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David Paetkau is Good at Being Frank

Actor David Paetkau wants you to know that he worked really, really hard making Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, and like any fan of the AvP series, he hopes it doesn’t suck.

The 29-year-old B.C. native, best known for his role as dead snowboarder Beck McKaye on TV’s Whistler, plays the obnoxious Dale in this month’s sequel to 2004’s mash up of two horror franchises —Alien and Predator — AvP: Alien vs. Predator, which in fact did suck.

“To be honest, I thought the first movie was quite a disappointment,” say Paetkau (it rhymes with “late show”) on the line from his home in L.A.

“Most fans agree, so this time [directors Colin and Greg Strause] really wanted to do everything they didn’t do in the first movie, which was PG-13. Ever since 300, ‘restricted’ is back in again and this one is restricted, and it’s going back to its roots — more like Ridley Scott’s Alien and Aliens — with full-on action and where you’re tense the whole time.”

The movie kicks off with a Predator scout ship, which has Aliens on board, crash-landing in a small Colorado town. The two violent species escape and start a battle royale that puts the human residents right in the middle of the gory action. Paetkau’s Dale is the least-liked human in town, the movie’s prerequisite jerk.

“I have to say of all the characters in the movie, Dale is the one most people would want to see get destroyed by an Alien or a Predator,” says Paetkau with a laugh.

“It’s a lot of fun playing that kinda guy. You can act out things you would never normally act out, you can be obnoxious, totally entitled and arrogant. But the one good thing about those kind of people is that even though they are asses, at least they’re frank.”

Although he’s been working steadily since he first appeared in the 1998 teen flick Disturbing Behavior, and his credit list includes appearances in TV shows such as Smallville, Stargate SG-1, LAX and Justice, Paetkau can’t help but be excited about the release of AvP: Requiem, his biggest film role to date. But even he knows that no performance is safe from the cutting room floor.

“So much is out of your control, they might find some storyline needs to be shifted or cut. That happened with my first big break, the movie Snow Day,” he remembers. “It was a two-and-a-half-hour epic kids movie. Well, you can’t have  two-and-a-half-hour epic kids movies, you gotta cut it down. And I was so excited to see my scenes and they mostly never made it into the film.”

How did he hear the bad news?

“It was in Los Angeles at the big premiere, where they actually trucked in snow and had this little toboggan run. The director pulled a few of us aside and told us they had to cut some of the storylines. So I was prepared, but it was so hard, that feeling you get at the pit of your stomach, oh man. But now, in hindsight, when I watch the movie it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, it works.’”

—Ingrid Randoja