Blood. Sweat. Aliens.
Ever since 1987, the Predator franchise has been jam-packed with characters doing battle against a vastly superior foe that can turn invisible and likes human skulls for decorating. These films certainly aren’t for everyone, but if you’re into profanity, machismo, and hyper-violence, this might just be the fix you need.
Predator (***1/2)
In which Arnold Schwarzenegger finds someone who sounds almost as ridiculous as he does
It’s a testosterone-fueled mess of sweat, blood, and bullets. If you’re into that sort of thing, you will not be disappointed.
Predator came out a year after another science fiction battle against extraterrestrials: Aliens, a far superior film in virtually every way. That said, the two franchises are different enough that we can judge Predator on its own merit. It’s nothing more or less than a story about a team of muscly tobacco-chewing trigger-happy commandoes in the jungle, getting picked off one by one by an alien that kills humans for sport. In that sense, it’s a classic horror/monster flick. What makes this film particularly noteworthy is its two leads – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hyper-machismo bravado, and the Predator itself. Arnold matches Alien’s Ripley in the sense that he seems to be the only one who really understands the appropriate thing to do. The others are always yelling and shooting into thin air, whereas Arnold is always attentive and thinking out the problem as best as he can. It’s this element of his character that makes him someone to root for, particularly in the final act when he’s facing off against the Predator one-on-one. The enemy himself is also a blast, partly because we’re figuring out who he is right alongside the commandoes. He’s also enigmatic even at the end of the movie – though he’s been defeated, we still haven’t totally figured out how he works. It’s clear that he has some sort of code of honor, but does he understand humans in a linguistic sense? He’s got this gimmick where he can replicate human speech – and in those instances, he more or less does this with meaningful effectiveness. But was he just shooting in the dark, or does he actually understand our language? I like that there’s not a clear answer to this in the film.
I certainly wouldn’t say this film is shooting for the moon. They’re not attempting to earn any Oscars or to provoke anything from the audience but screams and the occasional war cry. But that doesn’t make this a bad movie. Sure, some of the special effects are a bit dated – the invisibility, in particular – but the final act hits just as hard today as I imagine it did back in 1987. I finished this film looking forward to where the franchise was heading next.
Predator 2 (*1/2)
In which cops curse at each other while an alien goes around killing people
Predator 2 is a sequel stuffed with profanity, sex, and hyperviolence – and devoid of some of the critical elements that made the first flick fun.
The film kicks off with a firefight in the heart of Las Angeles between the police force and Colombian and Jamaican gangs. Maybe I’m naïve, but the sheer intensity of the battle in broad daylight on a main street seemed ludicrous beyond the point of reasonable plausibility. I’m all for violence in a film – even a heavy amount of it – but something about this fight just wasn’t fun for me. Maybe it was just too pulpy or cartoonish, but it was clear from the get-go that this didn’t have the timelessness that a jungle monster movie can pull off. This was very clearly a 90s action movie. Maybe that’s some people’s cup of tea, but it didn’t do anything for me. There’s lots of cops yelling and swearing at each other, and a lot of ridiculously cheesy lines of dialogue like:
“I put my *** on the line to get you here! You disobeyed a direct order!”
“Til now, it’s been all fun and games. Cops and robbers. Dunkin Donuts. But you’re in the **** now. Metro Command is a war zone.”
“You’re ripping my **** off and shoving it up my *******!”
Maybe lines like that make you think, “Man, this movie is for me”. But for me, it was very hard to take the movie seriously after just a sprinkle of these. To be fair, the original Predator had a lot of profanity as well. But somehow it didn’t sound as stupid back then as it did here.
There’s a moment – no, that’s too generous a word. There’s an entire scene that’s filled with gratuitous nudity that I had to fast forward through. And from what I gathered, there was really no value to the nudity apart from nudity for nudity’s sake. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Everything in this movie is cranked up to eleven – it’s trying to go over the top in every way imaginable. But the difference between violence and sexuality in film is that the violence is never as real as the sexuality is. The actress in this scene wasn’t acting like she was being exploited for her body. She was being exploited for her body. And I can’t be okay with that. On that basis alone, this won’t be a film I watch again, nor will be this be a film I recommend to others. Not that that’s particularly heartbreaking, mind you. I already wasn’t enjoying the film when this scene came along.
When things got really stupid was when the Predator started having full-on conversations in English. I’m exaggerating slightly, but this time around the alien seems a lot more proficient with English than the one in the original film did. And I don’t think this sequel benefits from that decision.
This movie isn’t hopeless. We get a look inside the Predator’s starship, which was pretty cool, as well as a nod to the Alien franchise that I imagine would’ve been insanely thought-provoking to the audiences at the time. The action wasn’t all bad – but in my eyes, it was mostly bad. Skip this.
Predators (***1/2)
In which the aliens are now human connoisseurs
A reinvigorating addition to the franchise, Predators gets back to its roots in a way that somehow feels new.
There’s a lot to like about this film right from the get-go. In the very first seconds of the film, you’re plunged right into the world of the movie without given any explanation or backstory. You’re forced to figure it out as you go along, right along with the characters of the film. Much like the original that had an eclectic mix of personalities (albeit each being a slight variation on a hyper-masculine gunslinger), this new film features a diverse cast both in terms of ethnicity but also in personality. King Kong’s Adrien Brody, I Am Legend’s Alice Braga, Spider-Man 3’s Topher Grace, The Matrix’s Laurence Fishburne, Machete’s Danny Trejo, and Luke Cage’s Mahershala Ali all give great performances that distinguish their characters from the others while adding to the team atmosphere overall. Everyone’s background, motivation, and personality are clear – which makes you care about the people that are getting killed off one by one.
The premise is similar to the original, but there’s a fresh spin to it. An expert military team finds themselves in a jungle being hunted by aliens. The difference is that these soldiers aren’t on Earth – they’ve been plucked from our homeworld as good candidates for a hunting reserve somewhere within the Predator’s reach. After figuring out how they were brought here, the team wrestles with why they specifically were chosen, which leads to some interesting conversations. It also sets up a great twist towards the end of the film, where we suddenly discover the reason someone was really brought here.
The action was fun, the performances were great, and the movie walked the fine line between honoring its predecessor without becoming a carbon copy. It’s a shame the next film in the franchise couldn’t keep this momentum going.
The Predator (*)
In which we learn you can turn alien dogs nice by shooting them in the head
Just plain dumb.
A lot of the script feels cheesy and uninspired. We’ve got a ragtag team of ex-military guys who are each mentally unwell in one way or another – the film goes on to poke fun at their illnesses, particularly a soldier with Tourette’s. There’s a kid who’s bullied for being on the autism spectrum, though the Predator eventually decides that autism is actually the next step in human evolution and kidnaps him to learn his secrets. It’s also explained that the Predators are concerned with humanity’s impact on climate change, which is why they’re coming more frequently to get their kicks before we drive ourselves to extinction. Oh yeah, and the Predators have Predator dogs now. And a soldier shoots one in the head, which somehow turns it into a friendly Predator dog. A father also executes humans at point blank range in front of his child. There’s blood and everything.
And the very end of the film shows our anti-government hero laying claim to a piece of alien technology simply because he thinks he’s got enough hyper-masculine energy to take it for himself.
Honestly, not even Keegan-Michael Key saves this. It’s just a frustrating waste of the Predator mythos. Skip this.
Prey (****)
This might just be my favourite installment in the franchise.
Prey definitely knows how to rely on the elements that made the first flick so iconic. Structurally, it’s near-identical. A team with combat experience in the woods finds themselves outmaneuvered by a sinister invisible monster who seems to have rules about when and how it kills. The team gets picked off one by one, until one triumphant hero remains using their gathered intelligence about the monster and the sweat on their back. What made this so enjoyable to me was the growth of our heroine Naru that happened along the way. From the beginning, she’s a woman desperate to prove herself in a society that doesn’t think she can do a “man’s job”. That will excite some and infuriate others, but what’s more important than her motivation is how she achieves her goal. She doesn’t just look the Predator in the eye and yell “I am no man” (not that there’s anything wrong with that). She makes mistakes and learns from them time and time again. The hatchet-rope tool she devises is a world of fun as she invents it, experiments with it, and finally masters it. She gradually figures out how the Predator works so that she can subdue it. She doesn’t just prove to the other characters that she’s worthy – she proves it to the audience. I loved that.
The historical setting was something that I really liked too. It was fun seeing characters from Naru’s Comanche nation do battle against the Predator just as much as the French colonists, as both had different ways of fighting. It was also cool just seeing the Comanche way of life – I don’t often get opportunities like that in the movies I watch.
The Predator himself was of course great. He was intimidating whether he was invisible or not, and I loved his design. You really felt like you knew the guy by the end of the film. All in all, this was a fantastic addition to the franchise.