Review: The Predator

“When in doubt, quote the first movie”

The Predator franchise has been around for 31 years. In that time, it has only produced four films (not counting the non-cannon Alien v Predator films). With each instalment, the quality has dropped, and yet again, here we are. How low can we go? Well, the finances for this aren’t going to be great, so maybe this is it.

Let’s get one thing clear, I enjoy all of the previous three films. I know many don’t. The original Predator is the best by a long way, and is one of the best action/sci fi movies ever made. It’s the perfect blend of suspense, action, horror, sci fi, all wrapped in excessive action sequences that Chuck Norris could wander into, and a great layer of cheese melted over the top of everything. It has larger than life characters yet manages to contain them all in this enclosed environment of the jungle. You feel the heat of the jungle when you watch the film. You sense the danger the characters are in. You get enough back story to make you care, and each member of the team matters and you miss them after they die.

Predator 2 is underrated in my book. I think what Predator 2 had going against it, is that it lost the tone of the first one. The city setting with the drug cartels, the gang violence and the voodoo imagery, turned a lot of people off. But when watched as its own thing, separating it from the original, it works well and Danny Glover is great.

Predators feels both like a return to the original and an alternate universe. It tries to capture the feel of the original, whilst trying to add some new elements. The ideas are all there, it just doesn’t quite pull it off. It lacks a big name star who could really carry the film. Adrian Brody is adequate in the role, but imagine the film with a big name star with real screen presence, and the film might have worked a lot more. Brody isn't really an action star.

Then there’s this film. We return to Earth for this one, but we don’t return to the world we know.

Work Cover claim coming up I think

Set in current times, the film references the events of both the original 1987 film, and the 1990 sequel (which was set in 1997). It doesn’t mention the third film. This time we open with a Predator space ship being chased by another predator space ship in a kind of Star Wars style opening.

The ship crashes on Earth, and we meet our hero for the movie, Quinn McKenna, an assassin, who is out doing assassiny things when the ship just about crashes on top of him. He encounters the predator and the plot is set in motion.

During the course of the film, we are introduced to our team who will fight the predator (as we had in the first and third films). These team members are mostly made of a character traits, rather than being characters. We have a guy with turrets; a guy who tells jokes, a Christian (because… reasons)… a Irish guy (Reek from Game of Thrones), and then theres Nebraska Williams, whose character is actually likeable and has a bit more to him. They join up with McKenna, and we then add Olivia Munn as a scientist / conveniently handy with a gun and able to hold her own against the galaxy’s biggest killing machine. Oh, and we throw a kid in with Asperger’s because we need someone with magic abilities to move the plot along.

Yeah, you know I'm going to be annoying. I was super annoying in the trailers.

Whilst the film is called The Predator (as opposed to the more appropriate Predator 4), there are actually two predators, with one your more standard predator, and then the super predator that is 11 feet tall and really not interesting.

When ever the film can, it throws a poorly written joke at you. If it can’t, it throws some violence at you, mostly featuring that really fake CGI blood effect that is so prevalent in movies now (I miss the 1980s). And if all else fails, throw a reference to the first movie in there and hope that gets a rise out of the audience.

The film has some redeeming elements, mostly Quinn McKenna. However, Fox has clearly tampered with Shane Blacks story and the film feels highly re-edited and reshot. The third act is a disaster and apparently this section of the film was reworked after bad test screenings.

The film tries to give us new ideas, but overall it doesn’t. Even the predator dogs, which I heard some people online complain about, aren’t new, as they had dogs in the third one. The different types of predators was also explored in the third one.

The human characters aren’t interesting for the most part and were more of an annoyance. A much smaller cast would have been better. The worst character in the film is by far is Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), who acts mostly as a villain and who’s unprofessionalism throughout is laughable for who his character is supposed to be.

The cinematography is a mess in many parts. The scenery doesn’t look particularly real or interesting, losing one of the key elements of all three previous movies, which managed (especially one and two) to capture the environment they were set in so the landscape is almost a character within the movie. The third act is dark and hard to tell what is happening. For every good visual shot, there is an equally bad shot.

The score is very poor, using the original themes in many areas, but it just feels like they copied the audio file from the first film and stuck it in every 10 minutes into this film. It doesn’t feel part of the film and doesn’t feel like it naturally works with the story being told. The original music from 1987 is fantastic, but it needed to be more of its own thing, with adaptions of the classic themes, not just copy and paste.

Shane Black might have been in the best film of the series, but he hasn’t shown the understanding of that film to make a film worthy of being in the same franchise. The studio may have butchered his original vision, but there isn’t many moments here where you think a good film was in there somewhere and the studio messed it up in post-production.

The Predator is the least re-watchable of the series. I don’t think I will be purchasing it, as I don’t want to sit through it again, especially as there was lots of shaky cam and there didn’t need to be (and I suffer motion sickness). I’d say the film is only for true fans, but really, the true fans will hate it more than anyone.

BTW, I did enjoy the Jake Busey cameo, which was a nice nod to Predator 2 (his father was in Predator 2, replacing Schwarzenegger who refused to reprise his role). Of course, they did nothing with it, but it was still cool to see.

The five bearded questions:

1. Was it worth a cinema trip? No

2. Would I See It Again at the Cinema? No.

3. Would I buy it on Blu-ray: (only films I really love get bought these days) No 4. Do I Recommend people see it? No

5. Any cheese/ Disney style bullshit?: (such as jokes wedged in at serious moments, because fun!). Yes, way too much humour and not much of it good.