By Tara DiLullo Bennett

The idea of a movie featuring two of the biggest cinematic space creatures, the Alien and the Predator, going claw-to-claw against one another on the big screen is a no-brainer. Bring on the blood! Except when that finally came to pass, what audiences got was the murky, watered-down exercise in confusion known as 2004?s AVP.

Flash-forward three years and brothers Colin and Greg Strause have been given the chance to finally make the kind of epic, acid- and blood-infused extravaganza that true fans have been waiting for?in their full-length, directorial debut Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. This time the two merciless species have arrived on Earth to wage war, and God help any vestiges of humanity that get in their way. A little town in Colorado experiences Hell on earth when it becomes ground zero for a terrifying bad-ass alien battle to the death. Greg Strause talks to us about the wreckage we should expect?

You and your brother own the visual effects company, Hydraulix, and through it you?ve worked on a lot Fox films. Is that how you landed this gig?

We have been doing so much work on so many big Fox films over the years and [in] parallel, Colin and I figured just having a visual effects career wasn?t enough to keep us busy. So we started directing music videos and then segued into TV commercials and then short films. While working on visual effects, we would go pitch Fox to get a movie to direct. Eventually we did an interesting pitch for Wolfenstein and the executive really liked a lot of our atmospheric ideas for that. It took a year for him to connect the dots and realize the same guys coming in as directors were the same guys doing the effects on his films. When the stars aligned, he was like, ?Oh my god. I need you guys to do AVP2!?

Both franchises are huge, so did you have a clear vision of how you wanted to see these two iconic monsters come together again or was it dictated by a script that Fox had?

It was a bit of both. We had gotten a script they had been developing for awhile. Colin got it and said they were onto something interesting but we wanted to make a horrific Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style film?instead of a guy running around with a chainsaw, we?ve got Aliens and Predators?and really make it a horror film. We felt it was very important, based on where the last few movies had gone, that we turn the ship around and really make a scary, intense film.

The idea of bringing the Aliens to Earth has been in development for a long, long time. So how did you finally get to tell that story on film?

Yeah. It?s been the essence of the Alien franchise in that we can?t let these things get back to Earth. It was pretty fun to be the first to let them out in an urban environment. Even though it?s a small town, it still is an interesting playground for this to stuff to happen with a large sewer system, a nuclear power plant and swimming pools and restaurants?every kind of place you are used to in everyday life is turned into a horrific battlefield.

AVP had the first glimpse of the PredAlien, but for this film do you take a side on which species is really the dominant creature?

We thought it was important to have a good back and forth. The Predator has a lot of technology and sophisticated weaponry which gives him the upper hand in an even match-up. But Aliens are known for sneaking up on ya, so we played up on those strengths. We didn?t want to make one overly dominant over the other. If it gets too one-sided, we?d feel that wasn?t fair. So there are scenes where the Predator rules or there are scenes where Aliens have the upper hand. We have an extra factor in here in that the PredAlien we made even more powerful than your average Alien. And even though the overwhelming DNA and physical characteristics are Alien, those extra Predator characteristics make it all the more lethal. It?s a very imposing creature.

People really just want to see the Aliens and the Predators tear each other up, so are the humans in it just collateral in this war or are they equal in the fight?

There is an interesting twist that I don?t want to spoil that addresses that a little bit, but our human cast of characters are very relatable. They are caught in the middle and at a certain point it becomes a survival film. They?re not trying to figure out where they came from, they don?t give a shit! All they want is to get the hell out of there and run. It all comes down to stay and fight or run with a small chance of living.

AVP2 is really a balls-out, gory horror film. What?s your goal with that approach?

Really what we were trying to do was be as intense as the original Predator. It was the bar we set. We didn?t want to go gorier than that. When someone gets killed, they get killed in a horrific way and you see it. Even the kills in the original Alien when there is a chest-burst, you need to see that and that?s really rated-R content. We didn?t want to pull any punches with that and the studio agreed.

You are visual effects specialists so what was your approach in balancing the practical versus CG for this film?

The creatures are overwhelmingly practical in camera. The only time a Predator is CG is when he is cloaked. There is no way to do a cloaked Predator in camera. There is a lot of scenes of water, rain and steam so whenever we could, we put a guy in a suit and we shot it. There are obvious things that need CG, like an Alien getting blown apart, but when we could practically cut one in half?we did it. If there was a situation that we couldn?t film something, then we would pull out CG. There are a lot of scenes in space in the beginning of the film and obviously it made a lot of sense to do that in CG than to build giant sets that you use for twenty seconds. So CG was really only used when it was a safety issue, or we could make the movie look bigger or it made more financial sense.

Directors like James Cameron and David Fincher and John McTiernan have put their stamp on these franchises, so what did you and Colin bring to the table that reflects your style?

I think the biggest point to that was that we hired Daniel Pearl, who shot the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the remake in 2004. It was a big stylistic point because Daniel has a very interesting look. Colin and I feel we bring, always, our own visual touch to it. It?s very backlit, with cinematic lighting and a lot of handheld camera work to make it gritty. Of course, with the visual effects we brought a lot of big-budget VFX to a more modest-budgeted horror film.

Is there a signature moment that you are excited for audiences to see in this film?

Yeah. One of the things we got to add late in the process was the Predator home planet. It was fun to design and it was a big conceptual design issue to figure out what their landscape would look like and what their civilization would look like. It was fun and something completely new we got to explore. It wasn?t in the original script. It was an idea afterwards. So that is exciting for us.

The first AVP didn?t exactly blow people out of the water, so do you see this as a chance to reboot the franchise and to lay the groundwork for where it can go?

Oh yeah! Colin and I have been pretty open that there is a secret scene at the end, which basically says this is the end of the storylines on Earth and we want the next AVP to take place in space.

We haven?t seen the Alien home world yet?

[Darkly chuckles.] There is something cool for the future in store.

What?s your greatest fear?

It?s pretty interesting. [Laughs.] I wouldn?t want to meet either of these creatures in a dark place; that?s for sure!