For as much as I might complain about some modern movie tastes, largely in regards to the Transformers movies, I will say this for modern audiences: We are far more sophisticated when it comes to strange franchise concepts. In the past (say, the 40s), a movie like Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem would have been the absolute final nail in the coffin for both the Alien and Predator franchises. But here we are, three years after that crime upon culture, with Predators, a movie that acts for all the world as if AVP: R never existed. It’s a fantastic thing – following two awful crossovers, the Predator franchise could return entirely sans xenomorphs, in a form so pure you’d have to go back to 1987 to make comparisons.
In the development of Predators, those cancerous, leprous, all-around diseased AVP movies were never even an issue, for the original draft of Predators was written long, long before they were even an abortion waiting to happen. Let us travel back to those halcyon days of 1994, when Predator 2 was four years old, and Fox was desperate to then revive their dead-in-the-water franchise. Enter Robert Rodriguez, still in the first act of his nutbars career of awesome B-grade Mexsploitation. Like James Cameron penning his Aliens screenplay whilst developing The Terminator, Rodriguez put together an early version of Predators whilst developing Desperado. And the Aliens comparison is apt (and it is intentionally invoked in the pluralized title) for Predators hopes to be to Predator what Aliens was to Alien. That is, the title is a statement of purpose – we’re gonna expand logically upon the titular species, up the stakes, and (most importantly) make a worthy sequel.
For whatever unholy reason, Fox, that Satanic demon personified in movie studio form, decided to neglect Rodriguez’s script. The reason given was “budget,” which is odd considering the actual 2010 Predators is a relatively cheap beast. Perhaps those bozos didn’t understand Rodriguez’s skills at stretching a budget mightily (consider the semi-apocryphal tales of his $1,000 El Mariachi). Oh no, Fox knew in their black, soulless hearts the thing to do was to instead crash two franchises with a bunch of AVP nonsense instead, and to also eventually cancel “Futurama.” (Complete side note – God bless Comedy Central!)
Come the years following 2007, and Requiem’s cinematic affront to just about any value I could name. Only then realizing how much they’d screwed their beloved, dreadlocked pooch, Fox sought to “reboot” Predator. Consider how much the 00s have played host to this noble trend – Batman Begins, Casino Royale, horror film remakes up the wazoo. I mean, a potential franchise that was started in the 00s was later rebooted in the 00s (that’s Hulk and The Incredible Hulk). So Fox was just gonna do what moviegoers themselves had already done, and pretend as if the Alien vs. Predator “series” never happened.
As per Rodriguez’s telling, Fox then dredged up his old Predators script from whatever dank dungeon it was rotting in, and decided some damn 15 years later to make that beast. For whatever reason, the existent script itself wouldn’t do, so instead a new draft was commissioned from writers Michael Finch and Alex Litvak. Predators was given wholly over to Robert Rodriguez as producer, giving his truly independent and drunk mind creative control in place of the brainless drones who thought Requiem was “okay,” and that AVP “drew you in, it drew you in.”
So now in theaters there is a new Predator movie, something I still cannot believe, even though I just saw it. Thus I shall avoid obvious spoilers (though I spoiled the hell out of the pre-spoiled 2007 Requiem – I promise I’ll try to stop referencing that pile so much).
The audience and characters are instantly dropped right into the thick of things, oh so literally, as our cast of characters is randomly parachuted into a strange and unfamiliar jungle. Using Predator as a major departure point, Predators does a good job of getting things rolling and invoking absolutely no more subplots than is absolutely necessary. Something both entries are phenomenal at (this is a genuine compliment) is avoiding subtext altogether, and sometimes even text. These are stripped down and basic – dudes in a jungle against killer monster(s).
Between the Alien and Predator franchises, no characters have ever been written as more developed than the barest traits needed (except Ripley got her development over time). What makes the franchises’ genuine classics work (those being Alien, Aliens and Predator) are good casts. (Yes, I’m calling a Schwarzenegger-headlined pile of testosterone a “good cast.”) This is the sort of sneaky little cinematic trick which completely evaded those Yahweh-awful AVP pictures. And you know what? Predators’ cast is just as damn good as those other movies. Who cares if they’re ciphers, they’re well played.
Headlining our assembly of mercenaries this time around is Adrian Brody, Best Actor winner for The Pianist and regular media whore in 7-Up ads. So we’ve replaced Schwarzenegger, best known for having basketball-sized biceps, with Adrian Brody, best known for having a monumental proboscis, and an Oscar. I’ve been punished in the past for thinking Brody might make for a convincing action hero in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. But damned if I’m not convinced here! For you see, there’s just no way to compete with Schwarzenegger in the all-important testosterone competition, so why even bother? Hell, it pretty much bombed spectacularly when they tried to tell us Danny Glover was an adequate successor. But Brody, relatively bulked up but still of eminently normal proportions, comes across as a real world mercenary, lithe and agile and smart instead of hulking. And I am accursed, because I’m praising a Predator sequel for seeming more “real world.”
The whole cast is like that. They make for believable killers without acting hard to impress like the Predator cast did. I don’t recognize most of these people, but I salute them.
Eight specialist killers have been amassed together in this strange jungle. (Well, nine, but one’s chute never opened – get that body count started!) They do not yet know each other, having been assembled from all over the world. I’d make a “Lost” reference, except I do not know any. Instead, I’ll do like I did with Alien and Predator, and devote a paragraph to each of these figures, in the order they plummet from the sky:
First up after Brody is Rodriguez regular and the awesomest Mexican on Earth, Danny Trejo. Yes, this is Machete himself, and yes, a trailer before Predators confirms that Machete will soon be more than a mere movie trailer parody! (A sad trailer side note – there’s gonna be a fourth Resident Evil movie, so I’m afraid I’ll have to watch those things…Just when I’d thought I’d escaped you, Paul W. S. Anderson!) Anyway, Trejo plays an enforcer for a Tijuana drug cartel (that is, Trejo plays a character in a movie). His character has a name, as do they all, but it’s never uttered in the movie – hence, I’ll simply call Trejo “the Mexican,” just as I often do in real life.
Next is “the Russian” (Oleg Taktarov), first seen doing his best Jesse Ventura impression, unloading some sort of minigun or another all over the jungle. He is a commando straight from the Chechen Wars – in fact, those danged Predators beamed him straight out of combat right then and there, as they did with all our buddies. I applaud these Predators for running an efficient operation.
Then we meet our lone woman, “the Israeli” (Brazilian Alice Braga). She is a black ops sniper, and acts as the conscience for this group. She also possesses knowledge of the Predators, in the form of a call back to the first movie and first movie alone. And as the lone female, I am glad to say Predators has the good sense to forego romantic distractions altogether.
My personal favorite member of the group is “the Yakuza” (Louis Ozawa Changchien). The rest are clad in functional and unappealing battle gear; he has on a snazzy jacket and vest combo. And later on he gets his hands on a Samurai sword. It rules!
There is “the Sierra Leonean” (the unspellable Mahershalalhashbaz Ali). I have little else to say about this guy. He is the black guy in a horror film.
There is “the Convict” (Walton Goggins, best known from “The Shield”). Of course this group had to have someone from San Quentin, and I guess Danny Trejo himself doesn’t count. And pity the poor, sexually hyper-deviant Convict, for while everyone else gets some sort of mofo gun, all he’s armed with is his homemade shiv.
Finally there is “the Doctor” (Topher Grace, further escaping the shadow of “That '70s Show”), the lone “unskilled” member of the party. He is entirely unarmed, save for a nearly useless scalpel, and alone entirely unfamiliar with combat. At first this seems to be an enormous oversight on the Predators’ part, but secrets do come up later. I won’t say what, but I will say that Topher Grace rather reminds me of Elijah Wood. Remember how Rodriguez used him in Sin City?
Our group sets off into the mysterious jungle. It may seem unoriginal to just plop the Predators back in the jungle (it is), but this is their home. And Hawaii, in place of Predator’s Mexico, is distinct enough filming location to warrant visual interest. As settings go, this is familiar, but still distinct enough to be good. Actually, that just pretty much sums up Predators as a whole.
More on the setting: This ain’t Earth! Yeah, they learn it pretty early on, it’s kinda the premise. But neither is it the Predator home world. Nah, it’s a Predator hunting reserve, where they ship in all sorts of dangerous beasties for their hunting pleasure. And considering they regularly mine our planet of its best hunters and killers, I like to imagine what the Predators’ selection process is like. I picture them huddled over some sufficiently “otherworldly” PowerPoint presentation, growling and chirping in that distinct way of theirs (like I do when I wake up), claiming that “Indeed, let’s kidnap Topher Grace…Ooh, and that guy from Spy Kids 3-D!”
Now, the Predator movies never really expounded upon the species quite as successfully as the Alien films did. Beyond the original Predator itself, all the new info we got concerning the Predators is this: There are several of them, they have spaceships, and they live on a planet…Ooh, it took three awful movies to set that up! Predators, at last, develops the species a bit. We get different varieties of Predators, but without sacrificing the classic original Predator design. We get new variations on their hunting methods – building up on that franchise-wide theme, they have their versions of fox hunting, falconry, seeding, and so forth. There are even different “breeds” of Predators, described as the distinction between dogs and wolves. And guess what, our beloved Predator of yore is the “dog” variety. This puts various Predators at opposition, makes one of them the “hero” (an inexplicable preoccupation of the AVP series), and allows for the first time ever a Predator on Predator fight (Requiem only got half way there). And I do like how the Predator is modeled on higher predatory mammals, in contrast to the xenomorphs’ bug and parasite influence.
I’ve called Predators a reboot, but at the same time it is a genuine sequel to Predator. There are degrees of reboot severity, the highest being a complete continuity break, and Predators goes for the lighter end of the reboot camp. And as a Predator sequel, it is full of parallels. Whole scenes and sequences mirror events from the original Predator, such as a recreation of Billy’s last stand with the Yakuza – this scene rocks!
Some might find fault in Predators’ never-ending faithfulness in mimicking the original, but I do not. See, if Predators really is the Aliens of another franchise, we have to remember that Aliens itself employed a truly heavy amount of parallelism, but found new ways of phrasing the events. Predators works in the same way, such as in the aforementioned Yakuza scene, but also in the use of booby traps, waterfall escape, and final mud-drenched mano-a-claw. It’s not as good as Aliens, oh no, but Predator isn’t as good as Alien. But we judge them by totally different standards. The Alien franchise at its best is horrifying, momentous moviemaking. The Predator franchise at its best (meaning this and Predator) is fun. They’re action flicks, totally lacking in pretentions, and eminently minimalist.
And the soundtrack is similar to the first too. It is by John Debney, and heavily references Alan Silvestri’s earlier work. This is appropriate, and for someone likely to fall into fanboy reveries like I am, it is wonderfully nostalgic to hear such strings wafting through a theater.
I actually haven’t mentioned the director yet, somehow. It is Nimród Antal, responsible for movies such as Kontroll, Vacancy and Armored – genre flicks I haven’t seen, but I am assured are respectable. For as much as I credited the cast above as being intensely responsible, the director is as much if not more responsible. From the classic films we have Ridley Scott, James Cameron and John McTiernan (he did Die Hard, he’s on par). I cannot say if Antal might someday reach those ranks, though surely when each prior director made his franchise entry he hadn’t. This aside, I’ll say Antel’s direction here is assured and capable – technically, this is the rare modern action movie that makes geographical sense. And somehow, the lengthy lead up to the Predators’ reveal works, even though the fifth time out (or is it third?) we know what’s coming. It ain’t ever quite scary or suspenseful, but was Predator? Nah, it was awesome! Predators isn’t perhaps as fist-pumpingly nutbars as that was (here it fails the Aliens upgrade test), but it’s surely a more than respectable heir to McTiernan’s gooey throne.
It’s always hard to say without retrospect just how absolutely good this movie is. Many are looking upon Predators favorably, though there’s some sentiment that it’s getting decent reviews because of the recent slapdash AVP atrocities. If that’s true for other reviewers, it goes doubly true for me, seeing as I’ve spent my last days weaned on those fecal turds. Compared to them, Predators is absolute gold, and with the entire franchise(s) now under my belt, I can say unequivocally that this is a welcome member to the species.
Related posts:
• No. 1 Predator (1987)
• No. 2 Predator 2 (1990)
• No. 3 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
• No. 4 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
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