EXCL: Rick Baker on Alien Designs of Men in Black 3

And, what did he think of Rise of the Planet of the Apes



Over the weekend, Shock sat down with Rick Baker in Austin, Texas where he was presenting a screening of An American Werewolf in London at Fantastic Fest. In the time we had with him, we picked his brain about current projects, films he has seen and the book he’s working on.

Before landing in Austin, he told us he was in New York plugging away at Men in Black 3 which will feature an eclectic array of all-new alien FX. “The thing that’s cool is there is a time travel element [to the story]. Where I had fun is that we go back to the Men in Black headquarters of the ’60s. The first thing I said is that we should have retro aliens, not aliens of 2012. More based on B-movies of the ’50s and ’60s. So, a lot of the aliens are based on that. Space suits with fishbowl helmets and ray guns.”

We also asked if Baker – who worked on Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes redo – saw this summer’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes film. “I did and I liked it. I went in totally expecting to hate it and loved it. I got a call from Fox very early on telling me about the project. ‘It’s going to be really great because we’re not going to use any make-up for the apes’ is what they told me. That sounded horrible and against what Planet of the Apes is. I didn’t want to know about it. Then I went to see it and thought it was a terrific story and what WETA did was fantastic. Good filmmaking and I was happy to see that. It won me over.”

Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor

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