Action Films

"Edwin Maxwell — Mr. Bäumer"

"Beryl Mercer — Mrs. Bäumer"

"John Wray — Himmelstoss"

"Arnold Lucy — Professor Kantorek"

"Slim Summerville — Tjaden"

"Louis Wolheim — Leopold "Kat" Katczinsky"

"I saw him die. I didn't know what it was like to die before! And then, then I came outside and it felt so good to be alive, that I started in to walk fast. I began to think of the strangest things like bein' out in the fields, things like that. You know — girls. Then it felt as if there were something electric running from the ground up through me. And I started. And I began to run hard and I passed soldiers, and I heard voices calling to me, and I ran and I ran, and I felt as if I couldn't breathe enough air into me. And now I'm hungry."

"Lew Ayres — Paul Bäumer"

"[While on a mission with his comrades, Paul takes cover in a shell hole to protect himself from gunfire] I say "You must [get out of this hollow], it is your comrades, it is not an idiotic command," and again: "What does it matter to me, I have only one life to lose—""

"[about Paul] Here is one of the first to go, a lad who sat before me on these very benches who gave up all to serve in the first year of the war. One of the iron youth who have made Germany invincible in the field. Look at him, sturdy and bronze and clear-eyed, the kind of soldier every one of you should envy."

"But now our country calls! The Fatherland needs leaders!! Personal ambition must be thrown aside in the one great sacrifice for our country! Here is a glorious beginning to your lives! The fields of honor call you."

"Some of you may have ambitions. I know of one young man who has great promise as a writer, and he has written the first act of a tragedy which would be a credit to one of the masters. And he is dreaming, I suppose, of following in the footsteps of Goethe and Schiller, and I hope he will."

"Are your fathers so forgetful of their Fatherland that they would let it perish rather than you? Are your mothers so weak that they cannot send a son to defend the land which gave them birth?! And after all, is a little experience such a bad thing for a boy? Is the honor of wearing a uniform something from which we should run? And if our young ladies glory in those who wear it, is that anything to be ashamed of? I know you have never desired the adulation of heroes. That has not been part of my teaching. We have sought to make ourselves worthy and let acclaim come when it would. But to be foremost in battle is a virtue not to be despised. I believe it will be a quick war, that there will be few losses. But if losses there must be, then let us remember the Latin phrase which must have come to the lips of many a Roman when he stood embattled in a foreign land: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. 'Sweet and fitting it is to die for the Fatherland.'"

"[to class] You are the life of the Fatherland, you boys. You are the iron men of Germany. You are the gay heroes who will repulse the enemy when you are called upon to do so. It is not for me to suggest that any of you should stand up and offer to defend his country. But I wonder if such a thing is going through your heads? I know that in one of the schools, the boys have risen up in the classroom and enlisted in a mass. But, of course, if such a thing should happen here, you would not blame me for a feeling of pride. Perhaps, some will say that you should not be allowed to go yet, that you are too young, that you have homes, mothers, fathers, that you should not be torn away."

"[of Katczinsky] If he were out, the war would be over. You remember what he always said: 'They're savin' him for the last.'"

"Replacements are all like that. Not even old enough to carry a pack. All they know how to do is die."

"There used to be some food in the sawdust. Now it's all sawdust. No joke either."

"[to Paul on his return] It's gonna be a real war again."

"[Paul is trapped in a shell crater with the body of a French soldier who was just mortally wounded.] I want to help you. I want to help you... [the soldier screams] Stop that! Stop it! I can bear the rest of it. I can't listen to that! Why do you take so long dying? You're going to die anyway. Oh, no. Oh, no. You won't die. Oh, no. You won't die. They're only little wounds. You'll get home. You'll be all right. You'll get home long before I will."

"Out of 20, three are officers, nine dead, Müller and three others wounded, and one in the mad house. We'll all be dead someday so let's forget it."

"There's 80 of us left. The rest is in dressing stations or pushing up daisies"

"That cannon shell you don't have to pay much attention to. Those big fellas just make a lot of noise and land about five miles behind the line. The things we've got to watch out for are them black ones. They don't give you much warning... Mother Earth — press yourselves down upon her! Bury yourselves deep into her! Just keep your eyes on me. When you see me flop, you flop, only try to beat me to it."

"[to new recruits] Now you're gonna see some shell fire, and you're gonna be scared... [a shell explodes nearby and they all duck for cover; one terrified recruit soils his pants] Never mind. It's happened to better men than you. And it's happened to me. When we come back, I'll get you all some nice, clean underwear!"

"[while exploring the abandoned whaling station, Miller is startled by a penguin] Careful. They bite."

"And then there are two: one woman, one predator, and they do what they have to do. She proves her mettle doing what heavily armed eight-foot invisible predators clearly can't. She kicks alien arse, destroys the queen's eggs, and then they both race hand-in-claw into the night toward the almost-romantic denouement. Then, with her beau-that-will-never-be gone, it's down to the feisty Ripley-replacement to take out the alien queen and source some anti-scarring cream for her permanently disfigured face. He should have just given her a ring."

"AvP owes its genesis more to the video games than to the movies that preceded them, but this actually weighs in its favour in that it is not tied down by the conventions of the originals. (Although, that didn't stop the wonderfully loopy Jean-Pierre Juenet from making the spectacularly bonkers Alien Resurrection, a movie that, having Winona Ryder as a vengeful synthetic lifeform, is responsible for one of the most ill-judged casting decisions of all time.) And so, while I am still plagued by the question of how the aliens, without so much as gulping down a bottle of powdered milk, go from eight inches long to seven feet tall in the space of five minutes, in this context I no longer need to care."

"There's a touching scene near the end of Alien vs Predator when an eight-foot, fang-faced predator, using the acidic blood from the severed finger of an alien face-hugger, tenderly scorches a mark of courage and respect onto the cheek of the last human survivor. She grimaces as her skin burns, and then their eyes meet across the great expanse of space and time that separates both cultures, and then they kiss … or they would have if the queen alien hadn't eviscerated the woman's new friend with the pointy end of her tail. And there ends the almost-birth of a new movie genre, the inter-species romcom."

"Was the film shot entirely in Prague?"

"Like last year's Freddy Vs. Jason, Alien Vs. Predator never suggests a reason for existing other than the fact that it can. The logical curlicues used to bring the title beasts together defy description; the plot involves ancient civilizations, an abandoned Antarctic whaling station, and an underground pyramid that changes shape every 10 minutes. Into this lair of subterranean mystery and dimly lit sets marches a ragtag group of scientists and explorers led by overqualified Love & Basketball star Sanaa Lathan and funded by Alienseries vet Lance Henriksen. Soon, they discover they've walked into a death trap, an elaborate human-sacrifice machine designed to create Aliens for a ritualistic Predator hunt. Or something like that."

"I suppose going into this film, everyone has their favorites. For me, the Alien world has always been a very rich and exciting one. The Predator character is pretty cool, but I mean, really, the first Predator was good, but what do we really know about these dreadlocked ugly mothers? Well, I suppose Paul Anderson either disagreed with me or simply decided this was his chance to expand the Predator world, but the Aliens get the serious shaft here."

"When we do get to the Predators and Aliens, the film starts to look pretty promising. The Aliens look great, the Predators look great and, at first, their battles are fun to watch. Unfortunately, over-stylized herky jerky camerawork makes the action very hard to follow. It gives one the feeling of watching a fight with a crowd of large people in front of you. It's like you're always trying to jump up to see over someone's head or look around someone, but you keep missing the action."

"Do you realize that with the exception of Pam Grier, who starred with Ice Cube in "John Carpenter's Ghost of Mars", you are probably the first black female lead in a sci-fi film?"

"When it comes to monster films, horror films, and basically the sci-fi genre, African Americans aren't usually featured in a positive way. For years, we were always the first to die or weren't even featured in the film at all, but lately the trend is changing. In the last few years, the unexpected is happening. In "28 Days Later...", Naomie Harris made it through alive and so did Kelly Rowland in "Freddy Vs. Jason". We don't know what fate holds for Sanaa Lathan in the upcoming "Alien Vs. Predator", but she's considered to be the first black actress to lead a sci-fi film. That itself is a history making achievement. Having received a Tony nomination for her role in "A Raisin in the Sun" and co-starring with Denzel Washington in last year's "Out of Time", one would say that Sanaa has chosen some good projects as of late. In speaking with blackfilm.com, Sanaa talks about her role in "Alien Vs. Predator" and compares the physical work needed for this film to the one needed for her recent work on stage."

"Anderson shows such a lack of interest in character or mood that the first 45 minutes, pre-Alien and Predator battles, feels unnecessarily lugubrious. His film lacks the obsessive haunted house setting of Ridley Scott’s Alien, the virtuoso gung-ho action of James Cameron’s Aliens or John McTiernan’s Predator, the bleak doom of David Fincher Alien³, and the cartoon splashes of Jien-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection. Those movies were of varying levels of quality, but the filmmakers were committed to a singular vision. Alien vs. Predator is a technically proficient fan-boy’s wet dream, made for people who want to see the Alien bleed acid on the Predator’s body armor, or the Predator using his nifty laser to blow apart alien hoards. It’s not much of a movie, but it’s a geek’s paradise."

"Alien vs. Predator is a monster mash between two of 20th Century Fox’s franchise creatures. When H.R. Giger’s sleek and slimy killing machines face off against the Rastafarian headhunter, there’s a giddy childish thrill not unlike when King Kong faced Godzilla, or when Frankenstein met the Wolf Man. Their confrontations play out in the exaggerated manner of professional wrestling and take place in an ancient pyramid buried under the Antarctic ice where you half expect John Carpenter’s monster from The Thing to pop up and waste them both. These beasties frequently strut their extraterrestrial stuff and are geared toward audience cheers and jeers. While you can’t argue for Alien vs. Predator as a movie to be taken seriously, it certainly delivers as a loving homage to two of our favorite monsters and their respective super-duper powers."

"Q: Which character is worse: Predator or Alien?"

"The Predator society builds sophisticated spaceships, yet they should not look as sleek and hi-tech as a Star Wars stormtrooper. They are a tribal culture, yet their look should not be as primitive as the orcs from Lord of the Rings. They are also a warrior culture, so the ornate cannot conflict with the practical."

"Scar, so named in the movie's credits for a mark on his face and a ritual he performs with Alexa, recalls Cicatrix, the "Scar" of The Searchers (1956), one of the more complex Native American villains in U.S. movies. In Alien vs. Predator, villains and heroes become simultaneously concrete and abstract: they're functions of the game, the franchise, and the broader commercial and moral marketplace, yes, but they're also vaguely resistant, less transparent than they seem."

"While the film's tagline holds true -- "No matter who wins, we lose" -- the underlying notion here, as it has been in both previous entries in the Predator franchise, is that the hunters are comprehensible. Like gamers, they measure their own prowess and keep track of their kills."

"The heat Weyland's researchers noted results from preparations for the Predators' with each stage allotted its own room, for instance, "sacrificial chamber" (the structure is remarkably elaborate and mobile, with ceilings and walls shifting every 10 minutes, rather like the scary place in Cube [1997])."

"Its set-up is mundane: billionaire industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen, a.k.a. Bishop) hires himself a motley crew to go to Antarctica, where they find a perplexing, heat-generating Cambodian-Egyptian-Aztec temple 2000 feet under the ice. Luckily, they've brought along someone who can read the hieroglyphics, Italian archaeologist Sebastian De Rosa (Raoul Bova), who essentially explains the plot, if only his fellow adventurers would listen."

"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."

"I don’t even know if Sigourney Weaver has read the “Alien vs Predator” draft I wrote. She’s never said she has. But, I was a fan obsessive of the “Alien” franchise, Sigourney. Big time. Particularly Ridley’s original, which is still unmatched. And “Alien vs Predator” — as a concept — is still killer, full of potential. Even its critically maligned first cinematic outing made $172,544,654 worldwide, compared to $159,814,498 for “Alien 3” and $161,376,068 for “Resurrection”. Hardly a financial “fail” there, Sigourney."

"Being such a self-confessed sci-fi geek, was there ever a moment when you had to pinch yourself that you were really in charge of this movie?"

"Sam Troughton - Thomas Parks"

"Tommy Flanagan - Mark Verheiden"

"Colin Salmon - Maxwell Stafford"

"Ewen Bremner - Graeme Miller"

"Lance Henriksen - Charles Bishop Weyland"

"Raoul Bova - Sebastian de Rosa"