Nostalgia will only get you so far. In the current atmosphere of remakes and sequels, sooner or later, you have to bring something worthwhile to the table. For the successful reboots, with all their lack of substance, that something…is money. The Predator managed to amplify all the superficial elements of its predecessors while failing to capture any of the heart that made the first film so endearing.
After an alien encounter, an elite sniper goes on the run only to wind up in military custody at the hands of a private black-ops organization looks to tie up loose ends. Meanwhile, a cultural biologist with an alien fetish is brought on as a special consultant and immediately gets in over her head, making herself a target as well. Naturally, the pair align their interests and team with a ragtag group of expendable soldiers with mental health problems. Facing both planetary extinction and a ruthless corporate asshole with hired guns, the team must band together and save the world. If you think that sounds stupid, you should read the summary on the film’s IMDB page.
Writer/Director Shane Black played Hawkins in the original 1987 movie, but that doesn’t make him an authority on the Predator character or the franchise in general. Remember the guy cracking pussy jokes after killing a village full of Venezuelan rebels…yea…that’s him. Now imagine every character in this new film is some version of Hawkins. Black’s screenplays have been almost exclusively comedic and it’s an odd choice for this film tonally, setting everything off on the wrong foot. His writing partner Fred Dekker wasn’t able to balance the ship either, drafting a crew of relatively hollow characters with no substantial dialogue to help create any depth. The first 10-minutes or so paint an interesting picture of Earth caught in the middle of some sort of intergalactic conflict, but the following hour and a half is a painfully low-brow journey to a completely underwhelming end. I will say, the jokes seemed to land well enough with the early Thursday premier crowd but there was no fluidity between the two halves of the film. There was a decent action-horror movie right below the surface, but the decision to go for the low hanging fruit resulted in another messy, unpolished entry into a rapidly deteriorating franchise.
Nimród Antal’s Predators in 2010 was, in many ways, the spiritual successor to the original, capitalizing on a strong, likeable ensemble cast and framing the film as a survival-horror story but ultimately made the mistake of introducing the bigger, badder Predator 2.0. The new creature upgrade only served to cut the balls (and the head) off the monster audiences wanted to see without adding a strong reason for it. Clearly, Black didn’t learn the right lesson from that film and chose to introduce the 3.0 Predator ***Spoiler Alert*** that still isn’t capable of defeating a highly unstable and severely ill prepared group of reluctant “heroes”. The reason for this new version of the creature holds up reasonably well, but it certainly wasn’t necessary. These Predators have conquered technology, interstellar travel, and planetary colonization…but they are altering their DNA in response to a few instances where one of their species was killed at the hands of a human? Because they just love Earth so damn much? That’s absolutely ridiculous…and it shows.
Despite the dearth of shortcomings here, Sarah Finn did a fantastic job putting together an exceptional cast which was one of this movie’s strongest selling points. Unfortunately, a couple of the most important roles in the film were badly miscast. Olivia Munn wasn’t believable for a moment as biologist Casey Bracket. She shouldn’t shoulder the blame as her dialogue was awful and brought next to no level of scientific legitimacy to the role. Everyone’s favorite TV dad, Sterling K. Brown, drew the villain card as Traeger, the head of the black-ops group investigating the Predators. Sadly, his dialogue was somehow worse than Munn’s which made him a painfully awkward amalgam of dad jokes and “fuck yeahs”. He wasn’t much of a villain to begin with and the potential confrontation brewing between him and the primary protagonist is swiftly vaporized in incredibly disappointing fashion.
On the other side of that equation, Boyd Holbrook was good enough in the lead as Quinn McKenna. A marine sniper who first encountered the new Predator on Earth, McKenna is very much the lone wolf type from that point on which makes the decision to surround him with a large supporting cast of whacky characters an even more bizarre decision. Holbrook was also victimized by a weak script that turned his character into a punchline machine. There’s an estranged wife (Yvonne Strahovski) and their autistic child, played well by Jacob Tremblay, who plays a large role in deciphering Predator tech and catalyzing the hunt which makes up the plot. The entire plot would have been better served had it been centered around just that family dynamic, and maybe one additional supporting role.
Instead we are given a very talented and diverse cast of completely pointless characters; Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), Keegan-Michael Key (Key and Peele), Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea), Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones) and Augusto Aguilera. Part of the fun with the Predator franchise is the hunt. Introduce a group of likeable, or at least sympathetic characters and then watched them get picked off one by one. That isn’t what happened here. This group worked pretty well together, and the focal point of the subplot seemed to be getting in as many jokes as possible, but it quickly devolved into schtick. There are instances where the jokes land, but more often than not the humor doesn’t seem to line up with the seriousness of the threat.
There is a lot of action and the special effects crew did a nice job upping the ante from previous installments in the franchise. The nature of the dual Predator threat created a unique set of problems and plenty more explosions. As far as the creature effects go, what made the original Predator work was the simple fact that it was a guy in a very elaborate costume…tangible, real life makeup and prosthetics. Digitizing the new 3.0 Pred was a big mistake that will age poorly since he looks kind of like Goro from the first Mortal Kombat movie. Given the character design, it would have been incredibly difficult to bring the creature to life without visual effects but…again…the new monster wasn’t necessary to begin with. Thankfully Henry Jackman didn’t try to reinvent the wheel and stuck closely to the original score. Predator is one of those film scores, while not iconic, manages to still evoke all the right emotions.
There was absolutely nothing good being said about this film, so my expectations were about as low as they could get. While there are many, many moments throughout this movie where you’ll find yourself shaking your head at the ludicrous nature of what’s going on, it still managed to exceed my expectations. Fans of the franchise and, more acutely, the creature will be rewarded for their loyalty with some gruesome kills and over-the-top action, but it’s difficult to ever take the movie seriously.
Recommendation: If you’re a fan of the original, like myself, you kinda have to see it more than you want to. For the average movie-goer there isn’t enough substance to be rewarding but, with tempered expectations, this was still an enjoyable enough film that had me thinking “it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be”. The story is very much PG-13 but the R rating lets you know just how violent and gruesome the movie can get, so maybe leave the kids at home for this one.