Predators: A Fanboy Rant

A poor retread and an utterly wasted opportunity

So Predators is finally here, was it worth the wait? As a huge Predator fanboy, I have been waiting years for a "Predator 3". After I found out that Robert Rodriguez, one of my favourite directors, was going to take the helm, I was very intruiged, despite his intentions being less than stellar (he didn't like Predator 2 which spurred him on to write a treatment for a new Predator film, which I am not happy about becuase Predator 2 is awesome). Then, taking a step back from directing, he decided to get Nimrod Antal to direct for him (another decision I was not happy with as Nimrod had 2 movies behind him, one of them decent, a Hungarain thriller called Control, and the other an American horror called Vacancy, which is one of the worst films i've ever had to endure). Thus, things started to look from good, to bad...

The trailers looked good and the premise, whilst nothing special at all, was sound. The intention was to go back to the roots and bring an 80s style action film with minimal gloss; raw and gritty. Some artistic decisions made me grimace such as shunning Stan Winston Studios yet again (why ignore the studio that created the original creature?) but bringing in a studio which had people who worked on the original movie was I guess the next best shot, especially considering they will be using one of the original moulds for a special appearance of the originally designed Predator (dubbed "Jungle" or in this film, "Classic".) Not getting Alan Silvestri to do the score he created for the first 2 films was again a downer, but then John Debney promised fans that they were in for a treat. It was a 50/50 movie- could be great, could be bad, if anything the premise was to make something with integrity and something better than the AVP films- it could not be that hard. If anything, it would bring respect back to the Predator franchise which had become lost of the years. So, with trepidation as well as excitement at the thought of seeing a brand new Predator film on the big screen, I awaited with baited breath. Here is what follows: a 2 part analysis of the film; a simple breakdown, and then an in-depth strip; behold, it' not pretty, as if you know me by know, you'll know that I absoloutly hated this film. Note: I use a lot of lingo and fan speak which only people familair with the Predator franchise will understand, so if you don't understand that, then tough! Oobviously I will do a normal review of the film at one point, but here is a long analysis of what I thought of thisgarbage.

Part 1: The Minimised Breakdown:

Liked:

-The first half is excellent. It starts off well, constant action.
-The Preddogs scene is awesome, mad and brutal creatures, excellent action and CGI, good designs.
-The characters are well done, Brody did a good job which surprised everyone, everyone else is good and memorable.
-Good dialogue- to the point, humorous where it counted, did the job, very 80s.
-Funny humour, i was laughing where i was supposed to.
-Noland is awesome, funny to watch and my favourite character
-Planet looks great for what it is (a simple jungle), cinematography is good, very creepy atmosphere.
-Good gore, violence, funny harsh language
-Interesting mythos that i liked, the clan/race war is a good idea..however...

Hated:

-Second half completly ruins it, it turns into a big action mess which ruined the set up of the first half, which in turn made me hate the whole movie.
-The Preds looked like crap (fat, bulky morons with bland designs), acted like crap (idiots in
monster suits) and killed off in crap ways (it's like AVP again). No original sounds or anything. If I come to see a Predator film i want to see cool, badass Preds. All i got was pussified dumb ones that died cheap deaths. And they were supposed to be "Super"? Fail.
-Cloaked Preds look even worse, horrible CGI and animation (why didn't they do it the traditional way?)
- TOO many goddamned homages to the first film! Too constant, just annoying, every single second a homage comes! It felt like this was a fan remake of the original film. Why? It doesn't stop, not even in the credits.
-uninspired music (imitating Silvestri 95%, and the rest was garbage...it's cool to listen to for the first half an hour, then it got very repetitive, a pale copy)
-Classic Predator was a spit in the face to fans, an insult, shameful. Pointless cameo.
-Some of the major fights were horrible and forgettable, which was dissapointing- Hanzo vs Super Pred was laughably bad, the Classic vs Black fight was atrocious and the final fight was even worse.
-Adrien Brody thought he was Arnie in the latter half, and it sucked. Brody is NOT Arnie, but in the last part, he acts like it.
-I don't like the idea that the planet is to make the Preds better hunters.

As a casual action film for fans of the genre- 6/10

As a Predator film and my personal take on it- 2/10. I hated it. I fucking hated it.

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Part 2: The Long Fanboy Rant

The first half was excellent, don't get me wrong, but it's exactly like it was in the script, and i loved the first half of the script. The actors are excellent, the action scenes are good (the clips we've seen on the net have been heavily cut, just as i expected), its constant action as soon as it starts. The directing was good, nothing wrong there, i'm not going to blame Nimrod because for the most part he does a good job- i was never bored, it doesn't lag at all, which is great.

The dog scenes are awesome, they are brutal, fantastic creatures! Much better than I expected, the CGI is also very good on them. The music so far is bang on cue. They set up the characters very well, long and hard and we invest in them, and it's excellent- Brody is fantastic as the leader, Isabelle is great, even Stanz and Nikolai. Its very tense and suspenseful, jungle is great, scary and mysterious. Trejo is good but only here for a short time but i'm glad he's there.

The mysterious other hunted creature which hunts them is funny because it's a homage to that shitty original design for the Predator (the Van Damme one), you don't see it close up but you know it's the same one when you glimpse it and it made me laugh because this creature acts so dumb and gets killed fast, just like it should because it's a dumb, stupid looking design. But as they are setting up traps for it, it's another big homage to when they are setting traps in the first one (yawn).

Then Noland comes in, and he's the best character in the film by far- very unexpected (you will know when you see the film, hes nothing like in the clips), basically he's gone a little crazy being there so long, an it's excellent to see him act this way, i was genuinely laughing at everything he said. Good acting performances from everyone, and excellent dialogue, even good humour as well which i was laughing at. His base is full of little references again, spot the details. And he talks about the mythos, which is interesting and great, it doesn't contradict but it adds a new dimension- just some small new info, not too much, that keeps in tone with the original Predator series, still keeps it a mystery, but one more new slice of it. I liked that.

But then after the Noland camp attack, it's starts to go downhill, and i felt that it just ruined what the first part set up so damn well.

First, you notice that the homages are off the scale, just too many of them and its getting very annoying. It not only homages the first movie but blatantly copies scenes and dialogue from them too goddamn much! Even scenes from Predator 2 are in here (i'm happy about that, but not needed!). You realise that the music isn't that special after all- it's just an imitation of Silvestri, and it starts to sound very cheap, and forced. Silvestri did the first theme in P1, then in P2 he took the theme and gave it a latino drum vibe, but here, Debney doesn't give it his own thing, it's just copying Silvestri's first theme with nothing new added, and it gets annoying (wait for the killer part where he does add something new though- it's facepalm moment).

Can you say HOMAGE? This film evidently doesn't know when to stop.

The Falcon isn't even seen properly, you see it from the back as it's flying, and that's it. Nothing from the front, so it looks like a flying robotic boomerang. So it's not a creature, it's more of a tool/weapon, so it's not bad. But the POV is horrible for it, it's like all purple.

The Super Preds look like crap, i never liked their design from the start, and here it does nothing new to improve it, if you didn't like them in the clips then you will not like them at all here as it's the same thing- i hated everytime they are on screen, i hate Black and his stupid goofy looking Jaw mask, they are fat and slow and the suit performance is atrocious. No cool poses, no good movement, just standing like hunched hulks. The POV is also the one we see in the trailers as well (looking at Mombasa), so if you don't like the new style then you're stuck. The Falconer/"Batman" Pred was shit, hell he even had a vision which tracked blood and pheromones like the Batman Arkham Asylum game! Dog Handler was good in parts and i guess the best performer, when he was walking in one scene he looked badass, and Black walks good if he's seen from the back, but otherwise the suit performance on the whole was lacking and inexperienced, very AVP sad to say! Ian Whyte is still the only person who has succeeded KPH, and Wolf still stands head and shoulders above these Preds, so it sucks that they didn't get him. So AVPR still has the best Pred we've seen since City Hunter, in my view, and so far McTiernan, Hopkins and the Strauses are the only people who have been able to photograph and film the Predator creature well so they look cool. Here, they look dodgy and silly, people in rubber monster suits, just like they did in AVP, just like what you are NOT supposed to do.

Crap

Everytime they are cloaked it also looks crap becuase it's blatant CGI. Why didn't they do the old skool guy in red suit, and put the camo effect in post? The CGI sticks out too much, and it looks totally fake, the CG animation is stiff and robotic.

Everyone (including me) was going on about Hanzo being badass- in truth he is wasted and a poor, unneeded imitation of Billy. His fight is rubbish and completely forgettable. The Pred acts horrible in it! And the sword fight suffers because of this, becuase the Pred is just waddling around like a fatass around Hanzo, the whole thing is cringe worthy to look at. And then the fight is over, as quickly as it began- just forgettable, with bad camera angles and choreography.

Classic Predator- arrghhh, completely and utterly wasted!! The face looks great, and the first time we see him is awesome, and when Royce frees him it's wicked because Classic doesn't give a fck and hates Royce, so it's cool so don't worry, no AVP style team up shit here....(but then follows another homage of the first movie again...), and it messes up from here even more than before. The fight comes with Classic vs Black- and it's horrible! First the Predator theme with a ROCK remix plays when Classic gears up (yeah, a rock remix....cheesy and silly and not in a good way), what the hell were they thinking? Okay, so the music has now been updated for new fans and it kicks in hard first with Classic suiting up- some people will like it, some people will cringe like me. And the suit up scene doesn't even last long, like 5 seconds. No POV is seen for Classic either (shame). The fight is atrocious, Black performance is rubbish, Classic is okay, but as soon as they start to show a bit more of him, he gets owned- and that pissed me off. They focus on him gearing up , and then 30 seconds later, he's dead. And when he gets owned, you're gonna get pissed and angry, the most beloved character gets dumped hard, it's shameful.

Waste

Black taking his mask off during this fight- just horrid, it looks like a smiley happy kid, not a badass in anyway. The face just doesn't work on screen there, and the actor just shaked his head as he screams and it reminded me of Scar from AVP (i was so gutted). And then he puts his mask back on again 2 seconds later, done. What, that was it!? I guess it's okay not to have the whole "taking off the mask" set up, but the screentime of it unmasked could have been much better.

Then there's the Isabelle and Edwin finale part, if you've read the script then it plays out exactly how you imagined it, generic and dull, with the camera being blurred because she's been drugged.

But the facepalm part is when Royce goes to fight Black- it's truly horrible because Royce is topless, covered in mud, running around with a stick with a flame on it and shouting "come here, kill me, i'm here"- i'm like WTF!!, why the HELL are they just imitating Arnie so badly!? Rodriguez said you can't compete with Arnie, but here is Adrien Brody doing exactly the same fucking thing, and it disgusted me. True that he is only doing what Isabelle told him to with the mud because she knew about the first film events but the "homage" here is so much that you just facepalm because they actually went there and did it. Royce fucks Black up bigtime, complete with fast cuts and blows, i hate how Royce is all "Arniefied", but i'm glad to see that abomination called Black get destroyed, because the design was terrible (though i must say his final look before he cops it was decent).

Ridiculous

The film ends on an underwhelming Hollywood note, but again they piss me off with the end credits music (Long Tall Sally, why? Just not needed, just thrown in there to please fans). I'd rather it kept out please, so again they get me angry. Silvestri's normal theme is in the credits, and i'm glad, because he should not be involved in the film and it was good that he didn't do the score because this film doesn't deserve him in my opinion, it's not a "classic" Predator flick.

It's not the Predator films of old, this is a new style for new folks. It tries to keep it old skool, but it's all been updated. It's a solid action film and i liked it on that level, and it tries it's damned hardest to be a Predator movie and on the outside it is, but i felt it didn't cut it as one. It looks and feels like one, but the Predators themselves were horrible, and if that's the case for me then it's failed as a Predator film. I came to see Preds and we get half-assed, poorly designed ones that are rubbish. The mythos are great behind them, but the Predators and Pred action was no good. So it's a fail for me.

Though acting and cast was a good thing..for the most part

So, as a stand alone action movie it was awesome, and i'll be honest, i was tremendously entertained for the first half. But the second half comes in and messed it all up, and you feel like you've been duped, and i felt very dissapointed and angry.

So, really, the movie is a 6/10 as an action if i was doing a proper review, because casuals will like it and it's a good night out, and for what it is they tried to do a good job, and i do see the positives (yes it's better than AVP, but also just as bad). It's fun, tense and suspenseful and non-stop action all the way, well acted, good dialogue, gory action monster movie that tries it's best, so it will please fans of the genre. But as i said i feel it's a film that will either be loved or loathed.

But my personal opinion is that it left a bad taste in my mouth, and the rubbish second half messed the whole experience up for me, especially being a huge fan of Predator. So i personally rate it 2/10, because as a Predator movie, it simply did not deliver. I came to see my favourite creature, and what i got was badly designed, badly performed rubber pieces of crap in an otherwise well made, fun (albeit homage-filled) action film.

The original is still the best, and P2 is still the best sequel. Preds was fun, but it fell to pieces, sadly. It works for what it is but i just fucking hated the choices they made in it. So pat on the back RR and Nimrod for trying, too bad you messed it up Still, at least it's a step in the right direction, even if it's not that far ahead.

6/10 as a casual.

2/10 as a hardcore Predator fanboy.