Just had a listen, that was very interesting stuff! I too am always a fan of hearing from people who actually worked on the films. Any little nugget of new information is like gold, and it's especially cool to hear the reasoning behind how certain things turned out or about things we never got to see.
I actually really liked Liam's pitch for AVP3. At first when he said he'd imagined it taking place in Africa I thought "isn't that a little on-the-nose for a Predator film?", but when he actually explained it in more detail towards the end there I thought it was great! It could have given us a really great bridge between the world as it exists today and the corporate-driven future world of Alien. It sounded like it could have had some of that really great world building that we got in the first two Alien films if it was done right, and expanded the universe in a cool way. Alas, what could have been.....
I never actually had a problem with the overall premise for AVPR. I certainly had issues with how it was ultimately handled, but I don't think the fact that it wasn't set in the future and/or in space meant it was impossible to tell a good AVP tale. Honestly I preferred the setting here to that of the first AVP. Granted I think an AVP set in the future is still what we all want to see, but that sounds like a really cool idea for a third one, if it were once again to be set on Earth.
And it's funny to hear first-hand from someone who was there about the execs at Fox wanting the Predalien to cloak. I get their whole thing of wanting audience to see something they haven't seen before (they are; the Predalien!), but it still has to, y'know, make sense.
And that would have been crazy if they'd actually gotten Bill Paxton to play the chef. Funny for sure and kinda cool, but it definitely would have taken you right out of the movie like you say.
I kinda feel bad for the Strauses after listening to this, it sounds like they got hamstrung with a bunch of stuff they didn't really want to do and on top of all that they barely got to shoot any of the actual Alien or Predator scenes themselves. I can only imagine how disappointed I'd be if I'd gotten the chance to direct an AVP film and then had someone else do the majority of the actual AVP stuff. I guess that's part of why Guillermo del Toro never has a second unit.
Great works guys, this was a very cool listen indeed!