Speaker 1: M hm, weary, weir.
Speaker 2: Read we can kill.
Speaker 3: It, shouting at the wading fish English. What time? Hell?
Speaker 3: I welcome back midnight viewers too. Yeah. Oh chuffs, it's
Speaker 3: the latest edition. Hey, Patreon listeners here in the month
Speaker 3: of August. Hello, everyone else in the Maiden Freed sometime
Speaker 3: in September.
Speaker 2: We are back.
Speaker 3: It is another attempt to examine the lifestyles of predators everywhere.
Speaker 3: This is our first direct sequel to any of the
Speaker 3: films that have come so far. This is Alien versus
Speaker 3: Predator Requiem. Here's the trailer. Oh my god, just nobody's home.
Speaker 3: Who's outside the window? See no monster? The towels completely overrunning.
Speaker 3: We'll see on me. He's evacuation plan. Okay, that was
Speaker 3: part of the trailer, because the majority of the trailer
Speaker 3: was just sounds, lots of screeching and people shouting and
Speaker 3: guns going off and lasers blasting and face huggers chittering
Speaker 3: and alien motion trackers beeping, even though that sound is
Speaker 3: from one hundred and seventy years in the future. But
Speaker 3: I do want to say one thing. At the time
Speaker 3: that this trailer came out, we were all so far
Speaker 3: over this franchise and concept that I didn't notice how
Speaker 3: good the trailer actually, now I showed this trailer. I
Speaker 3: showed this movie as a projection back in two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven and rewatching the trailer. The trailer's great because
Speaker 3: the trailer starts the way the movie should have, which
Speaker 3: is it slowly introduces us to the town of Gunnison, Colorado,
Speaker 3: and it shows us the townsfolk, and it gives us
Speaker 3: the population, and then it shows the predator or the
Speaker 3: predator alien ship crashing, and then the population turns into
Speaker 3: a counter and starts winding down as people in the
Speaker 3: town start dying in the trailer. It's a great fucking
Speaker 3: trailer for a terrible fucking movie. HP. What's your first
Speaker 3: experience with AVP or was it this was this year
Speaker 3: inaugural Journey on the Ocean that is Requiem.
Speaker 2: This literally the first when I watched this for this podcast,
Speaker 2: was the very first time I've seen this movie. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you what that trailer that you just described that
Speaker 2: you played a little bit of a minute ago, I
Speaker 2: want to see that movie because that's not the movie
Speaker 2: that I watched the other day for this podcast. But
Speaker 2: we'll get into it.
Speaker 3: The first thing I noticed in rewatching the trailer, it
Speaker 3: was appreciably brighter, like, for instance, you could see everything
Speaker 3: on screen. It was fascinating. Having seen the movie previously,
Speaker 3: both theatrically and on home video, and then again for
Speaker 3: this podcast. You know what I did this time, turned
Speaker 3: up the brightness on a television screen all the way up,
Speaker 3: and I saw everything for the very first time. I
Speaker 3: wish I'd.
Speaker 2: Thought of that, because that's one of my chief complaints
Speaker 2: is that it is so infernally dark and murky and frankly,
Speaker 2: the editing doesn't do this movie, and he favors either.
Speaker 2: But on the positive side, the things that I could see,
Speaker 2: the scenes that were bright enough for me to make
Speaker 2: out what was going on, I will say this, Father
Speaker 2: Milonemy might be my highest compliment of this movie is
Speaker 2: the bits that I could see were actually better cinematically
Speaker 2: than the last movie, Alien Versus Predator. This movie did
Speaker 2: feel more cinematic than that movie. That makes sense.
Speaker 3: I do understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting that it was shot extremely well, but
Speaker 2: it's hard for me to explain that the texture it
Speaker 2: didn't look as cheap as the last movie.
Speaker 3: I understand what you're saying. This feels like a movie
Speaker 3: because this movie was directed by people who wanted to
Speaker 3: make a movie, and the other one was made by
Speaker 3: a guy who wanted to make a franchise by any
Speaker 3: means necessary. Those filmmakers here are the brothers Strauss. That's
Speaker 3: their credit for directing here. Written by Shane Sellerno, the
Speaker 3: genius behind Armageddon. That's not my description, that's Michael Bay's
Speaker 3: description of him. Also based on characters and situations created
Speaker 3: by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Schuston and Jim and John Thompson.
Speaker 3: This movie stars Stephen Pasqualely Ray eko Ailesworth, John Ortiz,
Speaker 3: Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Sam Trammel, Robert Joy in a
Speaker 3: role written for Adam Baldwin but scheduling prevented him from
Speaker 3: portraying Garner once again from Predator Too. And the film
Speaker 3: also stars Tom Woodruff Junior, and Ian White as the
Speaker 3: Alien and Predators, respectively. This film starts immediately at the
Speaker 3: end of the last film, Hpop, what's the story here?
Speaker 2: So the story here is astute listeners to the podcast
Speaker 2: will remember that Alien versus Predator ends with the slaying
Speaker 2: Predator being carried on to his ship by his comrades,
Speaker 2: and the final shot is a alien predator hybrid chest
Speaker 2: burster coming out of this dead predator. This movie begins
Speaker 2: at that very moment where the chest burst the creature
Speaker 2: comes out of the predator's chest. There's a firefight, and
Speaker 2: the ship ends up crash, landing back on Earth before
Speaker 2: it can leave to get back to the predator home world.
Speaker 2: So the plot is the ship is crashed. Oh and
Speaker 2: by the way, there's also face hugger samples critters like
Speaker 2: in basic class cases, presumably for this predator to seed
Speaker 2: other hunts. I assume that's why they're there. Sure, So,
Speaker 2: so it crashes. Not only does this pre we'll just
Speaker 2: call it, I hate to call it this because I
Speaker 2: think it's a dumb name, but the pread alien as
Speaker 2: it's referred to, is not only is that on the
Speaker 2: loose and wreaking havoc, but these face huggers have gotten
Speaker 2: out when the ship crashes and almost immediately starts to
Speaker 2: seed this town in Colorado, this unsuspecting small town in
Speaker 2: the mountains, and it becomes a Basically they're trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what's happening and save the town before it's
Speaker 2: completely overrun with creatures.
Speaker 3: Me.
Speaker 2: While there's been a distress signal sent to the predator
Speaker 2: home world. This was actually cool. Father, This I have
Speaker 2: to say, we're gonna be look spoiler alert, we're going
Speaker 2: to be bagging on this movie a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh, but we're going to kick the shit out of
Speaker 3: this movie. But there are some elements that are actually
Speaker 3: a lot of fun and interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, namely this where they the distress signal goes back
Speaker 2: to the So you see the alien home world and
Speaker 2: the predator home I'm sorry I said alien, I meant
Speaker 2: the predator Homeworlducha Prime, Yeah, Oucher Prime. And it's cool looking.
Speaker 2: It makes me want to see more of it. So
Speaker 2: a predator there, a Yaucha, gets intercepts the distress signal,
Speaker 2: gets into his ship and flies back to or flies
Speaker 2: to Earth ostensibly to deal with this this crashed ship,
Speaker 2: find out what's going on, and deal with any of
Speaker 2: these creatures that have escaped. And that's the scenario that
Speaker 2: we're presented with here in this By the way, I
Speaker 2: didn't know when we set out to do this. When
Speaker 2: you gave me my homework, I did realize you were
Speaker 2: giving me the Robert Altman, Nashville of predator movies, because
Speaker 2: this movie is sprawling and not in a good way.
Speaker 2: Like when you were going through the cast list this
Speaker 2: there's so many. I don't think I even I know
Speaker 2: one character's name through the whole movie.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: There's probably what there's at least ten twelve main characters
Speaker 2: that you're trying to keep track of.
Speaker 3: Do you know the is it the lead character Stephen
Speaker 3: Pasqually's character's name Dallas Howard, not Bryce Dallas Howard, who
Speaker 3: was an active actor at that moment in history. Bryce
Speaker 3: Dallas Howard was, But no, is it Dallas Howard?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Dallas because they I think they use his
Speaker 2: name more than anybody. There's the sheriff, but that's not
Speaker 2: really his name. There's Dallas's ne'er do well, younger brother.
Speaker 2: I don't know his name. There's a girl that has
Speaker 2: the hots for the younger brother. I don't know her name.
Speaker 3: It's my favorite character because she gets pinned to a
Speaker 3: wall accidentally.
Speaker 2: Who is that actor who was in Can't Hardly Wait
Speaker 2: and that thing you do? Ethan Embry?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: This the younger Brother was like a poor man's Ethan Embrey.
Speaker 3: That's I could not stop thinking about him like a
Speaker 3: photostatic copy of him. There are very few recognizable basis
Speaker 3: in this movie. The only one I recognize is John
Speaker 3: Ortiz as Sheriff Morales. And that's only because I fucking
Speaker 3: love that movie Kong Skull Island, and he's one of
Speaker 3: the scientists in that movie.
Speaker 2: See, I recognized him too. He's the only one I
Speaker 2: recognized for a different movie. He was in Silver Linings Playbook.
Speaker 2: He was Oh yes, he was married to what's the
Speaker 2: what's your name? That's her name? Why am I blanking
Speaker 2: earned her name? The one Jennifer Lawrence, save her sister,
Speaker 2: Who's say the last dance for me? She was in
Speaker 2: one of the Bourne movies. You know, I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Julia Styles and Julius Stiles. He's lit on Bexter.
Speaker 2: He's married to Julia Stiles, but he's under so much pressure.
Speaker 2: He's stressed from the pressures of marriage and having to
Speaker 2: He's really good in Silver Linings Playbook. That's what I
Speaker 2: remembered him from. But that's aside from him, I recognized
Speaker 2: no one else. I think you made the point that
Speaker 2: this is like alien versus Predator.
Speaker 1: The cw avp AVPCW absolutely it feels like a pilot
Speaker 1: for a CW show, and then fucking face huggers are
Speaker 1: jumping on people's faces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has that look. That's sort of because this
Speaker 2: is two thousand and seven. That's prime time for the CW.
Speaker 2: I think was that when did the Archie reinvention take
Speaker 2: hold on the CW.
Speaker 3: A little bit later, but this is prime like One
Speaker 3: Tree Hill and that entire wave of television actors who
Speaker 3: had already populated all of the remakes of horror movies
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 2: It's like post scream. I think that's it doesn't hurt.
Speaker 3: That doesn't help that the movie rather is shot in
Speaker 3: Vancouver like every fucking CW production.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and like the CW. The people in this there's
Speaker 2: people in this movie that are supposed to be high
Speaker 2: school kids or high school age like fake like fake
Speaker 2: Ethan Embry, but him and the girl that he's dating
Speaker 2: or he's trying to date, and her bully gang that
Speaker 2: she's affiliated with, not gang literally, but just a bunch
Speaker 2: of tough kids. They all look like they're in their
Speaker 2: mid twenties and they're supposed to be playing high like
Speaker 2: literal like even if they're seniors. They still look way
Speaker 2: too old.
Speaker 3: And all of these people populating this town are they
Speaker 3: just are involved in so many fucking subplots. It's out
Speaker 3: of hand. It's like when we talked about alien versus Predator,
Speaker 3: I said, it doesn't it doesn't endear it character to
Speaker 3: us for them to rifle out some line of dialogue
Speaker 3: about I have a family at home. Oh okay, now
Speaker 3: I care about you. This film seems to double down
Speaker 3: on that idiotic notion by giving us a bunch of
Speaker 3: stories with characters we don't care about, in the most
Speaker 3: cliched plots possible. Here is the brother, the bad boy
Speaker 3: brother who has been in prison, returning to the small town.
Speaker 3: How's he going to fit back in? And his younger brother,
Speaker 3: his ne'er do well younger brother, who's constantly being beaten up,
Speaker 3: and he can't get the girl, but he's trying real hard.
Speaker 3: And now the military woman returning home and her daughter
Speaker 3: doesn't recognize her. At what is any of this? There's
Speaker 3: a fucking a there's a face hugger on a hunter
Speaker 3: in the forest right now, and something's going to burst
Speaker 3: out of them. And you're all none of your stories
Speaker 3: are going to matter. But we spend so much time
Speaker 3: with their stories in this ninety minute movie.
Speaker 2: It's exhausting. My head is spinning in the first fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes because they're throwing character after subplot, and these subplots
Speaker 2: you can see them coming a mile away, like this
Speaker 2: sort of high school kid who's trying to get the
Speaker 2: girl but her boyfriend's a bully and all this. And then,
Speaker 2: like you said, the military mom comes home and the
Speaker 2: daughter he doesn't. She's having trouble adjusting to her having
Speaker 2: her back. That there's a sheriff. There's this hunter and
Speaker 2: his son that are I think they're the first people
Speaker 2: that are killed. I will say this, this movie is
Speaker 2: not afraid to get really ugly, like very distasteful, Like
Speaker 2: I'm no prude when it comes to movies whatever, but
Speaker 2: it gets ugly quick. So this the ship crashes and
Speaker 2: this hunter and his young son, what's the kids supposed
Speaker 2: to be like nine years old or something. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: go out to investigate the ship and one of the
Speaker 2: face huggers jumps at the father, who shoots it with
Speaker 2: his rifle, but the acid from the face hugger's blood
Speaker 2: gets on his arm and the arm falls off in
Speaker 2: front the child. Is watching all of this, and then
Speaker 2: the face hugger comes out and slams on the dad,
Speaker 2: and then it slams on the kid. And then they
Speaker 2: wake up later and the son wakes up just in
Speaker 2: time to watch a face hugger burst out of his
Speaker 2: father before another one bursts out of him. Man, it
Speaker 2: is dark.
Speaker 3: This is the assault on Precinct thirteen of Predator movies. Sure,
Speaker 3: no holds barred here. Look, you've got young filmmakers. This
Speaker 3: is their first film. They've been pitching a alien versus
Speaker 3: Predator movie since they had come to Hollywood. They are
Speaker 3: a couple of visual effects guys. Okay, they had moved
Speaker 3: out after seeing Aliens. So inspired were they that they
Speaker 3: came out out and tried to get a job on ILM.
Speaker 3: Ended up working freelance on a bunch of properties. Ended
Speaker 3: up forming Hydraulics, which is their visual effects company. They
Speaker 3: did a bunch of music videos and stuff. They would
Speaker 3: eventually do that movie. What was it Sky? Something in
Speaker 3: the Sky Skyrise, Scott?
Speaker 2: Was it Skyrise either that or Skyscraper? I know the
Speaker 2: one you're talking about.
Speaker 3: No, it was the one where the people are being
Speaker 3: taken up into the alien ships like the Rapture.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, the not the rock movie.
Speaker 3: No, No, not that thing.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to look it up here. I
Speaker 2: know the one you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Because Skyline Skyline with Eric Balfour, who was a guy
Speaker 3: I thought was going to be a huge actor but
Speaker 3: then ended up doing virtually nothing. Yeah, they'd eventually do
Speaker 3: Skyline as their next feature, and they produced a bunch
Speaker 3: of sort of offshoots of it. But this is the
Speaker 3: movie that they wanted to do, and they, like I said,
Speaker 3: they pitched a version of their own version of Ailie
Speaker 3: Verse Spreader that got turned down. That was before the
Speaker 3: Paul Anderson movie. And then when this movie came together
Speaker 3: very quickly, which feels like a we got to keep
Speaker 3: the rights situation, like we made enough money on the
Speaker 3: last one, but we got to make this real quick
Speaker 3: with the crew that we already have. These guys got
Speaker 3: hired with one month to make the movie. So that's
Speaker 3: where the behind the scenes is is where we're at.
Speaker 2: But if you're working on a very tight timeline and
Speaker 2: you're trying to make this thing ostensibly on the cheap
Speaker 2: and be efficient about it, like the last thing that
Speaker 2: I would do is deal with a movie that is
Speaker 2: so I keep using the word sprawling, but there's no
Speaker 2: other word for it. There's so much ground to cover
Speaker 2: with every subplot, and there's it's just it gets so
Speaker 2: exhausting trying to keep track of everyone when all you're
Speaker 2: really doing as a viewer some a fan who's coming
Speaker 2: to this movie is you're just waiting for the mayhem
Speaker 2: to start and it just takes forever. There's no real
Speaker 2: This is a problem that we talked about with the
Speaker 2: last Dailien move Alia versus Predator Boo. There's no suspense. Really,
Speaker 2: this movie is mostly about gore, I think, because like
Speaker 2: I said, it's not afraid to get ugly. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of gory, nasty effects with this. It's an R
Speaker 2: rated movie.
Speaker 3: Correct, it wasn't it, But yeah, the previous film was PG.
Speaker 3: Thirteen and was much derided for that.
Speaker 2: So if you came to this looking for for a
Speaker 2: lot of blood and a lot of violence, then you
Speaker 2: came to the right place. My problem with it was
Speaker 2: that I just found some of it. Again, at the
Speaker 2: risk of sounding like a prude, I just found it distasteful.
Speaker 2: Not to skip ahead too much, but there's even a
Speaker 2: scene where the predators or the aliens are taking over
Speaker 2: a hospital and there's a woman there, a pregnant woman
Speaker 2: who's being attended to by a nurse. The nurse is
Speaker 2: dispatch by the alien, and then the predator alien comes
Speaker 2: in and impregnates a pregnant woman right there, and then
Speaker 2: multiple times right and then through plot machinations, the heroes
Speaker 2: end up there. We'll talk about why and how they're there.
Speaker 2: And this poor pregnant woman is webbed up like victims
Speaker 2: of aliens are. We've all seen it in all the
Speaker 2: alien movies. And sure enough, the chest bursting happens, but
Speaker 2: like you said, it's not just one alien. There's many
Speaker 2: aliens bursting out of a poor pregnant woman's belly. It's just,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it just seemed very It just seemed
Speaker 2: in poor taste in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Look, this is a very mean This is the meanest
Speaker 3: of any of the films, and it did come out.
Speaker 3: Like I said, My point was about talking about the
Speaker 3: brother straus Werg was these are young filmmakers in two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven. If you remember, back then, the saw
Speaker 3: movies and torture porn was all the rage. So it's
Speaker 3: not unexpected that it would seep into this movie, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't. You know what I want to say, because
Speaker 3: I agree with you, it is distasteful. Nevertheless, it's the
Speaker 3: most memorable part of the movie. It's probably the best
Speaker 3: part of the movie. Like all of those scenes, The
Speaker 3: actual best part of the movie is what you mentioned,
Speaker 3: which is that they have a predator character here nicknamed Wolf,
Speaker 3: named for Winston Wolf, the Harvey kai Tell character from
Speaker 3: Pulp Fiction. Because he's a cleaner, which means he's technically
Speaker 3: named after Victor from The Fun Nikita or just Nikita
Speaker 3: if you're in France, because he's basically a bounty hunter
Speaker 3: character who picks up the distress signal. My favorite part
Speaker 3: of the entire movie, HB is the fact that our
Speaker 3: lead predator alien is effectively Bruce Wayne because he's just
Speaker 3: sitting in his chair. It's Bruce Wayne from Batman Returns.
Speaker 3: He's just sitting in a chair doing nothing, and then
Speaker 3: a little screen pulls down and says, hey, there's action
Speaker 3: on Earth, and he's like, I'm on it.
Speaker 2: It's cool. Because he goes to his back wall, there's
Speaker 2: a whole bank of different predator helmets and he looks
Speaker 2: he's just like Batman. He looks, he picks one that
Speaker 2: is well suited for he.
Speaker 3: Picks the one that looks most like Casey Jones from TMNT, And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted more of that. Now. The thing of
Speaker 2: it is, I guess the ultimately like the notion of
Speaker 2: a predator of this crash and a predator having to
Speaker 2: come and clean up the mess and deal with it.
Speaker 2: That actually is a really compelling idea for a movie
Speaker 2: like and actually a part of its time in making
Speaker 2: the predator kind of the protagonist.
Speaker 3: It would have been a Private Eye movie with the
Speaker 3: Predator as the gum shoe. I fucking loved it.
Speaker 2: I thought that would have been so cool, and I
Speaker 2: was hoping by then, by the time you meet this predator,
Speaker 2: I knew that I wasn't getting that movie. I just
Speaker 2: there had been too many red flags leading up to
Speaker 2: that scene. But I guess there is a great idea
Speaker 2: for a movie there. It's just not written well, it's
Speaker 2: not executed well, it's not directed well, and it's not
Speaker 2: edited well. But someone somewhere could have made a great
Speaker 2: movie out of that idea.
Speaker 3: In a lot of ways, this movie feels like a
Speaker 3: direct response to Alien versus Predator. Whereas that film sided
Speaker 3: with the aliens, this one sided more with the Predator,
Speaker 3: and that one was PG. Thirteen. So they went not
Speaker 3: only are they went hard r for this one, and
Speaker 3: according to cinematographer Daniel Pearl, he felt the previous film
Speaker 3: was too well lit with too many lockdown cameras, and
Speaker 3: he wanted to change that by turning off all the
Speaker 3: lights and swinging the camera around wildly on a cameraman's back.
Speaker 2: So confusing. There were scenes. There was a scene where
Speaker 2: the Predator's finally squaring off against all of these xenomorphs,
Speaker 2: and as a movie actually actually thought what I thought
Speaker 2: in watching it. One particular scene, I thought that he
Speaker 2: had killed the Predator alien hybrid because it was so confusing.
Speaker 2: But no that they obviously leave that confrontation till the
Speaker 2: very end of the movie, as they should. But it's
Speaker 2: not a good sign when I'm losing track of characters
Speaker 2: and not understanding what's happening action wise. It's not mapped
Speaker 2: out well. It's herky jerky camera and editing, and it's
Speaker 2: just so dark you can't see anything. I should have
Speaker 2: bumped up the brightness on my computer when I watched
Speaker 2: this that was the smart thing to do bottom along.
Speaker 3: And when I showed the movie, I controlled the brightness
Speaker 3: in the theater. By the way, let me just say
Speaker 3: for most of you who are still going to movie theaters,
Speaker 3: and you should, if your screen seems dim, definitely go
Speaker 3: complain and tell them to stop skimping on hours on
Speaker 3: their bulb, because that's what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, actually, another sort of question about that.
Speaker 2: Because everything is predominantly digital projections now, is it. It's
Speaker 2: not the same process by which you have a light
Speaker 2: bulb that's illuminating a piece of celluloid.
Speaker 3: So how prevalent is that there's still a light bulb?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, you're still throwing light.
Speaker 2: I guess you would have to be, because it's not
Speaker 2: the bulb you're watching it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bulb has not changed. It's still a big
Speaker 3: motherfucking xenon bulb man. And so you can throw out
Speaker 3: the same amount of light, if not more, because they're
Speaker 3: the reflectors are even better now. The fact is those
Speaker 3: bulbs are expensive, so you want to save hours on them.
Speaker 3: The best way to do that is to keep them
Speaker 3: just a little dim. And when they start going dim,
Speaker 3: just leave them until they finally blow out, which leaves
Speaker 3: well us literally in the dark.
Speaker 2: So there, you said, there's xenon bulbs there. There's been
Speaker 2: no advances in LED or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know what, I've been out of the game
Speaker 3: a little bit, But they were filled with xenon gas
Speaker 3: when I was still a projectionist, when I was dealing
Speaker 3: with digital projectors. Cool.
Speaker 2: It makes sense now that you say it, because obviously
Speaker 2: you're not watching television screen with pixels. It's still an
Speaker 2: image that has to be thrown via a bright light
Speaker 2: up on a large screen. But I can't say, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm trying to think of the last time
Speaker 2: I watched a movie and I thought it was really dark.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Never really occurred to me that I
Speaker 2: could ask them to turn up the brightness.
Speaker 3: The last time it happened to me and I went
Speaker 3: and complained was a Fast and the Furious movie. The
Speaker 3: whole end sequence took place at night, and I couldn't
Speaker 3: see fucking anything. I was like, am I going to
Speaker 3: drive in in the middle of a busy city? Like?
Speaker 3: How am I not following action in this major blockbuster? See?
Speaker 2: I have a similar issue, but with video games. When
Speaker 2: you start a video game like Assassin's Creed or whatever, oh, it's.
Speaker 3: Usually a set the screen to yeah, make sure the
Speaker 3: logo is just verrely visible, and then you spend the
Speaker 3: rest of the game going where is everything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I from experience, I just bump it up,
Speaker 2: usually about as high as I can take it, until
Speaker 2: it's blown out, Like I don't want it to look
Speaker 2: too low contrast or whatever. But yeah, if I see that,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm not gonna bring it up just the
Speaker 2: hair above visible. No way, I bump it up much brighter.
Speaker 3: Than I'm not looking to be a character in the movie,
Speaker 3: certainly not in this movie. The entire military subplot exists
Speaker 3: our character, so her character can fly them out at
Speaker 3: the end. Yeah, she doesn't really do anything, so there's
Speaker 3: no resolution between her and her daughter.
Speaker 2: What the story is.
Speaker 3: She's coming back from her tour of duty and her
Speaker 3: daughter doesn't really know her and they have no connection,
Speaker 3: and she feels bad about that. The husband has more
Speaker 3: of a connection with the daughter. And then the husband
Speaker 3: gets jumped and eaten by an alien and mother and
Speaker 3: daughter go running and that's it and it's not the
Speaker 3: la father, Mom, I love you now, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I've missed you.
Speaker 2: So there's no like scene, there's no arc to any
Speaker 2: of their the subplots or their relationships. There's no I
Speaker 2: could see if they introduce, let's say this ex convict
Speaker 2: character saying, oh, I wish I just once I could
Speaker 2: have been the hero in my own personal movie or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then give him that heroic act to fulfill his
Speaker 2: character art. There's none of that, certainly not with this
Speaker 2: military mother. But again, if we're talking about this being distasteful,
Speaker 2: by the way, not just to continue this trend the
Speaker 2: military mom, there's the daughter and the husband.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: They're just a family of three. But the husband was
Speaker 2: a poor man's Jason Ridder. I couldn't stop thinking of
Speaker 2: him in this because he looked just like Jason Ridder.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe it's a thing with me.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that isn't acted by the way named Sam Trammel,
Speaker 3: which I think some of our female listeners are going
Speaker 3: to be mad at you for saying.
Speaker 2: That, but go ahead, why was he in something that
Speaker 2: I should know?
Speaker 3: I believe he was in true Blood whatever.
Speaker 2: Anyway, continuing this idea of it being distasteful mildly, if
Speaker 2: not egregiously. The way that the father is dispatched is
Speaker 2: so inexplicably. The military mom has brought a pair of
Speaker 2: night vision goggles back from whatever military situation for the daughter,
Speaker 2: which is it's like Chekhov's night vision goggles, because you
Speaker 2: know they're gonna be used to spot an alien lurking's
Speaker 2: and the daughter can't get to sleep. She puts the
Speaker 2: goggles on, she sees a xenomorph walk lurking. She complains, Mommy,
Speaker 2: there's a or your daddy, there's a monster, and they
Speaker 2: do what parents do. It's a cliche. Or there's no
Speaker 2: under the bed, no, okay, And then he goes to
Speaker 2: the window and he's like, see, honey, there's no monsters.
Speaker 2: And just at that moment, the xenomorph like whips its
Speaker 2: tail in and kills the father right in front of
Speaker 2: this poor daughter. I'm just like, what the hell, man.
Speaker 2: It's like, they don't miss an opportunity to crank up
Speaker 2: the sort of distasteful meter. If there's something that is
Speaker 2: going to be cruel and gross and unfortunate for the
Speaker 2: people in the scene, they leap at that opportunity, right,
Speaker 2: Why have someone Why have a xenomorph impregnate somebody, unless
Speaker 2: why don't we just have him impregnate a pregnant woman
Speaker 2: who's in this dire situation. Why if you're going to
Speaker 2: kill a guy, why not kill him right in front
Speaker 2: of his daughter as he's trying to calm her fears
Speaker 2: about the monsters outside. It just seemed rather cruel to me.
Speaker 2: I keep harping on this, but that's really how I felt.
Speaker 3: And it's an old joke because they had the same
Speaker 3: goddamn joke in the Monster Squad. Daddy there's a monster
Speaker 3: in across that. Oh look, scary monster. He turns on
Speaker 3: the light and the mummy is standing in there, like
Speaker 3: reaching out of him. Ohay, is that that might have
Speaker 3: been Mummy Daddy from Amazing Stories. I get them both confused.
Speaker 2: I think that might be it.
Speaker 3: But that's that's saying. Is this is just the lazy
Speaker 3: fucking that. It's not even an original bed because I've
Speaker 3: seen it done in a half dozen horror movies. This
Speaker 3: one's just being really mean about it. This one's being
Speaker 3: very saw about it. Jess saw very The child has
Speaker 3: to see the father murdered in front of him. Look,
Speaker 3: this is several years after the events of nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: and we're all feeling a bit like anything is possible
Speaker 3: and we can all go at any time, and we're
Speaker 3: all still nervous, and we all know that monsters are
Speaker 3: real and can come out of the night and kill us.
Speaker 3: But this is a cheap knockoff movie. It is not
Speaker 3: saying any of those things. It's just a reaction and
Speaker 3: a copy of those like better ideas.
Speaker 2: Exactly, But it's just there's so much. There's a group
Speaker 2: of homeless people living in the sewer that figure into
Speaker 2: this because the sewers connected to this forest where the
Speaker 2: xenomorphs are breeding, and I'm like, okay, is this another
Speaker 2: character that I have to learn who they are and
Speaker 2: what they're doing. Though they're dispatched very quickly, there's a
Speaker 2: battle that the predator, So finally the predator does find
Speaker 2: these xenomorphs and they start to battle back and forth,
Speaker 2: and that even that's confusing because they change locations and
Speaker 2: it's not always clear where they're going, but it's at
Speaker 2: a certain point they end up a power plant and
Speaker 2: the nuclear power plant, and we all can see where
Speaker 2: this is going because I'm like, okay, they're going to
Speaker 2: get into a fight, they're going.
Speaker 3: To knock up you know. I'm just hp, Can I
Speaker 3: just say something because that was something that was not
Speaker 3: confusing that the plot you're talking about there, we get wolf,
Speaker 3: the predator comes down, finds the crash ship, dispatches it,
Speaker 3: and then starts tracking the aliens. Yeah, and that that's
Speaker 3: leads and that leads him to that power plant where
Speaker 3: we watch him scan and see them go running in there.
Speaker 3: So we all know that and where we are. That's
Speaker 3: the only part that did make sense. That was the
Speaker 3: only geography that I was following and gave a shit
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: That aspect where the predators tracking the Xenomorphs, that all
Speaker 2: makes sense. What I'm saying is a couple of things.
Speaker 2: First of all, like they they don't end up at
Speaker 2: the power plant immediately they've gone to they go to
Speaker 2: a school, and then they're not at the school, and
Speaker 2: then they're here. They go they kill somebody in a
Speaker 2: diner or some people in a.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the xeno morphs and their pattern of behavior,
Speaker 3: which is fucking boncos and makes absolutely no sense for
Speaker 3: what we have seen so far in the Alien series overall.
Speaker 3: Is the most organized alien species we've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Right, But what I'm saying, ultimately, at the end of
Speaker 2: it all, when they ended up at a power plant,
Speaker 2: I knew exactly where this was leading. It was so
Speaker 2: unsurprising that of course they're going to knock the power
Speaker 2: out just to amp up the danger that's happening in
Speaker 2: this town. Because now the powers out everywhere nobody it's bedlam.
Speaker 2: People are trying to evacuate, and then the sheriff and
Speaker 2: then the National Guard are brought in. I think the
Speaker 2: sheriff has contacted the National Guard to bring them in
Speaker 2: because it's chaos.
Speaker 3: This is a situation where you would actually need the
Speaker 3: National Guard where it makes that makes sense. Are taking
Speaker 3: over your town, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: And that sequence I thought was actually amusing in a
Speaker 2: good way because they show up with all these tanks
Speaker 2: and weapons and they are dispatched almost immediately by these
Speaker 2: zeno morphs. It's not even a fair fight, they're just
Speaker 2: they're killed immediately, So.
Speaker 3: They you know what I was thinking during the military
Speaker 3: sequence of this, Yeah, there are very few military sequences
Speaker 3: in aliens where we're watching that squad do their thing.
Speaker 3: But it's all skillful and amazing and just compare it
Speaker 3: to what's going on here. They have the same resources, right,
Speaker 3: it's all In fact, they have more resources here because
Speaker 3: they have access to lots and lots of military vehicles,
Speaker 3: whereas in Aliens they had to make one out of
Speaker 3: what is basically a forklift for pushing around airplanes. That's
Speaker 3: what that ATV vehicle was, right, And he made a
Speaker 3: fucking amazing tense sequence when they land and are exploring
Speaker 3: for the first time, it's it's incredible here They've got
Speaker 3: all of these tanks and stuff moving into town and
Speaker 3: and we have an alien attack and it's all worthless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just doesn't. It leads nowhere. But another kind
Speaker 2: of at least something that was logical to me in
Speaker 2: the midst of all of this stuff happening is after
Speaker 2: the National Guard are wiped out, the sheriff who has
Speaker 2: organized a survival party. It's him. It's this guy Dallas,
Speaker 2: his brother.
Speaker 3: It's all the subplots have come together.
Speaker 2: They've finally all come together in a way. Although, yeah,
Speaker 2: the military mom is there. He gets one of the
Speaker 2: radios and he contacts colonel to let him in the army,
Speaker 2: an army colonel to let him know what's going on?
Speaker 2: And can you bring an airlift to get us out
Speaker 2: of here? Like that, as he's talking to this colonel,
Speaker 2: you see the colonel on a military plane and as
Speaker 2: the colonel's trying to keep the sheriff on the line
Speaker 2: or whatever, he's looking at. First he's looking at footage
Speaker 2: of the National Guard getting wiped out, all of the
Speaker 2: body cams and everything, and then you see him running
Speaker 2: simulations to see how far this thing will spread, because
Speaker 2: it's clear that they know something that's happening. It's not
Speaker 2: clear immediately that they know it's an alien thing. They
Speaker 2: know that something's happening, and they know that it's gonna spread.
Speaker 2: That was cool because you because I knew, okay, because
Speaker 2: he tells him go to the center of town. That's
Speaker 2: where the airlift is gonna be. But in my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, they're just they're gonna nuke the town.
Speaker 2: And that actually was logical and it made sense, and
Speaker 2: I thought it was a, like I said, a logical thing.
Speaker 2: But the thing that gave me the most amount of
Speaker 2: joy about this movie father, Yes, because not because of him.
Speaker 2: In this movie. First of all, he was the only
Speaker 2: guy next to Ortiz that I recognized and really recognized him.
Speaker 2: He's been in a million things. This is gonna be
Speaker 2: a bit of an aggression, so indulge me on this.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, So he as you said, he's played by
Speaker 2: Robert Joy. He's been in a million bit roles. We've
Speaker 2: seen him in a bunch of stuff, but most intriguingly,
Speaker 2: Father Malone. I looked up his thing on IMDb. The thing.
Speaker 2: You and I may be the only ones who even
Speaker 2: care about this, but fuck it, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 2: into it. He was in one episode of a nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety TV show called get Ready for This Maniac Mansion?
Speaker 2: Do you remember, Father Malone? When Father Malone and I
Speaker 2: were in high school, we used to play this called
Speaker 2: It was a point and click adventure called Maniac Mansion
Speaker 2: by Lucas Arts. Lucas used to make video games and
Speaker 2: it was play on. It was a little rocky horror
Speaker 2: because it was this mansion with a crazy evil scientist.
Speaker 3: Who's doing all these things, and it was as close
Speaker 3: to rocky horror as we could get at the time,
Speaker 3: and at the time, by the way, we couldn't even
Speaker 3: get it on video. If you wanted to see rocky
Speaker 3: horror mixture. You had to go to a midnight movie
Speaker 3: screening of it.
Speaker 2: This TV show, which I have no memory and I'm
Speaker 2: pretty certain you don't have a memory of it. This
Speaker 2: show Maniac Mansion was a sequel of sorts to the game.
Speaker 2: It took place twenty years after the events of that
Speaker 2: original video game or computer game. And but get this, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's the crazy part. The other stars. The stars of
Speaker 2: this include are you ready for this? Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy,
Speaker 2: Oh my God, Robin Duke Martin Short, Deborah Thieker, who
Speaker 2: was Gwen Fabin Blunt, and Guffman. She was basically in
Speaker 2: Christopher Guest's repertory of mockumentaries, Tony Rosatto, Andrea Martin. Dave
Speaker 2: Cronenberg is in this as himself. This show is bananas.
Speaker 2: I've I was so shocked to read about this thing.
Speaker 2: It ran from nineteen ninety to ninety three. Obviously you
Speaker 2: can tell from the cast list that it was Canadian
Speaker 2: in origin.
Speaker 3: It ran on.
Speaker 2: Canadians is animated, No, it's live action. It ran on
Speaker 2: you YTV, which was a Canadian network, and it also
Speaker 2: ran on the Family Channel in the US for three years.
Speaker 2: And I was just knocked out. This is the cream
Speaker 2: of the setv crop and others in this thing. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed going down this rabbit hole of Maniac Mansion about
Speaker 2: a million times more than I show this movie Father alone.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry for the digression, but I had to mention
Speaker 2: it because I was so surprised by this information. Maybe
Speaker 2: we should look I think the they're on YouTube. I
Speaker 2: haven't looked it up.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're definitely going to be investigating, and I know
Speaker 3: I'm going to watch every episode at least once. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's talk the Predalien for a moment. Let's talk.
Speaker 2: I'd love to, but I'd love to follow moment, but
Speaker 2: I couldn't make him out. Couldn't see him.
Speaker 3: You saw him, listen, I didn't, I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: Aside from a few herky shots of his head, I
Speaker 2: don't know what he really looked like. But I'm sorry
Speaker 2: continue he looked like Barney what.
Speaker 3: In the initial draft the script, the preed Alien was
Speaker 3: supposed to murder everyone on board the predatorship and then
Speaker 3: be dispatched, and then the ship was going to crash
Speaker 3: and the Aliens are going to behave as normal, making
Speaker 3: a queen taking over this town. And then the executive said, no,
Speaker 3: we liked that preed alien from the last one. Make
Speaker 3: that the villain. And so we get this based on
Speaker 3: the notion from Alien three that an alien will take
Speaker 3: on the traits of whatever host it has used genetically.
Speaker 3: So we have this alien slash predator hybrid who somehow
Speaker 3: is a queen and controls the actions of the other
Speaker 3: aliens around it, and thus it can lay eggs somehow
Speaker 3: orally with no because they've sort of logicked it in.
Speaker 3: If you listen to any of the commentaries on any
Speaker 3: of these discs that it's a stage in between the
Speaker 3: creation of the over positive. It's all bullshit. It's the
Speaker 3: stupidest innovation in any of these alien and or predator movies.
Speaker 3: It's the dumbest thing that somebody has added to the mythology.
Speaker 3: People say that this one is out of cannon, which
Speaker 3: is a drag because some things in this movie I
Speaker 3: did like. But if it means that we can wipe
Speaker 3: out the predalien from consciousness, let's go ahead and do that.
Speaker 3: Because it is not only clumsily handled, it is very
Speaker 3: dumb looking. It is.
Speaker 2: But again, this is one of those things where it
Speaker 2: was established an alien three. You're right that an alien
Speaker 2: will take on secondary characteristics of whatever it is, whatever
Speaker 2: host that's used. So it's not a bad idea. It's
Speaker 2: not executed well in least for a myriad of reasons
Speaker 2: we've already stated. But it's not about I didn't buy
Speaker 2: this idea. I was confused more than anything when the
Speaker 2: pread alien impregnates this pregnant woman, because it's not a
Speaker 2: face hugger that comes and gets her. He attacks her
Speaker 2: in the hospital and it's like a kiss that he
Speaker 2: gives her and you can see the eggs going down
Speaker 2: her throat and again a wonderful, tasteful shot in a
Speaker 2: film filled with them.
Speaker 3: So I was you keep saying he, but it's a she.
Speaker 3: That's a queen.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: It the preued alien, nicknamed Chant by the crew because
Speaker 3: it's the most distasteful character they could think of, Chant
Speaker 3: from Weird Science.
Speaker 2: Weird Science.
Speaker 3: But Chan is a female, Okay.
Speaker 2: I didn't think that through. It makes sense if this
Speaker 2: thing is producing eggs to impregnate other people, but again
Speaker 2: it was all to confuse. I get it. It's an
Speaker 2: alien type creature and there's no character that's gonna exposition
Speaker 2: something to give you a context for what it's doing.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, like at least a predator,
Speaker 2: a normal predator, a yaucher creature, you know what you're getting.
Speaker 2: And it telegraphs its motivation and its equipment and everything
Speaker 2: it's doing very clearly. It picks up that spinning blade
Speaker 2: thing and you know it's gonna whip it around. By
Speaker 2: the way, one thing I have to say about the predators,
Speaker 2: they are very poor shots in this movie from the
Speaker 2: very beginning, because this predator alien hybrid is running around
Speaker 2: the ship and one of the others at the very beginning,
Speaker 2: one of the predators is on the ship is using
Speaker 2: its shoulder cannon to try and target this thing and
Speaker 2: kill it. But every time it tries to shoot, it misses.
Speaker 2: Like like, I guess it's supposed to be that the
Speaker 2: pread alien is too fast and that's what causes the
Speaker 2: ship to crash. It's that this thing is shooting wantonly.
Speaker 3: This thing is and firing a ajectile weapon inside a spacecraft,
Speaker 3: as if that won't depressurize everything and cause a crash,
Speaker 3: as if it as it does not only that, HB
Speaker 3: remember the absolute room full of badasses we met at
Speaker 3: the end of alien versus predator. The ancient one alone
Speaker 3: would have been able to deal with anything. It's so
Speaker 3: insulting that they've gone with this. Why not just craft
Speaker 3: a whole new movie. Who cares? Why link it at all?
Speaker 2: Also, because the predators are always so conscious about if
Speaker 2: all us fails, if they're incapacitated or they're overrun, they
Speaker 2: are clearly taught as a race to self destruct because
Speaker 2: they can't, especially in the case of an alien, because
Speaker 2: they can't risk that this thing is going to spread
Speaker 2: across the universe. So I guess ultimately, and that's in fact,
Speaker 2: that's what this wolf predator. The first thing he does
Speaker 2: when he lands on Earth and finds the down ship,
Speaker 2: the first thing he does with the ship is he
Speaker 2: sets the self destruct and blows it up so that
Speaker 2: it can't be found and any of the other creatures
Speaker 2: that are around will be dealt with. But what I
Speaker 2: don't understand is as this ship, as they're trying to
Speaker 2: fight this pred alien, I don't see any of the
Speaker 2: other badass predators. Like you said, someone should have been like,
Speaker 2: all right, we made a this isn't happening. We can't
Speaker 2: take out this thing. This is something we're all right,
Speaker 2: self destruct sequence alpha, that's it. You wouldn't have a movie,
Speaker 2: of course, But doesn't that make sense. These are pragmatic creatures.
Speaker 2: They're hot to do this.
Speaker 3: You are absolutely right. Like, the one thing that we
Speaker 3: know about predators is that they will commit suicide rather
Speaker 3: than let things go out of their own control. And
Speaker 3: here we've got an entire ship of them, and we're
Speaker 3: just supposed to believe that this pred alien has vested
Speaker 3: every one of them to the point where that is
Speaker 3: that they've taken their fine option away from them. Okay,
Speaker 3: makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's really just exasperating.
Speaker 3: And can I reiterate that my dissatisfaction with the continuation
Speaker 3: of the bony zeno morph skull. It cannot stand the
Speaker 3: everything is now the warrior alien and not the sleek
Speaker 3: dome of the big chap from the first Alien. I
Speaker 3: know we're getting a lot of it in the New
Speaker 3: Alien Earth series, so I'm very satisfied, but I just
Speaker 3: want to say, again, enough with the bony skull alien.
Speaker 2: Here's a question I have for you. This is a
Speaker 2: bigger question. Do you think this movie represents the nader
Speaker 2: of both franchises? The Alien and Predator franchises.
Speaker 3: Yes, because there was only they were. The only place
Speaker 3: to go was up after this, right, I mean that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I mean. There's only one way to go,
Speaker 2: and that's up. Because he couldn't get any worse than this.
Speaker 3: That is correct, because I will and we will discuss
Speaker 3: problems with the future Predator films in the series, but
Speaker 3: they cannot and are not worse than this film. So, yes,
Speaker 3: this is the lowest of the Predator films, definitely. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's the lowest of the Alien films.
Speaker 3: It might be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have problems with Prometheus, but that's.
Speaker 3: Most I have big problems with Prometheus.
Speaker 2: Right, But that's purely story. That's we're not talking the
Speaker 2: craft of the movie itself.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it's gorgeous, you know. That's a gorgeous movie,
Speaker 3: and the performances are really good in it, and I
Speaker 3: like a lot of the action in it. I just
Speaker 3: don't think it's the Alien movie, right.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking as I'm watching this, because again,
Speaker 2: on one of the beauties of this series of episodes
Speaker 2: that we're doing is I'm coming at it as a
Speaker 2: complete newbie to most of these movies. So I'm curious
Speaker 2: what the arc of these sequels is. Are we at
Speaker 2: the lowest point. It seems to me that we are,
Speaker 2: because I know that we were coming up to like
Speaker 2: Predators and then the Shane Black movie and of course
Speaker 2: Pray and bad Lands eventually. So it's comforting that it
Speaker 2: can't get any worse than this, because this is a
Speaker 2: bit of an endurance test.
Speaker 3: Here's something that I did like, At least initially, it
Speaker 3: seemed that finally somebody was taking the alien blood seriously.
Speaker 3: When the Hunter shoots the face Hugger in a mist
Speaker 3: of blood sprays the air, and then his part his
Speaker 3: forearm drops off like a log. I thought, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: somebody remembered that in that first Alien movie, just a
Speaker 3: few drops of blood from the face Hugger ate through
Speaker 3: most of the hull of a ship, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 3: we're definitely going to get that, and we get a
Speaker 3: lot of it here. But then at a certain point,
Speaker 3: our lead character is sitting beneath an alien. It is
Speaker 3: literally on top of him, and then he blasts open
Speaker 3: its skull and just runs away and everything's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would have been seriously probably he must have
Speaker 2: been killed because there's another there's a moment where the bully,
Speaker 2: like the Alpha Bully is does someone shoot an alien
Speaker 2: above him? There's some somehow the alien blood gets on
Speaker 2: his face.
Speaker 3: And it eats it away immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is another in a movie filled with horrible images,
Speaker 2: but that I agree with you one hundred percent. There
Speaker 2: there's a lot of acid blood stuff happening. They're not
Speaker 2: missing an opportunity to make something extra gross or extra
Speaker 2: give you that kind of shiver at something happening, And
Speaker 2: the acid blood's a big part of that.
Speaker 3: That's a big part of anil the Zeno morphs, and
Speaker 3: I hate when they skimp on it. It's and I
Speaker 3: hate that they it has over time become more and
Speaker 3: more of just an irritant and less of a corrosive
Speaker 3: acid that will eat through everything in that. I noticed
Speaker 3: in the New Alien series that when they have a
Speaker 3: container for the corpse of an alien, it's a heavy
Speaker 3: duty plastic underneath, like we would do here on Earth
Speaker 3: with a corrosive acid instead of more metal.
Speaker 2: Right, right, But let's continue on this because I'm we
Speaker 2: mentioned a few things here, but what else did we
Speaker 2: like about this move? What else worked? If anything? Else
Speaker 2: because we already talked about the whole world of the Predator.
Speaker 2: That was really cool.
Speaker 3: Two sons on the Predator world two sons.
Speaker 2: I know, I didn't notice.
Speaker 3: Looked really hot there, which makes sense considering that's their thing.
Speaker 2: It did, and effects wise, I thought that whole sequence
Speaker 2: because worked because the wolf Predator gets this signal, he
Speaker 2: brings up this heads up display kind of thing and
Speaker 2: you can see he actually plays back like a recording
Speaker 2: of everything that's happening on this ship, the pread alien
Speaker 2: escaping and running around and the thing going down. That
Speaker 2: all worked really well. So technically I think some of
Speaker 2: the effects work. Particularly, it would say the use of
Speaker 2: CG in this, I thought it was actually pretty good.
Speaker 2: It was used effectively.
Speaker 3: It certainly was because everything that took place on the
Speaker 3: Predator ship with the pred alien attack was all CG.
Speaker 3: There were no practical sets there at all.
Speaker 2: Looked great. Well after that looked great.
Speaker 3: These guys are an effects company basically, so they handled
Speaker 3: the majority of their own effects, and it, like you said,
Speaker 3: it does look mostly great. Some of the face hugger
Speaker 3: stuff is sketchy and a lot of the other effects
Speaker 3: are okay, But yes, overall the I do think the
Speaker 3: visual effects when you can see them, are really good.
Speaker 2: Right again, some of the shots, the scenes things, it
Speaker 2: looked again I keep using this word. It looked more
Speaker 2: cinematic to me. There was a texture to some of
Speaker 2: the shots that I thought worked really well. It looked good,
Speaker 2: It looked. It didn't look like it's being shot on
Speaker 2: a bunch of sets. I believe that they were in
Speaker 2: this small town in Colorado, that all worked, that all
Speaker 2: looked fine. So that's another thing in the plus category.
Speaker 2: When you could see things, certain scenes looked pretty good.
Speaker 3: That's definitely a plus. Sure, here's another plus. I don't
Speaker 3: have one. It's definitely not the screenwriting combo of the
Speaker 3: gun store owners and stoners. Let's get that joke in here. Somehow.
Speaker 3: Were those characters supposed to make us laugh in some
Speaker 3: way because they were stoned in the middle of all
Speaker 3: of this, and then we're immediately brutally murdered. The gun
Speaker 3: owners who seemed unable to handle guns. Why did they
Speaker 3: go to a gun shop? Can maybe I dozed off? HB.
Speaker 3: Why did they go to a gun shop and not
Speaker 3: the police station when they needed weaponry?
Speaker 2: One thing on that I thought initially the first thing
Speaker 2: I thought was this looks like a pawn shop, and
Speaker 2: then I thought this must be a gun shop, but no,
Speaker 2: it's actually if you go back and watch them, it's
Speaker 2: a sporting good store.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So on that basis, it doesn't seem all that illogical
Speaker 2: that these two Stoners would be working there, because it's not.
Speaker 2: They're not purely selling firearms to people. That would be
Speaker 2: unsafe to have these guys working that kind of shot.
Speaker 2: But if they're selling Camo vests and Duck calls.
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense that they're not adept with the guns. Maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's as if you worked like here Dick's sporting
Speaker 2: goods store here, it's probably elsewhere too. They used to
Speaker 2: sell you can get like running gear, you can get sneakers,
Speaker 2: you can get skiing, you can get all this stuff.
Speaker 2: They used to also be able to sell you guns.
Speaker 2: So I look at it that way, like they don't
Speaker 2: have to be an expert weaponsmith to work there. That
Speaker 2: part didn't bother me so much. It was goofy, and
Speaker 2: it didn't. I think they are looking for a silly,
Speaker 2: cheap stoner laugh. But that didn't bother me quite as
Speaker 2: much because I knew that they were just going to
Speaker 2: be dispatched almost immediately. It's like when low Rent ethan
Speaker 2: Embry's managed at the pizza shop that he's working at,
Speaker 2: ends up becoming part of this group that the sheriff
Speaker 2: is shuttling to the center of town. As soon as
Speaker 2: they picked him up, I knew that he was not
Speaker 2: long for this movie, because anybody who's even half of
Speaker 2: a prick in this movie gets it, and I think
Speaker 2: maybe that's maybe part of the point. Maybe there's a
Speaker 2: wish fulfillment thing happening here where you want to see
Speaker 2: these asshole characters get killed in awful ways. So that
Speaker 2: was predictable for me.
Speaker 3: I wanted some of our leads to get killed in
Speaker 3: unpredictable ways. My favorite bit in the movie is when
Speaker 3: the Predator, a wolf, dispatches two aliens with one of
Speaker 3: those spinning discs and it slices them in half and
Speaker 3: then catches hold of one of our leads and pins
Speaker 3: her to a wall. It was really brutal and horrible
Speaker 3: and made me think about the Predator in a way
Speaker 3: I haven't thought about him for a couple of movies,
Speaker 3: since maybe the first movie, where it was like Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ what are these people up against like that? I
Speaker 3: thought that effect was fantastic. I know it's gruesome to
Speaker 3: say that, what are you gonna do? It was a
Speaker 3: great effect.
Speaker 2: The effect was fantastic. But again I'm left thinking about
Speaker 2: the poor aim of this predator, because.
Speaker 3: There's no poor aim. That girl ran into the shot.
Speaker 3: She ran like he did. He accomplished his goal, and
Speaker 3: then she stepped in front of the blade.
Speaker 2: I suppose that's the case. I guess she did. It
Speaker 2: was her fault that she ran into this blade. I
Speaker 2: at the time, I thought, can't you aim that blade
Speaker 2: any better? Predator like you're you just seem It's like
Speaker 2: the joke that stormtroopers are all have terrible aim because
Speaker 2: they can never hit anything they're shooting at in the
Speaker 2: Star Wars movies. That's how I felt about the predator
Speaker 2: in this movie. But I see your point. Maybe it
Speaker 2: was her fault.
Speaker 3: This predator's got the blue juice, he's got the he's
Speaker 3: got the magic erase juice.
Speaker 2: That made no sense to me at all, because he's
Speaker 2: investigating the ship, the down ship before he blows it up,
Speaker 2: and he concocts this liquid, this blue iridescent liquid from
Speaker 2: the cases that were holding the face huggers. He mixes
Speaker 2: it with something, and somehow this juice he drips, so
Speaker 2: he pours it on things and they just dissolve into nothing,
Speaker 2: presumably because he's trying to erase any trace of what's
Speaker 2: been happening. Like he pours it on the hunter and
Speaker 2: his son and they just dribble away into nothing. But
Speaker 2: what was that stuff and why did it have to
Speaker 2: what does he mix I maybe I just wanted too much,
Speaker 2: too many explanations, too much explanation from this, but like,
Speaker 2: why is he using this liquid from this face hugger
Speaker 2: juice and why is it? I was very confused by that.
Speaker 3: That's always the best parts of these movies.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: This is the Predator to situation again where he's using
Speaker 3: bathroom tile to help cosgize his own wounds. It's like,
Speaker 3: what was that about that? I don't know, he's an alien.
Speaker 3: They do it weird shit.
Speaker 2: That's another fair point. Okay, I'll give you that one too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love the blue dissolving juice, the Reccom serum.
Speaker 2: And every Predator movie has to have the requisite scene
Speaker 2: where the predator gets knocked on his ass and.
Speaker 3: Can patch himself back up. Oh man. I love when
Speaker 3: the predator has to patch himself back up and it's
Speaker 3: like Anton Sugar and No Country for Old Men. When
Speaker 3: he's in that bathtub, you're breathing really heavy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a medical triage scene in every Predator movie,
Speaker 2: at least up to this point. I'm sure there'll be
Speaker 2: some predators and the Predator, but I don't have to
Speaker 2: wait and see.
Speaker 3: I guess if I remember deckerd he has to break
Speaker 3: his fingers back into place at the end of Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: That ooh man, that sequence because I saw before I
Speaker 2: saw this is a tangent before I saw the entirety
Speaker 2: of Blade Runner and understood what the movie was as
Speaker 2: a kid, I flipped over to HBO Let's SA and
Speaker 2: that scene where Roy is breaking his fingers and this
Speaker 2: is for Chris cracked. That is a for a nine
Speaker 2: ten year old kid. That's a heavy sequence, man, because
Speaker 2: he's just breaking several two or three fingers in the
Speaker 2: guy's hand.
Speaker 3: He's breaking He's breaking Han Solo's fingers. You're nine years old,
Speaker 3: that's Han Solo and this android is fucking him up.
Speaker 3: It was horrifying. I agree.
Speaker 2: It was so savage and that's obviously the point. But man,
Speaker 2: when you seeing these things, seeing these things out of
Speaker 2: context as a kid, it's it's a trip anyway, digression.
Speaker 3: Over, Hold on one second. How long have we been talking?
Speaker 2: Let me see there's usually a counter somewhere, right, I
Speaker 2: guess it's been about we started at about an hour,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Right, somebody else to say, trying to thank every trying.
Speaker 3: I didn't really take notes this time because it was
Speaker 3: just too painful.
Speaker 2: Let me look through what I have here. Oh, we
Speaker 2: can talk about the ending of the movie. We didn't
Speaker 2: talk about that yet. So the town, so they make
Speaker 2: their way, this little party of survivors make their way
Speaker 2: to the helicopter on top of the hospital and they
Speaker 2: take off. It's the military. Mom, it's Dallas's brother who
Speaker 2: has been impaled I believe by a by an alien tale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought somehow. And then in the next scene
Speaker 3: he's there again. I was like, way, what was there again?
Speaker 2: So it's just the three of them on a on
Speaker 2: the helicopter. Oh, I should mention before that that the
Speaker 2: predator I'm jumping all over the place. The predator's shoulder
Speaker 2: cannon has malfunctioned. So the predator has taken it off
Speaker 2: of his shoulder and fashioned it into a pistol, and
Speaker 2: Dallas at some point has found this pistol and he
Speaker 2: was using it to kill xenomorphs. Anyway, the three of
Speaker 2: them are on that chopper that takes off. The bomber
Speaker 2: comes and bombs the shit out of the town. It's new,
Speaker 2: it's gone, and the helicopter crashes because of the shockwave,
Speaker 2: but everybody survives, and then the military come and pick
Speaker 2: them up. And part of that is he surrenders this alien,
Speaker 2: this predator pistol thing, and presumably they're taking to where
Speaker 2: they're going to go.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised with the regularly with the rest of the
Speaker 3: tone of this movie, that they weren't all summarily executed,
Speaker 3: and then they take the predator's pistol off of their corpses.
Speaker 2: That would have made a lot more sense given what
Speaker 2: we just what we find out is what happens is
Speaker 2: we cut to this military installation looking building and Robert
Speaker 2: Joy's character, the colonel, is walking with some haste with
Speaker 2: a briefcase and he goes into a room where there's
Speaker 2: a woman there somewhat of authority, and he produces he
Speaker 2: opens the briefcase, and the woman says, the world isn't
Speaker 2: ready for it, but the colonel replies, it isn't for
Speaker 2: our world, is it, Miss Utani, and presents her with
Speaker 2: the pistol. The idea being this is it's the Wayland
Speaker 2: Utani thing that we're going to see hundreds of years hence, so.
Speaker 3: We've seen Whyland and that's the alien portion of it.
Speaker 3: The Utani. We're now establishing that they're the predator portion
Speaker 3: of things. Yeah, which it was supposed to conclude with
Speaker 3: a dissolved to much later in the future, and that
Speaker 3: alien pistol in use by some sort of colonial marine
Speaker 3: contingent that have settled on a planet which is the
Speaker 3: Alien home World, where a group of predators are fighting
Speaker 3: for their lives on the surface. The end Alien Versus
Speaker 3: Predator three was supposed to take place entirely on the
Speaker 3: Alien home world, with these space marines helping predators. Maybe
Speaker 3: they should have gone with that with this move.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is a long way to go just
Speaker 2: to get that alien the predator weaponry in the hands
Speaker 2: of the Utani Corporation. It's a long way to go
Speaker 2: for that. You're right. If they could have just covered
Speaker 2: that with a crawl at the beginning and opened up
Speaker 2: on that predator alien colonial marine conflagration on that home world.
Speaker 2: That would have been badass.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, are you kidding me? Some outposts somewhere,
Speaker 3: because look, honestly, I wish they had made that third
Speaker 3: movie just so we could avoid the whole Prometheus nonsense.
Speaker 3: You could make an alien home world cannon, then you
Speaker 3: avoid all of the fucking engineers and their black goo bullshit.
Speaker 2: But that's the big ending, that's the big reveal.
Speaker 3: At the end of this time, Utani Corporation is involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So anyway, beyond that, I'm not sure what else
Speaker 2: there is to dig into this. We've talked about the
Speaker 2: poor acting. Have we talked about the poor acting? We
Speaker 2: talked about we.
Speaker 3: Have that, but we don't have to. I don't think
Speaker 3: we need to pile on the poor actors who are
Speaker 3: saddled with this terrible screenplay, because, make no mistake, it's
Speaker 3: a terrible screenpoint. How this movie was not just about
Speaker 3: an alien or rather a predator sitting in the home world,
Speaker 3: gets a distress call, goes what's going on there, and
Speaker 3: then goes and investigates a case on Earth. I don't understand.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and there's even moments I don't think we
Speaker 2: talked about this that come out of nowhere that make
Speaker 2: no sense. So there's this girl that's got the hots
Speaker 2: for the younger brother of the convict, and she entices
Speaker 2: him to go to the pool.
Speaker 3: At the high school because of the course, we're watching
Speaker 3: a fucking CW episode.
Speaker 2: But the whole reason behind this is that she can
Speaker 2: strip down to her underwear and basically we can leer
Speaker 2: between lear at this woman who's being seductive. It has
Speaker 2: no bearing on any of the events of the movie
Speaker 2: because very that's the moment where the lights go out
Speaker 2: because the power plant is destroyed. They got her there
Speaker 2: just so they could undress her, so that everybody could
Speaker 2: leer at her, and that's it.
Speaker 3: It just I'd like, I'd like to point out that
Speaker 3: this was a time in popular culture where assless white
Speaker 3: women were constantly being ogle at in movies and it's like,
Speaker 3: what are we even looking at here? And can I
Speaker 3: And I mentioned earlier that the so far from the
Speaker 3: alien films we've seen, the aliens are very organized. They
Speaker 3: always have a purpose, they're always doing something like we
Speaker 3: never see an alien just resting right but their plan
Speaker 3: here makes no sense whatsoever. There's no central place they're
Speaker 3: working out of. It's all just randomly running around. How
Speaker 3: many eggs is this queen possibly laying that we're getting
Speaker 3: this many zeno more?
Speaker 2: This is supposed to be like a hive mentality, right,
Speaker 2: They're all working to support a queen and the colony,
Speaker 2: and everything they do is supposed to support that. But
Speaker 2: what we get here is essentially a bunch of slash.
Speaker 3: I was about to say, it's a slasher movie. There's
Speaker 3: just like going from house to house and neighborhood to neighborhood,
Speaker 3: but there's no purpose to it. And the other point
Speaker 3: I was going to make is we once again get
Speaker 3: the fucking alien life span. The life cycle of the
Speaker 3: alien sped up or slowed down depending on what the
Speaker 3: plot fucking needs. Like these hunters get face huggered and
Speaker 3: alien pops out of them and suddenly there's a fucking
Speaker 3: full grown adult. Like, Okay, was.
Speaker 2: There any canon established on the alien life cycle? Because
Speaker 2: you're right, they do grow very quickly from a little
Speaker 2: chest burster to the full sized alien. But at that
Speaker 2: point do they just stay the same size and that's it,
Speaker 2: or do they die quicker. What's the lifespan of an alien?
Speaker 2: I guess is my question to you.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know what their eventual lifespan is. I
Speaker 3: don't know if they mutate even further. See, this is
Speaker 3: all something interesting that a skilled writer could do with
Speaker 3: the Xeno Morphs's characters. But my point is that it's
Speaker 3: established in the first Alien movie that there's at least
Speaker 3: a few days between impregnation of an alien embryo till
Speaker 3: it's chest bursting, and then a day maybe or two
Speaker 3: before we get the full blown warrior or drone, And
Speaker 3: here it's like a matter of hours. It's like now
Speaker 3: people when they get bitten by a zombie, they turn
Speaker 3: into a zombie, as opposed to in the Romero sense
Speaker 3: where you die from whatever and then you come back.
Speaker 3: Here it's just it's like it's a game of tag.
Speaker 2: Without knowing that getting back to the story and the
Speaker 2: setting and how it could it might have been improved,
Speaker 2: my impression without knowing actually what transpired is that it's
Speaker 2: as if somebody, like somebody said to themselves, Okay, look,
Speaker 2: my uncle has access to all these sets. Let's say
Speaker 2: my uncle owns a hardware store and someone wants me
Speaker 2: to make them a predator movie. So let's write something
Speaker 2: that takes place exclusively in a hardware store, and we'll
Speaker 2: figure out the story as we go, like and we've
Speaker 2: already got a predator suit, right. That's because it felt okay.
Speaker 2: We have access to these locations in Vancouver or wherever
Speaker 2: it was. We don't have a lot of money, but
Speaker 2: we know we can shoot at a hospital, a plant,
Speaker 2: a power plant, and a diner or something. Let's figure
Speaker 2: out a movie based on all these places. We can
Speaker 2: shoot these locations and everything else will fall into place.
Speaker 2: Because I think again, if you came at this instead
Speaker 2: of that way of creating a script a screenplay, if
Speaker 2: you had started by saying, look, I want to make
Speaker 2: a kick ass alien versus Predator movie. How do I
Speaker 2: do that. Let's put the budget aside for a minute.
Speaker 2: Let's figure this out. We want to start on the
Speaker 2: predator homeworld where get to distress signal? He does all,
Speaker 2: how do we get from A to B? And then
Speaker 2: let's make something cool out of that. I got the
Speaker 2: sense that they started It's like Johnny Bravo and the
Speaker 2: Brady Bunch. Right. He fit the suit. That's why he's
Speaker 2: Johnny Bravo. There was no greater plan around it. I
Speaker 2: got the sense here they're like, we can shoot at
Speaker 2: these locations in Vancouver. Let's figure it out and it'll
Speaker 2: make sense eventually. That's my lasting impression of the story
Speaker 2: of this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all hastily slap dashed together, both in intent
Speaker 3: and in drama that I can't figure this story out
Speaker 3: at all. I don't care about any of these characters
Speaker 3: the least invest that I've been in any of the
Speaker 3: scenarios or any of the characters thus far, including the Aliens.
Speaker 3: They're just the Xeno more of some some sort of
Speaker 3: irritant here more than anything, unless they're being totally fucking disgusting,
Speaker 3: which is fine. I don't mind aliens being totally fucking disgusting.
Speaker 3: It's just that I want the movie to be better
Speaker 3: around it. I can handle a shock moment, I can
Speaker 3: handle a revulsion moment. Those are fine, but it has
Speaker 3: to be supported by a film and a plot and
Speaker 3: a point of view and an idea somewhere. This film
Speaker 3: had nothing to say at all about anything.
Speaker 2: Just it was. It offered cheap thrills. That's all you're
Speaker 2: getting with this. This is something that probably would play
Speaker 2: pretty well at a drive in if you were of
Speaker 2: a certain bent and you just wanted to sit back
Speaker 2: and check your mind out and just go all right,
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen here? That's fine, and there's a place
Speaker 2: for drive in movies, But there's so many corners cut
Speaker 2: and needless complexity added to what should be a very
Speaker 2: straightforward movie of Predator trying to track down these zeno morphs,
Speaker 2: humans caught in the crossfire. Let's make something interesting out
Speaker 2: of that, And that's not what we got at all.
Speaker 2: So really, they're over two in sequels here in Alien.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, they're oh for two in Alien Predator crossovers. Unfortunately.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our only hope is Trackton Berg because he's laying
Speaker 3: the whaling utany Predator groundwork with Thenandroid with the bad Lands.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we'll get to that eventually. I know, we
Speaker 3: keep hinting at it as if we have any knowledge,
Speaker 3: but we don't. But we're just hope we got hope.
Speaker 3: That's what we got. Baby.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult to talk about these movies and not
Speaker 2: try to bring up the dawn of a new era
Speaker 2: and creditor filmmaking, because again, We've already said it in
Speaker 2: the last few movies we've talked about, but Tracktenburg is
Speaker 2: he's doing so much right, and having going through the
Speaker 2: exercise of seeing these earlier missteps makes me appreciate these
Speaker 2: later movies all the more. Really, this guy figured out
Speaker 2: the formula. He figured out how to build a better
Speaker 2: mouse trap, so good on him.
Speaker 3: He does represent a dawn. It can't get any darker
Speaker 3: than this. Quite literally, this is the darkest movie I've
Speaker 3: ever seen. You'll be wondering what just happened quite frequently.
Speaker 2: I did, I know, I did. Like I said, I
Speaker 2: thought the pred alien was killed much earlier in the movie.
Speaker 2: I was really surprised to see him pop up later
Speaker 2: because I thought he was already.
Speaker 3: Dead and in the end with a nuclear warhead following.
Speaker 3: What did any of it matter?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess I'll have to see in
Speaker 2: the next movie if they even relate back to this
Speaker 2: one at all. I suspect they didn't, because I don't
Speaker 2: think this was a very successful movie.
Speaker 3: I'm just guessing this movie made like one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty million dollars based on a forty million dollar budget.
Speaker 3: I'd say it did pretty good. Actually, it's not good
Speaker 3: enough to dissuade them from accepting Ridley Scott's offer to
Speaker 3: come back to the franchise. Thus no AVP three, which
Speaker 3: I'm sure somebody somewhere was really hoping for. Anyway, that
Speaker 3: next movie you're talking about, tune back here to Yahoucha
Speaker 3: Fest in two weeks if you're on the regular fee.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you probably listened to this anyway. If you're on
Speaker 3: the Patriot anyway, that movie is Predators, from the mind
Speaker 3: of Robert Rodriguez. Back in ninety three ninety four, they
Speaker 3: asked him to write a sequel to Predator. He wrote
Speaker 3: Predators then, years and years later, this is the movie
Speaker 3: we're going to get Until then, HP, Where can people
Speaker 3: find you if they look for you?
Speaker 2: I co host The Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast
Speaker 2: with you Follow them Alone, of course, so please check
Speaker 2: that out. I'm an occasional guest on The Culture Cast
Speaker 2: with Chris Dashu. I host another podcast called The Noise Junkies.
Speaker 2: It's a music podcast. And last but not I have
Speaker 2: a band camp site Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 3: As for me midnight viewing, you're here Follow them Alone
Speaker 3: weekly round up on Mondays. We got a fest on
Speaker 3: a Friday or I don't know, Tayns some the dark
Speaker 3: Side or something. Thank you all for joining us here.
Speaker 3: We really appreciate your continued patronage, and I mean that
Speaker 3: even if you're listen for free, all right, please we
Speaker 3: can kill it.
Speaker 2: Waking the job of.
Speaker 3: What n hell are you h