The Predator (2018)

[Einherjar]

Damn you MoviePass.  This movie was not available as an option last weekend.  Ended up watching Peppermint instead, an ok movie.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Einherjar

[kajnrig]

Man, I don't know what you folks saw. I had a frickin' blast. It wasn't until I saw this movie that I realized I'd forgotten what a good, balls to the walls, R-rated bloodbath looked like. Both Predators (I don't think that's a spoiler because... c'mon.) had amazingly visceral moments. The one kill shown in the trailer where one of them repeatedly guts a poor mook was what won me over, and it continues to be one of my favorite moments of the movie. How it's so effortless for the Predator, how brutal it is... Mwah. Excellente.

 

The "story," inasmuch as there is one, serves its purpose well enough, which is just fine by me. If it feels flimsily strung together and overly complicated... well, I admit it is, but again, that's just fine by me, because what we're here for is to see the creative ways that super effing buff super effing aliens can rip people to shreds. Government conspiracy this, yautja whistleblowers that, autism = evolution there, all of those "themes" suggested by the narrative are secondary to this one overarching thesis.

The criticisms I have of the movie are all nitpicks. The yautja dogs are more disturbing than they are intimidating. They fit neatly into the subplot of the yautja genetically modifying themselves, but this implies that either a yautja willingly subjected themself to becoming essentially another yautja's pet, or a yautja willingly subjected another member of its own species to that fate. Whenever they were on screen, the movie brought up more of these ethical questions that bogged down my attention. I would have much preferred if they'd recycled the dogs from Predators. Not only were those more visibly not yautja, they were also much more ferocious and intimidating.

The autism = next step of human evolution thing... Eh. I know it's something some people IRL actually think is the case, which is... well, I don't want to say silly, but it's certainly an extraordinary leap in logic. As a plot device, it was easy enough on my part to suspend disbelief.

The characters mention that the second Predator has the ability to grow an exoskeleton under its skin... to which I chuckled a bit, because y'know if it's under the skin then it's really not "exo" is it it's really just another endoskeleton... But more to the point, I never could get a good look at said exoskeleton. Some more close-ups of the Predators in general would have been nice.

The way the second Predator kills the first Predator was a bit disappointing. I had hoped to see them clashing more throughout the movie, so to have it be just a single manhandling... eh. Could have done more there. Again, nitpicking.

I think the movie could have, starting with the same premise, been a very different movie simply by changing perspective to that of the first Predator as it lands on Earth.

 

It kills the first humans it comes in contact with out of self-defense, which gets the rest of them understandably riled up. It spends the movie studying them, trying to figure out their speech and/or researching what data is stored on its ship. It has to balance its self-preservation against its goal of giving them a tool to fight against its kind and teaching them how to use it. Inadvertently it drops a piece of equipment that finds its way to a person - Aspergers-diagnosed kid or otherwise - who figures out how it works over the course of the first half of the movie. The second Predator shows up, and the humans think they're one and the same, and the first Predator and second Predator clash with each other throughout the movie, both physically and mentally, the latter hunting both the former and the humans, and the former trying to stop the latter and again still trying to communicate with the humans. I have a sequence of events in my head where the first Predator figures out that humans point, arm extended, to indicate to others to look somewhere; it also hears, multiple times, and maybe learns how to say, "Over there." A play on the first movie's line. In some part or another of the movie, in a moment of risking its life to show humans it's not a threat, it sneaks up on a camouflaged soldier and decloaks, scaring the bejesus out of them at first but pointing for him/her to look in the distance while saying, "Over there," where the second Predator is... I dunno, doing its own stalking or something.The movie could easily become fraught with the dangers of miscommunication; the first Predator finds out about the autistic kid (or whoever) and has no choice but to kidnap them and bring them to its ship to teach it, but that kidnapping is construed by the humans and they up their hunting of it. The second Predator uses this to its advantage and lays traps or manipulates them to serve its needs. I dunno. Maybe the humans finally join forces with the first Predator, maybe it dies saving the kid from the second Predator while the humans watch, or something along those lines, I haven't thought out the ending at all. But suffice it all to say that the same premise could have made for a very different movie if they just wrote it from the perspective of the first Predator instead. Not better, but different, with a very different mood/tone.

Anyway, that's that. One hell of a fun movie.

On 9/15/2018 at 3:25 PM, Mommar said:

I’ve heard it’s the best comedy of the year.  Same complaints as Iron Man 3 too,  EVERYBODY is a quippy jokester.  To the point where you can’t tell when a scene is supposed to be serious.

I didn't get that sense at all. Some of the quips are certainly for comedic effect, but/and a lot of it was character-driven, a way for one character or another to assert themselves in a situation that's way, WAY beyond their control. The MCU has a tendency to overdo it, giving characters one-liners that don't necessarily match the tone of the scene/movie or the character uttering them (ie a lot of Ultron's dialogue in Avengers 2 or specifically Black Widow muttering, "That was gross," after what's-her-face gets dragged up into a passing... grinder... vehicle... thing in Avengers 3.).

Here, though, the entire movie is irreverent. Everything is larger than life, from the characters - even the kid - to the story to the action. What's more, almost everyone harbors some measure of distrust of each other. Their "quips" are often combative, competitive, hyper-testosterone'd just like the original movie. I never lost track of the "mood" of a scene just because a character cracks a joke or two or ten.

Edited September 19, 2018 by kajnrig

[eXis10z]

Caught it. Wish I didn't. Looks like I'll have to rewatch P1 and 2 for to wipe away the memory of watching the new one.

[kajnrig]

8 minutes ago, eXis10z said:

Looks like I'll have to rewatch P1 and 2

I'll be honest, I never really liked P2 all that much. Aside from that cool opening shot where it pans from the forest to suburbs, I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy it very much. Something about it felt way... cheaper... than the first one. The Predator looked sillier, running around barreling through bedrooms and the like.

That said, I'm feeling the need to get the trilogy blu-ray and rewatch them again, so maybe I'll like it better on another go-around.

[kajnrig]

A lot of this video is insufferable - I actually recommend you don't watch it - but one point I agree with is that it doesn't really matter what the Predator mythos is, what its culture and lore and whatnot is, because... it's an alien sports hunter. That's all it ever needs to be.

 

[apptt4]

yeap I agree with that too. beyond the premise of the first 2 movies, it falls apart. if you dig into it more it's not fun or interesting in film form (some of the comics are great).

 

coming into The Predator from the position of "this shouldn't exist and the idea is done" I quite liked it for what it was: a stupid, R rated SciFi action gorefest with a particular sense of humour.

 

[kajnrig]

Well. Never thought I'd be reviving this thread, but here we are:

 

[kalvasflam]

  That was just too much, the reindeer with the gatling gun...

[Dynaman]

Ripoff of "The Night the Reindeer Died"

[spanner]

I finally watched this and it was awful.. 

[sh9000]

 

[kalvasflam]

ha ha, a classic.  Right up there with Bambi vs Godzilla.

Edited December 20, 2018 by kalvasflam

[derex3592]

Love it.

[Fusion]

Why didn't the regular Predator just use his "gift" to the humans to stay alive?

[sh9000]

 

[derex3592]

[Hikuro]

saw this pile this morning....and pile is because I can't say how I REALLY feel about this film. Shane Black you can't direct yourself out of a paper bag with a map and flash light and voice assist.

[Mazinger]

4 hours ago, Hikuro said:

Shane Black you can't direct yourself out of a paper bag with a map and flash light and voice assist.

While this entry was a disappointment on a number of levels, I enjoyed some aspects. I’d still put it behind Predators though which I thought kept a lot of the tension and atmosphere of the original.

Regarding Black though, I think he can do good stuff, such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. But yeah as the kids say nowadays, “this ain’t it Chief”.

[Negotiator]

finally saw it. enjoyed it until the end which was embarrassingly bad, imo.  wish i rented it.

[Mazinger]

3 hours ago, Negotiator said:

finally saw it. enjoyed it until the end which was embarrassingly bad, imo.  wish i rented it.

Yeah, gotta agree the ending really should have been ditched.  Minus that it is a better movie.

[kajnrig]

4 hours ago, Negotiator said:

finally saw it. enjoyed it until the end which was embarrassingly bad, imo.  wish i rented it.

The last fight end, or the main story end, or the final twist end?

In the case of the latter two, agreed wholeheartedly.

[Negotiator]

The gift end.   It looked bad too.  Cg was kinda bad in some spots thru out. A couple of "what about this and that?" Loose ends but who cares.  It was a messy cut.

I had to buy venom to wash this out.  Which wasn't bad. Not great but enjoyable.

 

this pretty much sums up my problem with it, but i have more problem with the dogs...but i digress i was still entertained and willing to let these problems go, but that end just killed it for me.

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by Negotiator

[sh9000]