Directors Colin and Greg Strause said a Christmas Day release date for opening Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is great timing. The Strause brothers think traveling to a theater on December 25th to see creepy creatures battle it out is a perfect way to spend the holiday. “Scream movies did really well during that week,” said Greg Strause. “People ask about that and it’s a huge movie-going week.”
Colin and Greg Strause Interview
The first Alien vs. Predator had switched up some of the mythology to suit certain needs. Have you removed some of that and gone back to the original?
Colin Strause: “Some stuff has been smoothed over, like we redesigned the altar that Scar’s body was on to make the ship a little more Predator-ish, you know? There’s a couple of things. We tried to stay as close as we could be. There were a few things we had to massage a little bit, just to kind of make the movie more what we wanted it to be.”
Can you talk a little bit about when you found out you got the project?
Colin Strause: “Yeah, it actually went pretty quick. I mean, we met on the first one so we met all the executives over there. Our effects company — we’d been doing a lot of work for Fox. We got the backdrop for Day After Tomorrow and we did all the Fan Four movies…X-Men 3…just a ton of stuff over the years. We pitched on Wolfenstein and got really close to selling it at Fox. Then when this thing came around, it was all the same executives and everyone.
We got our hands on it. We had about a week or so to put together a visual presentation, and our ideas of how to take what script they had and where we kind of wanted to put the movie. And, yeah, we had one really good meeting with them and then we had like two other meetings after that - and then we basically had the job booked.”
Can you talk about the design of the PredAlien? How many incarnations did you guys go through? Was that the toughest design challenge that you had?
Colin Strause: “It was definitely one of the trickier ones. One of the hard things is that there are so many other people that had to see stuff and approve, and try to get everyone on the same page. One of the cool things is we went with ADI, the guys have like - even for the Predator - they must have had 60-70 different concepts painted together of all different Predators. Some of them were from the previous movie they didn’t use. A bunch were new ones they did. Like the whip was something that one of the concept artists just happened to have, this huge bullwhip. As we went over there on the first meeting, we saw them and, ‘Holy s—t, this thing is about as cool as it gets. We’ve got to put that in the movie.’
What they would do is we did our initial designs in Photoshop with our designer. We showed the guys from ADI what we wanted to do, and then they would start doing their paper designs. We’d get something kind of close and then they’d start building all these maches. We’d start with the head maches, and they’d start with the full-body maches. We probably went through a bit of design work.”
Greg Strause: “Yeah, I remember going through some of the art work and it was like PredAlien Version 65 and you’re like, ‘Jesus Christ!’ It’s just naturally going through a lot of indurations, but there were some concerns. We wanted to keep him very much - or her very much - an alien, so there was some back and forth in terms of how many predator sort of characteristics should come through. So that was what most of the back and forth was about.”
Colin Strause: “One of the trickier things, too, was it’s one thing when you’ve got like all the geeky fans who know everything watch the movie. They go, ‘Oh I know that’s obviously a warrior alien. I know that’s the PredAlien.’ But the biggest issue we had with the design is, because we’re going so dark with the movie and there’s a lot of rain and atmosphere and everything, is a normal person watching the movie going to be able to tell the difference? That was like one of our biggest tricks, because we knew that hardcore fans would get it instantly but good design also has to appeal to people who don’t give a s--t about the franchises, [who] just want to go see a movie, and they go and actually like it.
We had to make sure we included all those people in it, as well. So that was one of the things. We cheated the pigmentation a little bit more yellow on her and just things so that if you just see flashes of her, at least a general audience member would be able to track it. But at the same time, not watering down the design or anything to make it kind of generic.”
Were there key things that you had to have, like with Predator the key thing is the fangs and the Alien the key thing is the head?
Colin Strause: “Yeah, for us it was keeping the Alien teeth because that’s such a distinct feature, and having the dome. That’s why we went back with putting the skull actually underneath the glass dome so it has a real Predator skull under there. Even in the original Alien you could never really see it because the photographers lit so dark. We have a couple shots in the movie where you can actually see the whole skull feature and everything underneath.
Then with the mandibles in that, because of the basically the egg-laying scene, we wanted the mandibles under there so she could actually wrap around - almost like a face hugger in a way, and grab people’s faces as she’s doing the impregnation. So it was a kind of important design thing. In the battle sequence, I think she looks pretty fearsome. When she has the mandible closed, she looks more Predator. But when they open up, you see the distinct Alien teeth and everything.”
Page 2: Aliens on Earth and the Alien & Predator Franchises
