Let’s face it. I’m a sucker for pretty girls and for big, stompy robots – especially when they appear in movies together. Utah actress Katherine Joan Taylor must have secretly known this, because she had me sold on the local independent science fiction/action flick Archangel Alpha with these words:

 

“Nikki Mauvais and I play two women in love with each other forced to fight on opposite sides in a devastating world war. There will be cool robots made in miniature like in Alien and Aliens.”

Geeky ones, did you see that? Miniature robots! Well, I just had to sit down with Katherine, Archangel Alpha director Aaron Martin and producer Bev at a little coffee shop in Sandy to find out more about the movie, the love story, the RED Camera (a film quality digital camera being used for the project) and, of course, big stompy robots.

JoSelle Vanderhooft: Tell me a little about Archangel Alpha. How did this all come together?

Aaron Martin: When I first moved to Utah like five years ago I started writing the script in my spare time. I’d written others before, but I hadn’t produced them or anything like that. Over the next three or four years it kind of took shape and it’s a lot different than it used to be. There’s an online forum called DVX User [for people who film with the Panasonic DVX camera] and they have festivals that are based on a theme. I’d already done one for the Sci Fi Festival before and it was going to come around again so I thought I want to be ready for that. I broke out the script and made like a six minute film version. But it turned out though that they moved the theme, so I’m stuck with this short film script I don’t have a use for. And I started thinking, well if I’m going to go through all of this trouble – because even for a short there was a lot going on in the short – I think I’ll maybe just expand it to a full-length script. So I started writing it as a feature and [Bev and I] just put everything together. We’d met a lot of people doing short films, so we were like alright gang lets do the big one now.

JV: Without giving too much of the plot away, it’s a lesbian post-apocalyptic love story with robots. The robot miniatures with really excited me!

Katherine Taylor: [Laughs]

AM: [to Taylor] That’s how you described it to her? Wow, Kat’s good at advertising!

JV: Is it set in Utah?

AM: It is set in an alternate world, that way I had a lot of wiggle room to make up stuff. It’s based on certain things. Like one of the countries is based on Soviet Russia and another is based on Hungary and on the Soviet satellites that broke away in the ‘50s and ‘60s. There are a lot of parallels to our world, but everything familiar to us, so it’s pretty much the same technology but advanced in a few areas. And there’s the whole Esper undercurrent.

JV: Esper?

AM: Yeah, there’s a group of people who have the talent to control computers with their minds without having to type or plug in. They’re the underground persecuted social class. They’re rounded up, used, mad to be servants to the rest of society, but society fears them so they have to control them.

JV: Katherine, you’re one of the main characters? Who I’m guessing is this mental hacker?

KT: Actually I’m not playing one of the Espers, but I’m playing the top ace fighter pilot on my side of the world war. I’m playing the bad ass, really. If this movie were Star Wars I’d be playing Han Solo [laughs.] But the woman I’m in love with is an Esper and I protect her and hide her. I know that she is one, but I don’t reveal it to anybody because I don’t want her to be enslaved.

JV: How does the lesbian romance fit into the movie? And then because I like this a lot, how do the robots come in?

Everyone: [laughs]

AM: For the main relationship of the story I don’t think I ever considered it being a heterosexual romance. It just didn’t interest me. I just wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to portray a different relationship on screen and have it be positive. It just seemed to really reach out to me. I thought if maybe Alex had been a guy – I don’t know, it just kind of seems cliché and boring. … See, I’m a big anime fan. And in anime female characters are often very strong, like in Ghost in the Shell. In these kinds of stories you typically have the top ace that everyone fears and respects and to me it was a no-brainer to make Alex [Taylor’s character] that top ace, the Red Baron of her world. It seemed like just a logical choice.

KT: Another thing I liked about the script is you never had the lesbianism become an issue where that’s the persecution. It’s considered normal in this universe. So we’re kind of hiding our relationship because, well, we’re fighting on opposite sides of this war and also because she could be hurt if it’s revealed and I outrank her, but the reason isn’t we’re two women in love with each other.

AM: Because they start out on the same side.

KT: And then this war happens and we end up on opposite sides.

JV: Right.

Bev: I think that’s a big theme in the movie, too. It wasn’t intent written that way, but it’s very anti-war in the sense that you could be in a relationship, but when it comes down to patriotism a lot of those lines get blurred to where no matter how much you love someone a lot of times war will tear those bonds apart. I think that’s a big message that’s in this, when a lot of people see the script I think that’s the third thing take away from it. I think they take the cool robots –

Kat: [laughs] Yeah, the robots! We fight with these combination airplane/robot things called Alphas, and they’re awesome.

[Next issue: Building the big stompy robots!]

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