"The Predator" by Shane Black (2018)

[Sweet Rabbit]

Predators set up a chance for an interesting sequel, I don't know why it was abandoned. While that movie had some out of place characters, I felt like the overall film did a good job blending what was good about P1 and P2 with a new twist in that we're on a world of theirs.

You could almost duplicate the same P1/P2 formula on earth and just keep going through time, have old west Predators with cowboys trying to survive, P2 established that the hunts had been going on for a long time.

I would have rather had that

 

[Magpie 7]

Warning spoilers below.

Saw The Predator, glad I did. I enjoyed it. Not a perfect movie, but not a bad one either. So to those who said it's bad, put your money where your mouth is - what would have made it better for you?

A few things I noticed - the editing when they were blowing those bombs off in the jungle could have been better - I figured out what was going on, but a few quick shots would have really helped that scene a lot.

The suit at the end was cool, but I thought it felt a little too "star wars" for a Predator movie, if you know what I mean.

I liked the concept of the predators taking the spines out not only as trophies but to genetically improve themselves; it worked for me, being that they're not only hunters but clearly in all the films come from an advanced society.

I liked the scene where the Predator walked right by the woman scientist (she looked like she was kneeling, he probably figured she was worshipping him and moved on).

Any, I look forward to seeing comments on what those who didn't like it were expecting or hoping for. I know that the film could have gone in a lot of different directions, but considering all the previous ones, I didn't see it as a missed opportunity at all, like the critics claimed. Sure, they could have done more with it, but how much did they really do with ANY of the previous ones? Sometimes more of the same is okay - I don't want them to turn it into Star Wars anyway.

I don't hate it, i'm not saying it's a train wreck but it could've been and should've been better and it would've if Black had followed the basic path that P1 and Predators took. When the Thomas brothers wrote the original film they decided to place it in a war zone where there was genuine peril without the Predator, they created a team of characters that were larger than life. The Predator isn't really seen for almost two thirds of the film and when it is finally seen we immediately are impressed by it's size and appearance.

You've asked if anyone can come up with something better, well this was off the top of my head...

Spoiler

Syria, summer 2018
A team of special forces (nationality not important) are sent in to capture a high value ISIS target. They are choppered in but have to land some distance from the target, as they pass through a Syrian village they see the death and destruction that has resulted from the fighting. But there's something else, a foreign military unit have been killed in a way we have seen before. The unit are strung up, skinned, some with limbs missing and others with massive wounds to their torsos. Their weapons have been left behind and there are signs that they fought to the death, our team of heroes are both horrified and puzzled at what has happened.


The team move on and close in on the ISIS held village, they approach it and sight their target beheading hostages. As night falls the team assaults the village, taking out the sentries as the rest are at prayers. They find the last living hostage, an International Red Cross worker and release her after killing her guards. There is a massive firefight as the ISIS fighters return from prayers, only there is another force, invisible to everyone and it takes out many of the ISIS fighters. When the battle is over our special forces team notice that some of the ISIS casualties have deadly wounds that match with the unit they came upon back at the previous village. It's a haunting sight lit by the flames of the battle, the village is alight and the crackling fires are only interrupted by exploding ammunition.


With 20 miles to march to the rendezvous, slowed by an unwilling prisoner and a freed hostage, they set off. What they fail to notice is the shimmering shape watching them, it's the first time we see through Predator vision as we watch the team depart. The Predator vision then switches to a play back of the battle, various members of the team are highlighted, the Predator vision stops the playback at various points to take greater notice of the leader and the ones with heavy weapons. Back with the team the journey is far from easy, as the dawn breaks we see that they're in a barren desolate desert...

I think it is much more faithful to the Thomas Bros story.

 

[Khev]

Well at least The Predator retroactively removes a plot hole from Predator 2. It always bugged me that when the City Hunter is looking at Danny Glover inside the ship at the end that they show the CH's point of view and it's the full heat vision even though he isn't wearing the mask (P1 clearly showed that their vision becomes very red saturated without it.)

Now we can assume that the City Hunter's natural vision was simply "evolved," lol.

 

[theuzi9mm]

Well at least The Predator retroactively removes a plot hole from Predator 2. It always bugged me that when the City Hunter is looking at Danny Glover inside the ship at the end that they show the CH's point of view and it's the full heat vision even though he isn't wearing the mask (P1 clearly showed that their vision becomes very red saturated without it.)

Now we can assume that the City Hunter's natural vision was simply "evolved," lol.

I thought it was the mist/fog in the ship close to the floor as Harrigan was crouching letting him get closer before sticking him with the cutter blade. I'll have to look at the scene, but I think I know where you're coming from.

yeah that was my take, mist acting like the mud so to speak, obscuring some heat signature

I personally think the whole evolution concept underlying this was a dumb way to go for this franchise, but that's just my take. Plenty of other (better) ways to explain the who and why's of them, and it really isn't totally necessary either. Personally I don't HAVE to have all the why's or underlying essences explained away. Look at what Ridley's done with the Alien. **** I was fine when Cameron turned them into space bugs, simply that. Now they're David's creations.... :eyeroll:

Predator...Space faring hunters, simply just that. The come to worlds and hunt the best or the best for sport. Kinda *******ish from a species standpoint, but since that was what the original seemed to present, ****, stick with what works hollywood!

 

[Khev]

The bottom pic is still what Predators see through their bio-mask optics though. The City Hunter didn't have his mask on in that scene. In the first Predator when the Jungle Hunter took off his mask everything became a washed out red. All those contrasting blues and yellows disappeared.

 

[theuzi9mm]

The bottom pic is still what Predators see through their bio-mask optics though. The City Hunter didn't have his mask on in that scene. In the first Predator when the Jungle Hunter took off his mask everything became a washed out red. All those contrasting blues and yellows disappeared.

indeed it should have been over saturated with the reds like in the Dutch battle. Director oversight I guess cuz the heat vision looks cooler then the red wash!

I'll need to see it again to see when/where each of the Predators had their 'heat' vision, but iirc the super predator showed it way late in th emovie. Granted he's upgraded now but still thought it was silly. Probably just to get more screen time for the mandibles!

 

[Kaiju]

Watch the first movie with John McTiernan's commentary. The all-red is how the jungle actually looked in heat vision and in between takes they had to hose down the jungle to cool it down. So my take is that the mask was altering the heat vision to show body heat only. Without the mask it was pure infrared. In P2 they're in a freezing slaughterhouse and whatever the gas is on the Predator ship is also cold because you can't see Harrigan's lower body when the Predator looks at him.

 

[Caped Baldy]

Did anyone notice the advanced Pred was able to see in full on heat vision even with the heads up display despite not having a bio-mask on?

Was that an oversight or is he just that advanced his eyes alone act like one?

 

[jye4ever]

This movie is definately getting a directors cut lol

 

[Kaiju]

Did anyone notice the advanced Pred was able to see in full on heat vision even with the heads up display despite not having a bio-mask on?

Was that an oversight or is he just that advanced his eyes alone act like one?

He was also able to breathe normally, zoom in on things he was looking at, get aerial rotating views of the people he was hunting, playback video of the loony gang after they got away in the RV... and see a map that the kid drew on a piece of paper. Good thing the kid used thermal crayons.

 

[EndoSickness]

Unleash the hate EndoSickness...

Stick to your guns, speak with your wallet, shout from the mountain-tops...do what you need to do.

I'm not to sure that Hollywood is listening however, they will continue to deliver what they have always delivered: good and bad movies. Not all Blockbuster movies are quality and some box office failures are great.

Now as to your supposition that this is not a 'damn Predator movie'...well it is...it has Predator characters, it pays homage to the original (albeit in a light-hearted comical way! "Get to the choppers........." was particularly funny) it has Predators killing humans, Predators killing another Predator, it has action and gore. Yup...just like the other Predator movies before it.

When the essence is lost, it isn´t to me anymore. Same with Terminator: Only because it got Schwarzenegger in it, doesn´t mean it´s a terminator. There are MILLIONS of T-800s, not looking like Schwarzenegger, waiting to extinguish, yet we have only seen him.
Terminator can be so much more, as can Predator.
A whole culture to be explored, yet those idiots fail to give franchises like these the LOTR treatment, with a fleshed out world and just go bigger, badder.

P1, 2 and s (to shorten it like that) did it all right: They established clans, they established a long history and "s" brought a clan war to the screen. I loved the 3 Predators, bigger Preds weren´t overdone and taking trophies was still there...they enhanced themselved, but only to get a better hunt.
Here?! "Oh, it´s not trophies, they take it to enhance themselves...so they´re not Predators." They change the source, the fabric of what "Predator" means and therefor...it´s not a Predator movie anymore

Predators set up a chance for an interesting sequel, I don't know why it was abandoned. While that movie had some out of place characters, I felt like the overall film did a good job blending what was good about P1 and P2 with a new twist in that we're on a world of theirs.

You could almost duplicate the same P1/P2 formula on earth and just keep going through time, have old west Predators with cowboys trying to survive, P2 established that the hunts had been going on for a long time.

This.
Cowboys V Aliens showed that Sci-Fi and Western could work, so why not here. I´d buy that any day over this BS.

They could do an entire movie about the Predators coming to earth in the past and the backstory of the elder Predator getting Raphael Adolini's pistol on the pirate ship.

There is all the material in the world from the comics and video games etc so why aren't they using them? How about a film with Scarface, Serpent Hunter or Machiko?

Some things should be kept a secret, but essentially...yeah, I´m with you and AvP was taken by the whole Machiko/Broken Tust encounter. Not faithfully to the source, but still...overall AvP worked.

I would have rather had that

You know it.

 

[Vault Boy]

The title character should've been the lead this time. The Predator's culture and motivations could've been expanded on better than this garbage. Clearly, the Thomas bros never intended for them to be terraformers. They hunt for sport. Not for DNA. Even after Paul Anderson's T-Rex-Alien Queen hybrid, Shane Black still thought a juiced up Pred was a good idea.

 

[Rotfish]

The title character should've been the lead this time. The Predator's culture and motivations could've been expanded on better than this garbage. Clearly, the Thomas bros never intended for them to be terraformers. They hunt for sport. Not for DNA. Even after Paul Anderson's T-Rex-Alien Queen hybrid, Shane Black still thought a juiced up Pred was a good idea.

There really is no redeeming quality to this drivel. Now I'm thinking my original 3/10 rating was generous.

 

[Bgnyc007]

I found this movie very funny and entertaining.

 

[LipSmack]

Did anyone notice the advanced Pred was able to see in full on heat vision even with the heads up display despite not having a bio-mask on?

Was that an oversight or is he just that advanced his eyes alone act like one?

Well the movie does state they upgrade them selves, they have computer sytems, not a far fetch to think the upgrade pred integrated all the mask OS into a his eyes or something

Also isnt it known that preds see in heat vision? like thats the spectrum their eyes work in?

 

[LipSmack]

You've asked if anyone can come up with something better, well this was off the top of my head...

Spoiler

Syria, summer 2018
A team of special forces (nationality not important) are sent in to capture a high value ISIS target. They are choppered in but have to land some distance from the target, as they pass through a Syrian village they see the death and destruction that has resulted from the fighting. But there's something else, a foreign military unit have been killed in a way we have seen before. The unit are strung up, skinned, some with limbs missing and others with massive wounds to their torsos. Their weapons have been left behind and there are signs that they fought to the death, our team of heroes are both horrified and puzzled at what has happened.


The team move on and close in on the ISIS held village, they approach it and sight their target beheading hostages. As night falls the team assaults the village, taking out the sentries as the rest are at prayers. They find the last living hostage, an International Red Cross worker and release her after killing her guards. There is a massive firefight as the ISIS fighters return from prayers, only there is another force, invisible to everyone and it takes out many of the ISIS fighters. When the battle is over our special forces team notice that some of the ISIS casualties have deadly wounds that match with the unit they came upon back at the previous village. It's a haunting sight lit by the flames of the battle, the village is alight and the crackling fires are only interrupted by exploding ammunition.


With 20 miles to march to the rendezvous, slowed by an unwilling prisoner and a freed hostage, they set off. What they fail to notice is the shimmering shape watching them, it's the first time we see through Predator vision as we watch the team depart. The Predator vision then switches to a play back of the battle, various members of the team are highlighted, the Predator vision stops the playback at various points to take greater notice of the leader and the ones with heavy weapons. Back with the team the journey is far from easy, as the dawn breaks we see that they're in a barren desolate desert...

I think it is much more faithful to the Thomas Bros story.

"off the top of my head"

Thats Predator 1 updated ...

 

[Rotfish]

How about a WWII-era prison escape film?

The Predator comes to Earth to hunt axis and ally soldiers alike. An American POW breaks out of a German prison and catches his eye. At first, the Predator merely observes as he overcomes enemies and traps. Impressed with his strength and cunning, he pulls some of his own high-tech tricks to test the prisoner. He's thrown for a loop, but completes the Predator's challenges nonetheless.
Eventually the prisoner runs into an elite guard. He gets the best of two men, but is cornered by the remaining three due to having sustained injury. Before he meets his end, the Predator appears and kills the remaining guards. The monster and prisoner then face off.


Or an adaptation of Dark Horse's Cold War story? A personal favorite.

Americans and Russians duking it out in Siberia. A US detective (Dutch's brother in the comics, could be someone else) is shipped to the scene. Upon arriving, his team is ambushed and slaughtered by an unknown enemy. He makes it to the US military base and learns of a Russian lieutenant who's been found and captured after her squad met a similarly gruesome fate. He breaks her out and the two join forces to track the Predators to their ship while their countrymen continue fighting each other, unaware of the looming alien threat.


There's also Big Game, probably the most derivative of the comic tales.

Marine of Native American descent who's lost touch with his culture is training on a military base in New Mexico. Predator arrives. Legend of his tribe tells of a warrior rising up to defeat a demon. You get the picture.

 

[a-dev]

The title character should've been the lead this time. The Predator's culture and motivations could've been expanded on better than this garbage. Clearly, the Thomas bros never intended for them to be terraformers. They hunt for sport. Not for DNA. Even after Paul Anderson's T-Rex-Alien Queen hybrid, Shane Black still thought a juiced up Pred was a good idea.

I like what he says at 54:53.

Some people have said this movie is so bad that it's only going to work for Predator fans. What the **** are you talking about? Predator fans are the one demographic that will absolutely despise this ****ing movie

I'm sure I read similar comments from people when Terminator Genisys came out and it's a very mistaken idea that fans lap up everything to do with their favourite franchises and I don't know where it comes from or how they can assume that. Fandoms for Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, Predator, Alien and so on are actually the most discerning and the most difficult to please out of all the viewership these films will receive.


Anyway that video was almost an hour but I still listened to it. Holy Christ the film sounds even worse than I could have imagined.

 

[Khev]

Anyway that video was almost an hour but I still listened to it. Holy Christ the film sounds even worse than I could have imagined.

I jumped in at about the 20 minute mark and holy crap does he destroy the whole "hunting for DNA" revision when he brought up Predator 2, lol. He's totally right that if they are just DNA harvesters and NOT honorable hunters then why the hell would they only take DNA from opponents who are inferior to them but then when they meet someone who can defeat them like Danny Glover they give him a prize and decide *not* to take his DNA??

The make themselves better by only splicing genes with the losers? lol

 

[Heavy Metal Spike]

Haven't watched the video because the guys voice bugged me after just the first minute

If I remember right (my brain's trying to forget) - all the exposition about twinkies, climate change, Preds invading the planet, Preds harvesting DNA was solely down to Munn & Traeger’s observations/conclusions. So - all guesswork on their part.

Shane Black previously said something about different clans behaving differently and having their own agendas, so who cares if some group of Nazi Preds is trying to go their own way - that doesn't have to undermine everything we understood so far.


.