Alien fans have been waiting a long time to see Aliens on Earth. How much fun can you have with that finally within the context of the AVP story?
Colin Strause: “Well, I mean, the thing we were trying to be careful of is we didn’t want to have Aliens dancing in front of McDonald’s and stuff. I know a lot of people were worried being on Earth, it’s like you know what are the locations going to be. One of the first things in our pitch we said [was], ‘The movie’s got to take place and power’s going to get knocked out. It’s got to be raining the whole last night.’ Seeing an Alien in broad daylight or just plain view is going to look stupid no matter what you do.
The reason it worked in all the other movies is you were in a dark spaceship, you had flashing blinking lights, steam jets. You had all these great elements to cover them up, basically. If you don’t do that, they’re going to look like guys in suits. That’s why the first thing we did is get that atmosphere. The second thing was picking cooler locations. The first big battle takes place in this huge underground sewer network. The next battle takes place in a power plant. Then you have the big rooftop battle. Then there’s a National Guard battle on the street in the rain.
We tried to pick locations that, even though they were earth bound, they still were reminiscent of…you know, the power plant is going to look very much like Alien. It’s got all the yellow warning beacons and lot of steam and everything, so we’re trying to give it that space sort of feel so even though it is Earth it doesn’t — [we tried] not to make it feel cheesy or anything, just give it a much more gritty kind of environments.”
You said this franchise is obviously a fan-boys dream. What ways is it for the general audiences?
Colin Strause: “Well, the big thing we did with the movie is just try to make a good scary film. I mean, we tried to treat it not as like a ‘versus’ movie because I think sometimes people see a ‘versus’ movie as being kind of cheesy. You know, Freddy vs. Jason is entertaining, but there’s a little kind of funny cheese to it. We tried to keep it as serious as we could with the creatures and just make a good, scary, dark movie. Basically the idea was to do a kind of like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre with creatures. That’s kind of the tone.”
Can you talk about what the Alien films and the Predator films mean to you?
Greg Strause: “It’s funny. Colin and I had said this before, we go on a lot of movie pitches and a lot of times you don’t just talk about the project you’re there to talk about. You talk about things you like, what your tastes are. We’d always be like, ‘Predator is the best mission movie ever made, bar none.’ And then Aliens just, from a horror standpoint, scared the piss out of us when we were 8 years old and just loved that movie. Also, though, it’s a scary action film but it’s got a real heart to it. I mean, the whole Ripley/Newt dynamic and her starting as a mom and having to become a solider. It was like this great character of writing in there.”
Colin Strause: “And also [James] Cameron was a big influence. I mean for us when we moved out here, we saw Terminator II and it was like…because we were already doing visual effects in Chicago…and it was like once we saw that movie, we were like we got to get to L.A. You can’t work on toothpaste commercials forever in Chicago. It was like we had to get out here. When we first saw Aliens, it was literally on Pay Per View in a hotel room and our parents were at a craft show or something and we kept flipping on the channel. We’d watch it for a few minutes, we thought we heard them in the hallway, we’d flip the channel back and go back and didn’t realize that every time we did that we kept getting billed like $15 bucks. We had like a $200 bill that our parents just about killed us over. But, yeah, that was our first time seeing it. We’re just huge Cameron fans, too. I mean, I’d say for me the favorite ones are Aliens, Predator and Alien would be my top 3.”
Are the Alien and Predator franchises now basically inexplicably linked or did you envision some just Predator films again?
Colin Strause: “I think it will be definitely another AVP before there’s a Predator film again.”
Greg Strause: “It’s hard for us to speak for what those guys are thinking over there, but I’d say your chances of an AVP III are a lot greater. You’d get that first before you’d get another Predator 3 or Alien 5.”
Colin Strause: “I think most of it is just looking at it from a pure financial standpoint. I mean, you get two fan bases or you get just one. At the end of the day, the whole idea of making movies is making money off them.”
You guys have been involved in so many landmarks effects, what do you think is the next level you can take visual effects to?
Greg Strause: “Stereoscopic.”
Colin Strause: “3D stuff is going to be the future.”
Greg Strause: “I don’t know if you guys have seen Beowulf or not, but the 3D, the stereoscopic aspect of that experience I thought it was awesome.”
Colin Strause: “I wouldn’t bet against Cameron either. If he thinks it’s a good idea, I think it’s going to be the future I think.”
Greg Strause: “It brings you into the picture more.”
Colin Strause: “I find myself with my home theater at home, like I’ll just wait for the DVD, you know? But stereoscopic you kind of have to get you’re a-- off the sofa and get to the theater and actually watch it. It’s a cool thing because going to the theater should be an experience. It shouldn’t be a chore. Having something like stereoscopic would be something that you could only experience there. 3D TVs - 3D plasmas - probably won’t be out for another 8 years, 7 years, realistically, so I think that will be an experience unique to the cinema for a while to keep people going there.”
