Aliens vs. Predator Requiem Retrospective, A Chat with Liam O'Donnell - AvPGalaxy Podcast #60

Started by Corporal Hicks, Dec 15, 2017, 11:50:29 AM

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Aliens vs. Predator Requiem Retrospective, A Chat with Liam O'Donnell - AvPGalaxy Podcast #60 (Read 18,992 times)

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#15
Quote from: Huggs on Dec 16, 2017, 11:10:13 PMI agree. Guilty Pleasure is about the right way to put it. It was a bold departure from the first film, and gave me exactly what I wanted at the time. Predators and Aliens destroying each other in "R-rated" fashion with armed humans caught in the crossfire. I hope we get more AVP films in the future, hopefully one set in space. Perhaps now that Disney will be in charge, that dream may someday become a reality.

Yes the fact humans were actually hitting and exploding ALIENS with guns for the first time since ALIENS 1986. I cannot believe, even today, that of the eight (yes eight) ALIEN movies that only TWO movies have believeable sci-fi action elements of the power of high powered fire-arms. As Arnold/Dutch would say in PREDATOR "if it bleeds we can kill it", well ALIENS have acid blood so go figure where I stand..........
ALIEN- Resurrection, first AVP (2004) ALIEN-COVENANT all had humans with guns but none could hit a barn door and ended up posing instead. I think AVP (2004) would've been better recieved with a human vs ALIEN gunfight.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=alien.htm

Disney does indeed take higher risks with budgets, imagination and extended Universes. Disneyland almost had an ALIEN (yes Ridley Scott ALIEN) themepark ride as below.

The above is what put Ridley Scott off making ALIEN movies and was the inspiration behind his "you can't put him in a glass box on display, that makes him neutered.......the beast is cooked" quote.
I really hope Scott Free productions gets pissed off with Disney so they hand the reins to someone who gets on with making movies rather than taking 5 years at a time to put out lukewarm releases.


Also re- BEYOND SKYLINE there is/are phyiscal home release DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on January 8th 2018 (almost 10 years to the AVP-R anniversary).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr_n_0?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A283926%2Ck%3Abeyond+skyline&keywords=beyond+skyline&ie=UTF8&qid=1513505579&rnid=1642204031



Ratchetcomand

I was 16 in High School when AVPR came out. I can never forget how foolish I was when I first like the movie. Me being a teenager at the time, I had too much hype in my eyes to know how bad the movie was. It was not until when the movie came out on DVD in 2008 when I feel like the movie was really bad.

Strange to think that I was a member on this forums for a whole decade. Most forums that I have been on, I normally don't come back after many years.

Nostromo

Excellent interview and podcast again, 10/10, extremely funny, entertaining and interesting. Not sure who is worse now, Fox post 1987 or Disney.

Perfect-Organism

Quote from: Nostromo on Dec 18, 2017, 03:53:57 AM
Excellent interview and podcast again, 10/10, extremely funny, entertaining and interesting. Not sure who is worse now, Fox post 1987 or Disney.

Fox

Huggs

"I think AVP (2004) would've been better recieved with a human vs ALIEN gunfight."

Definitely. If Disney chooses to consider additional AVP films (which I believe is a possibility) I hope the human characters are given some capabilities. Gracious, we all saw what Vasquez did to that Alien's head with her 10mm (9mm technically) in Aliens 1986. It should be possible for people to fight back decently, and there's nothing I love more than a good "last stand" moment.

Frankly, that's why I wished they'd have gone the way of the first book. A large group of humans having to barricade themselves inside a complex and fight it out with both species. Still a thrilling read to this day. A film adaption of that novel would be exquisite. I'd love to see what revolver they'd choose for Machiko, the Ruger Alaskan is a good one (yeah I'm biased). 44 Mag, 454 Casull, or .480, that's some big boom-boom.

OpenMaw

Quote from: Huggs on Dec 19, 2017, 05:45:59 AM

Definitely. If Disney chooses to consider additional AVP films (which I believe is a possibility) I hope the human characters are given some capabilities. Gracious, we all saw what Vasquez did to that Alien's head with her 10mm (9mm technically) in Aliens 1986. It should be possible for people to fight back decently, and there's nothing I love more than a good "last stand" moment.




That final section of the comic, when they're basically just in a mad dash scramble surrounded by chaos would have rivaled Aliens for pure adrenaline, and unlike AvP 2004. Prey, and the comic, do a much better job of giving us a believable team up. The team up, also, serves to give the Aliens a much bigger sense of danger. They're like(much like in Aliens) a tidal wave that's going to come and wipe you out, and there's nothing you can do but just keep moving.

SiL

The idea that AvP would be better if it simply had a gunfight is exactly the kind of thinking that got us crap like AvPR to start with :D

OpenMaw

Quote from: SiL on Dec 19, 2017, 12:39:17 PM
The idea that AvP would be better if it simply had a gunfight is exactly the kind of thinking that got us crap like AvPR to start with :D

The failing of a lot of action writing is having action for it's own sake. If the action doesn't derive from the story, plot, theme, it serves no purpose other than pure gratuity. Which, honestly, movies that take that route become immensely boring.

AVP bores me because it clearly doesn't care about the characters, and the one fight scene between the titular monsters isn't really what it could have been. AVPR bores me because the movie just seems to be moving from scene-to-scene with no real point other than gore, gore, gore, gore. It's honestly boring as Hell to watch AVPR.

Aliens, and Predator, are both still very entertaining films because they deliver from every standpoint.

I've always wondered what the first AVP might have been like if a few changes had been made:
1. Bring the run time to about 90 minutes.
2. Shrink the size of the expedition to a dozen people.
3. Only have one Alien and one Predator. Basically stretch that confrontation between Celtic and Grid across the 3rd act. The film structure would have the Predator stalking the humans in the beginning, then the alien stalking the humans in the middle, and then the collision and cat and mouse taking up the finale.

Huggs

"AVP bores me because it clearly doesn't care about the characters, and the one fight scene between the titular monsters isn't really what it could have been".

This is true. The characters and their development in the first film were just terrible. B-movie quality for certain. As for the creatures, Net-head was a force to be reckoned with in AVP1. Then after they tagged, there came Wolf in AVPR to pretty much destroy everything and everyone. While the fights between the creatures exclusively weren't nearly as good as they could be, the sewer fight and the predator fight inside the hospital were short, but solid efforts.

"AVPR bores me because the movie just seems to be moving from scene-to-scene with no real point other than gore, gore, gore, gore. "

I'll admit, this is exactly why I love AVPR. When you think about it, it's hard to imagine these two species running wild in a town without massive and constant carnage. The aliens biology will have them host-hunting incessantly, and Wolf is in full blow "fix-it-felix mode" here. The film has some genuinely scary moments in the midst of serious carnage too. The scene where wolf is spotted by the police officer in the woods, his eyes shining in the dark, it really felt like an old school Predator moment. But, when the guard rolled into town and was engaged by the Aliens, I was honestly grinning from ear to ear. It was probably the closest we've come to anything resembling Cameron's Aliens since 1986. The journey through the hospital, the predator fight inside the hospital, the human fight through the hospital, the power plant scene, I think AVPR actually brought quite a bit to the table. Heck-fire, it even worked Yutani into the plot before it closed.

AVPR might not have been perfect, but it had guts, in every sense of the saying. It was a more grown up approach to the subject matter, and it felt like there was an affection for the creatures there (on behalf of the directors) that wasn't present in the first film. I think the brothers really gave a dang, and aside from ditching the migraine inducing darkness from AVPR, I wouldn't hesitate to give them a shot at AVP3, should Disney allow another "R" rated AVP. That may well depend on the success of Predator 2018.

SM

I found killing children and pregnant women to be more juvenile than grown up.

Huggs

"I found killing children and pregnant women to be more juvenile than grown up"

I do see your point. I merely meant the violent content was more mature than AVP1. Which, in my opinion, was a necessary and welcome change. That being said, I don't see the xenomorphs as being a very merciful bunch. Unleashing them and a Predalien inside a hospital can result in this sort of thing.

SM

Of course.  AvPR was just gratuitous though.

Considering how laughably watered down AvP was, they really didn't have to go as stupid as they did.

Huggs

"Considering how laughably watered down AvP was, they really didn't have to go as stupid as they did. "

I see where you're coming from here. It was definitely an apology wrapped in a lot of gooey red stuff. I just happened to like the gooey red stuff. So I was cool with it. And absolutely, AVP1 was like the GhostRider of the AVP movies. It was so watered down I half expected little flags that said "bang" to pop out of the guns.

HuDaFuK

Haven't had a chance yet, but I'm really looking forward to giving this one a spin.

Kailem

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. :laugh: 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. :D

Great works guys, this was a very cool listen indeed!

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