Loving The Alien

If I were the geekiest girl in the universe I’d say it were a job for Sapphire & Steele (oops), but by virtue of some presumably weird kink in the space-time continuum, Alien Vs. Predator – despite its contemporary setting - functions as a prequel to both Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien and 1987’s maniacal Governor Schwarzenegger Beat-‘Em-Up Predator.

These seminal splatter-fests have since spawned (and that’s got to be the right word) comic book crossovers and a video game, the latter being the most direct source for Paul W.S. Anderson’s (no, not that one, the Resident Evil guy) new film, which retains the decadently entertaining no-brow notion of Predator’s tally-ho Huns from Space breeding H.R. Giger’s gender-confused fanged phallic-vaginal monster thingies in order to chase them around mazes and kill them for sport.
This franchise cross-pollination sees a group of unsuspecting humans – including Sanaa Lathan’s Ripley-riff, Ewen Bremner’s mandatory scaredy-cat, Raoul Bova’s exposition spouting archaeologist and Colin Salmon’s swaggering head-hunter - stumble into the warring creatures’ battle arena with predictably gooey results. In the time-honoured uber-B tradition of Godzilla Vs. Super-Mechagodzilla or Freddy vs. Jason, nodding in-jokes are mandatory, and here they’re provided courtesy of Lance Henriksen’s appearance as the bonkers billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland. (For endless speculative witterings about Leyland Industries using his likeness for the robots in Aliens and Alien 3, please type ‘sci-fi’ + ‘sad’ into your search engines now.)
Borrowing a demi-Frankensteinian trope, the slimy action generally takes place within the architecturally-befuddled walls of a Mayan-Egyptian-Cambodian pyramid (Chariot Of The Gods, anyone?) beneath the Antarctic ice. This quasi-mythological dimension proved immensely attractive to actor Colin Salmon, though he assures me that the location work wasn’t quite as desolate as the supposed true south setting might suggest.
“We mainly shot Alien Vs Predator in Prague,” Colin told me in London recently, “so it was a bit cold, but it was so beautiful there nobody cared. Apart from getting the scenery and all the incredible architecture, I loved all the goddess stuff that’s attached to the movie. I’m really into mythology and archetypes and I think I’m a bit of a goddess worshipper myself. Well, my wife is from Belfast, so I like women to be in charge.”
Quite right too. A delightfully verbose chap with oodles of flirtatious charm (“I’m a happily married man, but I love chatting to a lady, especially when she’s Irish”), Colin first came to prominence in the well-regarded television mini-series Prime Suspect 2 opposite Helen Mirren. Since then his smouldering voice and beefed-up screen presence has kept him busy alternating between small screen drama, theatre and Hollywood schlockbusters. Alien Vs Predator is his second project with director Paul Anderson, the pair having previously worked together on the similarly squashy Resident Evil.
“Paul wrote the part for me,” Colin explains, “I think he felt bad for because I disappeared so quickly in Resident Evil. I love working with him because he’s a hardcore gamer, so he’s a natural director. He knows every nut and bolt on the set and has an incredible eye for detail, especially when it comes to covering people in KY jelly or killing me off.”
Though the 37-year old London born actor is one of the trillion or so candidates for the James Bond gig, Mr. Salmon is the only one to have received the stamp of approval from existing tux-stuffing Pierce Brosnan. He already knows his way around the Broccoli Empire, having popped-up in Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day. Still, he finds the notion of swilling martinis at blackjack tables singularly hilarious given his punkish origins in exotic Luton, though unfortunately for astute headline writers (sorry Mr. Nolan), he wasn’t quite a black punk on dope.
“No. Not quite,” says Colin, “I’ve been high since birth. I don’t need anything else. I’m like a kid staring in wonder at everything. But there were a few black punks knocking around back then. There was a really amazing black sub-culture that grew out of punk, specifically out of The Clash. Reggae and Don Letts became everyone’s chilling music. Then you went to The Clash and the energy was incredible and infectious and empowering. Like my dad’s from Jamaica and he’s a cultured guy, but my mum was totally working class. She even had problems with the idea of actually buying a house. I think when you hear the Daily Mail or whoever going on about a lack of respect among youth, that’s what they really mean. The working class will never be that scared again or go around doffing their caps, and its because of that period.”
Despite his healthy contempt for the establishment, Colin really wouldn’t mind donning the Bond bowtie for the laugh. “Well, a lot of people make a big deal out of the Black Bond thing, but I do think it would be good to re-energise the thing, do something different. I thought the last one wasn’t so hot, and I should know, I was in it.”

Alien Vs. Predator is released October 22nd