do that ×10
Give the Strause bros credit...they originally pitched a space story
They did and fox said it would be too expensive or something like that. lame excuse if you ask me.
Davis wanted them on Earth. And using locations like Vancouver that already has a well established film industry would be cheaper that building a lot of sets.
Alien managed it just fine and that was a low budget film. I really don't get it, Fox gets tons of money yet are completely tight with it when comes to financing a movie. They could have done it in space very easily and if they wanted to save money so bad then simply eliminate unnecessary cgi like there was in the beginning where the entire environment was just greenscreen.
Also in practice, going for a cheaper path instead of quality or for reasons such doing what you pitched is really not the best thing to do (though I can understand caution) Cameron does go over budget a lot but because he does do what he envisions, the quality of his movies are much better and the box office draws more than make up the budget used.
At the end of day, as bad as an earth setting can be, a competent crew could still have made a good movie out of it so who knows if it being in space would have been better, though considering what we got, I would like to think it would be.
Alien wasn't low budget.
It wasn't high budget.. Alien is or started as a B-movie. It just was so good that it ascended.
Either way, AVP-R had a much bigger budget 40 million, while Alien had 12 million.
Adjusted for nearly 30 years of inflation, that's only a few mill different.
Fair enough but then if its more even, they still could have done it in space. They could even have changed it so there is only one or two aliens to keep their budget in a space version. It would mean they would have to make the Alien more deadly to be a threat to Wolf. A one on one confrontation with a bit of a cat and mouse chase so to speak.
They could've done it space - if only they'd wanted to do it in space.
1. Set it in the near future, 2040-2055ish. This gives enough leeway with the audience to establish the beginning of Weyland-Yutani and mankind's attempts at interstellar travel but doesn't put it so far ahead that slightly updated versions of (then) current technology become dated.
2. FLESH OUT THE CHARACTERS. The only elements existing character-wise that rush to my mind are the brothers' dynamic (Dallas watches out for Ricky, even if it means jail time) and the Sheriff's "by-the-books" approach. Amplify that. Don't have Dallas just go "hey Ricky, let's get your keys," show him actively trying to keep his brother out of trouble by taking the heat. Kelly's alienation from her husband and daughter got maybe one scene to develop, and the timing was perfect to have this amplified by possibly having PTSD. She saw combat during the Iraq/Afghanistan era and this new threat is the one time she feels "at home" back in her town.
3. Contrast the lighting more. It being pitch black was the right choice for certain scenes but not for the whole thing.
4. Maybe it's just me, but I think the scenes where the Predalien tears through the Yautja ship and the ensuing "call" to the Wolf should have been shown in glimpses during the opening credits rather than given full screen-time. Think how Alien 3 immediately set the tone by relaying the events between listing the cast and crew.
5. Don't show so much of the Predalien, leave most of it as a mystery. The hospital impregnation scene does this wonderfully, but the rest of its scenes come across as gaudy and schlocky.
6. One of the reasons that the action scenes in Aliens (and, I'd say, most of Cameron's work overall) stand out so well is because of variety and pacing. If you're going for a more action-focused approach, then figure 3-5 key moments and how to make each stand out as unique. If an audience is given gratification at no cost then the prize is worthless, and if all the action is the same then none of it truly stands out.
7. Don't change that ending (after the helicopter crashes) one bit. I LOVE how AVP:R ends, giving us hints at how Weyland-Yutani become a conglomerate and focus on developing interstellar travel. Anything that gives Robert Joy more work is alright by me, as well.
8. In Aliens, the USCMC explain that the Pulse Rifle and Smart Guns fire explosive-tipped ammunition, and we see during the ventilation shaft chase that Vasquez's .45 rounds do very little damage to a Warrior. It never sat well with me that standard NATO 5.56 rounds would do the same damage.
9. Remember what made the original work. It was a b-movie concept given a-level care. Stop, think about each decision being made, and then wonder if it sounds like a Charles Band feature.
It's perfect. Wouldn't change a thing.
I'll start out by assuming that I have to keep the basic concept and setting - honestly, my first impulse would be "Trash the whole f**king mess and put it somewhere else" because aliens in modern, populated Earth is a bad idea and it's also deepl.y stupid to believe the Predators wouldn't check/find out that their dead comrade was impregnated.
But let's assume we're stuck in Colorado with these characters and this terrible setup... if that's the case, here we go:
1) More characterization for Kelly and Dallas. Let's see more of Dallas breaking rules to do the "right thing," and learn how that got him into jail. Let's see more of Kelly's isolation from home and her uncertainty. Maybe reference that Kelly was a helicopter pilot in the military FAR earlier as a way to set up the ending.
2) If Ricky must be in this thing even though he sucks, then at least remove Jesse. Give her death to Ricky, and turn it into a major emotional point for Dallas, who loses his brother after all his struggles to protect the idiot.
3) Also dump the bullies and just focus on Ricky as someone who's struggling to hold down a job and also doing some petty crime on the sides. He took the worst possible lessons from his brother, and now Dallas feels responsible for leading him into a criminal existence.
4) As long as we're dumping useless characters like Kelly and the bullies, we can increase the screen time for John Ortiz - an amazing actor who does so much with so little.
5) More lighting, more lighting, more LIGHTING.
6) In a perfect world, I'd like to call out the Predalien as a young Queen more clearly - that means showing her laying some eggs, for example, or maybe even growing a bit/shedding in one scene. Not sure how feasible that would be on the budget, but if we remove the throat-embryo implantation of the pregnant women and simply have eggs in an adjacent room before we see the women later burst in a traditional fashion... well, it sure seems like that would help.
7) Keep most of the extended stuff from the longer Blu-ray cut in the theatrical release.
The Strause made a pitch but it was strange, the first 45 minutes were human free.It really focused on alien and predator.
Take it into space or a really alien looking planet, similar to the one in AVP 2 the game, with a similar smart story and smart script/acting.
45 minutes of AvP non-human stalking and action sounds great actually
This too, is dealing with the nature of the setting in the present day and dealing with it as best you can because of John Davis' awful insistence. As long as the Predator was involved, it had no chance of being anywhere else.
- Have Kelly in the National Guard and have her not return to Gunnison until they're called in, as she witnessed the Predator ship falling from the sky with fellow members on leisure time in the mountains/forest. We never directly meet her family.
-Have Dallas in Sheriff Morales' custody when the events kick off. He has violated the terms of his parole. You never really know what he did. He is being transported to a facility. While on the open road, they both witnesss the Predator ship falling which in turn causes Morales to crash the car and begin a day plus trek back using the Forest as a short cut. Tense as Morales has to watch Dallas the entire time.
- OWLF through the funding of Yutani get a major focus early on when the Guard is called in and they are essentially directing throughout the movie. They are questioned harshly by Kelly and other members as to how they are in control and why they need to follow the directives of this agency. Mrs. Yutani had taken OWLF under their banner and guidance after witnessing the aftermath of what happened to Keyes' team in L.A. in 1997 after the U.S. Government were prepared to dissolve their program due to loss of all resources.
Rest of this self indulgent time waster is in the spoiler tags:
Spoiler
-You have a sizeable group of big game hunters in the area camping. They are chased by the few Facehuggers from the ship into the forest, trying to run back towards the direction of the road, others killed by the PredAlien, which has been revealed to have survived the crash. A few of their bodies are found hugged by Morales and Dallas on their way back, others skinned, except for one Hunter who ambushes them by surprise pleading for help to the Sheriff. They witness his Chestbursting and hear the distant roar of the PredAlien sending them in a panicked frenzy and now side by side.
-OWLF through clearance and lead from Col. Stevens are the first ones to investigate the Predator ship crash site. The Hunter's bodies all mysteriously missing from the area now. They arrive with a massive force and set up a restricted perimeter around the site with FBI Agents from the state.
- None of the stuff from Wolf's perspective before Earth. It's made clear the Preds on the ship sent out a distress signal to someone earlier. You can go all in on his viewpoint the same way when he arrives and investigates. The remnants of the ship have already been scoured through by the time he arrives. He has to Cloak and stealthily move around the site with OWLF all around at night. In addition to the Aliens, which he is already late to, this makes OWLF a priority target to retrieve the tech.
-No Aliens die by human hand. There are only 4, or 5 from the Facehuggers. Spread all about for destruction, but converging in the film. The PredAlien has to mature and molt and become the Egg-layer. No other reproductive method. Also makes the PredAlien extra brutal in preserving itself. This is the reason the infestation is never truly out of control and there's no questioning as to why an Earth invasion wasn't possible.
-You never see what the Aliens directly do in the nearby town, until a certain point. Dallas and Morales arrive back at the Sheriff's station which is in chaos with calls being made to it from all over. Nobody believes their outlandish story, but see they are extremely distressed. Dallas is put into a cell in the meantime. All of a sudden the power is cut out and The PredAlien and the Aliens arrive, destroying the deputies and dispatchers in the dark. One dude is killed right outside his cell, Dallas takes the keys and firearm from his body and we gets a glimpse of an Alien as he escapes through the bathroom. Morales manages to hide in a locker until the Aliens leave and escapes.
- Dallas and Morales get into a fight for control of the last squad car on the scene. They pull guns on each other until Wolf reveals himself in the Tree above, and Dallas opens fire. Dallas is blown away by the Plasma Caster, and Morales attempts to fight the Predator hand to hand at which point Wolf grabs him by the throat, then suddenly Morales is impaled by an Alien's tail leading to the first fight of the film as their battle goes up to the roof of the station.
-There are dozens of civilians cocooned, struggling, helpless,some having been there for nearly 2 days in a Hive being set up at the Power Plant. Other dead, skinned bodies from workers strewn throughout for the PredAlien to get sustenance and increase its growth rate.
- Wolf receives the Acid damage during the film in an encounter with the Xenomorphs at a Water Treatment Facility, which he, after killing 1 with the combo of the Whip and Laser traps, then sees the others retreating, and realizes it is connected underground to the Power Plant.
- The National Guard vs. Aliens on Main Street where they are overwhelmed. The promising scene from the movie way expanded. As characters are picked off, and Stevens/OWLF see the Aliens for the first time. Having been in pursuit of the Predator until now, he devises a new strategy to retrieve one of these new beasts. The remaining group panic and roll out.
- Kelly discovers her weakened Husband in the Hive after massive casualties. In an attempt to escape, she is stopped by Stevens and OWLF saying it's not an option. This, more or less seals everyone's fate.
-Stevens attempts to reason with Wolf to join him in working with his organization and retrieving specimens in order to "understand what they are." when the PredAlien bursts through and literally rips his spine out. Kelly and her husband and the wounded PredAlien are all that is left. Wolf takes his shot and cuts through the PredAlien with a special Shuriken. By this point, the main characters and everyone who bore witness are all slaughtered. He activates and leaves his Wrist Bomb, of the same scale as the one in the Antarctic Temple, at the site of the Power Plant, destroying the other Aliens just as they are approaching Kelly and Hubs, All evidence is gone. Everyone is gone.
- He lets his guard down as he returns to his cloaked Vessel in the lake, not knowing of the new PredAlien stowaway present, having attached at the bottom as it took off. This one is a normal darker colored variant, from one of the Predators that was seemingly hugged before the crash. There will have been enough Facehuggers in vials to account for this if one looks back at the beginning of the film in this case, and had burst on its lonesome and escaped into the forest, thus taking so long to grow. It doesn't reveal itself until he leaves Earth. It seemed to be going into the same type of hybernative state as the original on the Narcissus. This scout ship is bigger than it was in the film for this reason: There is a claustrophobic battle in Space near Saturn. They both become mortally wounded, when Wolf's ship crashes into Saturn after he sets the course for destruction ending the movie in the same locale where it began.
Brighten the film up a bit and maybe it might be a little better :laugh:
Base the plot around the AVP2 game. That was a good story. No crappy love story between a pizza boy and a hot blonde cheerleader. Also, make it so we can see what the hell is going on.