"When will filmmakers learn to make a film about an intergalactic alien hunter stalking quip-loving marines with the depth and gravitas it so richly deserves?"
My response?
"They did learn - in 1987."
In short, The Predator is absolutely fucking awful. Laughably so. Anyone who has seen the trailer may have been suspicious that the film wasn't quite going to live up to expectations. Well you can be safe in the knowledge that it really doesn't; in fact the trailer has tried its best to polish a certifiable turd, a film so bafflingly moronic it would have been a disappointment as straight-to-video sequel fodder in the early 90s. It makes 2010's Predators look like a borderline masterpiece in comparison. Hell, it makes Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem look mildly ambitious. I may be over-egging the pudding a bit. But probably not. This really is 100% shit sandwich territory.
Just what was writer/director Shane Black thinking? Was he *even* thinking? Who knows. The guy was IN Predator, FFS; he's got critically-acclaimed writing credentials under his belt; he even made a decent fist of Iron Man 3. Yet somehow, in channelling his inner 80s action movie nerd, he's managed to concoct an unwieldy beast of a film that never seems to know what it's trying to achieve, with so many tonal misfires it comes off more like a really bad comedy (swapping Jesse Ventura's "slack-jawed faggots" line for jokes about a man called Gaylord).
Okay, so I did it. I dropped the f-bomb. No matter which way you slice it, Predator - unequivocally excellent though the rest of the film is - has that line which is no doubt destined to feature in an upcoming Honest Trailer. Oh wait, here it is! Though to be fair, this kind of throwaway homophobia was unfortunately the case for many an 80s genre flick; a rather sad by-product of its time. A Christmas staff screening of Trading Places where I work yielded not just the f-bomb, but Dan Aykroyd in blackface. The atmosphere was awkward, to say the least. Anyway, I digress. What I think Black has tried to do with the aforementioned Gaylord joke (along with plenty of other 'funny' character traits - an army vet with Tourette's, anyone?) is rekindle elements of what he liked from the first film. That being, the kind of #bants only him and Michael Bay would find funny.
Not even the plot makes sense. Predators having some kind of interstellar battle end up crash-landing on earth (seems to be their favourite trick), with nearby military assassin (Boyd Holbrook) picking up some of the wreckage (a mask and wrist gauntlet) to send to his ex-wife's address as 'evidence'. He also swallows the predator's cloaking device, we assume in order for it not to be discovered on his way back across the border from Mexico. Which begs the question: why didn't he just cloak himself and go across the border undetected? This is the kind of film that ditches any potential logic in order for a man to chug a giant marble, just so he can 'comically' shit it out later. Absolute #bants.
Anyway, his (presumably) autistic son opens up said package and pisses about with the mask and gaultlet, triggering a further flotilla of predators back to earth. Turns out these crazy predators are using spinal fluid from 'the best' species across the galaxy in order to enhance themselves. In other words, they've made themselves taller. Oh, and they've bred predator dogs - let's call them 'Predadogs', like the rest of the internet is doing - for no particular reason. I'm also not sure why the Predadogs have dreadlocks like their predator kin. Makes you wonder what kind of distasteful gonzo science experiments they've been conducting in their forever-crashing spacecraft. It would be like us creating dogs with human faces. I've seen this before, and it's not pretty.
Throw a jerk-off military scientist, a weapons-handy biologist (!) and an Irish Theon Greyjoy into the mix, and you've got yourself a film where empathising with the characters is unequivocally impossible. Think of the taut simplicity of the first film - Schwarzenegger's band of ex-marines are macho as shit, but every single one of them you invest in and care about (also see John Carpenter's The Thing, where every character is vital as well as memorable). The utter absence of nuance or subtlety, in both plot and characterisation, is absurd - you give zero fucks what happens to anyone, or indeed what happens at all. Jokes are to be cringed at, not laughed at. The only laughing you will be doing is at how cack-handed the whole venture feels; no amount of money thrown at the screen could have resolved what is ultimately a sad, teenage wank fantasy from a writer/director who appears to have a) forgotten what constitutes a good film, and b) is completely hampered by his own misguided 80s nostalgia. I do wonder if he knows what a vapid monstrosity he's shat out into cinemas.
If nothing else, I would like to think The Predator shows studio executives it's not always a good idea to keep returning to a character just because they think an audience wants more of it. But I doubt they'll care. Sure, there's always going to a be a yearning for more of anything that was good, in and of its time. It's why a Back to the Future remake/reboot is never far away - studios can't keep their hands off something that will be a guaranteed moneymaker, no matter how shit or soul-destroying it might be. The RoboCop remake wasn't a total car crash, but was ultimately pointless, carrying none of the satiric weight or iconic production design of the original. But it made money, so fuck what the public thinks, so long as Hollywood be rollin' in that dollar.
But hey, at least the original is still great. No amount of crappy sequels or remakes or reboots or offshoots will change that. Turns out you really can have too much of a good thing... with The Predator, I think I've had my fill.
