SUBMITTED BY Typhon24

October 19, 2003 —

Hey guys. Typhon24, with some quick information that you 'AvP' fans might find interesting. I recently attended the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention (as in I just walked back in the door), where they played a brief 5 minute preproduction presentation on Fox's upcoming 'Alien vs. Predator' flick. They mentioned that 'not a frame of film has been shot yet', but shooting starts next week in Prague. They also mentioned that this tape played at their con last month, so it's possible that you all know about this presentation already, but I hadn't heard much about it so far, so I figured no one would mind if I provided a quick recap of what was shown.

The whole piece was narrated by director Paul WS Anderson (Resident Evil). As far as the story, we are told that in the past, the Predators used the the Aliens for hunting purposes, as a right of passage for the young Predator to become men (er, for lack of a better term). We see one such battle play out in an Aztec temple. Supposedly, the Predators were seen as Gods to the Aztec people (some shades of 'Stargate', it would seem), who built them their temples for worshipping and battle purposes. They showed some storyboards of one Predator defeating an Alien, holding its severed head in victory, as well as some boards where three Predator are overrun by thousands of Aliens, and upon realizing that they have clearly lost the battle, they activate their self-destruct technology. This is why so many ancient civilizations have been wiped out; Predator hunting failures.

Flash forward to present day, where a group of scientists have found one of the ancient Predator temples under an Antarctic icecap. The story revolves around 5 "teenage" Predators who are set to undergo their right of passage with the Aliens at this newly discovered temple, with the humans caught in the middle. There was also some brief dicussion about the Predators testing out their new weapons technology. The video showed one example, a modified shuriken throwing star (apparently this weapon is 'in' again after 'Underworld'), which starts as a small handle with a trigger and expands into 6 elongated razor blades. This was actually pretty cool looking.

Anyways, that pretty much rounded out the presentation. They quickly flashed some shots edited together from the two respective franchises, and rounded it out with a tagline (which may or may not be the final one), "Whoever wins...we lose." All in all, hard to tell too much about the final product from the small amount shown. The story is a little weird, but it could potentially be pulled off if Anderson is up to the task. Anyway, make of that what you will. That's all from me for now! Later!