QUINT: I remember before Paul W.S. Anderson did ALIEN VS PREDATOR it came out that you kind of made an offer to do another ALIEN film with Ridley Scott...
JAMES CAMERON: Yeah. Ridley and I talked about doing another ALIEN film and I said to 20th Century Fox that I would develop a 5th ALIEN film. I started working on a story, I was working with another writer and Fox came back to me and said, "We've got this really good script for ALIEN VS PREDATOR and I got pretty upset. I said, "You do that you're going to kill the validity of the franchise in my mind." Because to me, that was FRANKENSTEIN MEETS WEREWOLF. It was Universal just taking their assets and starting to play them off against each other.
QUINT: Milking it, totally.
JAMES CAMERON: Milking it. So, I stopped work. Then I saw ALIEN VS PREDATOR and it was actually pretty good. (laughs) I think of the 5 ALIEN films, I'd rate it 3rd.
QUINT: Ummm...
JAMES CAMERON: I actually liked it. I actually liked it a lot.
QUINT: You know, I hate it when movies don't abide by the continuity of their series...
JAMES CAMERON: When they make up their own rules.
QUINT: Exactly. They did that a lot with the alien incubation time, where from egg to chestbuster it happened...
JAMES CAMERON: In minutes, yeah...
QUINT: That kind of stuff really pissed me off with the movie...
JAMES CAMERON: Well, it starts to become a video game. It's like, "Okay, that can be in him and that can show up over here..." It becomes more metaphorical or more comic book. I don't mean comic book in a negative way, I just mean that it's working at a kind of mythic, metaphoric level as opposed to really trying to immerse you in reality.
I mean, I felt when I was making ALIENS I think the same thing Ridley was doing with ALIEN, which is... "I'm going to make you think this is real." Even though it is completely ridiculous deep space adventure. We were going to make you feel like it's real. It's a question of does the film take itself seriously or not.
https://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22405
Came across this link while surfing. I have to admit I am surprised. I am not one of the AVP playa' hatas' - I thought it was good mindless fun. But I wouldn't have thought someone as technical and plot centric as Cameron would have gotten into it.
P.S. I also love how the interviewer is trying to tell Cameron he thinks it sucks, but can't bring himself to disagree with him ... classic.