Yautja Fest - Aliens Vs. Predator (2004) - Midnight Viewing

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hm.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Weird way m H read I can kill it up?

(00:44):
What n hell?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
I welcome back midnight viewers to Yahucha Fest.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Stay with me, HB, Yahucha Fest. I've bad it's practicing.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, yeah, you did it great?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
All right?

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Everybody you know it. Yeah, we're talking about the Predator here.
We're talking about the Predator series.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
So far?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
What have we got? We got Predator done, Predator two done?
What's next in the in the cycle? Predator two came
out in nineteen ninety and then we have to wait
fourteen fucking years to get Alien Versus Predator in two
thousand and four. HP HPB is here with me, everybody,
HP night, mister Walter's HP No, he's jenkis HP He's

(01:28):
he's my yaoucha pal.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm the partner in Dayu yaucha fest Or. I didn't
say it right, I just killed all credibility. Yes, what
can I say? What can I do for your father alone?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
When did you first see Alien Versus Predator? Was this
your first time?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
This was my first time? I as I mentioned in
the last episode, I did see Predator two in the movies,
but I think a combination of factors kind of left
me lukewarm on this one. I it was fourteen years
or so later, or what have you. I wasn't all
that enthused about the director that we'll discuss momentarily, and honestly,

(02:05):
it the ads and the previews didn't look that interesting
to me as of the time, so I just I
kind of missed it. I didn't figure it was because
I didn't by then. It's my understanding that the comic
book picked up a lot of slack for Predator in
culturally speaking, Am I correct on that.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
You're talking about Alien Versus Predator? The comic books?

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, the Mark Verheiden book.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yes, the Extended Universe where we got Alien Versus Predator
in comic form, which was almost immediately following Predator two.
That story was set in the Alien universe, so it
took place on an outpost and in the future basically,
so it was contemporaryd Then now, interestingly, here's what happened.

(02:52):
Predator two comes out, and now, thanks to Stephen Hopkins
very wisely saying this would look cool and sticking an
alien skull on Predatorship, everyone thought, oh my god, these
things exist in the same universe. We could do something
with that, including newly installed twentieth century fox head Joe Roth,
who evidently had said we need an Alien Versus Predator film,

(03:15):
when two days later a spec script showed up on
his desk from an author named Peter Briggs, who would
eventually write the hell Boy movie, who just wrote it
as a spec script to get rewrite work. And it's
effectively an adaptation of the Verheiden comic. So for the
entirety of the nineties, Alien Versus Predator was in play

(03:35):
and going to take place on an outpost on another
planet where predators are seeding the planet with alien eggs
so that they can hunt, which is a pretty cool idea.
But then it's basically the comic book, because Briggs pretty
liberally borrowed, let's say, from the comic book.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Do you read the books in their day?

Speaker 3 (03:57):
I read some of them, But then at that time
the Predator wasn't my thing, so I wasn't as interested
in the Predator as I was the Zeno morph Aliens.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Sure that makes sense. There was an arcade game. I
think it must have predated this the movie, don't you
remember we I think we actually played it somewhat in
high school. It was a Alien Versus Predator video game
where I think you could play as either the Colonial
Marine or the or the Yaucha and it was basically

(04:29):
just a run and gun, let's kill the Xeno morphs
before they kill us. Do you remember that?

Speaker 3 (04:34):
I have no recollection of this.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
No, okay, well, if you you should look that up.
It was a pretty cool You remember the Alien game, though,
I know we played the Alien Game.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I remember the Alien Game. I remember the Smart Gun.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
It was very similar to that, except it had you
could play as the predator effectively.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
What was that stupid jungle game? That these are all
sort of modeled on.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
The Jungle King?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
No, that it was a game with two soldiers Contra, right,
these were all based on Contra.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Really sure, Yeah, it's just stupid. That's interesting you consider
it like a jungle game. I guess it's true. You
are in the rainforest or something, but I think there
was a lot of like sci fi elements to that too, which.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
There were tons of sci fi elements, but it took
place in a jungle and it was called Contra, which
at the time, the word Contra in my mind, just
meant the Iran Contra.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
It was very big in the news at that point.
I'll have to look it up and see if that
that game predates the AVP movie. It might because the books,
like you said, the comic books were in the public
consciousness at that point. They weren't super popular, but they
kind of kept the Predator in somebody's mind. At least
they carried the water for those years, those intervening years, right.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
They did. Indeed until two thousand and four. Did I
say that already because I'm.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Oh, it was from ninety four, the arcade game.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Oh okay, see yeah, yeah, I have no recollection of
the game. I certainly don't recommend it, but I don't
recommend I don't recall playing it with you.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah. Maybe that would have been after high school. That
was ninety four, so I stand corrected.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
However, on August the thirteenth, two thousand and four, that's
when Alien of Versus Predator was released.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
Seven days ago, one of my satellites over Antarctica discovered a.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Pyramid where exactly on the ice is this?

Speaker 4 (06:27):
It's not on the ice, it's two thousand feet under it.
Let's make history. Oh my god, I never built this pyramid.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Believed in ritual sacrifice. Did you hear that? What was that.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Let's go on, let's go.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
What did you say?

Speaker 2 (07:10):
This room was called it's acrificial chamber. The story is
all here.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
This whole thing was a trap.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I'm not hunting us.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
We're in the middle of a war. They're using us
as baits.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
You're ugly sables.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Alien Versus Predator written by Paul W. S Anderson, not
Paul Thomas Anderson. You not to see he adopted the
WS after Thomas Anderson hit the scene with a screen
story by Paul W. S Anderson and Dan O'Bannon and
Ronald Shusett. Now there's been debate online about what this
particular credit means. Some people think it means that since

(08:43):
it's based on their original screenplay, they're getting their credit there,
but that's not true because they get that credit later
in the movie in the final credits, the alien based
on their thing. What happened here is Paul W. S
Anderson evidently claimed that he spoke to them or had
their ideas for a treatment, and then took some of
their ideas, which is all bullshit because Peter Briggs, the

(09:05):
guy who had written that initial Alien Versus Predator screenplay,
actually approached the writers Guild and said that Paul W.
S Anderson's screenplay had so many elements from Dan O'Bannon's
original Alien script that they deserved credit, and the WGA
agreed because in the original Alien script they land on
a planet and find a giant pyramid and there's all

(09:28):
sort of sacrificial things within and basically elements that could
or could not possibly translate over to this. It is
likely that Paul W. S Anderson had no idea of
what was the contents of the original Starbeast screenplay. Nevertheless,
Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shoo's got paid, so that's probably

(09:48):
the best thing that happened with this movie. But like
I said, those are the writer and director. It is
starring Sanah Lathan, Lance Hendrickson, You and Bremner sput everybody
Tommy fl It occurred to me that Tommy Flanagan, he
is the Sons of Anarchy and every badass and everything.
The John Lovett's character of the liar Tommy is also

(10:11):
Tommy Flannagain. Yeah, I mean that is that he lies
about the pronunciation of his name.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, that's a good point. He I remember him most
because when I saw him in this, I said, I
know that guy from somewhere. I remembered him from Gladiator
because he has that very distinctive scar on his face,
and I never I thought that was done just for Gladiator,
But I guess he's truly scarred in real life.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Evidently bottled in his youth.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, okay, oh really wow, like a bar fight or something.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, that's what I had read that might be about.
Don't take me at my word, but that.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Woof, I know, that's pretty badass.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I think who else is in it? Who cares? Colin Salmon?
He's mister Cube from the Resident Evil movie. Speaking of evil?
This is written and directed by that tour Paul Anderson.
He's mainly known for what Resident Evil, the Resident Evil movie,
several of them, although he didn't direct all of them,
he directed all the ones with his wife. Yes. He

(11:14):
then did Event Horizon.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
He did Moratal Kombat, the original.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Oh my god. Yeah, please name some other mediocre movies
that he did hither his.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Career is rife with them. He did a remake of
Death Race.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
He did the remake of Death Race. How can you
fuck up Death Race? You moron?

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Seriously? That's right there? What else did he do? He's
done a lot of adaptations. He did an adaptation of
a game called Monster Hunter.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
I tried to watch that. I couldn't get through it.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Not good he did apparently he did a version of
The Three Musketeers.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Oh yeah, that was terrible too. It's all very frenetic
and very very resident evil, but like completely out of
place and too modern.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Did you mention already?

Speaker 4 (12:01):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (12:01):
He directed Soldier, maybe his one like swipe at Legitimacy,
but only because of a central performance by Kurt Russell.
If Kurt Russell wasn't in that movie, nobody would ever
mention it. I don't care how many Blade Runner spinners
you throw into a garbage pile.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Friend, this is true. No, I think Event Horizon was
the best movie. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say that's
probably his most enduring picture. Like that's not one that's
beholden to another franchise, or that's a good picture.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
It is, except I hate that Laurence Fishburne and Jack
Nosworthy are constantly calling each other Papa Bear and baby Bear.
And speaking of I hate Jack Nosworthy.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
What was that show that he used to have on.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
MTV Dead at seventeen.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
That's the one, remember MTV at the time was that.
This was before they discovered reality television.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
This is like the studio system in the late sixties.
They were in free fall. They did not know what
to do. People are no longer watching videos. We need
to make content. What do we do here?

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Dead at twenty one, that's funny, twenty one seventeen.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
I think it is dead at twenty one because dead
it's seventeen might be a little harsh there. Well, because
he can name a show about killing high schoolers.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, Noseworthy in that was he was a clone or
some kind of a I don't know, there was something.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Oh my god, that's just way ahead of its time, man.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, he had to. It was a little bit like
The Fugitive where he had to find some scientist or
find somebody who was going to save his life.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
I don't it was his head or something like that.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, yeah, it was sci fi adjacent, but it was
not anyway. I agree. I co signed the Noseworthy disdaining
he was in one last note on him. He was
also the one of the bad guys in the original
Brady Bunch movie. Do you remember that?

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Oh? Yeah, HP, what's the story?

Speaker 1 (13:51):
So the story, the broad strokes of the story are
that this is this exists now in the I don't
know if this is still Cannon, but in this movie,
it's not Whalen Utani yet, it's just Whalen Corporation. They
one of their satellites detects a giant pyramid buried beneath

(14:11):
the ice in Antarctica, and they, I guess it's Lance
Hendrickson's character.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Charles, Bishop of Whalen, meaning that the Whaland Corporation must
be the robotics part of Whaland Utani.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Right, exactly, exactly, So he puts together a team of
scientists and archaeologists and to go and investigate this, this
pyramid under the ice, and unbeknownst to them, this pyramid
and we'll talk more about it the actual nuts and bolts,
but this pyramid figures very heavily in the mytho, the

(14:46):
Yaocha alien mythos, and things are not what they expect.
People die in all sorts of horrible ways, and yeah,
aliens fight predators, Predators fight aliens, and and it's one big.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Mess the end, bye, everybody.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Yeah, what with the tagline was whoever wins, we lose
or we all.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Lose, right, Yeah, we lose, which is great. Okay, I remember,
like Predator to really enjoying this movie. Although not tempered,
I've had problems with it from the beginning. Let's start
with I don't know, let's say the setup. It's set
on Earth, it's sent in a contemporary two thousand It's

(15:28):
movie takes place inwo thousand and four. It's set in
two thousand and four, so automatically you're setting up a
situation where nobody knows nothing.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Well, it's effectively a prequel to the very first Alien movie.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Right, correct. This is a sequel to Predator two and
a prequel to Alien, so we should have some knowledge
of the Predators, but we don't hear in this movie
because they've What they've done is oh my goodness. Okay.
Charles Whalen, head of the Whalen Corporation, his satellite picks
up that this pyramid exists down there and knows that

(16:03):
other corporations are on the way, so he has to
make a team. He's got to put a team together
really quickly, which he does, headed by or not headed
by but Sna Lathan. That's Blade's mom, everybody, I don't
know why she wasn't more popular and Famous. I love her.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
She's great, she's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
She's great. Let's talk about Sailithan. Let's talk about her
character here, Alexa Woods, who you can tell this is here.
Let's just get to the fucking chase here. I know
I'm jumping around like crazy, but Paul ws Anderson is terrible.
He's a terrible filmmaker. He does okay kind of with action,
but really as a writer, he is like he is

(16:40):
television level writing. Everyone just says subtext. Everyone just like
forwards the plot. Everyone just tells you something about themselves
just to endear themselves. It's all just like cookie cutter
fucking nonsense, including the characterization of the lead here. You
can tell he sat down and wrote, well, this is
kind of like Alien, so I'm going to write Ripley.

(17:01):
But here's the thing. So what he does is he
makes her character really strident, like kind of a buzz kills.
She's always like, you're doing wrong, fellows, I'm about of here.
You bet it followed my rules kind of a thing, which,
if you watch Alien, Ripley is an asshole for half
of the movie. But so you're off kilter when it

(17:22):
turns out that she's the hero because you think Dallas
is the hero for most of that movie, right, So
when it turns out that she's the hero, now we're
totally on her side. And now when you've rewatched the movie,
you know that everything she's saying is true. Don't open
that door, don't do this thing. But the point is
you get to that point where you love Ripley by
the end of the movie, whereas this we never get that.

(17:45):
But there's no switch. But this is our lead. We
know she's our lead. The opening scene is her like
hanging off a fucking cliff face while they come collect
her for the mission.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Yeah, it's like at the beginning of Mission Impossible too,
or that Star Trek movie where Captain Kirk is freaking
i'ming ol Capitan again.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Just shorthand Paul hobbling shit together from other fucking movies.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, as you're talking about the dialogue and the characterizations,
and we haven't really talked about the actual plot, which
is a whole nother thing. But because it's everything is
so stilted in terms of the dialogue and how the
characters are written and the direction, which I know we'll
talk about too. The end result for me, Father Malone
is there's never a moment where I'm not aware that

(18:30):
I'm watching a movie. You can We talked about the
first Predator, but the thing that I think about now
with Predator the very first one is you're able to
lose yourself in it because the filmmaking and the actual
story and the characters are so engaging that you can
lose yourself in the setting of the jungle in South

(18:52):
America or what have you. But this there's never a
moment that I'm not thinking to myself, I'm watching son
A Latham a speech in front of these guys, or
they're climbing down a rock face, and it's just it
was so you want to be transported in a movie,
That's the whole point. You're gonna be taken somewhere else.
It may not be a fun journey, but it's gonna

(19:14):
be memorable. But this, every step of the way, I'm
fighting against the clunkiness of the story, of the direction,
of the of the dialogue. Everything, it's all fighting against it.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
We're gonna be piling on this, but you have no
idea what's in store because we haven't gotten to Alien
Versus Predator Requiem, which makes this movie look like motherfucking Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, and it's so I know that you had said
and we're jumping around even more. But I know you
said that. The idea of this pyramid that has an
alien seated with aliens for the outcha to hunt, I
know that derived from another source. But I gotta tell you,
like I'm coming into this. I watched this over the weekend,

(19:57):
and I'm coming into this really looking foe to seeing
some alien versus predator fighting and what have you. But
the plot of it is so labored to get to
the point where the two factions, if you will, are
actually engaged in fighting. It's exhausting, frankly, Father Malone, because
it should not be. It shouldn't be difficult to get

(20:21):
these two creatures of the silver screen to face off
against each other. But like this idea that there's this pyramid,
and every ten minutes the pyramid changes configuration because it's
a plot. It's going over the going from the Mayan calendar,
and sometimes people get separated and things where youconfigure like
a Rubik's cube. And then there's this alien mother that's

(20:45):
held captive, that is being forced to lay eggs, and
it's so it's like I said, it's so, it's frankly
exhausting just to get to the point where the action starts.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
All right, let's take it chronologically. Let's try and do this.
Did you watch the theme or the unrated director's cut?
You know what, I'm not sure I did your movie begin?

Speaker 1 (21:07):
How did it begin? It began with the satellite picking
up the imaging of the of the pyramid. Then you
the action shifts to Mexico where the archaeologist is there
on a dig and it's a failed dig, and a
whalen representative invites him to go on this mission.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
Okay, then I think you go watch the theatrical cut.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Okay, I guess I did.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Which I saw in the theater. I saw this movie
in the theater. In fact, I was a projectionist when
this movie played. I played this movie. So I've seen
this movie quite a bit many times. Last night was
the first time I watched the unrated director's cut. My
movie began differently. The director's cut begins in nineteen oh
four at the whaling station.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
And I'm sorry, that's I apologize. I forgot about that
part I did.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
We watched it, but then we watched the same cut,
perfect we're all.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
I forgot about that bit because it goes by so fast.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
That so quick, and it has no fucking purpose other
than to let us know we're going to be an
Antarctica and they're going to be predators and they're going
to be aliens. As if we didn't show up to
a mo it be called alien versus predator.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Let's go right, But yeah, it does start in nineteen
oh four and these the wailing Outpost is being attacked
by predators and that's the start of the movie. So
you're as an audience member, I guess it makes more
sense than the theatrical cut because you understand that there's
some history behind this area for predators, But at the

(22:31):
same time, you're still not prepared for twisting the logical
twisting into Pretzels scenario that we're dealing with.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
This, which with this opening it piles it on even
more because he's setting it up right here because the
film takes place in two thousand and four, where this
is one hundred years ago, so already were setting up
rule every one hundred years, the predators come to this
planet and go to the one of these temples where
they have rights of which kind.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Of I can't say if it's a if it's a
bold move, or maybe running counter to known predator lore,
because in the previous two movies, we are told that
the predator only hunts on it when so hot, like
the temperature is a big factor, and when the predator
hunts right and here we are and it's the coldest,

(23:23):
one of the coldest regions in the globe, and now
that's part of predator lore. It's a little confusing.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Not only that they make no effort to update the
predator's garb. They do fight the way they fight because
they are in fucking humid temperature through the roof environments here.
They don't even get dropped off at the temple. Here,
their ship like drops three pods that land like miles
from the temple. So now they have to tramp through

(23:52):
Antarctica to this whaling station.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
One of a total of two cool things that I
took away from this movie. One of them happens at
the beginning because what we see is there's like a
giant predator mothership orbiting the Earth and it actually shoots
this beam directly down into into effectively creating a tunnel.

(24:17):
A two thousand foot long tunnel from this whaling outpost
down to the to the pyramid. And we know this
because they talk about in the movie that the first
imaging didn't have this tunnel. So you see this thing blasted.
And then when they're when the expeditions, they are looking
to see what's going on in this outpost, Like there's

(24:37):
a shot where you can actually see that this beam
has cut. It's like it reminded me of real genius,
which they set off the laser and you can see
that it's actually cut a hole through like a building,
straight through like this. You can see the path that
this laser took to shoot. And I thought that was
kind of cool. It creates this through.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
A statue and through a billboard.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah yeah, I thought that was the first thing that
I thought was first of two things I thought was
cool about this. I just thought it was a cool image.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Here's what I have to say about that. Okay, what
has happened here is this pyramid over the century's got
covered over with ice and in the interim a whaling
station a village basically it's like and it's an entire
whaling village has a village has been built on top
of the ice, on top of that pyramid. So when

(25:28):
we begin in nineteen oh four, we're dealing with what
must be the end of that battle between predator and alien,
because it's the predator. What we think is a predator
hunting a human is actually hunting an alien. The alien
jumps out and he kills him. Right. So my question is,
in nineteen oh four, if there wasn't that tunnel down
to the pyramid, how did they get there? I don't

(25:52):
know if they have shot, wouldn't they have bored a
hole in the ice that would have remained for one
hundred years. Shouldn't they have just shown up and gone,
what the fuck? Why is the It was a huge
hole that's perfectly cut as if by a laser.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
There are many logical inconsistencies, and I guess one doesn't
watch a Predator movie for air tight logic. But I
agree with you one hundred percent, it does that in retrospect,
that makes no sense at all. Why they'd have to
shoot the laser in two thousand and four, and how
are they going to get down there in nineteen oh four, silly.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Or eighteen oh four or seventeen oh four, like, okay,
But Before we get to that moment, we have to
do a putting the team together moment where we meet
those archaeologists in Mexico. Who, oh my god, they've run
out of funding. They're going to pull out permits hopefully.
Is it not Jurassic Park?

Speaker 1 (26:43):
It basically is. That's exactly right, borrowing from another franchise,
of course.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
So he puts this team together and we don't care
about any of them, no matter how he strives for
them to tell us some personal personal anecdote or some
fact about their life for their family or whatever.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah, because the one who was in trained Spotting they
go to grew and you and Bremner like he his
defining trait when you meet him in the movie is
that he's taking pictures for his two young sons. So there,
that's shorthand for you should really like this guy, you
should want to pull for him to survive this. But
in reality, there you know that he's not gonna make it.

(27:25):
It's just it's silly.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
But like, oh, yeah, he's great. Here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
This cast is great.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Lance Henrickson, Tommy Flanagan, ew and Bremner, Snana Lathan, Like,
I'm on board for this movie. I love I love
the setup even whatever. Do I love the setup?

Speaker 2 (27:41):
No?

Speaker 3 (27:41):
I don't. You know why I don't. I'll tell you why,
because once we get there, it's a huge team. It's all.
Once they showed these spiky haired blonde here. I wrote
it in my notes, spiky haired blonde, I wrote first
to die question mark. Yes she was. Oh, I already
said that. Oh I love the that's a hunter's moon.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
Oh, did you know about a hunter's moon, Paul Well,
I and I almost appropriate, like hunter like almost like
a predator.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
I said that right before he said it, because I'm
because I'm like, okay, it's either going to be a
blood moon or a hunter's moon.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
And it was a hunters the hunter's moon. Oh, so
fucking appropriate. So we get to the fucking whaling station.
Here's okay, before we go further. My overall problem with
the movie is that because he said it in two
thousand and four, he has robbed any of the characters
of any of the knowledge of what they've walking into,
which is ridiculous because the last time we met the Predator,

(28:42):
there was already an organization, a governmental organization, tracking them.
Here where are they?

Speaker 1 (28:49):
That's the thing I thought when all this was going down,
and just knowing the history of the whaling Utahi Corporation
and aliens, I was convinced they were going to get
into this pyramid and Wayland Charles Bishop Whaland was going
to divulge ultimately that Hey, this is never about a

(29:09):
pyramid or artifacts. This was us. This was about us
knowing that there are these creatures called predator yaucha. This
was us trying to collect one to study it, like,
which would have been a kind of a bullshit plot
point anyway, because they just did it in Predator too.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
But I or it could have been this is such
a break, like we had no idea how long they
had been here, Like look at this pyramid, look at
these markings, look at these other things, like there are
other like organisms involved now and it's a whole other ballgame.
They could say any of that, but instead it's like
what is going on? Everyone is just wandering around, going

(29:45):
what's this?

Speaker 1 (29:47):
They're wandering through this pyramid and there are like dozens
of statues of predators all over the place. There are
hieroglyphics showing the alien and predators, aliens fighting the predators.
The Xeno morphs. But at no point are they saying,

(30:07):
what the hell is that that doesn't look human? Have
we stumbled upon some sort of like they're convinced throughout
until they actually see these alien creatures that this is
all just culturally like Mayans meets Cambodians meets something else Aztecs, right,
because that's the architecture is all influenced by that. But

(30:29):
at no point, and I'm seeing the statuary, like these
twenty foot tall statues of predator creatures, and at no
point do they say, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
This is not right, like maybe not telling us something
whalan that?

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Like?

Speaker 1 (30:44):
To me, I was like, what who wouldn't like see
that and go, what the fuck are we talking alien
creatures here? What's going on?

Speaker 3 (30:52):
HP? Chariots the gods man, they're dropping out of the
Sky's like fine in South America? Yeah, so Paul Anderson
has bought into the chairs of the God's idea here
where this is an all of our civilizations were effectively
seeded somehow not seated. He doesn't go that far, but

(31:15):
all of our civilizations, the three dominant civilizations or ancient civilizations,
were all based out of this pyramid right where Look,
this wall is in Aztec, and this wall is in
mayand and this wall is in this Okay, so that
should keep the scientists wondering, right, But it got me wondering,

(31:37):
why wouldn't it just be one language featuring all of
the symbols that would be in all of the different languages,
and then eventually those would split off right and become
their own thing. Shouldn't it have been one thing where
He's like, I don't understand this. It's partially Cambodian, it's
partially inc and it's partial, and it's partially some other
language that we don't even understand.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
But ultimately, for me, your mileage may may vary on
this far them alone, But what the whole chariot of
the gods angle where the predators they aren't just hunters
like they've actually like had some role as gods in
ancient times. I fucking hate that. I don't like the

(32:16):
idea that you're giving these creatures this added motivation or
this added purpose that they have to fulfill. I like
it when the predator just wants to come down to
the earth and hunts, and somebody or some people have
to hunt or be hunted. That's all I need from
a Predator movie. I think all of the best Predator

(32:38):
movies that at least the ones that I've seen so far,
traffic in that ideal. So for me to see them
like there's a shot of the Predator in ancient times,
like on top of the pyramid, like gesturing to all
of these people going walking into these arcrificial chambers, I

(32:59):
just I hate it. It's just so like I use
the word labored before, That's what I feel. This is
all just like just trying so hard to make some
sense out of this when you don't have to. It's
not necessary. It's an action movie. You don't have to
twist yourself into knots trying to rationalize why they're all
in the same place at the same time. But let

(33:20):
me ask you, what was your opinion.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Of the Predators figuring into our cultural evolution? Yes, it's ridiculous,
it's as ridiculous. Is it as ridiculous? Not as ridiculous,
but it is. It's in the same ballpark as engineers
black Goo David is the true creator of the Aliens.

(33:49):
Can everyone go fuck themselves with that thing? Like speaking
of a chariot of the Gods, and I discovered that artists.
I just read that after was finished, one of Ridley
Scott's producers, like one of his closest buddies, wrote an
Alien two script that they didn't get obviously didn't get made,
but they didn't even attempt to get made because before

(34:11):
they could they had already handed the reins over to
James Cameron to do Aliens. And in that script it
had black goo and it had engineers. So that's his
stupid idea from way back when, just like his stupid
ideas from Blade Runner way back when, ended up in
that new movie ruining it.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, but do you think that a movie like this
needs that kind of intricacy of plot or are you
do you think that people coming to see this movie
they just want to see these creatures face off. Now,
I'm not just suggesting you put them both in Madison
Square Garden with a spotlight on the two of them
and say, all right, fight, you need some shoe leather

(34:52):
to get them to that point. But this is this
was like a bridge too far that the plot is
needlessly complex for what you're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Hey, when whalan is showing them what the mission is
entailing during their big briefing sequence, and he shows them
the pyramid under the ice, and he shows them a
computer generated image of what he thinks, like, look at
all these chambers. It goes down and down like a maze.
Did that not remind you immediately of Resident Evil with
the Hive?

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeah, I don't know how this movie got made. Here's
the thing. Look, the idea of predators being our ancient
four bears, the toll tics like that kind of thing
is absolutely ridiculous, unnecessary. What was great about the earlier
script and the comics for that matter, was I don't
have a problem with the idea of predators have a

(35:45):
fucking alien queen and they've got some eggs, and they
want to go hunting, like seating a lake, you know
what I mean, like planting some prey down, like oh,
they look at this outpost. Let's drop some alien eggs.
See what happens.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
But this is the pyramid is effectively an engine by
which people are supposed to tramp through this pyramid, and
at one point somebody steps on a brick that they're
not supposed to do, and that actually Raiders of the
Lost Ark style starts this ancient mechanism up where the
alien queen has been frozen for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, right,

(36:26):
she thaws and then immediately starts this factory against her
will of course, of dropping eggs.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
So that effect looked ridiculously terrible. It was terrible depositor,
and like, I was like, it's such a miniature, Like
could they not have filmed that better?

Speaker 1 (36:42):
I had a lot of problems with the animatronics and
just some of the effects of the aliens and the
predators too, but beyond that, like in this setting, the
people are absolutely necessary for triggering the alien reproduction cycle,
which it's just weird. I like, maybe I think what

(37:03):
you're saying is in the comic book, it's just about
the predators seating a lake or something with alien eggs
and just saying, well, let's just see what happens.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
But they find it out post of humans and are like,
let's go, and they dropped the eggs off, and I'm like,
we'll just wait.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
This effectively becomes a Rube Goldberg device where there's gears
turning and walls becoming open and other ones closing, and
it was just I can't say how much I hated
that whole notion when did that.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Movie Cube come out? Because it reminded me of that with.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Oh yeah kind of, but at least that had a point.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
I mean, that was no I'm saying, it's just another
sort of piece to the puzzle that like is the
Boola bays that is fucking Alien versus Predator AVP.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
I really I wanted to enjoy it because I think
before I saw this, I remember you and I were
talking at the end of Predator Too, and you were saying, oh, yeah,
I think you I think you might like AVP. I
think that was your memories of seeing it, much like
my memories were seeing Predator Too. I was like, oh,
I really like this, but.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Plus, I've seen hard I've seen Requiem, and Requiem is
so bad that I was like, that was garbage, But
that makes it in my mind, the comparison machine somehow
spit this one out is great.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Right right? But that was, like I said, it was
just so needlessly complex, Like I don't need.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
That needlessly complex. And when I was saying earlier, like
it drove me crazy because it's just people looking at
things and going what is this thing? Like they find
a spent face hugger and they're like, what is this creature?
And the audience is like, it's a face hugger, run
like that's this. Every fucking scene is somebody going what
is this And we're just like, that's a fucking predator thing. Man,

(38:45):
that's a predator gun. Like they needed this fucking organization
to go we know what this is, we know what
these are.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
That would have made more sense thematically, because I'm already
anticipating the Whalen Corporation is hiding something because I watched
I watched the Alien movies, so I know how they operate.
And for that for Bishop Whaland to be as in
the dark as the other ones and have it just
be totally pointless, I just was silly the whole, the

(39:16):
whole thing with So I guess the way it works
is that the predators, I keep saying predators, the.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Predators, the predators, predator fast, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Everybody knows. They have those shoulder cannons that zap, they
move around, they zap you. Those are in a like
a sarcophagus type of box inside of the pyramid. The
idea being these predators that are coming to this hunts
have to prove themselves, so they have to survive long
enough to get the weapons that they need to eventually

(39:52):
take on the aliens, which is actually not a terrible notion.
But of course before they get there, Whaland and his
team have found them, and now the predators are after
them to get these guns, and they're stocking them, which
I don't know. Again, it's this isn't rocket science. This
is just let's put the alien and the Yaucha in

(40:14):
a room together and let the sparks fly. Some plot
something to make it interesting. But it's just my head
was spinning with all the things you have to keep
track of and the direction. Does this movie no favors?
By the way, we want to talk about that a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Yeah, let's talk about that, because I'll tell you what
crystallized it for me. There's one scene in this movie
that I was like, Wow, this is really effective, which
is because the temple keeps reconfiguring. Sometimes our heroes or
our characters find themselves in a position where if they
don't move quickly, they're going to get smushed. So at

(40:51):
one point two of the characters are crawling down the
our leads sonal Athan and the Italian archaeologists, the Italian
Archaelois Sebastian or all size, his character's name. He's crawling
after her and it's closing so fast, and it was
so scary, and then a predator shows up and froze
his blade down there and completely diffuses it. And I'm like,

(41:11):
that's Paul Anderson right there. You can't get out of
his own way.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, and the action scenes. Look, I read reviews and
people saying, oh, it was too dark. I couldn't see anything.
I didn't think it was necessarily too dark. I just
thought that it wasn't filmed well enough. We talked about
this in relation to Stephen Hopkins and Predator too. The
action was not directed. Well, it's too chaotic. You don't

(41:38):
have a sense of space or contexts or geography. Geography.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Geography is like the most fucking important thing in an
action movie, so we know where everything is at all times.
This thing is a fucking temple that we're unfamiliar with
that keeps reconfiguring itself every ten minutes. I never knew
where I was at any.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Time, and every wall in this temple looks exactly like
every other wall, so they may as well be in
any room in any chamber having these fights break out.
There's no set, Like you said, there's no sense of geography,
the dimensions of the room that the fight is going on.
Just it just looked flat. The movie looked cheap in parts.

(42:16):
For me, I already said I didn't think that the
a lot of the creature effects, the animatronics were that effective.
There were a couple of moments with the Xenomorpha thought
were actually kind of cool. But I didn't like the
updated masks that predators wore in this. I didn't like
that at all either. But directing wise, beyond like some

(42:37):
of the incomprehensibility of what's happening, I just felt it
really was really flat and uninteresting.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
I have never in my life, while watching a movie
thought please just go to some CG. But that happened
every time the predator was fighting an alien. It's just
awkward puppet snapping at a overly muscled predator. Man. Yeah,
speaking of the design, does it not look like the
predators were all swole, like they all forgotten leg day,

(43:06):
Like their entire upper body is just like fucking what
was that Johnny Bravo, what was that cartoon character? Hey mama,
that guy like it's all upper body and then they
just kind of go down into a v. They looked ridiculous.
They looked like they were wearing shoulder pads.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
That was going to be the very next question that
I was going to ask you, father Malone, is what
did you think of the actor playing the Predator? Because
for me, and it sounds like you're on the same wavelength,
I really missed Kevin Peter Hall because he passed away
in nineteen ninety one, so he couldn't do this. But
for me, for somebody who you never really see their face,

(43:45):
they're in a suit all the time, there was something
about his portrayal of the Predator in both one and two.
He had a certain authority at command. There's something hard
to defind about, hard to define about the way he
moved as the Predator. But it was just so badass,
and it said so much about the character without actually

(44:06):
having the characters speak anything. And now we have these
guys they're like like brock lesnar from like the WWE,
this guy who's got this massive like you said, he's
so swoll up top and there's no room for him
to be agile or any of that. It's just the guy.
I just I could not unsee a guy in a

(44:28):
monster suit swinging around. There was there's no artistry to
his portrayal.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
It's like watching Michael Keaton fight with me. Remember when
Michael Keaton backhands that one guy lady steps out and
brings up his fist like, because you could turn your
fucking head man, Like, that's what I feel about the
Predators here.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah. There, But I will say this. I will say this.
We're beating up on this movie pretty good, like you said,
And I already talked about one of two things that
I found cool. Can I mention the second thing that
I found cool? Yeah, in regards to the because it
kind of fits because we're talking about the predator, the
one thing that the other thing that I found cool. Eventually,
everybody is basically wiped out except for Snah Latham, and

(45:09):
I think there was even a predator who was killed.
So so now there's it's basically one down to one
predator and her. And what I wasn't expecting, which I
thought was actually kind of novel, is they She decides, look,
she figures out that this we're in the middle of
a battle and we need to take a side. Like

(45:29):
because if we don't, we're gonna get killed by an
alien or by this other creature. So I'm gonna take this.
I'm gonna return this gun to this predator. This yaoucha.
She didn't say that, but she sa, I'm gonna I'm
gonna return this, and I'm on his side now effectively,
and actually he accepts her gift or the presentation, like

(45:51):
he he understands what she's trying to say to him,
and in fact, they kind of become a team, yeah,
which I thought was really interesting, best part of the
movie because it was unexpected, but it made sense because
at this point the Predator is in deep shit too because.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
His team's dead.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
His team's dead too, and so what he does so
they basically team up. She helps him kill one of
the Zeno morphs, and it's kind of cool, like he
has he has marked his head in his helmet with
this iconography to indicate that he killed this creature. And
then after she kills it, he marks her face with

(46:36):
it to kind of tell her that you're one of us.
Now you've I'm honoring you with this. You know that
this mark on your face and her right and he
fashions her weapons that are cobbled together from the corpse
of the Zeno morph because he's got the acid blood.
Of course, I think she even has like this shield

(46:59):
thing on her arm that's fashioned from the head of
the Zeno More.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
She hasn't Her arm is shielded by the entire skull
of a zoo giant banana shape is just completely sheathing
her left arm.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
And they're a team, and I've I hadn't seen that
up to this point, and I thought that I want
more of.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
That, making her part of the fucking tribe. And then
at the end of the movie, she doesn't get on
the ship and leaves. Spoilers.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
He thought he was going to say, well, come with us,
and you're predator.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Now, yes, yes, Why didn't she leave?

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Well, because it's pretty damn scary to imagine leave.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
I mean, what is she?

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Where does she kill me?

Speaker 3 (47:42):
After you fucking battle predators and aliens and aunt darctical?
What's left to do on Earth? Get out of here?

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Left? It was just such a novel concept. I wish
the rest of the movie could have been reconfigured around
that concept and been as cool as that, because I'm
telling you, that was the coolest part of the one
of two cool things I found out I found in
this movie, and it was the coolest of the two things.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
This movie should have begun with that team arriving and
it's a big team and we only know a couple
of figures and something about whyland, and then their team
gets wiped out, and then the predators show up and
they help out for a bit, and then they get
wiped out. And that's what you were saying, a buddy
film of a human and a predator fucking running am

(48:27):
up together.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
They have a moment where they enter a chamber that's
filled with alien eggs, and the predator, through pantomime, tells
her that he's going to set off one of these
explosive charges and throw it in there to wipe them out.
And he even like kind of takes his hand and
goes like poof like this to indicate like there's going
to be an explosion. That is that's so cool. They're

(48:50):
communicating for the very first time, a predator and a human.
I was that delighted me in the midst of all
of this crap. I love that.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
I loved it well, I loved all of their interactions together.
But let me talk about that scene here, we're now
at the end of this movie basically where Okay, first
of all, how many eggs do they need? Like how
many humans were showing up and sacrificing themselves because there's
so many? But maybe that's just an alien thing. Okay,
before we go further, because you mentioned the scene where
he scars her, where he scarred himself. He takes the

(49:22):
talon of a face hugger, or he takes one of
the fingers of a face hugger and he dips it
in alien blood and then scars his helmet and then
scars her face. Right, here's what I noticed. For the
first time. I never noticed the tiny little claws at
the end of an alien finger. Maybe they're just made

(49:43):
them more prominent here. But for some reason, all I
could think was, if you just put a little bit
of pink nail polsh on it, maybe those face huggers
wouldn't be so aggressive. And that got me thinking about
the alien life cycle. And now I'm sure I'm not
I'm sure there are entire fucking themes been written about
what a potential alien life cycle is actually like. But

(50:05):
is the face hugger the alien itself? And then it
somehow transports itself into the person and that's why it dies.
Or is it a creature whose sole purpose is to
deliver that payload into another living being and once it's
done so it dies. It is so single minded an organism,
that's all it does. The egg opens up, it's like,
I gotta find somebody, and then it's like and then

(50:28):
it kicks off.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
I think b I think that's the case because the
alien is the thing that bursts from the chest cavity.
That is a baby alien. I think the face hugger.
Not knowing much about plants, mind you, I think the
face hugger is more like the spore on a dandelion
that kind of goes like that's a vehicle that gets
the seed to where it wants to go. But the

(50:51):
dandelion seed is not the plant itself. It's only like
the mechanism that get gets the seed to where it
needs to gain per That to me, is like a
face hugger.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
But we're talking about a dandelion that chases after you
and wraps a cord around your neck.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
It's a scary dandelion. But I think that's but because
when the spikey blonde is the first person to die,
she gets impregnated with the face hugger. She wakes up
and she sees that the face Hugger is dead on
the floor next to her, which to me cemented that
idea that once the face hugger does its plants the seed,

(51:27):
it has no more purpose and it dies.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
Okay, the life cycle of the alien is a bit
accelerated here in this movie. People get a fucking face
hugger on and then it immediately bursts out of them
and then it's a full fucking adult alien, Whereas I
was always under the impression that at least took a
couple of days before you got off.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Well that's what happened in Alien, right, Like, Yeah, the
guy's on the gurney for a while, they don't know
what the face hugger is doing, but then it leaves
and they're like, what.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
Why don't you freeze him? The voice of Reason on
the Nostromo.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Right, But yeah, that's another thing that I took note
of is that this all happens very fast, this whole
mission from beginning to end, Like it seems like it
only takes about three hours total, or maybe it's happening
in real time. More or less because there's.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
No like anything. It takes place over one evening, not
even whole one evening, because at a certain point she's like, Okay,
we're calling it, we're going to go home, We're going
to go back to the ship now, and they're like, no,
we're staying. And that's when every all the fucking craziness begins. Right,
So we're talking about like twelve hours.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Maybe max twelve hours. It's not even by the time
they get outside at the end of the movie, it's
still dark.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Although I guess or is that just Antarctica?

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Is it the land of the Midnight Sun? Yeah, I'm
not sure, but it's certainly at no point do they
like set up camp and like rest overnight. Like this
is all happening basically, and within that twelve hour time span.
I think you're right about that.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Who cleans the pyramid after each little foray of young
predators coming to improve their metal? That place pretty fucked up.
Who's cleaning up the eggs? Who's putting the queen back
to sleep?

Speaker 1 (53:13):
That's well, there must be some sort of mechanism that
we're not privy to, because the whole thing went awry.
I would assume if the predators are able to do
their thing and kill the aliens for sport. I think
maybe there's like, maybe there's a button that they know.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
You're saying that they have to clean up after themselves.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
Basically, or they know that there's a brick that they
have to push in to a wall that will reverse everything.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Well, that makes sense. I remove my criticism.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Stricken from the record, but there is. But we do
see when they show this flashback to ancient civilizations, if
we know that if things go awry and they get
overwhelmed by the Zeno morphs, they do have like measures
in place, like a failsafe that if things look dire,
then they set off basically one of the nukes and

(54:05):
it wipes out everything, although curiously it does not wipe
out the alien queen. It just wipes out all of
the soldiers that are coming to kill and.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
She was already above.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Yeah, but this, like the radius of this nuclear explosion
is pretty wide, but.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
It didn't kill them. She was already on the surface.
When they get to the tunnel. At the bottom of
the tunnel, she looks up and you can see just
very faintly that the alien queen is scrambling up the tunnel.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
No, I'm saying during the flashback when he's telling the
story of the hieroglyph about because that's what happens is
they say, look, we've got to no matter what happens,
we can't let the xenomorphs escape because if they can
reach the surface, we're all dead. So there's a scene
where you see these predators getting overwhelmed on the top

(54:53):
of a pyramid where there's hundreds of xenomorphs swarming them.
One of them sets off one of their nukes and
it wipes out everything. And I think even the archaeologist says,
in the event that things get too crazy and they
can't finish the hunts, they have ways of making sure

(55:13):
that nothing escapes.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
So why do you think the queen wasn't killed by that?
Obviously she was killed. That's not the pyramid we're in.
That's a different pyramid.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
So you're saying there's other pyramids where this is.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
That's exactly what I'm saying, because that looked like an
alien world to me.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
No, I think that's the same pyramid, but it's before
it got covered with ice.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
No, because the pyramid is fucking decimated by the explosion.
That was an example of what could happen here.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Okay, all right, I didn't think of it in terms
of another pyramid on their world or whatever. But anyway,
I guess that would have been a viable option for
the predator to just set off the nuke and kill everything.
I guess they try to do that, but they do escapes. Yeah, yeah, queen.
Who did you talk about how the queen escaped?

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Oh? Well, they use the same method is alien resurrection. Basically,
they use the queen's acid blood that like against her.
Whereas what I liked in I didn't like a lot
of alien resurrections access I go back and forth. Anyway,
One thing I'd liked in alien resurrection was the two
aliens figuring out, let's kill this third and that'll eat

(56:19):
through the floor and we're free. And it would I
can't imagine a soldier coming up and swiping at the
queen and using her own blood, Like, wouldn't he do
it to himself first? That really bothered me.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I can see that. I can see that. But anyway,
so let's talk a little bit about the ending of this,
because I think we've kind of reached the point.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
What happens is well, No, I want to mention one
thing that I really like, which is Italiano. Guy gets
cocooned right and he's got an alien in him, and
the predator's like, I'm going to kill it, and she's like, no,
I'll kill him. And then they're killing him because he's
got an alien and it's about to burst out of him.
But then she kills him but doesn't kill the alien,
which is great. But the best part of the scene

(57:04):
is the little alien pops out and the predator catches
it and then breaks its little neck and then he
shudders like and then throws it away. The predator shuddering
at the grossness of an alien was awesome.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
It's hard for me to take those little baby chest
burst aliens seriously, Hello, my honey, Spaceballs, thank you. It's
because they it's just such a mechanical effect. It just
doesn't It looks just like that top hat wearing chest

(57:38):
burster from Spaceballs. It's hard for me to do that,
but you're right. That was kind of cool but not cool.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
Is one of the predators against bitten through his face plate.
He an alien as xenomorph uses his retractable thing to
go right through his head. But he's wearing what's the
purpose of a fucking metal face plate if it can't
put you against a zeno morph.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Well, that goes back to what you were saying about
the fact that they're not outfitted for what for the
type of hunt that they're on. They should have been
in some sort of winter gear with armor that is
xenomorph resistant.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
Yeah, and appropriate for fighting in a temple in dark
right areas. I mean, I guess they don't need light
because they have the they see through thermal imaging.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Sure, and there's in this movie. Also, there's none of
the This might have been the first movie where the
predators don't use any of the mimicking that they do
in the first two where they hear somebody and they
played back and then they can like like one of
them laughs like Sonny Lantham in the first one.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
And Yeah, why weren't they doing a bumblebee here with
the predator like using phrases that he'd been picking up
from the entire movie to like communicate with her.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Another thing that bothered me, actually, I was thinking about this.
I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. So the
whole point of this pyramid is for the predators to
come and hunt the alien xenomorphs. But when the predators
first arrive, half of the Whaaling Corporation search team. They've

(59:11):
set up camp in the old Whalers Whaling village. So
the first thing the predators do when they get there
is start killing all the humans and stringing them up
to make trophies out of. But I guess my point is,
what do they care about humans? Don't they just want
to cut to the chase and just hunt what they're
there to hunt, which is zenomorphs?

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Or are they just like, hey, I'm here, these humans
are here. Why don't I just get some trophies while
I'm here?

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Because like everything else the script, in this script, it's
completely clumsy, like he needed to show us that the
predators were a threat to humans without having them kill
any of our humans. Yet, so here it is, But
it doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't they want these humans alive?
Wouldn't they grab a bunch of them and go bring
them down? We got fucking eggs to fucking like, like

(59:58):
that's the thing these guys are showing up? Because why
the predators are the humans. Okay, they know. Okay, so
the temple has sort of come to life like it
does every hundred years. So they're dropping off predators. They're
used to hundreds or thousand years ago. They're used to
a bunch of.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Like Mayan, like ancient.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
They're used to human followers delivering them sacrificial people to
be tuned by the aliens and just bursted in such
But here it's completely covered in ice.

Speaker 4 (01:00:31):
What was it?

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
What was the plan? They were just going to go
down and kill face huggers? Yeah, there was no one
to fucking cocoon, right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
It would have made more sense if the predators instead
of just outright killing a team that had set up
base camp, like just grab them and say, you're coming
down this tunnel with us. We're gonna we have use
for you. You don't believe in us as gods anymore, but
we're gonna make use of you to breed these aliens
we got.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
It could have been so twist, you know what it
should have been. Honestly, hp it should have been. This
team comes to find out what's going on down there,
they are they know what the predator is, they don't
know what the alien is. The predators capture them, and
then fucking all hell breaks loose and one of them
gets away, and then it ends up one in a
I'm sorry, I'm fan fictioning, but this script is so disappointing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
It is, it is, but but I do like.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
The ending though. I do like the end. Fight.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Yeah, I was gonna say, let's talk a little bit
about that. So the Suna Latham's character and the predator
have made this alliance and they're gonna try to escape.
He has set off a nuke that they believe has
killed everything in the pyramid, but the queen escaped.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
So, okay, one more thing. I'm sorry, I'm gonna let
you get to this scene. Okay, So he mimes to her,
I'm going to use this explosive device and it's gonna
blow up everything. We need to get out of here, right,
And then, in one of these stupid action movie things,
they're running to outrun the explosion. It's really stupid. But
here's the thing. If they could have just left, why

(01:02:01):
didn't they, Like, suddenly, when there's an explosive involved, they're like,
let's just run and get out of here. At any
point they could have just run and gone out of there.
Why didn't they.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Well, they have to set off an explosive to kill
all the eggs that are waiting to hatch. They know
that much. They can't just leave it calmly and say, well,
that's it, we're done. They have to explode the place
because it's dangerous.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Yeah, do it from your ship.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
That's what he should have done. He should have like
communicated and said, hey, predator one, a predator two. When
after we're out of here, can you send another one
of those beams down, but an explosive one and we'll
be up. We'll be having a cup of coffee up above.
Just wait for you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Yeah, could you drill out the entire area with our
laser drill? Just keep drilling and drilling please.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah, it does. But what ends up happening. It's again,
it's just actiony bullshit where they think they've gotten out
and they're safe, but the queen has gotten out, and
I think the queen actually has ends up impaling the
predator through the chest with its tail.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Oh yeah, it's great. Listen when the queen comes out.
I do really like this sequence, only because you get
the how massive the queen is. Like at one point,
she's standing beside a house and I'm like, oh my god,
everyone's in real trouble here, but it's for me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
It kept hearkening back to Aliens, another movie that ends
with a face off between an alien queen and our heroes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
Oh sure, I'm not saying it's original. I'm just saying
seeing an alien on an alien queen on Earth like
charging toward our heroine was pretty breathtaking.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
It was some of those effects were kind of cool.
I think some of it was CG, but it was
dark enough that it kind of hid some of the flaws.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
I like the CG in this movie. The practical stuff
was the problem here, like the whenever an alien was CG.
Like there's a scene where the warriors come and kind
of a circle around the queen, and when they all
came running up, I was like, Oh yeah, and this
is what I'm looking for in this movie. I want
them moving like that, not like fucking puppets or like
guys in their suits.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
They're skittering around, I know what you mean.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Like they look like we're now used to them moving
like that, and now it's that's how they have to move.
They have to run on the ceilings and such.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Right, exactly, And I agree that the CG by and
large was actually pretty good. It was used sparingly, but
the animatronic was where things fell Apart from me, every
time you see the second set of Jaws come out
and try and snap at somebody, it just looks so
fake to me. I mean, I know it is, just.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Know there was somebody standing behind it, like pushing the
lever and then squeezing a thing to make the jaws snap.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Not good, but the battle at the end, like you said,
wasn't bad. But there are some inconsistencies when we'll talk
about in a minute. But what effectively happens is they
figure the aliens out. But they have figured out that
they're going to basically lash a chain around a water
tower and send the queen into the water. Like, did

(01:05:11):
remind me do we know that? Do we definitively that
the aliens breathe oxygen?

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Because I know no, that's the thing the aliens can
survive in outer space. So yeah, that queen is just
sitting at the bottom of the ocean, frozen, ready to
make more babies.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Right, that's what they've won the day, but only for now.
Like at some point that that alien is going to
be free of that water tower, and that's it. I mean,
it's game over basically. But so they do that. But
in the ensuing battle, the predator has been mortally wounded,

(01:05:50):
and then his brethren come and take him onto the ship,
but along the way, basically honoring son Alan, they give
her a spear as a reward for being a good hunter.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Here's the other thing I liked in this movie. This
is the only other thing. The predator that hands her
the spear is clearly an elder, and I got really
excited at seeing a gray old predator.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Yeah, but it was cool because they were like, you
know what, we salute you. You're one of us.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Basically, yes, now come with us because there's nothing left
for you here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
But that's not all Like nowadays, this would have been
like a mid credit sting. This was still made during
a time when they didn't have all that Marvel bullshit.
We had to wait through credits to see the actual
end of the movie. So they take this dead creature
on board, they lay it down, and then they all
go off to do ship things. I don't know what

(01:06:52):
they're doing, and the camera zooms in on this dead
this dead predator and what do you know? What happens
bah blahlone with this predator.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
It's ches burst open and the preed alien comes out,
a tiny alien that has the mandibles of a predator.
So the mandibles open and then the little, tiny second
mouth shoots out, Oh no, we're in for some trouble
in the next movie.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
The end not good because the animatronic once again lets
them down. It doesn't look there's nothing fearful about seeing
this tiny pred alien. It just looks like a puppet
with a mouth that opens and closes. I just it
looks so cheesy to me. Any horror that you're supposed
to feel at this new type of alien is evaporated immediately.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
And I thought it was a cheat because it just
felt like a shock moment tacked on at the end
of the movie because I couldn't remember a moment where
our hero was face huggered. Now I and rewatching the
director's cut, there is a moment where they show a
face hugger leaping at him and he spins around to
look and then we and it cuts away immediately, So

(01:07:57):
now I know that technically it makes sense that must
have happened, right. However, the Queen doesn't kill Ripley in
Alien three because she has an alien in her. The
queen here is out for fucking predator blood with that
predator who has an alien impregnated in him. Bye, Paul.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Logic is not a strong.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
Suit my god Man screen story by Dan O'Bannon Ronald Schue.
So they should take it off. It's a fucking insult
to put their names on this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
So when all of a said and done, Padamlada, I
have another question for you. Like now this, we both
agree that this is not a good movie, But do
you think in retrospect there was a necessary movie?

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
Ooh, good question in keeping both franchises fresh in people's minds. Exactly, Yes, yes,
I think here's the thing. Evidently that initial draft of
Alien Versus Predator that they were going to make in
the nineties was ready to go. Guess what happened regime change.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Oh, of course, things are killed routinely.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
So the next president comes in and says, we need
another Alien movie, and we need Sigourney Weaver. So they
made Resurrection and that killed Alien Versus Predator. They should
have made Alien Versus Predator then and saved Sigourney Weaver
for a later situation.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Would have been cool.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
Speaking of which, let me say right now because oh,
what's his name, Dan Tracktenberg. Since Dan Tracktenberg is doing
such a great job of blending both of these franchises,
can we get a movie with Dutch and Ripley.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
I have nothing but the fullest confidence in Tractenburg based
on I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
Not talking, I'm not talking animated by the way, I'm
talking right now, I'm talking Sigourney Weaver and fucking Arnold
Schwarzenegger fighting both aliens and predators together, because that's.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
The whole thing, Right, when you successfully hunted a predator,
they have that capsule that you're in, right, They they
take basically.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Yeah, which, by the way, I love that they do that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
It makes perfect sense in their culture that they would
do that because you're the killer of killers. Not to
put too fine a point on it, I I'm just
so eager to go wherever Tracktenburg wants to take me.
As far as a predator movie, he's there's not I mean,
knock on wood, I'm not going to jinx things, but
there's not been a misstep yet with any of those movies.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
I'm so excited that he's the one going to be
guiding the actual mythology of the Predator, because no matter what,
we still don't know what goddamn thing about them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
What he's really done. I mean, there was a Shane
Black movie which I note was a was the Predator.
That was the name of it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Oh we're getting there, baby.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
And we'll talk about it. But I can't say it's
not as if Gantracktingburg like took this moribunfranchise and brought
it to its former glory, because The Predator was, by
by all indication, a big budget movie. But I think
he has taken the idea and like sharpened it to
a fine point and taking all the bullshit away, And

(01:11:12):
what you're left with is a lean, mean fucking movie
about the Predator facing off against another fierce warrior. That's
what we got in Prey. That's what we gotten Killer
of Killers, and that's I couldn't be more excited. This
is somebody who kind of lost interest in the Predator
franchise very early. I am so excited for bad Lands.
I can't even tell you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
Yeah, man, me too. It's it can't be worse than this.
Although look, I think there's plenty to recommend the movie.
There's lots of little moments, there's lots of good performances here.
I love seeing sonaal Ethan. I'll take any chance I
get to watch her.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
It's a real head scratcher why she's even in this movie,
to be perfectly honest, because it's a very low budget director.
It's a very it's this movie was made on the cheap.
And I want to say, like Czechoslovakia.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
It certainly seems by the production cast list.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Right, and that's smart. I mean, if you can make
a twenty million dollar movie for two million dollars, then
why not. But the fact is this doesn't look like
an expensive movie, and it should. But but yeah, no,
there are things to recommend. I agree. But so now Latham.
I as much as I'm happy that she was in it,
it didn't make sense to me because she's better than this.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
Well, everyone was better than that. Are we better than this?
You're goddamn right, and you are too for listening to
us for all this time, better than all the better
than me and HP and the movie combined. Until next time,
we're going to be taking a look at Alien Versus
Predator Requiem, which is a quickly cheapy knockoff sequel to

(01:12:45):
this movie that nobody saw coming and nobody wanted and
oh boy, HP, we do another show called HB Hates Me. Well,
in this case, yeah, you're getting it, baby, We're gonna
get it twice because then we got to watch The
Predator after that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
This is Father Malone Hates Me because you're making me
watch Requiem and it sounds like it's not gonna be
a very good time for me.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
So oh, but it's gonna be a good time for
you when you're here. How we fucking deal with it?
All right? Until next time? Where can people find you?

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Hp?

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Oh? So I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi
podcast with you, Father Malone. I'm an occasional guest on
the Culture Cast with Christashu. I also host the Noise
Junkies music podcast and last but not least, I have
a band camp site Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
As for me, you're listening to Midnight Viewing every Monday.
Check out Father Malone's weekly round Up where I check
out the latest in streaming or in theaters. Every Friday.
You're gonna get a fest, yahoucha fest? Right? Well, that's
what you're listening to now and then we have tails
from the Dark Sided episodes. We've got Fusco Fest is
still ongoing, and we've got another fest in the planning.

(01:13:55):
So check us out in all those places. And if
you happen to be in Las Vegas on October the
fourth and fifth of this year, come to the Silverton
Casino where the Nightmare in Vegas Horror Convention and car
Show will be going on. There's going to be vendor booths.
Guess who's going to be in one of those booths.
HP and me because Midnight Viewing will be having our

(01:14:18):
first showing at such an event. So drop by, say hello,
make us I don't know, compose a podcast where make
us say hi? Do you want a podcast? We'll put
you on the podcast. We'll be recording there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Come see us.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
You heard him?

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
We can kill it? Ah, you know no, no, no, no,

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Yautja Fest - Aliens Vs. Predator (2004)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Yautja Fest - Aliens Vs. Predator (2004)