Liam O’Donnell Interview

Aaron: The earlier draft the I read also included a dog that got chestbursted and I think that the behind-the-scenes book that ADI put out may have mentioned all the animals acting as hosts. Was the possibility of other hybrids ever really discussed or was that a case of no budget for that?

Definitely had no budget for that. We were given a couple of different light items and things we could afford. We definitely put money into designing the Wolf from the ground up and getting away from the first AvP’s Predator designs and then we had to design a completely new creature for the Predalien. It just left no money to really do any changes for the Alien.

So the Alien was the same ADI design from AvP and so there was just definitely no money on doing anything else. I guess maybe technically the dead dog is supposed to be in the sewer but it just became a just leave it. I remember ADI pitched a bunch of different ideas like that because obviously they wanted some cool new creatures. What about cows? What about everything else? We were all for it but that was just not realistic.

Aaron: So, let’s talk about some of those infamous scenes in Requiem. So, there’s the one from the very first trailer where Wolf holds the two Aliens up in the sewer with one in each arm. I understand that was a last-minute addition that was made on set a couple of days before they actually shot that scene? Tell us a little bit about that? Do you feel guilty?

It did make a really cool Sideshow Collectible so I don’t feel totally guilty. Sideshow’s exactly what I imagined it was gonna be. I don’t think the scene is a 100% what that could have been plied but here’s what it was. This will give you a good idea of what my general responsibilities were on the movie. We had spent a ton of time mapping out the sewer set.

Obviously a good chunk of the movie takes place down there in the first 50 minutes or so. So we had we had a big map but it was kind of the biggest most complicated set built because you have water and a ton of dress to do. There’s all these different kind of competing ideas that we were trying to do to show how smart the Predator was and how he was going to make them like fish in a barrel and do something the Aliens that we’d never really seen anyone do before like setting traps for them and killing him this way.

Like this is a seasoned Predator and so we had a pretty cool cat mouse version previz that Greg and Colin were really happy with. Joshua Cordes who ended up co-writing Skyline with me was the previz artist and he was in Greg and Collin’s trailer. So I would kind of be sitting with him and we’d be talking it out and he would be doing the previz for it. Then Greg and Colin will come in and they make notes and then we’d send it to the studio for approval and so I think we’re shooting like one of these diner scenes.

It was probably like Dallas getting coffee or whatever and we were set to shoot the sewer thing I think like in a day or two and it came back that the studio rejected the previz that we all liked in there. Like the Alien and the Predator have to touch because the Predator… his first half was still alright. Like he did the fish in the barrel and he shot them back into the wires and then he was about to take out the last two and he got hit from behind by the Predalien and that got separated.

 

Now it needs a fight scene. We can’t just have this cat-and-mouse situation so we really need to see them kind of go back and forth and we’re like well this is a problem because there’s one Predator in the movie. You can’t really wrestle with an Alien cuz you’re gonna die. He’s gonna get stabbed through the chest. You’ve made the tails like superhero weapons in the first AvP so now what are we gonna do about it? They just said “Make something work”.

So I remember sitting there in the trailer with Josh and I kind of looked up at him I go “I think every Alien fan hate me” but I have a cool image in my head of him kind of coming out of the water with an Alien in each arm . So I acted it out and pitched it to Greg and Colin and they thought it was cool and the studio liked it and then it went in.

Now watching it again last night, I just feel like there’s a little something in the edit that could have been a little tighter that would have made it like more of a struggle and less like just total dominating. Like he kind of dunks on the Aliens pretty hard right there but again no real regrets. It’s still kind of one of the better parts of the movie and it made a great Sideshow Collectible.

Adam: So it seems like there was a lot of creative oversight that Colin and Greg had to deal with from the studio. Is that correct?

Yes this is definitely a different Fox. This is not the Caesar’s Apes box that we see nowadays which is making these amazing movies. They were kind of notorious at the time for having a lot of creative oversight and kind of trying to just make sort of generic films at the time. I mean there’d be the occasional great filmmaker that could get things through there but they definitely had a reputation in the early to mid-2000s.

It was also right before Marvel so there is that like sort of sea change that happened within two years afterwards where there was this feeling over there that it was like they knew better than what the fans wanted. “The fans thought they wanted this but we’re gonna make stuff that’s gonna bring in a bigger mass audience and these fans… you can’t listen to these idiots. They don’t know what they’re talking about”.

If we listen to Ain’t It Cool News, we’d never make any money in our lives and stuff like that. So there was that vibe and then all of a sudden, Marvel came out and said well what if you just actually made what the fans that really love it you made that movie for them. Then they’re gonna be so vocal about how great it is. They’re gonna tell everybody else to see it.

That’s one of the things about Marvel that like maybe gets lost nowadays when people complain about “Oh another Marvel movie” but they really kind of changed that approach and instead of getting away from this like sort of arrogant “Don’t listen to the people that are actually supporting you the most” and to like “Okay if you get the diehards on board, they’re gonna be the most evangelical and they’re gonna support you and tell everybody else to see it”.

There’s a reason why these things are such popular properties and they’ve lasted for so long. You can’t just make fan films but you have to kind of hit on why that core idea like is popular and what people love about it. If you don’t kind of hit that pleasure center, what’s the point?

Adam: One of the things that was changed from the original draft was that it was made clear that Wolf was deliberately on earth to respond to the crash of the Predator ship and clean up the mess. Except in in the final film, he takes his time to skin one of the police characters leaving evidence of his presence. So, I was hoping you could talk a little about the thinking behind that?

I’m sure like Colin would have a very technical answer for it but to me I think it was like because the movie was what it was. We knew it wasn’t what you guys wanted. This is not what the movie the fans are clamoring for. Well if we can put enough homages in it, it’ll at least be fun on some level. I think that was one where the homage just gotten distracted from the story logic.

Like you said it was like we wanted to do the skinned body from the first Predator and the logic that we kind of masked around it was “He’s there to get rid of any evidence of the Aliens. He’s not necessarily worried about people finding out about him”. It’s all about like a tech cleanup and like proprietary information cleanup which I guess is a very technical answer but it just would have just been kind of simpler if he just stabbed him through the chest and disposed of his body. Although I do like the autopsy scene. I think that’s one of the better scenes dramatically in the movie.

Aaron: Something you just mentioned, going slightly back to the skinned body, you said it’d be a cool homage. Now one of the things I personally have a problem with this film and to some extent Predators and some of the later films is when you go a bit too overboard with homage. Particularly winds me up when it’s dialogue. So with ten years sort of experience looking back on it, do you think homages were necessarily a good idea for this film or was it really just a case of trying to make the best out of a shit story that was handed to you?

Yeah “Get to the chopper!” Definitely stood out as not great when I watched it last night. It’s all kind of born out of a place of insecurity, I think. In the story in that there’s some fun homages and I think there’s a difference right and we all can feel it when an homage is like a nice little moment that you’re like aha but why would they have the same dialogue or names of characters? Like why is he named Dallas.

Even just other kind of little touches like that. There’s no reason to have it be so on the nose with that but at one point we were trying to get Bill Paxton in it. We’re trying to get Michael Biehn. We’re trying to do anything we could to kind of connect it more because it felt so disconnected. I was pushing for Adam Baldwin. I think actually would have been a cool idea and it wasn’t the money… whatever… scheduling didn’t work.

The one that would have been too much was like what if you get Bill Paxton to be the chef because he’s been killed by a Predator and he’s been killed by an Alien. But let’s kill him with the Predalien and like he’s got no set-up scene. It would have just been like one day, all of a sudden you just come into the kitchen and he’s just like “You can stay with me and my wife today”.

Like it would have been funny but it definitely would have pulled you out. That was definitely one discussed and then Michael Biehn was when we’re like “Well what about the soldiers at the end?” Michael Biehn is like one of the guys there and that would have just made no sense so those were like kind of at the very last minute. Just like different parts where we’re searching for more homages because again the insecurity of like it just doesn’t feel like an Alien or Predator movie.

Adam: Did you find yourself having to contribute to many last-minute onset changes?

I’ve gotta say not more or less than anything else. It would be more stuff within because they’re on set directing and they’re given the notes to previz and we’re working on that so it’d be like that. The main things that we worked on, Joshua and I, would be the sewer sequence, the hive sequence and the rooftop sequence. Again, the irony of doing this movie and what was kind of sad is that they didn’t get to direct like the Alien and the Predator fighting.

It’s like yeah this is my big break and I get to do an Alien vs Predator movie and they get stuck doing these kinds of like slice-of-life small town characters and the second unit directors get to do all the Alien and Predator fighting. The only scenes that they got to direct with the creatures is when one of the cast was interacting with them which isn’t actually that much. So yeah those were kind of the three things and then towards the end like Josh and I would be with the second unit during the Predalien-Predator fight and that was a lot of fun.

It was freezing rain up there in Surrey, British Columbia so it would be stuff like that. There wasn’t as much of a dramatic kind of switch like there was with that but we were definitely like trying to figure out what the ending was going to be during the movie. We had that end goal in mind but even just like working on locations was tough.

Like the Robert Joy character – where you see him in that plane. That’s actually just the same Stryker tank with like plasma screens put into it because the set that they had… they gave our four production designers so little money to build the set that it was pathetic. We’re like okay what if we just taped some plasmas into this Stryker and we do it in a tight angle, it’ll at least look kind of somewhat authentic. So yeah there was a lot of just that, those kind of budget limitations and trying to come up with creative solutions.

Aaron: There’s some concept art by a fella called Dark Hoffmann which showed a secret base with Aliens and Predators in stasis tubes. I’m assuming if it ever was toyed with in production, that was thrown out for budget but was that something that was ever actually talked about?

I’m thinking about it. It didn’t sound completely familiar to me when you mentioned it earlier. Dark obviously worked on the movie. I remember him. He’s a really talented guy. It would probably have had to have been something at the end for the Ms. Yutani scene if you’re gonna do something of it there but it may have just been something that he was he was playing around with.

I’m not 100% certain but that’s the only place I could think where that would narratively make any sense. Unless it was like because it’s a human place. That was definitely an alt idea for the ending and that whole ending is just shot at the hockey stadium in Vancouver. If you’ve ever been there, all that concrete and they did a really good job of masking it but they’re just walking up to like the seats at a hockey stadium. It was definitely a tight budget for what this kind of movie was and I had to come up with a lot of different solutions like that.

Aaron: So out of all your time on the set in pre and production, are there any memories that just really stick out to you? Stuff that we haven’t necessarily talked about yet that you always look back on when you’re thinking about this film?

I just saw someone had posted it online recently. It’s the most vivid one was just we were on set filming the first Facehugger scene with Buddy Benson and his son and that scene actually got a good laugh for me last night when the kid got facehugged. When we were filming that scene, ADI was off in their trailer.

“You guys gotta come check this out” and we kind of rushed over to their trailer and all of a sudden you see like the three lasers kind of go up the leaves in front of us and I looked down and it was right on my chest and I just looked up and the Predator is like standing right there. It’s Ian Whyte, almost eight feet tall in the Wolf costume. Colin’s like “That’s pretty fucking cool” and we’re just like kind of fan boyed out there for a minute. That’s definitely the one that I always think about is like the biggest like pinch me moment. I’m just getting to see like a real live Predator walking towards you.