TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 5: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (2004)

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

You drill down into the Antarctic ice and discover what you've been doggedly searching for: an ever-shifting pyramid containing critical analysis of ALIEN VS. PREDATOR. Ancient hieroglyphics discuss why the film doesn't work, how its white supremacist premise fits into racialised readings of the Alien films, and its weird contested position as a paratext in the multi/transmedia franchise.Content warning: body horror; sexual imagery; white supremacy; racism.Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/ZRWCWDFE

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello, and welcome back to the Xenapod, a podcast where we're watching all the alien franchise films in order, contextualizing them, and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie. I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello. How you doing? I'm all right, I'm all right.

I am cautiously excited to get into this month's film. Alien vs. Predator is the first film out of the Ripley Tetrology that we're getting into, the kind of sub-franchise of the versus Predator films. What's your experience with Alien versus Predator? So I was trying to remember this actually. So we've mentioned already multiple times on the series, the sort of the box set for the, you know, the four. Ripley one so I didn't

experience it through that and I have seen it on DVD since then but I'm fairly certain I'm fairly certain that this is the first of these films that we've spoken about on the podcast is where I did see it for the first time in the cinema

right so this would have come out in the UK I think the summer before I went to university I think or you know around the autumn I started something yeah I'll get into some stats but came out of August 2004, May August. It would have been just before I started

University in Edinburgh and I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I saw this for the first time in the cinema. Certainly I don't remember ever owning it on DVD and I don't actually remember ever re-watching it until I re-watched it for the purposes of this

episode actually. So I'm pretty certain I saw it in the cinema and it probably would have been in the OD and Douglas Field in Dundee. I don't know where that is. Oh, lovely. So I think that's probably or so. I don't know without a time machine, but I'm pretty sure I saw it in the cinema. I don't ever remember owning it on home media. They're a big screen experience.

Yeah. I had only ever seen it, I think, on a plane or a train. I watched it as some way to pass the hours while I was travelling anyway, and it didn't leave a huge impression on me, I don't think. It's definitely made a bigger impression on me re-watching it. Like, I always remember seeing it. It's not one of these films, you know, and I think we'll get into that but for better or worse I don't think it's a film that kind of fades into the background and you forget whether

you've seen it or not I think you know whether you've seen this film or not right? No it's that there's memorable bits in it and I think the overall experience is kind of memorable fortunately for us I think it's a more interesting film to talk about than to watch

yeah I'd agree with that because I did yeah like rewatch it It's interesting, right? Because also, when I saw this the first time, and I think maybe I'd watched it again on a plane or something. But basically, I only really remember seeing it, I think, in the cinema, and re-watching it for this.

It is funny watching this. Christ, it makes me feel old, like, nearly 20 years, like, Jesus. 20 years later, you know, when you think about all the stuff that's kind of come since then, right? Kind of like, you know, the original four films that we've already spoken about, kind of like bedded in as the kind of the original set right and then you had a sequel to this

and you've had Prometheus and you've had alien country like when you think about it in the context of the whole thing it is quite interesting to look at some of the concepts that come up in here and the way it deals with certain things and again I think it's like we said at the outset of this series right

it's um it's very of its time and place I think um but it's also you know it's also quite a good bellwether for kind of like changing attitudes to how these sort of films are put together in Hollywood and this sort of thing and how it deals with known franchises and this sort of things. So I think you're right in that respect. I think it's a much more interesting film to talk about and think about where it sits in this set of films and how all that goes

versus the actual text of the film itself. Yeah, I think in a strange way it is kind of a motivation for this podcast to watch this film in in line with the films we've already watched. Like, how do we get from, how do we treat these films as a continuous text? How do we get from Alien, this kind of new Hollywood horror masterpiece, to Alien versus Predator,

as kind of schlocky sub-franchise? And I think it's, it does say something interesting about franchises and, like you say, the context of film history at the time, how films were being made. And I have found some interest in academic work, on this as a text

compared to some of the other films that we've watched. I think when we say we're watching all the alien franchise films in order, the all there is specifically to point out Alien versus Predator, which stand as a kind of standalone yet also

part of the franchise thing. It's a contested position. Although I think the thing is, you know what I mean? I think, and I'm sure we'll get into it, you know, your Ridley Scott's and your, well, Ridley Scott has disowned it, James Cameron sort of disowned it for a bit and then didn't, you know,

like, we'll get into that. But I think what's interesting about this is, it's really only been decanonized, let's say, as a result of kind of the original filmmakers, and I'm basically talking about Ridley Scott in this context, it's coming back to the franchise, right? That's the only thing that's really

cemented this is, ha, no, this isn't a thing. You know, I think prior to, you know, and that, in a way, it also makes that, you know, some of the decisions that are made with the story here, kind of fascinating, actually. Yeah. You know, because you pitched the concept of an Alien versus Predator film, and I think as we'll get into, this idea had been, I think was the first comic like 1989 that did this concept. Yeah, that's right, 1989 was the first Dark Horse Comics run of Alien versus Predator. comics. Yeah, so, I mean, like, in, around the time this film comes out, I mean, this concept has been kicking around for a while, right? And you had, and I think it was, it was kicked

off by the whole thing of there being a xenomorph skull in the trophy room and, like, the ship on, uh, in Predator 2, I think. Yeah, that actually comes just after the comics, as a kind of nod to, nod to it. Right. So, like, this, the concept has been kicking around for a while. And I think it's been, you know, it's one of the things that I think a couple of the folk involved the films namely Sigourney Weaver I think was one they were a bit apprehensive about right? So it is kind of interesting to see this come to fruition

in a way, you know, and the exact quality of the film, you know, we'll talk about that but it's an interesting thing to see how this even came into being, basically. Hmm, hmm, yeah, exactly. So let's get into some context around it. Alien vs. Predator is

a 2004 film directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Best known, I guess, for not being Paul Thomas Anderson, but also for directing a load of video game movies. So he directed Mortal Kombat, he's directed many films in the Resident Evil series, none of which I've seen,

and Event Horizon. It's probably the only good one in this filmography, if I'm being uncharitable, but, you know. Yes. So the film was released on 12th of August 2004, budget of 60 to 70 million, box office of 177.4 million, which looking at the box offices of the previous alien films is about on par for Alien Free and Alien Resurrection.

The original alien had a budget of 11 million and took 204 million, so that's the outlier. But at this stage, they've settled into this, more or less comfortable, 70 million, returning about 160 million which if you take in double the budget for marketing just about makes a profit and it's probably worth it pointing out particularly around the

Alien 3 Resurrection Alien versus Predator period we're still in that period right where whole media actually delivers a pretty substantial return potentially yes you know we're very much we're very much pre-streaming days unlike once we get to kind of

you know Prometheus and in Covenant and all that. I'm going to about most people have probably experienced this film on home media, to be honest. Yeah, it feels like there was a period when you saw a lot of Alien versus Predator DVDs

in charity shops and stuff. Yeah. So 2004, the big films that year are Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Ascot Man, Spider-Man 2, The Incredibles, The Passion of the Christ, Meet the Fokas,

Aleutians 12, a lot of sequels coming out in 2004, Because the passion of the Christ, I forgot about that. Oh yeah, I don't forget. I did see that in a cinema. There's a sequel coming out to that soon. And so there is. I forgot about that as well. God, almighty.

In July, just before Alien versus Predator, the born supremacy, catwoman, garden state. And then the same month as Alien versus Predator, you have Collateral, Michael Mann's film, The Princess Diaries 2 on the sequel thing, Exorcist The Beginning. So, yeah, a lot of sequels. I think are coming out in 2004.

Studios are kind of consolidating their franchises, the Shrek franchise, the Harry Potter franchise, Spider-Man. Yeah, and it's kind of before, I'd argue this is before the kind of wave of comic book films and interlinked comic book films really starts to get off the ground.

I actually think, I mean, certainly in my memory, this concept of a crossover film, which is what this is, right? I mean, too, you know, if we, if we, you know, we'll get into the kind of the, you know, this relationship, the relationship with these films to the other media a little bit probably, but like crossover films certainly this point weren't a particularly common thing in my head. I mean, they were kicking around, but, you know, this idea of kind of shared universes really hadn't taken off yet. I mean, like it would be 2008 before Iron Man came out and then that would kind of like kick off this whole, this whole wave of things. But in this age, it was very much kind of like standard. standalone things... Stand-alone. You have your standalone X-Men film. You have your standalone Spider-Man's. Yeah, exactly.

There's no question of bringing these two properties together. For one thing, they were owned by completely different companies. Yeah, and certainly, as somebody who isn't, who, who's never really been, you know, I mean, I think as I got older, I've been aware of comics, comic books and kind of like, you know, what characters are in each other's runs and stories. but I was never a comic reader growing up, right? So, I mean, I never even really knew that, you know, I never even really knew that Batman, Superman, for instance, would be, like, ostensibly in the same universe, right? So the concept of crossover films,

you can even tell from that list of stuff that you read out, is pretty rare, whereas if you were to look at that same thing, at the vantage point, we're doing this podcast from, like, 2023, and you look at kind of the attempts to get DC Comics films interlinking and the MCU is all very well established now it would actually be a rarity for that not to be the case for some of the biggest films of the year

whereas I think it's the complete opposite around about the time this is coming out yeah take your point it's a different time for franchises and this kind of crossover thing is new I think did you do you see crossovers in horror at this point because there's Freddy versus Jason.

Yeah, and, you know, I think it depends how you define crossover as well. I mean, I'm pretty sure if you're going... Predig versus Jason was 2003, so the year before this. Yeah, right? So, like, you know, it's a thing. It's just not very common. I think it... And I think it's, in my view, anyway, I think it looks less common Hollywood.

I mean, like, if you... You've probably had plenty of, you know... You know, I'm pretty sure there have been Godzilla and King Kong Crossovers and, you know, Japanese cinema at this point. And, you know, there'd been a lot of, you know, Godzilla versus Mothra and all this sort The concept exists I think for big budget Hollywood

franchises it was still a fairly new thing or at least it hadn't been particularly well tried out You know you had plenty of the sort of thing kicking around but not for something as iconic as the Predator films or the Alien films You know and I think that's what makes this Quite unusual at this particular point time anyway. So speaking

of the Predator films, obviously this is a crossover with the Predator films, which we are not covering on this podcast, but would be like a Patreon thing that we'd do if we had a Patreon, and if people gave us money. But the Predator is... Is this because somebody would need to pay

you to watch The Predator? The most Shane Black thing a few years ago, because I've seen it. It's not good. It's not good. But the Predator is a franchise also, is it also owned by 20th Century Fox? I think it has to be for this. I don't know if the top of my head. Yes, it was also owned by 20th century fox.

Predator comes out in 1987. It's a kind of action. Some mercenaries encounter an alien who hunts them all to death, except Arnold Schwarzenegger. Predator 2 comes out in 1990. The Predator goes to Los Angeles and hunts Danny Glover. Obviously, this comes out in 2004, so we don't need to worry about the ones after that, but after that there's Predators, the one we're Eddie and Brody,

the Predator, the one you just mentioned, and prey, which came out last year. It's interesting, and I think actually if you look at that set of films as a whole, you could make a pretty compelling case that they have an overall higher average level

than the alien films. I'm not sure I'd make that argument, but I think you could. you know because I think I don't think that series has anything as bad as what I think Alien Resurrection is okay I haven't seen them but I don't think it has anything as good as alien

is so that's what I'm thinking Predator is good the original Predator but it's a different beast so the concept of Alien vs. Predator like you've said came with a comic book crossover published by Dark Horse Comics That same year, the idea of aliens and predators coming into contact is hinted at in Predator 2 when an alien skull appears in the Predator ship in that film. And almost immediately, in like, 1991, 20th Century Fox really want to capitalize on this concept, this crossover concept, of an alien versus predator.

So this has been brewing for several years while Alien Free and Alien Resurrection come out. They commissioned Peter Briggs to write a script, which was called The Hunt, Alien vs. Predator. You can find it online. It is essentially an adaptation of the comics. You know, it's set in the future. It is not set on Earth, and it involves the predators seeding various worlds with xenomorph eggs, so that they can hunt the xenomorphs when they emerge. And some humans, some colonists get stuck in the middle of this.

this fight between the aliens and the predators. That seems to be a common thread between the various script treatments that were made, you know, humans getting in the middle of this, which is ultimately what this film is about, I guess. So they spent several years trying to get this off the ground. Sigourney Weaver wanted nothing to do with this, so used her kind of executive producer presence that we've talked about to kind of push against this. But eventually it was picked up by Paul W.S. Anderson,

who wrote his own script and brought a lot of his own original ideas to the story. Ideas specifically around, we'll talk about it, but the predators coming to Earth and laying the foundations for several early civilizations like Aztecs, Mayans, Cambodians, and also bringing a kind of HP Lovecrafts at the Mountains of Madness idea to it, where an ancient civilization is discovered in Antarctica, and it turns out to be a hunting ground for predators to hunt aliens. They wanted some continuity with the original alien tetralogy, so they brought in Lance Hendrickson,

who was very happy to play Charles Wayland, who had previously played Bishop on aliens, and briefly in Alien 3. So there is also a burgeoning alien versus predator, sort of transmedia franchise, which I'll talk about as we get into it at this point of the further comic books, novels, video games, there's a whole long list of Alien versus Predator video games. But I'll get into the summary and we can talk through the film. So the film opens with a satellite detecting a heat bloom beneath Antarctica. The satellite

emerges on screen looking exactly like an alien queen so it's already in dialogue with the original films you kind of need to have seen it to get that reference we cut to our hero Alexa Woods played by Sana Lavin who is climbing I think it's meant to be Everest in the script climbing Everest and is recruited by Colin Salmon playing a the assistant of Charles Wayland she's taken on board a boat where a number of experts are gathered. There's also a brief scene of her in a helicopter talking to another Dr. Miller, played by Ewan Bremner,

to whom I shouted out, Spud, when he appeared on screen. I live in Scotland, Jimmy's Scottish. I recently watched Train Spotting. Not only am I Scottish, I also, like his character. I'm a chemical engineer at uni, so there you go. Let's say it about what happened to him in the film. them after that, the better, as far as that comparison goes, but anyway. Yeah, you and Bremner playing Dr. Miller, who also played Spud in Train Sputting.

The scene that kind of sets her up as somewhat aloof and somewhat authoritative, and she's brought onto the ship with all these various experts, some of whom also get little introductions at the start. But on the ship, Charles Wheland appears with a presentation. He's also got a little mic on. I imagine him setting up the presentation, setting up the projector, and showing he has his mic on for his dramatic reveal at the start of this, and gives a presentation saying, we've found this heat signature in Antarctica,

and I've recruited you, the best and brightest, to go check it out. We're going to have to discover what's down here. This pyramid shows remnants. It has fragments from civilizations from across the globe, you know, Aztec, Mayan, Cambodian. And so we need to go check it out, see what can be there. Lex is reluctant. She says, we need a month to train people

because we can't go into this kind of Antarctic environment untrained. And there's some back and forth where, like a true billionaire, he goes to several other experts who also refuse, and he keeps going until he gets the answer that he wants, and can go over the head. I'm thinking of this, particularly in light of the... Titan submersible incident that happened at this point of recording

a few weeks ago. I think that now is actually probably you know because like you know we're not worried about spoilers on this podcast and the film's called Alien versus Predator for God's sake right so we kind of know what's going to happen here but it was at this point in the film

where it really struck me right so I'm going to describe the opening to the film in a slightly different way right okay we have a a wealthy billionaire named Wayland, who's of questionable health, and is considering his legacy in the world and what his impact will be upon the world after he's left, and he decides to finance an expedition to an ancient structure based upon an archaeological discovery which shows an alien or otherwise unidentified civilization

sharing common traits across multiple earth civilizations with otherwise nothing in common on them in order to try and determine what the meaning of this is. And once they get to it, they are assaulted by another alien species and lots of things start to go wrong. And basically a lot of the crew are killed off, including at least one Scottish person. Now, the pub quiz question of you here is,

am I describing Alien versus Predator, am I describing Prometheus, or am I describing both? Yes. Now, that's the capsule summary, and it is startling in retrospect how similar the premises of these films are. Even some of the actual way, like the scenes that are used to introduce this,

I mean, like the concept of the Wayland character, right, giving a rundown of the situation to the wider crew in a, like a hangar. The scene where they're in the hangar on the ship is almost exactly the same as the scene whether in the hangar on Prometheus. Yeah, and I find this remarkable, given that it kind of like, you know, Ridley Scott has essentially disowned

these films and kind of like, you know, I'm going my own way with Prometheus, so it's basically exactly the same setup. It's remarkable. I was really struck by watch it. It was like, you know, somebody doctored my copy here. I feel like somebody's having me on, you know, but yeah, yeah, quite remarkable.

Scott had already been thinking about going back to the origins of alien in 2002. He wanted to go back to where the alien creatures were first found and explain how they were created, he said in a 2002 interview, which obviously he does 10 years later,

but at this point, it is remarkable how similar those films would turn out to be to this what is regarded as a somewhat disposable entry to the franchise. Yeah, it's a good example

of how, depending on what your focus and themes are in the script and what you want to achieve with the film, how you can end up with such a different film, right? Because I don't think beyond kind of like that, you know, and I've phrased things deliberately in a certain way to make it more, you know, more similar, right?

But it is remarkable where the overlaps are. But I don't think anybody would argue that Alien versus Predator is a similar film to Prometheus, right? Certainly, I would argue they have similarities, and we'll do that when we come to the Prometheus episode, but that's a story for a different day. But in terms of what they're looking to achieve,

it is quite a good example of how markedly different something can be with ostensibly exactly the same setup, right? Yeah, yeah. So, Wailand persuades Lex to stay and to guide this expedition down to the mysterious pyramid under Antarctica. We also see ominous shots of a predator ship entering Earth's orbit and powering up and firing an energy beam towards the source of the heat signature. I think it's around this point that we see an alien queen brought out of frozen stasis, I guess cryogenic stasis, and sort of activated, started to fall out.

The whaling expedition arrives at an abandoned whaling station where they explore a little bit. spooked by various noises and penguins and things like that and they discover a hole board directly through the ice which was sent by the alien predator ship and so they decide they can just descend this hole you know essentially sitting on sledges they could go down it but they descend into it with ropes and discover the mysterious pyramid beneath the beneath the ice they find evidence of a civil with some written history, what appears to be sacrificial chambers with human skeletons, with ruptured chests, they think it's for ritualistic human sacrifice, where the heart

has been ripped out, for example, but one of the experts says, no, look, this isn't where the heart is, this is through the chest or through, well, we already know it's for chest bursters, so through where a chestburster alien would come out. And I think there's further shots of the alien queen getting stimulated to reproduce electricity going through her to I don't know, stimulate her over positor

or whatever it is. It's such a lovely way of phrasing that, Simon. Trying to be scientific. It's a scientific film. Yes, there's very hardcore science of this. Yeah.

Is it one of these films for everybody who's a scientist runs around and just explaining how involved a scientist they are, because that's how scientists work. I'm a scientist. I think there's a lot of building up the competence and minor character traits of these various characters. There's the archaeologist who carries around a Pepsi Cola bottle cap

as some kind of symbolic representation of what he hopes to find and the perils of discovery and that kind of thing. Lex is obviously built up as kind of hyper-competent, you know? She's very much the voice of reason in the film and wants to do things by the book, whereas

Wayland and his associates are somewhat set up as somewhat reckless. There's a lot of... I've sort of zoomed through a lot of the build-up, but I think that's because the film takes a long time to get to the point. I mean, the film does that to a certain extent, really.

Although what's interesting is it does zoom through the buildup a little bit in terms of kind of like, you know, let's get everybody there. But it does try in my view a little bit to try and emulate Alien and the way that it

kind of withholds the Xenomorphs for a bit, I think. Which I find interesting, you know, given the film is called Alien versus Predator, they're on the poster where

prior to this four films deep into this franchise we're I find it interesting it tries to do that a little bit yeah I think I read somewhere that Paul W.S. Anderson wanted a lot of buildup but then once the buildup is over

it should be relentless which is kind of what you get you get a long 45 minute quite boring section where they are preparing recruiting various people very slowly going into the temple and then there is a certain point where it kicks off

and it keeps kicking off so they discover various ominous warnings like only the chosen ones may enter carvings that say they give their lives so the hunt could begin and there's various evidence of what this place actually is which is it turns out a proofing ground for young predators to come and hunt the ultimate prey

which are the xenomorphs Handley, we have a character to give a lot of clunky exposition and translation of hieroglyphs to outline this. The archaeologist's character gives a lot of, like you say, clunky exposition, a lot of clunky dialogue. I think there's a lot of clunky dialogue in general in these opening bits. I made a particular note of, they first encounter the heat signature. One scientist says, there's nothing in sector 14. Someone else says, there is now. which is very generic

dialogue. There's also things that like just don't really make a lot of sense. Like I mean I think my favourite one is they're talking about Antarctica and you know where they're going and there's something about somebody says that you know it's an area that no one owns

and I'm like I'm not so sure about that but it's quite a lot of territorial it's quite a lot of territorial claims Antarctica is very much divided up into kind of pieces radiating out. I think somebody radiating out. I think there's a lot of people who'd at least

claim to own it. Yeah. You know, whether they do or not, that's a great area of international law, but I don't think you can just say that nobody owns it. Well, I mentioned a specific place, which I think is owned by Norway. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's, you know, there's that

and then, like, there's some crack about there being a hunter. Well, I mean, it's not actually pitched as a joke. I think it's meant pitchers and ominous ooh, but there's a line about it being a hunter's moon, which is obviously meant to be a reference to the predator you know

there's some fairly corny stuff going on here you know it makes resurrection look like Shakespeare at points I think yeah at this point in the film I was thinking

I should be liking this more because I love this concept of Antarctica as this alien ancient world so like I like love crafts at the mountains of madness I like Werner Hertzogs

documentary about Antarctica, encounters at the end of the world. And there's something appealing about this vast, inhospitable territory that we can't really explore. But you never really get that sense from the film. It does not frame the location as inhospitable or actively hostile. It's just moderately remote. It seems like they're going on a tough hike, but that's about it. It's not deadly or alien, you know?

Yeah, I mean, this is probably, it's funny that the budget is as high as it, you know, because that's a lot of money for kind of like this period in film history. And I find it quite remarkable because you're right. I mean, for all, like basically, you know, you know, we've spoken about the fact that it kind of like it does build up, zips through it and then it withholds the Xenomarser bit and then kind of all hell breaks loose. But it's remarkable that in this initial buildup bit, which was said has, you know, a lot of similarities for Bermethius in some ways. A lot is made and the way that they establish Lex's characters around her resistance to them even doing this without any training, right? But compared to, they get through it in the space of about five minutes, you know, and like before you know it, you're in like, you know, this pyramid, which, you know, it's deep underground, it's perfully warm, perfectly pleasant, you know? Yeah, they take off their hoods, you know, it's not, it's not left behind super quickly. Yeah, they take off their hoods so they can talk to one another, you know, they're not all wrapped up. And I do find myself, I think a lot of the budget has gone into fight sequences,

costuming, effects, and all that sort of thing. Because really, if I'm being cynical, I think part of the reason, like basically everything after this must be happening on a sound stage. You know, like, everything, you know. And we'll talk about kind of the setup of this pyramid and how it works in a minute, right? But, you know, I think it's very, given the way that the setting is presented after this, It's probably quite straightforward to keep that part of the budget down at this point, really. It's all very samey.

You know, there's not a lot of variety here. We see some young predators land on the surface and kill the expedition team left at the whaling station before descending down into the pyramid. Meanwhile, the expedition has pushed onwards, and they eventually come across a sarcophagus containing... some guns, mist emerges and these guns are revealed. There's a shot that is specifically mentioned in just a word on the research for this episode. I went into this thinking that academic research would be relatively sparing for these films. So whereas we've had quite full analyses for

alien and aliens, I thought it would be like, you know, an inverse bell curve where the number of academic work on these films goes down precipitously after alien and aliens, and we end up in kind of a trough of Alien versus Predator scholarship. That's basically what I found. I wasn't able to find too many academic articles, but there are two in particular that I'm really glad I did manage to track down because they're actually really interesting. And one of them is Diana Adazola Maffa's chapter in a book on the portrayal of black women in films. And she has a whole chapter on the portrayal of Lex in this film, which reframes a lot of the film as really interesting. And I'll get into the reading at some point. But just to mention that she highlights this scene

where they discover the guns, specifically in a sexual way, she finds that the men crowd around the sarcophagus, admiring the kind of phallic representations of the guns, while Lex immediately backs off, uninterested in these kinds of phallic symbols. So they find these guns and recognize them as incredibly advanced. At this point, the chemical engineer says, You know, this is like finding Moses' DVD collection

So they take them for study But they accidentally activate a mechanism That causes the pyramid to shift Because I think it's implied that this is supposed to be the trigger For the predators, the start of the predator's hunt And the predators will descend to the attempt But the pyramid pick up their guns And the hunt begins

So at this point we've seen eggs coming from the enslaved alien queen being delivered to this sacrificial chamber where unfortunately half of the expedition is including several disposable characters who are soon impregnated by facehuggers flying in slow motion across the room which I did kind of like I'm not going to lie the facehugger bit

that part I actually thought was quite you know I mean it's a I kind of liked it in contrast I think the chess buster sequences of all that were actually really pretty poor, to be perfectly honest. But the facehugger, like, slow-bow face-huggers, yeah, you know, I kind of enjoyed that and, you know, taking my action, I say this a lot about certain films of a certain type, and taking my action figures and smashing them around, so are we, I kind of enjoyed that. Yeah, I think we've seen the facehuggers enough by this point in the franchise, that you can just go crazy with them, like, just do something interesting with them. Yeah.

Within, it would seem, 15 to 20 minutes, the chess, the facehuggers have impregnated the hosts, and, and, you can just go crazy with us. and chest-bursters are ready to emerge, which is very different from the 24 hours we were looking at in alien and aliens. Even Alien, I mean, even Alien Resurrection, actually, which played pretty fast and loose with this stuff. No, it's fast and loose with Zeno or. Anyway, but if you think about the, yeah, but if you think about the, I forget the character's name now,

but the character who was part of the crew that was abducted by the, you know, the team that were kind of ferrying people to the military to impregnate, like he's obviously had his face hugger attached at least many hours before if not at least a day or so yeah everyone knows he's impregnated for a long time as they wander through the ship

they're trying to get him on ice before it emerges but here they would have no chance because the chess blisters just emerged super quickly and I think it's interesting actually this I find this sequence interesting right in the sense now I know how well this criticism holds up

because it is a film called Alien versus Predator, I don't know, right? But we are talking about a film which one of its predecessors or the constituent franchises of it first came out 24 years prior to this film, right? This is the timelines that we're now operating with this series of films, right? And the last one which I think really made any particular emphasis on the eggs part of it, if you like, was probably aliens actually right you know it's not a huge amount of it in term in Alien 3

because you've only got that limited the one amount of xenomorphs right and resurrection yeah okay a little bit but it's a lot more about there's a lot more about kind of like you know the crossover DNA and all this sort of thing right so this is actually a pretty early example

of a blockbuster film doing something which really gets my goat these days and I I didn't think you'd see as many examples of it this early on, of it relying on the iconography of other films to do some of its heavy lifting, right? So when you're in this chamber and all the eggs rise up out of the ground, right? It's all presented very dramatically and everybody's terrified,

and it's clearly meant to be a bit where you're going, oh no, oh no, it's going to happen. But you have no idea what it is unless you've seen at least one of alien and aliens, really. you know there's nothing inherently terrifying about an egg rising out of a piece of stone right and it's it is a little bit you know and i'm not going to i'm not going to digress too far here but it isn't a little bit of an example of the you know um you know the star trek into darkness can reveal the uh specter you know daniel craig bond enstavro blowfelt reveal right it's it's a series of things where unless you're consuming these franchises voraciously and you've got all their iconography in your head it means nothing. And I'm willing to bet there's probably even thinking that, you know, because I'm not as plugged into the Predator films as I am the Alien films, right?

I'm not even sure I've seen Predator too, to be powerfully honest. I've seen all the other ones. I definitely haven't seen Predable's recent one. But certainly of the films that had been released before this film came out, I'm pretty sure I've only seen one of the two. I do wonder whether there's things that have completely gone over my head in this. film as a result of it. And this is an example of it, right?

The elaborate set up for the eggs rising out of the ground. Its entire impact, in my view, is built on the films that have come before it. This film does nothing

to achieve that impact. It's all built on the previous films. That's why I specifically mentioned that shot at the beginning of the satellite that from a certain angle looks like an alien queen head to a viewer who hasn't seen anything of these films before

and doesn't know what an alien queen is that's just a funny looking shot of a satellite it doesn't have the kind of ominous overtones that we bring to it from having seen these previous films and I find it interesting right now obviously this criticism holds a little bit less water here because it's alien versus predator and it's that type of film whereas the other ones I've spoken about

they're ostensibly reboots of their franchises right they're meant to be separated from the continuity where that iconography has been established previously right so it's not it's not exactly like for like comparison but it is an example I think of us entering this age of intellectual property and how studios maximise their intellectual property and one of the ways that that manifests to the detriment

of the films is having things that people are familiar with and can point at and say, I get that reference, you know, and this film does have that. And I think it's one of the things that kind of lessens it from being all that good a film in its own right. Because it does have interesting aspects. I think you're going to talk, you're going to go on to talk about some of them,

particularly around the lead character, right? But it is an early hint of the direction that studios are going to start going in where they own a lot of these iconic properties. Well, yeah, because this rise of IP and mushing your IPs together is going to get ever more prominent in franchises.

And that thing that you just mentioned of, I get that reference, is going to become an even bigger part of franchise filmmaking. And I am thinking specifically of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point. And

DC, I guess, to a lesser extent, partly because those films are generally less successful, but hearing about, I haven't seen it, but hearing about the flash and the various cameos that appear in that film. So the expedition is soon ambushed by the predators to get their guns back, and most of the mercenaries are killed, while several are taken by the aliens. We get our first scene around this point of aliens actually fighting predators, which is from the reviews all the fans wanted to see and were disappointed by how little the aliens actually fight predators in this film. An alien ambushes and kills a predator. Again, fans were upset that a predator was so easily dispatched by an alien in this first scene, but yet the predators are engaged and

I think two of the three get killed. So there's only one left who... I think he's called Scar in the script. Yeah, Scar... I think that's because he marks himself for a scar at one point, yeah. At one point Scar comes up against Wayland, but refuses to kill him because he's infirm. And this is kind of a reference from the Predator films

where they won't kill pregnant people, they won't kill the infirm, you know. They're hunting healthy prey. Lex and the archaeologist character are running around they get separated from the predator by the pyramid moving about an alien and a facehugger sneak up on the predator and attempt to subdue him and at this point he kills them both and then ritualistically like you say

marks himself with a scar using their acidic blood and Lex is kind of watching this through a hole in the wall and watches the predator's behaviour and sort of gets a sense of what the predators are actually here to do At this point, we get the backstory revealed through that archaeologist reading hieroglyphics in the pyramid. We learned that these pyramids were built thousands of years ago. The predators came to Earth and taught early humans how to build them, and they were sort of in turn worshipped as gods.

He says that every hundred years the predators return to Earth so they can hunt aliens. And if the predators become overwhelmed, they activate. a self-destruct to eliminate the aliens and the civilizations. So it's nice that they say ancient civilization made a note of how the civilization collapsed. I find it, and this is another part where it's kind of interesting, decisions this film makes with its script, right?

Because this is set on Earth, right? And basically there are so many contrivances to make this fit somewhat with the you know the timelines of either franchise right because undoubtedly having not read the comics right the biggest barrier really to combining these two is the fact that

Predator is a contemporary film right is set when it was made right whereas the alien films are set hundreds of years in the future by the time we're done with them right and pretty much every every single alien film pretty much has some

element of we can't let these things get back to Earth, right? And pretty much every single one has some element. It was a big part of Alien Resurrection, which we discussed last month. Yeah, right? And even then, it's kind of like, you know, like the, you know, what goals does Whel and Dutani

have with the organism in Alien, right? And then you've got the double crossing for the company in Alien. Like, there's all this element of kind of like, you know, them wanting to be used by Earthbound corporations, and you can't do that, it's too dangerous, but it's a film. It has seen it more. running a mock

like you know on earth and I think in particular there's one flashback scene right which has been done

through this description of you know that's been kind of like you know dictated out light where there must be thousands of xenomorphs thousands of them

you see them scrambling over this pyramid right up to the top where the predators are having one last stand but they've been overwhelmed clearly and they detonate there self-destruct device and take out

these thousands of aliens. Yeah. So I find it fascinating that this film, in some ways, wants to live within the continuity of the alien films because it really makes life difficult for itself to do that. And again, I find that fascinating for a film, which is relying

so much on the iconography of those films to kind of like, you know, build tension and suspense in certain sequences. I find it kind of fascinating. I think it's a roundabout at this point. Somebody says, like, this is starting to make sense. and I basically found myself looking at the screen going Is it, though?

Is it? Are you sure about that? You know, it's a bit like the kind of like no one owns Antarctica thing. Are you sure about that? Really? Yeah, this is definitely Norwegian territory, Norwegian subwin territory.

Yeah. I mean, also, it's kind of like, I also enjoy it at this point how basically we start off with three predators and, you know, this is meant to be kind of like their highest honor, you know, trying to, you know, their right of passage hunting these things

and best of the best, and best hunters, and two of them were frican hopeless, frankly. This is what the fans didn't like. They didn't like how hopeless the predators seem to be next to the aliens. Like, it, you know, diminishes their status.

So, yeah, setting the film in the present does present a lot of issues. The original Alien versus Predator comics were set in the future, in the alien sort of future timeline.

where the predators, you know, still exist because they are a civilisation that had lasted a few hundred years or whatever. But the first treatment by Peter Briggs just sort of adapted the comics and was also set in the future. So they mention, like, Gateway Station from aliens. They mention colonial marines from aliens, and they pretty much put it in that world. It was one of the producers, Don Davis,

who wanted to give the film an original approach by setting it on Earth, which I just don't think is a idea that works particularly because it leads to the contrivance of the predators coming to Earth and thousands of years ago and the aliens having been here for hundreds of years. So we end up with this situation where, for continuity, an alien cannot escape and be seen on Earth, Otherwise, it would undermine the kind of discovery of the alien by Whalen Dutani in alien.

So I want to talk about the premise at this point. So Paul W.S. Anderson brought in a lot of this early civilization stuff, where the aliens had come and influenced early civilization. This is influenced by kind of H.P. Lovecraft had alluded to this, with great old ones coming to Earth and setting up civilizations. in Antarctica. But a major influence was Eric van Darnikin, who wrote a book called Chariots of the Gods, which suggested that aliens had come to Earth many years ago and taught early civilizations how to build the Egyptian pyramids or other great works. Eric van Darnikin was a

Swiss hotelier. He had no kind of academic credentials around history or archaeology. Just before Chariots of the Gods came out, he was convicted for fraud and sent to prison, related to how he was falsifying hotel records as part of his hotel chain. And the book itself, Chariots of the Gods, has been very influential, despite obviously being racist. And this is quite fascinating given what we said earlier, because it's another one of these things which pops up as a potential influence on Prometheus, actually. Yes.

So another article about Alien vs. Predator refers to this as white supremacist pseudo-history. This idea that ancient civilizations could not possibly have built such magnificent things as the pyramids because they were savages, there is no civilization without kind of white Western people bringing civilization to other cultures. So this idea that an ancient people could not construct something marvellous is essentially racist and colonialist. It's odd that Eric Van Donovanekin's book has had the influence it has given this kind of implicit racism, but also because it's somewhat explicit in that the editor, he pitched this book around to quite a few publishers who turned it down. It was eventually accepted by Uttz Ottoman, who was willing to publish the book. He was a member of the Nazi Party and an editor of the Nazi party's newspaper, Volgisher Biobacter,

and he'd been a best-selling author of various Nazi books. So the only editor who was willing to take it on was a Nazi. He published it and it gained widespread interest, despite all this, despite the racism. And so I guess I'm asking the question, does the racism and Eurocentric nature of the premise make the film itself racist? I think to some extent it is adopting these kind of cultural trends and stereotypes that are embedded in racism.

I think the thing that's interesting is it. This is where, you know, the film is influenced by it, as is Prometheus, right? and this concept of, you know, aliens. These people couldn't possibly have done it, so it must be aliens, right? Now, I don't think that concept, when you apply it to the civilizations that the film said,

now I haven't read charities since the gods, right? So I can only base it on the kind of films I know it's on the impact on, right? The civilizations that it certainly talks about in this film, right, saying, that couldn't possibly be done by the civilisation. Aliens, it must be aliens, is a little racist.

Yeah, Stargate is the same thing, as I recall. Yeah, right, and I think the thing is, this is not a film adaptation of Charity to the Gods, right? It has the ability to go outside that, right? It would have been quite easy to come up with some structure or, you know, something, right? I mean, I'm not a writer, right? This is why people don't pay me to do this. well I'm not a screenwriter

so this is why people don't pay me to do this sort of thing but you could come up with some sort of European thing where you say oh they couldn't possibly done that must be aliens right now and I think if you then spread it out across different types of civilisation you can make an argument that then

maybe that reduces it slightly but when you're saying it's like oh mine's oh they couldn't possibly have done that or Egyptians oh they couldn't possibly have done that right that's when it starts when you take a step back and you look at it and you go really yeah um so i think that does does this make the film slightly racist not inherently i think the film's lack of questioning of that more so yeah i think it is a problem for the film but here's

where i get into one of the articles that i found and that i was really glad to have found because i actually had some trouble finding this one but i'm so glad i might eventually treked it down this is diana Sola Maffa's chapter in where no black woman has gone before about the portrayal of black women in film, which I mentioned earlier. And she has a really interesting reading that requires us to talk about something we haven't really touched on in previous episodes, which is kind of critical race theory or racialized readings of the alien films, in which the aliens are read as black, essentially. So she talks about Adam Roberts, who talks about how

alien represents the alien as a black-skinned monster played by a black actor in a suit and if you look at the work of Roberts and Adelufane Nama they talk about the blackness of the Predators as well the Predator was also played by a black actor and they have these dreadlock-like extensions tribal markings

ritualistic practices, stuff like that so in this reading of these films the aliens and the Predators are both positioned as black-skinned threats to white bourgeois normality. They are positioned as threats to whiteness and to white people. Maffay talks about the alien queen in aliens as a kind of extension of this, a representation of the black brood mother producing population, and this represents kind of fear of overpopulation, particularly by,

black people or African people which is often a talking point for white supremacist people in the West who kind of fear this invasion quote unquote by black people by black skin it's probably worth mentioning that these readings are not saying that these films are

structured to be racist but that these films they reflect reflect exactly racist undercurrents in culture. They reflect white supremacist attitudes subconsciously without meaning to. You know, no one's calling Ridley Scott or James Cameron a racist. We're just saying this is what the films

represent culturally. This is the culture that they come out of. Although, what's interesting actually is that reading, I mean, I think arguably the film would apply, and I include the Predator franchise in this, I think the film it actually applies the least two is probably the first alien film actually Yes Which is interesting

Because I take the point about kind of You know who effectively played the alien and so forth But in terms of this idea of them as You know in some ways reflecting a fear of a racialised threat To white bourgeois normality I'd argue that reading So it doesn't really work with aliens It definitely works with aliens, particularly when you think about the kind of the, you know, establishing a colony aspect of it.

It definitely works with, you know, the Predator, and I think this is particularly true with the Predator film, you know, when you think about the design of the creature. But I find it interesting. It goes a little bit more into showing, I think, how well-constructed Alien is, because I would say that reading prol, it's probably the one that applies to least two of those films, I think. I think so. There's also some discussion of Ripley as embracing a kind of masculine status, embracing a kind of phallic status that I'm not sure quite rings true with the actual complexity of the film. But I would agree, I think that that reading applies less to Alien than the others. All of this is to say that Maffa eventually presents Alien versus Predator as unexpectedly subversive for this kind of reading.

and a break from these previous racialized stereotypes in the film, because of its black female hero. So Lex is black, played by Sana Laufen, and Maffay refers to this as a character who immediately complicates notions of authoritative white patriarchy, black monstrosity, and abject femininity. Alien Versive Predator has a narrative in which the protagonist and the monsters are all racialized and feminized others,

and where the white paternal law is systematically dismantled. So as the white billionaire is taken out and just wiped off the film, the racialized, feminized character emerges triumphant against this other racialized feminized character, the alien queen. There's a lot in this article about the film portraying paternal law as diseased, a moribund, so that's Charles Wayland and his cancer, his heart failure. And the film goes on to show, it's an example of a black woman as a serious primary hero who is not sexualized, he's not turned into a sexual spectacle, and he's not given a white partner. She's

not the sidekick to a white figure. She eventually sort of pairs up with and has a sidekick in the predator, but he is also racialized as black, according to these readings. So the character ends up embodying difference and blackness and racialization in a way that challenges and subverts the previous films and their identity categories. So I think this gives it an analysis as a kind of subversive piece that I think is a lot more interesting than watching the film itself. Yeah, and I think it also speaks to things that, I, I, I tend to find in these, I think where my frustration sometimes lies with these sort of intellectual property mashups, right?

You will find the kernel in a lot of these things of something interesting, right? And you can tell that to a certain extent the reason this film has been made is because it's been attached to an intellectual property mashup, right? because otherwise if you were to take kind of like the bare bones of it like so let's think of it as a you know some sort of Antarctic exhibition led by a black woman who is pushing against kind of this patriarchal white authority in wayland about how it should be done blah blah and you attach some other story to it I don't think this film gets made right as soon as it's you know oh but they're going to this uh you know they're going to go look at this ancient structure oh what's in the ancient structure I know z xenomorphs. Yeah, sure. Oh, and by the way, you know, predators are hunting them, then, okay, great, you know, we can sell that, we can get a poster for that. And there are so many of these types of films where I find that, you know, I think about some of the Marvel films and, you know, there are some kernels of interesting ideas in there. But they get drowned out by the need to serve up the franchise iconography, to serve up what you, like, you know, you cannot get through this film. You know, if you propose making this film, and it didn't feature a facehugger, it didn't feature a chestburster, it didn't feature a predator being invisible, it didn't feature something to do with the xenomorphic acidic blood, it didn't fit, you know, if it didn't feature some of these things, somebody would look at it and go, well, hold on, what are we giving you access to this IP for if you're not going to make use of it? Yeah. And, you know, and I look at the kind of the reading that you've just, you just outlined from the paper talking about, and all these things are true. And to a certain extent, they maybe have more impact for being, or it makes it more subversive for it being a part of the alien franchise ostensibly. But really, all of this, and this is said in the paper itself, right, okay, in terms of, you know, because this has a, this has a reputation as a kind of, you know, formulaic if not bad film, right? And I don't think I'd go against that. I don't think this is a good film. I think it is formulaic in a lot of ways. I don't think, I think formulaic is an

overused criticism, right? I mean, you know, what exactly is the formula for an alien versus predator film? I don't really know what people mean by that, right? But in terms of, there's nothing particularly innovative in terms of plot mechanics, let's see, right? But basically all of that stuff drowns out these slightly more interesting aspects of it. And I think that's a symptom of this type of film, right? The intellectual property and the need for the script to be a slave to it to get all the references in and all the things that need to happen to make the most use of that

means that there's a lot of contrivances to do that and less attention ends up getting paid to the things where it could be genuinely unique and genuinely interesting. Yeah. So this character of Lex is kind of the focal point of this reading. and Maffey talks about how there are so few, there's often black men actors in these big budget films, points to Wesley Snipes, Will Smith, Denzel Washington,

but there's less black women fronting these kinds of properties. So Catwoman, I think I mentioned earlier, when I was talking about the 2004 films, Ali Berry gets a chance to front this kind of superhero film and it goes down badly. They're written off as bad movies. But it is interesting, nonetheless, that this film had this open casting process for its new Ripley. Sonal Laughan ended up getting the role, and it wasn't particularly great for her career.

So it's interesting that Paul W. Sandsen did want to continue on this path. The shooting script has a kind of sting at the end, you know, like James Bond will return. it has Lex Woods will return in Alien versus Predator Annihilation, a film that never got made. But he clearly wanted this character to continue. It's worth knowing that the character of Lex is loosely based on a character from the novels called Machiko Nogushi, who is also racialized as a Japanese character. So yeah, Maffei's reading is just really interesting, I think,

and it's almost more interesting than the film, which is, I think we've alluded to, just fittingly generic. So it's almost a shame that this kind of subversion comes in a film that doesn't particularly work. Yeah, and, you know, you can argue about how well the film works, right? But I'd argue that even taking the film... So my whole thing with films, especially films like this,

is you need to meet them where they are, right? You need to kind of assess the film on its own goals, right? You know, this has a very simple set up to Prometheus. This is not aiming to be Prometheus. It is not aiming to be one of the alien films. It is aiming to be kind of a, you know, fight spectacular. And I think in some ways it does okay with that. I would say the effects work is pretty good.

I'm re-watching it. I was actually pretty impressed with it. I think the main thing is you struggle to give much of a shit, really. I mean, like, you know, this is, like, I mean, basically, and this is, I think you've probably got more scope for this sort of thing in comics, right? Because, you know,

you have the ability with the still artwork to do kind of like maybe slightly more interesting things, perhaps. But it's a case of, this is big budget fan fiction. I mean, that's what this is, really. Yeah. And it's written like big budget fan fiction, for the most part. There's not a lot of care taken to the script, because that's not the point of this film.

But when it's as bad and generic as it is, it kind of overshadows all other aspects of it. And I don't know whether they do much interesting with kind of the way you could have these characters interact, right? You know, I mean, you know, I mean, everybody, you know, and you may be covered us in the xenobiology part. We lean pretty heavily on the acid blood here again. You know, do we do a lot with, like, the predator physiology here?

I don't think so. Do we do a lot with, you know, I don't know. It just doesn't really hang together as anything particularly interesting. There are a couple of kind of neat fight sequences, but they're very quick. Some of them are incoherent. It's just overall a bit disappointing, really. I mean, like, even, I mean, the concept is ridiculous, right? But, I mean, you know, ridiculous concepts can work.

But for what this film wants to do, I'm not even sure it really, it really works. We spend a lot of time, but it has kind of a similar problem to Alien 3, actually, in the sense that there's a bunch of generic characters who are basically just offed. You know, so in that sense, it has the same problem that another kind of, earlier film suffered from and I find it remarkable that this got a sequel so easily and we'll talk about it on the next episode no doubt in more detail in its own right but it's just it's interesting and it is another indication of where we are in kind of Hollywood history that that is where this goes after this because this is not necessarily a bad film I would say

like it doesn't have a lot of good aspects I would certainly wouldn't describe it as a good film But it's just, it's very forgettable. It's very forgettable. I think you mentioned the predators' biology, not really coming into it. And I think the predators are just not represented well in this film. They do not have a lot of chance to hunt, which is the big appeal of films like predator and prey, which came out last year. The predators are basically just reactive in this film.

they turn up and react to the aliens, react to the humans. They are not actively hunting in any interesting way. No, admittedly part of that is due to the kind of like the human characters getting in the way like idiots, right? But it's like that's the whole thing, right? They're called, like, you know, it's predator, you know, but they're not preying on anything here. They're basically just trying to, basically they're glorified janitors in this film, really, is what we're saying. I mean, that's, that's what they are. Somebody's made a mess and they need to come clean up, really.

That's, you know, and it just so happens, it's very annoying that the mess is made of acidic blood, so it's quite hard to do. Quite hard to clean up. Yeah, yeah. And I think what you just said about the action scenes looking very generic, I think they look ugly as well. I think they often look quite incoherent, they're not exciting visually. I think the pyramid itself

is just a very grey and very bland some shots just straight up have bad composition like the subject isn't positioned or lit in an interesting way so it just all comes together to feel very generic and very mid-2000s action horror

template it's just a bland experience it is a very bland experience and I think the decision to have the pyramid act like it does right so basically what I can't remember is it it's on a set time I think or something basically it reconfigures

yeah right or half an hour or whatever now what all this really results in to me is you have absolutely no idea what is how where anything is happening in relation to each other right there is no understanding of space now obviously

you can use that to your advantage right You can have the idea of there being no understanding this space to be a good thing, right? And I can't believe I'm making this comparison with the Alien versus Predator. But the classic example of this is like The Shining, right? Where kind of, you know, if you look at the way it's shot and you think about what the architecture of the Overlook Hotel would be, it can't possibly exist, right? It's very subtly disoriented. Yes. Right.

Okay. And there's lots of examples in films of that being, you know, to his benefit. It's kind of, you know, destabilizing kind of your understanding. of what's going on, that adding to the general kind of feeling of horror or, you know, disease, right? On the ease, rather. Here, it's just incoherent. You know, I mean, it's basically like, you have no idea whether anything is meant to be relating to one another. And, of course, the question really is, do the predators and the aliens understand how this is reconfiguring?

Like, you know, and it's just like, I find myself looking at it. When I think about it again about kind of, let's say, Alien 3 right it basically suffers from exactly the same problem that the climactic kind of chase get it into the piston

room thing the Alien 3 HUD it's exactly the same problem I was going to say but in this case it's not done with it like so in that film it's done by it's made it it's rendered incoherent through

certain shot choices and the editing here in studio interference here it just doesn't feel like there was ever a coherent Exactly Here it's rendered incoherent by the very concept

That they're executing Yeah right I don't think there are very few I think shot choices or editing choices You could have made to improve this Right So there are so it's one of these examples Of choices it makes from the outset

Or at least choices it made that persisted Until they got to the shooting stage Where it renders it a bit incoherent. You know, I'm thinking like, you know, the xenomorphs being on earth thing, the ridiculous kind of like laser down into the, you know, the, you know, deep under the ice, the reconfiguring every hour or something.

It's just, it's, it's these baffling choices where, again, it's because we need to get these things to fight each other almost as quickly as possible, screw coherent, screw everything else, it just needs to be vaguely cool and that's it you know and the film as I say the film suffers for it

it's all in service of the intellectual property it's all in service of that yeah so we are firmly into the bashing IP against one another section of the film and these incoherent action scenes yeah the Lex teams up with one of the predators

after the predator sees her dispatch a xenomorph and they kind of have a scene of him fashioning some weapons out of a xenomorph, you know, a xenomorph skull for a shield, a xenomorph tail for a spear, and they kind of form this Erzat's team. They make their way into the alien hive

where various people, including the archaeologist, have been cocooned. At this point, I wrote in my notes, Jesus Christ, are we doing the kill me scene again where someone gets cocooned by the aliens and begs for death? because I just said in the Alien Resurrection episode that we've done this twice at this point and yeah

because they team up the ultimate aim is to activate the self-destruct device to destroy the aliens so they don't get to Earth and this is I alluded to this on Twitter my problem with the tagline whoever wins we lose

which is a very dramatic tabline for the movie but it's not true because we side with the predator if the predator wins we win yep because that means that aliens don't take over Earth if the predators win

they just leave they just go away and there is no problem no not according to this film if you help them out you'll get a little pat on the head as well you get a little pat on the head

and you get a scar burned into you forever So they successfully escaped the pyramid moments before the explosion obliterates the structure Earlier in the film Several of the alien soldiers have surrounded the chained alien queen And used her acidic blood To free herself from her manacles I'll just mention that's another part of Maffa's analysis

I didn't mention the fact that this big black alien queen is specifically chained up and manacled in slavery imagery is very potent for the reading that she's going for so the queen has escaped the queen is kind of the ultimate baddie at the end of the film as it were because it escapes and gets to the whaling station and Lex and the predator have to team up to defeat it they ultimately chain her to an oil vat

and tip it into the Antarctic Ocean where the queen drowns, freezes. I don't know if aliens can drown or freeze, but unfortunately the predator is mortally wounded and dies. A predator ship decloaks directly above where Lex is standing and several predators appear from within, like at the end of E.T. Not the predators emergent E.T. Just that the image of the aliens coming down from their ship looks like E.T.

The clan leader sees... that Lex has been marked by the Predator. She has the skill of a warrior. She is accepted as one of the Predator tribe, and so they leave peacefully, leaving Lex alone. As they fly off into space, we see the Predator's body lying in state, waiting for funeral rights,

and something burst out of its chest, and it's a tiny alien with the kind of mandible flaps of a predator, referred to on the Alien v. Predator, the Alien Wiki, as a Pred alien. and the film goes to credits and I believe we catch up with the story of the Pred Alien in the next film but I've not seen it

Yeah my only comment at the stage is You'd think the chick You'd think yeah Yeah the Predators should have some scanning technology As they bring anyone aboard The ship They can scan They can scan you know Charles Bishop Whelan

To make sure they don't kill him because he's already in firm, and they can set up this elaborate mechanism for having some sort of ridiculous right-of-passage hunting these things. Should we check in his chest cavity, you see, if anything impregnated him before we got to him? Nah, it's probably fine, mate. That's a very good point.

They have these things in their help. If I just leave him out in the open, just leave his body out in the open, it'll be fine. Absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. It'll be fine. Do you want to put him in a cell or something just to contain, like, you know, even the spell? That's fine.

He's fine. It's been more than 15 minutes. These things only take 15 minutes to come out. Yeah, exactly. If the plot dictated it should have burst out by now, it would have happened. So, you know. So that's Alien versus Predator,

which is, I just want to talk about its position within the franchise for a moment. Because I mentioned at the start, it's kind of an outlier to the franchise, a kind of sub-franchise. It has now been, as you mentioned, I think, stricken from the canon by what happens in Prometheus and Alien Covenant, which kind of

renders this non-canon now. And so it's kind of got this interesting relation to textuality, which is kind of the subject of the second interesting article I found, which is a book chapter by James Fleur and Stephen Mamba in a book on franchises and how franchises have been made in Hollywood there's a whole chapter on the alien franchise that is specifically focusing on the video game Aliens Colonial Marines

which was a disastrous video game that people hated and that they position as a paratext so they distinguish between a mothership text which is like one of of the main films in the franchise and a paratext which is the comic books that we've mentioned or video games or whatever so there's this difference between multimedia storytelling and transmedia storytelling where multimedia has these parrotexts that you don't have to get into you know you can

just watch the mothership texts and be fine the paratex are there to add other information or to tell the same story again for someone who wants to get into that. Transmedia storytelling on the other hand is where the ancillary paratex tell an important and cohesive part of the story. So think of Marvel where you could just watch the films but there's also TV shows like Loki which have important information which have, you know, Jonathan Majors as Kang in them or whatever. So that becomes a kind of transmedia franchise. And they propose that Alien has shifted from this kind of multimedia to this transmedia approach over the last few years.

But specifically the Alien versus Predator has moved from Mothership Text to Paratext by virtue of what's happened with management of the franchise. So the Alien franchise, they say, has become less a cohesive narrative spread across texts than a series of diverging narratives that demand audiences to choose their preferred story path. So you can choose which branch of the alien story you want to go down, whether that's alien aliens and nothing else is canon after that, or you go off in the direction of the novels, which apparently take a completely different trajectory with Hicks, Ripley, Newt, etc., than Alien 3.

or you go down alien aliens, alien free, alien resurrection, alien versus predator, telling this coherent story, or you just look at alien versus predator and this sub-franchise that has now been established. You know, we've chosen the theatrical releases of these films and in doing so have in some sense created what we view as a definitive path but the multi-transmedia nature of the franchise means that this just one path through this what I think we're coming to argue over this podcast

is a poorly managed IP. You wouldn't get this kind of sprawling contradictory thing with the tight reins of them, a Kevin Feige in charge of this franchise nowadays

all the way they manage Star Wars at Disney. Yeah, and it's interesting. You're entirely right and I think the there's a couple of interesting comparisons you can make here in terms of kind of like franchises are having this similar sort of and this is probably the slightly more defined way of thinking about this identity crisis that we've spoken about this the seas is having right so it has it within the films that we're looking at certainly but it has it across its entire kind of like you know back catalogue of media right and this is one potential route through it Equally, you could look at the first two films and then go down the comic books, you know, all the Dark Horse stuff. Equally, frankly, you could even come out from an entirely different franchise. You could come at it from the Predator franchise.

And I think this is the only one where somebody who is a part of that franchise, Shane Black, has kind of said that a third thing of this, right? Alien Vespredder could happen, right? In the relatively recent term, times, he said, yeah, sure, that could happen, right? Whereas I don't think anybody involved with the alien franchise would say that now, right? I think you also see this similar idea

of like choosing your path through. It is even starting to be absorbed into the filmmaking process, and I'm thinking about, you know, we might talk about these at some point in the context of future films and, you know, maybe a future episode. You know, you think about the Neil Blomcamp proposals for future

alien films they were even going to do the same thing and that they were going to ignore alien three right yeah right um so even within the filmmaking part of this it has this same idea of going off into a different path as we as we speak now and we may well end up doing a future episode on it given kind of the time frames involved there's meant to be an alien tv series filming right so once again we've got uh you know we've got a different medium looking at this franchise. There is also an Alien vs. Predator anime that has been fully made, it has been fully produced and fully made, and Disney just have not released it. At this point they have sat on it for two years, you know, the article I read referred to it as in the Disney vault. I find it

interesting. I think the alien franchise is an example of particularly poor management in terms of what it said what they want to do with it but you see the shoots of this and other things and how they did or did not deal with it right so another James Cameron franchise it's not the last time I will make a comparison to the Terminator franchise

during this podcast series because it is interesting to see some of the things that are similar as well some of the things that are quite different and the way that they've tried to approach this with the Terminator franchise which also has this you know there are comic books out there

there's been talk of crossovers you know you've got the TV series to say the Connor Chronicles which is out there right it has a similar sort of set up in this regard but that main line right that main line through the middle with the theatrical films

basically the approach they've taken there is constant soft reboots right now it can do that a little bit easier than that series because like time travel is kind of a central concept but it's interesting what they've done there they've gone with constant soft reboots and they're all kind of ostensibly part of the same line, albeit there's branches within them. These explicitly branch off and bits are pruned, right? So this is kind of a pseudo

branch which Ridley Scott will then prune and then there's a different one later on. And then you mentioned Star Wars and that's a particularly interesting one because off the back of the original trilogy, of course you had this vast, vast empire of like novels and, you know, further stories and different things. And basically when Disney took ownership, of the franchise, they basically just said okay, none of that matters, none of that's canon. You can read it, but it's kind of a, it's, you know, I mean, I don't know what they called it, but it was kind of, you call them the DC Elseworlds thing, right?

It's kind of like, that's a thing on its own over there. I think they call them Star Wars, right? You can think of it as a separate parallel universe, if you like, right? But it's not a thing. And we're coming back to this, right? But that's not something that they've done with the Predator films, the Terminator films, or in particular the Alien Films. And I think the alien films are, you know, people would argue about the Terminator timelines, but I think the alien films are an example of how it really is a complete mess, you know, just in terms of kind of like even the type of films that are going forward. The Terminator films are all ostensibly the same sort of film, right? But you look at this film and you look at Alien. And I think if you were shown this film immediately after Alien, you go, what the hell happened to you?

Yeah, it's hard to see what happened in between and how this franchise has changed. Yeah, I think what we see with Star Wars, for example, is this change from a multimedia to a transmedia franchise, but in a very stark and delineated way. So, Fleury and Mambo say that multimedia franchises involve narrative repetition, whereas transmedia franchises involve narrative expansion. So I think, well, a lot of the Anceloey Star Wars stuff,

that kind of reiterated stories that we'd already heard that they're all somewhat samey they were not essential for understanding the main story and they never had an impact on the main story but then Disney said no from now on it is transmedia all this stuff that comes out now will be canon and you'll see characters crop up in films and stuff

there will be a lot more crossing over of these narrative threads Whereas Alien has also done this, but sort of accidentally, and just through no one managing the IP. So the article sort of ends by saying, as the franchise enters its 40th anniversary, and as its ownership changes from 20th Century Fox to Disney, it remains to be seen how the alien franchise will reconcile the deviations of its multimedia and transmedia past. you know, where does the alien franchise go from here is, I think, a question that we'll be looking at over the next few films, particularly when we get back into the Ridley Scott films. But I think a lot of that divergence comes from

Alien versus Predator, and what it represents for the franchise, an odd little path, an odd little deviation that doesn't even seem to be canon anymore. Yeah. So I think that brings us to the end of discussing Alien Versa is Predator, a generic film, a very generic film that isn't particularly interesting or memorable, but that I think the impact it has and potentially subversive readings are interesting.

Yeah, completely, and I think, well, I'll be interested to see what we make of the sequel to this, a derivative film of a derivative film. Indeed, I'll do a quick round of xenobiology, although there's not too much to discuss. the first thing I've written is xenomorphs can now generate in about 15 minutes which I've been banging on about all the way through this because it annoyed me you can stimulate a xenomorph queen to reproduce in the absence of ideal reproductive environment or what I noticed in the first fight between a xenomorph and a predator

the xenomorph has an insanely long tail like a lot longer than in previous films like it is swishing this about and using it as a real extra appendage in a way it hasn't in in previous films. I think the main thing that we learn is that xenomorphs are thousands of years old and predate civilization on earth by many thousands of years. Apparently. Apparently. And yes, xenobiology will soon have to split into its own section for the new things

we learn at a later date. And I think there's the implicit assumption that a xenomoth queen can either drown or freeze to death. unless it can breathe under water and it's just down there now. I think this is the first time we've seen the idea of using a xenomorph corpse as some sort of

defensive mechanism against a xenomorph. Oh yeah, there's a specific shot of the predator dripping the acidic blood on the alien head and it having no effect, dripping it on the floor to demonstrate to Lex that you can use the xenomorph head as that shield.

I mean, not that I see what this is really doing against a 25-foot-tall alien queen, but we'll overlook that part. No, no. We're continuing in our next episode with our journey through the Alien versus Predator sub-franchise with Aliens versus Predator Requiem. I'm not sure why this one's Alien v. Predator

and the next one's Aliens versus Predator, but on we go so that is a 2007 film directed by the brother Strauss as I think we've said this is the only aliens film

I haven't seen so this will be entirely new to me you haven't seen it either right I have not I don't know it will be an entirely new experience an entirely new experience for me and the only one that would be because I remember

I have seen Predster too so it will be the only new experience for me left in either the Alien or Predator for Antros. Please join us next time when we discuss Aliens versus Predator Requiem. Until then, we're on Twitter at the Xenopod.

You can find details of the show at take-onecinema.net. There's also complete content warnings on each episode in the show description. And I've also started putting out references for these episodes on Zatero

in my Zatero library. that there's a link to on Twitter and I'll put a link in the show description as well. So if you want to take a look at the academic references we've referred to, take a look. But until then, thank you Jim. And we'll end with saying, we have to consider the possibility that we might not make it out of here. We're in the middle of a war, it's time to pick a side. It's game over, man! It's game over!

You know, No. No. You know, you know, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, You know, No. No. No. We know.