Predators is like the future Die Hard movies.
It took the concept of the original film but made a bigger.
Die hard 1 was a single building than 2 a neighbourhood, 3 a city and 5 an entire country.
Predators went from an unknown region of Central America and now there's an entire planet full of weird jungle.
Yet despite its large size the Predators they hired for this hunting season are just awful.
They have three Predators (possibly four) and they all get killed off buy a group of semi train but very confused people.
Where as the original Predator was able to kill off an entire group of highly trained military experts in their own backyard.
I'm a little upset that Danny Trejo wasn't in the film very long.
Like I didn't expect him to be there throughout the whole thing. He's an older guy and they probably couldn't afford to keep him on set for too long. But it still would have been nice for him to stick around for a bit. Maybe have him do some damage to one of the Predators but he just kind of disappears.
and then Laurence Fishburne shows up later on as a Plucky survivalist* of several seasons of hunting. But he's only in the movie for a few minutes too.
Then we have to go back to boring protagonist man and secondary protagonist boring lady girl.
And you know that these two are going to survive until the end.
I'd actually be impressed if they didn't survive.
Like one of them just gets killed immediately and that's the end of it. Alien versus Predator 2 was willing to kill off a few of the characters you thought would survive. Like the Plucky stupid looking blonde girl.
Okay let me stop being negative for a minute. Despite a lot of my little grapes at this movie. I found it entertaining enough. Like it's a perfectly serviceable film and if you're going to make a sequel to the very good Predator movie then this film wouldn't be a bad candidate.
It's leagues better than Predator 2** even if it is just a glorified reboot telling the exact same story almost beat for beat.
We even get a point where are boring protagonist man eggs the Predator on to kill him and yelling the exact same lines is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It would have been nice if they had try to make a predator film all their own. Instead of relying on past references to a better movie.
It would have been nice if they had try to make a predator film all their own.
Instead of relying on past references to a better movie. This becomes especially blatant with the soundtrack which uses literal cues from the original film.
It's not a bad soundtrack and it even sounds okay in the film but I think they would have done better to try and make their own original content instead.
However to give credit where credit is due.
This film also recreates the scene of the Predator facing down the solemn man with a knife. In the original Predator movie it was a semi stereotypical Indigenous man with a very large blade. In this movie it's a very stereotypical Japanese Yakuza man with an incredibly old medium sized Japanese sword.
And in this movie we actually get to see a fight.
Not only is it a entertaining fight but the Japanese man holds his own against the Predator. he's even able to kill him. Though he died simultaneously in what is one of the most cliche deaths in all of moviedom.
I'm referring to the sword slash both opponents stand idle for a few seconds then one (or both) fall over from their wounds.
You see it all the time and older movies and it's clearly still popping up a new movies.
In real life the chance of you getting stabbed by your opponent after doing said move is really high. Humans don't just tend to keel over dead once dealt a threatening blow.
We tend to keep fighting until there's nothing left.
But now I'm just nitpicking something that doesn't matter.
The point is this Predator movie did what neither of the other Predator movies could do.
Actually have an engaging and fun fight scene between the human and predator.
And I like that because as much as I enjoy the original Predator I always thought that scene was a bit underwhelming.
Nobody's asking for a great fight but at least show us a bit of the confrontation.
Especially once the second Predator movie comes around and they do it again.
You have no excuse at that point.
At least in the first movie you can make up some sort of excuse and explain it away as the imagination filling in the gap.
But you can't do it again and not show anything.
And speaking of the other Predator movies I guess the original film is in continuity with this one. There's absolutely no reference the second movie and I think that's for the best. Even though that would make it very comedic to think that all these Die Hard kind of real life people all came from a world of Looney Toon violence and RoboCop authoritarianism.
*Laurence Fishburne scene where he leads the group to a secret bunker reminds me of that weird scene in Jurassic Park 3 with that little boy living on an island for several weeks and he shows Sam Neill his hidden bunker.
Had the same kind of atmosphere is that.
I didn't think I'd be thinking about Jurassic Park 3 while watching this film.
Although it kind of makes sense. Two silly movies set in the jungle with horrible monsters trying to kill you. Then discovering an lone person existing on their own, seemingly unfazed by the world around them.
** That's the one solid Mark I can give better too. It is in fact its own movie. It didn't try to recreate the first film beat for Beat.
It took the basic structure of that film and stuck it in a completely different environment with loads of other weird things.
It wasn't good but at least I'll remember it. Chances of me remembering this movie is incredibly slim Despite the fact that it's far better.
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