[Just your average movie goer]

Following the phenomenal success of my Alien thread, and in an attempt to keep this forum alive just a little bit longer, I thought I'd start a thread for its imitator.

Today, I think I'll just talk about the original movie in the series, and the best. With the Alien series, despite the first being obviously superior to its sequel, there still seems to be a surprisingly large divide in opinion over which one is best. For Predator, such dispute appears to be non-existent.

Now, it was only very recently that I saw this movie for the first time. There'd been a handful of movies in the eighties that I wanted to watch as a kid but couldn't because I was deemed too young (oddly enough, when I was old enough and I was watching things like Alien and The Terminator, I had clear forgotten about things like Predator). Anyway, recently, I started catching up on those eighties movies I'd missed. I saw Robocop and it was absolutely brilliant (although I realised why I hadn't been allowed to watch it when I was a kid). And then I remembered that I had wanted to see Predator as well, so I could find out why it was such a popular cult hit, so I checked that out too.

Initially, I have to say I was a little underwhelmed. It wasn't particularly scary and I'd been under the impression that it was supposed to have been. The characters weren't all that interesting at first and a lot of the story revolved around them being idiots. The scene where Mac starts firing madly into the forest and the others join him (without knowing what he's firing at!) and waste all their ammunition comes to mind. Mac's inability to tell the others what happened is also frustrating. At least Anna's smart enough to notice the blood on the leaves that they find afterwards but she's the only one.

I was also underwhelmed by the creature itself. I think however that was because I'd heard many fans going on about how cool it was and how it was an honorable hunter and always hunted opponents on equal ground, using only what weapons its prey had. However, what I saw was a cowardly critter who hides behind an invisibility cloak, shooting people who don't even know he's there.

Although, a little while after I'd seen it, it started to grow on me a bit more - then I remembered that it was an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie... or more to the point, I remember what that meant. Arnie had been in one movie above his station, The Terminator, based largely on the fact that he had almost no lines and all he had to do was look mechanical and unfeeling (something which his inability to act well lent itself to perfectly). When you think about other Arnie movies, there all pretty terrible for the most part. Arnie is eighties B-grade royalty. Also, it's going to be interesting when kids in the future ask us why we all liked this guy so much at the time. Like many eighties actors, he's not as charismatic as we thought he was and we might have a hard time explaining to kids why a former bodybuilder of all people was a mainstream Hollywood star. Anyway, it's an Arnie movie and as such, I realised I had to judge it by a slightly different standard.

So I watched it again, this time being sure to switch my brain off beforehand, and found that once I got into the spirit of the thing, I had a lot of fun. While it's not scary, there is tension and the pace is really solid. It is also very atmospheric and as Mr. Pye mentioned in the Alien thread, the jungle setting in Predator is gorgeous. I also discovered that it's smarter than it pretends to be. It starts like one of those embarrassing and forgettable 80s action flicks that were a dime a dozen, right down to the strange steroid fetish. Seriously, why were musclemen so popular in 80s movies? When you see unnatural physiques and people strutting and flexing where there's no logical reason to, it knocks down the quality of the movie a lot. When Arnie and Carl Weathers have that stupid arm wrestling match, Predator lost half a star right there (then another half with Hawkins' terrible jokes). However, after the silly but immensely fun attack on the rebel camp where these characters are playing typical invincible 80s action movies, they are all slowly picked off one by one and somewhere along the line, they start to feel like human beings.

Also, more surprisingly given the fact that they were pretty unlikeable for the most part, by the time the predator starts picking them off, we do start to care about them. Maybe the movie's teaching us something about tolerance. Yes, guys who go around claiming to be thought-to-be-extinct Sexual Tyrannosaurs might not be the kind of guys we'd like to sit next to on a bus but we don't want them to get blasted into pieces, do we? Or even guys who tell god-awful vulgar jokes. However, we do start to care about them as people and you want them to survive. I always feel sad that Dillon and Poncho don't make it, even Billy - since he almost got to this mysterious chopper.

The chopper is weird. When Arnie tells Anna to get to it, we cannot see it anywhere, so I wonder how Anna would know where it is. Also, Dillon points out earlier that if they don't make it to their rendezvous on time, the chopper isn't going to wait for them. Yet, the chopper waits a whole day for Arnie to muck around with his boyscout traps. Finally, what exactly did Anna say to the general when she got there? "Oh, hi. You don't know me but..."

Now, onto various observations...

First, a theory. Near the end, Dutch surmises that the predator is hunting his group because they're carrying weapons. However, the predator did overhear one of Hawkins' jokes. He also must have realised that the rest of the group were friends of Hawkins, except for Anna (and you notice he never tries to attack her), so it makes you wonder. Don't know about the poor dead guys they find before they reach the rebel camp though, which leads us to...

... an oddity. Why does the predator skin some guys and take the skulls from others? Is it a matter of hunting some people for food and some for trophies? It doesn't really make much sense. Also, it seems like that scene is there just because the filmmakers desperately wanted to have something with the shock value of the chestburster scene in Alien. However, they should have known better than to try to outdo the movie that influenced them.

On another subject, Dutch's claim that his men are a rescue team and not assassins is hilarious - and not just because they're delivered with Arnie's trademark er... style, I guess you'd call it. No, it's also hilarious because when you see how Dutch's team work - firing indiscriminately into the compound without ascertaining the whereabouts of this 'other' hostage we heard about and basically blowing up everything in sight - one has to wonder whether they're actually any good at rescuing people. I'd think that a hostage would probably prefer it if anyone else but Dutch's men were hired to rescue them. When Mac tells Dutch that he found the other guy and that he was dead too, one can't help but wonder whether this guy was knocked off by the rebels or whether a stray bullet (or several hundred bullets) from Blain's mini-gun got him.

Finally, a mystery - when the predator comes out of the river at the end, with his cloaking device malfunctioning and with him finally switching it off, it is a great reveal. It also could have been a fantastic moment of finally seeing the creature that has been stalking them all along - if we hadn't already seen it uncloaked twice. Also, at the very start of the movie we see his spaceship come down to earth - and then in large letters during the opening credits we see 'Creature designed by Stan Winston', which is also something of a tip off. The mystery I'm driving at is why did the filmmakers show their hand so early in the piece? One can't help but wonder how much surprise value the creature would have if we hadn't seen the ship, hadn't seen the predator's infrared vision, or the creature uncloaked right until the end (okay, maybe the infrared vision could have stayed). Just a thought.

Anyway, that should be enough to get the ball rolling for now. Over to the rest of you.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 17 May 2011 - 08:38 PM

[civilian_number_two]

I agree. Predator is stupid. But Terminator, which could have had various different actors as its antagonist, is not the only film above Arnie's station. Conan, which could not have starred anyone else, is great.

[Mr Pye]

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It starts like one of those embarrassing and forgettable 80s action flicks that were a dime a dozen, right down to the strange steroid fetish. Seriously, why were musclemen so popular in 80s movies? When you see unnatural physiques and people strutting and flexing where there's no logical reason to, it knocks down the quality of the movie a lot. When Arnie and Carl Weathers have that stupid arm wrestling match, Predator lost half a star right there (then another half with Hawkins' terrible jokes). However, after the silly but immensely fun attack on the rebel camp where these characters are playing typical invincible 80s action movies, they are all slowly picked off one by one and somewhere along the line, they start to feel like human beings.

This is my impression as well. The movie starts out as a slightly fun b-grade action movie in the vein of Commando. And with Arnold to. This is the feeling through the whole attack on the rebel camp. Only the early discovery of the skinned soldiers break the tone for a short moment. There are even some Soviet advisors in the rebel camp just as if to really date the movie to the 80:s. Then when the Predator starts hunting them the tone changes and in the end it becomes a mano-a-mano survival struggle against a mysterious seemingly invincible enemy. Not entirely unlike Ripley vs the Alien.

It is unusual for movies to almost change genre midway, the way this movie does but what surprises me is that it manages to pull it off and even use it as a strength. The self-assured, cocky, bone-headed he-mans of the team comes face to face with this new alien danger, and suddenly they are afraid. That kind of wakes you up, it thrown everything overend and you feel like you know no more than the characters what's going to happen next. I wouldn't call any of the muscles great actors but they all manage the shift in tone. Credit to the director perhaps?

If I remember correctly the behind section of my DVD mentions that the director was changed after shooting had begun and John McTiernan was brought in. I don't know if this is the explanation for the shift in tone or if it was something planned from the beginning. Either way McTiernan shows the touch that he would later use to create Die Hard. Like Conan it is a role that suits Arnold pretty good. Played straight with very few in your face comic moments and the one liners though many of the has caught on feels like they belong and aren't just thrown at the audience to be cool.


The score is simple, and possibly borrowed from something else, but it is effective and help to keep the pulse up.

[Just your average movie goer]

Sounds like I'll have to catch up on Conan too, because I've never really seen that either. I felt like I've seen it though, since I've seen bits and pieces of it at various times on TV. I guess that must have a few tonal shifts as well because when I try to put together the pieces I've seen, it looks weird - Conan punching a camel, Conan near grim death, Conan er... doing the nasty with a snake? Have I got this right? It sounds like some mixed music tape but in movie form.

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The score is simple, and possibly borrowed from something else

Not borrowed as such, but recycled and tweaked a little. You're thinking of the Back to the Future score which was composed by the same guy, Alan Silvestri. I'm kidding when I say it's exactly the same but it's certainly cut from the same mold. However, it really moves the pace along. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a simple score - and actually there's quite a lot going for them. Simple arrangements stay with you longer. You can recognise motifs more easily as well, which is great, because when the story is being told through the music as well... well, that's exactly what a great score does. You know, you can listen to them in isolation and visualise the point of the movie each part of the score corresponds to. Finally, if anyone doubts the effectiveness of a simple score, they've probably forgotten about Jaws.

As for John McTiernan's contribution, I think there is no doubting it. In a lesser director's hands, I think the whole movie could have fallen apart. I see two pieces of evidence that support this. Die Hard, possibly the greatest action movie ever (and certainly this movie goer's favourite of the genre), is a showcase for a director who knows exactly how to pace a movie, who knows all the camera angles and positions to make all the action as thrilling as possible, who knows how to work with a composer (also demonstrated in Predator) and who clearly knows how to get the most out of his actors (whether they are Alan Rickman or Arnie).

The second piece of evidence is Predator 2. It's not as thrilling as it could be and some things that clearly are supposed to feel exciting don't. I'm sure the opening shootout was supposed to thrill audiences (I mean it's a shootout, right?) but it really just feels noisy and boring. Now, imagine what it would have been like if McTiernan had been shooting the movie. We also could have had Danny Glover and a predator battling it out in a hide and seek game in an uncompleted section of a high-rise building, which would be awesome!

Also, you're right, the movie does use the tone shift as a strength. I think those who seem to love the creature itself would probably argue that the way these guys are taken down shows how powerful the predator is - but I'd say that's rubbish, because when it's cloaked with a laser canon, it could be an ewok and it wouldn't make a difference. In fact, that might be even more dangerous because Dutch and his team definitely wouldn't see it (after all, Dillon could never see it - even when it was standing on a tree branch in front of him). However, I say the change in tone works to make you feel for these guys and hate the predator even more. It feels sad seeing these guys take out 10,578 rebels, just to be killed off an hour later (or ten minutes in the film's running time). There are also hints that we're going to get to know some of these guys better. There's that little exchange with Mac and Blain where you see that they're good friends outside of doing their "rescue team" work, probably living in the same town by the sounds of things and you think maybe there's more to Blain than chewing tobacco and not being able to find time to bleed - and well, then the predator makes time for him to bleed.

Which reminds me, there's a nice little commentary for the movie by the Rifftrax guys (if you've ever heard of them) that points out that unlike Blain, the predator's open schedule presumably allows plenty of time for bleeding. The highlights are here. The compilation is about ten minutes long.

Anyway, I think the abruptness has some shock value, in that the characters are gone before you can really get to know them - and not in an 'this is an underdeveloped character' way but in a 'there might have been more to this guy but now we'll never know' kind of way. Also, seeing Dutch looking wordlessly outside as he's flown off in the helicopter is a touching scene - because you remember how much fun the gang was having together at the start, sprouting bad lines like "Stick around", and now Dutch is only survivor (of that group, I mean - so I'm not including Anna here).

So despite its cheese, or perhaps partially because of it, it succeeds and does in fact end up being more than the sum of its parts.

Now, on a slightly different point, I also observed that the discovery of the other dead soldiers does break up that typical 80s action flick beginning a bit and tip the characters and the audience off to the fact that something is not right. I think it's placement is quite effective - even if I can't think of any justification for why the people are skinned, especially when corpses with no heads or spines would be shocking too. It's an oddity in the film, I have to say - but it does signal that all is not as it seems and in no small way forewarns the audience of the shift in tone that is to come. It probably helps make the transition work as well as it does.

And one last thought before signing off - when Mac goes crazy and runs off through the jungle, reciting the lyrics to Long, Tall Sally, I had to admire the choice of song. It just fit so well. Can you imagine how the scene would have played out if the last song they'd listened to in the helicopter had been Hey, Mickey!?

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 18 May 2011 - 07:46 AM

[Mr Pye]

Difficult to visualize anyone except girls in cheerleading outfits listening to Hey Mickey in public. (Although the original was sung by a soft rock group. http://www.youtube.c...h?v=pAhuwfaU4vs )

Just your average movie goer, on 18 May 2011 - 08:26 AM, said:

Anyway, I think the abruptness has some shock value, in that the characters are gone before you can really get to know them - and not in an 'this is an underdeveloped character' way but in a 'there might have been more to this guy but now we'll never know' kind of way. Also, seeing Dutch looking wordlessly outside as he's flown off in the helicopter is a touching scene - because you remember how much fun the gang was having together at the start, sprouting bad lines like "Stick around", and now Dutch is only survivor (of that group, I mean - so I'm not including Anna here).

Yeah, through all their boasting and posturing you do get the feel that they are a tight knit group trusting each other. There's even a scene with outsider Dillon getting told off just to bring this point home, and later as one by one gets picked off you feel them getting weaker and more uncertain, like when Billy decides ot face off the predator alone, until it's only Arnie left. Then the movie switches gear again and goes to it's conclusion.

I think it was you who brouhgt up the similarity to the Back to the future score in the other thread. I can definitely hear some of the same beats in it.

And yeah, they go from invincible supermen machine-gunning a whole camp of rebels because 'you killed our pilots and work with the Soviets! Die bastards.' It was the Reagan era though. But then once the Predator is brought in you start to notice, hey, these guys are human after all, but that transparent bastard in the trees ain't.

But that's Predator for you. It's unlikely we'll see a similar movie again.

[Just your average movie goer]

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And yeah, they go from invincible supermen machine-gunning a whole camp of rebels because 'you killed our pilots and work with the Soviets! Die bastards.' It was the Reagan era though. But then once the Predator is brought in you start to notice, hey, these guys are human after all, but that transparent bastard in the trees ain't.

That's a nice summation actually - and I think that explains why we care about the characters, even though they're largely a group of cocky somewhat offensive people. Despite their personality flaws and penchant for awful jokes, they don't deserve to be hunted down by that thing in the trees, and so we have a vested interest in seeing someone take that sucker out (although common sense would dictate that after the predator lost Dutch at the river, he should have just gone to the helicopter and got out of there).

Another point - I kind of wonder in the context of just the first movie, ignoring the others, whether the same creature was the one that had been haunting Anna's village or whether it was another of its kind.

And another - I wonder whether the boy scouts sponsored the movie, since Dutch is so keen on those elaborate traps. You can just imagine scout masters telling the kids about the importance of learning to tie various knots properly, with the movie in mind. "Come on, son. Concentrate. How are you going to defend yourself against an alien hunter if you never learn to tie a half-hitch knot?"

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 18 May 2011 - 07:04 PM

[Zatoichi]

Just had to rewatch the movie to refresh my memory of it. And then I checked out the rifftrax thing while eating dinner. I had to stop eating or else I would've chocked to death from laughter combined with food.

MG I am definitely with you on them tipping their hand too early. The movie had a ton of great little things to bring the audience closer to the edge of their seats (too bad they weren't capitalized on). The dead berets they run into first are the big clue that something is off. There are a bundle of shots of Billy, the tracker and Indian, shamanistic warrior, thing guy looking around like the whole thing is not right. All of the SF guys get more and more tweaked as time goes on.

Here's what I think they should've done, the same kind of thing that got done for Halo 1. In all the commercials, articles, and everything that got put out for the Halo, all there was the fight against the Covenant. You were the Master Chief mostly alone and kicking Covenant butt on a strange alien ringworld helping your fellow survivors continue ... surviving. So you get the game and you're playing through the first 4-5 boards and things are going well. You're doing great, saving a ton of your buddies and killing loads of Covies (unless your on Legendary. In that case all you're doing is dying bunches and bunches while slowly making your way through the game). Then you hit board 6 (I think) and things start to get ... strange. You can tell there's some weird crap going on, and not a lot of enemies either. The music and the whole atmosphere, plus other little things you pick up on have you on edge. The one soldier you run into has lost his mind and will start killing you. Then you play the tape recorder ... and what the hell are all those little buggers?! There was no real indication of this anywhere else in the game, or in any of the advertising. Then wham! Wham! Boom! They break down the doors and start to swarm you.

That's what should've been done in Predator. They should've left out all of the shots of the Predator up until he flashes the yellow eyes at Mac. I'd even take out the shot of Hawkins strung up in the tree, but leave in the shot of the claw weapon sticking out of his back when he dies. And he shouldn't have been visible until he reveals himself to Dutch. That way, until Mac sees the glowing eyes, the audience has no freaking clue what's going on. The just saw two of the SF guys die in somewhat odd ways, one by a claw thing and the other by a plasma blast or something (Actually, I think I would've maybe had the Pred hold back on the blaster until it felt it actually needed it). That would be pretty scary. And it wouldn't seem entirely out of place either, the sudden killings of the SFs. The audience might've figured something was up when they came across the dead green berets, or when they saw continually looking around nervously as if something else was out there.

In the same vein as Halo, the film could've been solely advertised as a cheesey action flick. I believe there was enough story and filmtime until Hawkins dies to pull that off. They could've even used the extra time they had to elaborate on the plot a little more. Actually, I didn't quite get what was going on in the first place. A helicopter was shot down. You get told it was a cabinet minister (a couple of clues that it wasn't), and then find out later it was a CIA guy. What were they doing there? If they thought they were still alive, then how does it stop being a rescue mission? Apparently there were Russians that got waxed (I thought they were actually from the chopper, I was a smidge confused), and Dillon says something about an invasion. They take a prisoner who might know a bunch about the rebels. So you take that and build it up a little, advertise the movie as though a team got tricked into halting plans by the Russians or something and are gonna be great heroes if succeed, save the country and all that. So when the audience watches it they see the good guys mow through the badguys, are working on getting out of there and the audience isn't really expecting anything different. Something is going on though, and then the chick tries to escape and wft, why does Hawkins have metal blades sticking through him ... oh crap oh crap oh crap, what the hell!?!

[Just your average movie goer]

Not sure what my favourite line in the Rifftrax commentary was, but I loved that bit where the guy says "Is Carl Weathers posing for a statue in his honour back there?"

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You're doing great, saving a ton of your buddies and killing loads of Covies (unless your on Legendary. In that case all you're doing is dying bunches and bunches while slowly making your way through the game).

Loved that too. Sometimes, I've gotta wonder what the point is with some of these higher difficulty modes in games. Perhaps after mastering a challenge, what some people crave is a nice dose of lengthy frustration. Actually, it's interesting you mention Halo because it seems that the game designers were influenced by Predator with the design of those big Covenant warriors. Except, rather than being simply derivative, they're an improvement. They show what a predator could have been.

I like the idea of them keeping things under wraps in the advertisements as well. You're right. They've got enough meat in the first act to make it seem as though the whole movie's going to be about that. My wife hadn't seen the movie until recently either (she enjoyed it actually - I thought that was quite cool) but she said she'd seen a poster and thought it was just some war movie or something. So that kind of minimalist promotion could have worked.

As for the story in that first act, I suppose they could have said something along the lines like this: that a special forces unit is sent into a jungle in South America to rescue a kidnapped cabinet minister. It's supposed to be a simple one day operation but all is not as it seems.

It'd be generic, sure, but it'd keep the mystery intact.

On a side note, the whole plot at that point of the movie isn't particularly well handled. Dillon's men were looking for the camp presumably. Their helicopter got taken out with a heat seeker. Some of them died, some of them were taken to the camp. Hopper and his guys went looking for them and disappeared - skinned, but not skinned alive as Dutch claims (we know that because the predator went through the routine with Hawkins, and Hawkins was definitely dead). Actually, that claim with no basis makes Dutch look like an idiot. But then the way he goes around chomping cigars doesn't make him look particularly bright either. Anyway, having no idea where Hopper got to, Dillon makes a cover story to get Dutch's 'rescue team' involved.

However, it makes no sense why Dutch gets angry about being lied to, as there were still hostages there. As for blowing up everything in sight, that seems in line with his kind of work. They're not a group of medics. They're commandos. What does Dutch mean, they don't do that kind of work? Also, why did Dillon need the cabinet minister story at all? Why didn't he just say there were hostages?

Also, Dillon looks through papers and Dutch thrusts one sheet in his face, shouting "I think this is what you're looking for. You set us up!" What was Dillon looking for exactly? The movie doesn't seem to care. Fortunately for the movie, the audience doesn't particularly care either, but still. What's the point of having all of that talk in that scene if that whole plot's just going to be dropped by the wayside. Yeah, I know, the rift between Dutch and Dillon and all that... but that was already there at the start anyway. Dutch thought that Dillon had sold out somewhat and didn't want him coming along on the mission. I don't understand that either. Actually, the way the others ostracize Dillon make them all look like bigger jerks than they do already. To be honest, I would have loved it if Dillon had been the last man standing instead of Dutch... but I guess it was the eighties, and everyone still loved Arnie (back then, people obviously didn't know about his habit of sexually harassing other women, even when his wife was looking).

Anyway, for the life of me, I don't know why they tipped their hand right at the very start. It would have been a brilliant surprise if they had held back the creature to the very end. I wonder perhaps whether the decision was made by studio executives. Perhaps they didn't trust their audiences to be smart enough to figure things out for themselves. Sadly, it's often the case that movies are dumbed down for the lowest common denominator. A pity. The movie could have been in another league entirely if they had shown any interest in keeping the mystery.

[Mr Pye]

Just your average movie goer, on 19 May 2011 - 12:11 AM, said:

And another - I wonder whether the boy scouts sponsored the movie, since Dutch is so keen on those elaborate traps. You can just imagine scout masters telling the kids about the importance of learning to tie various knots properly, with the movie in mind. "Come on, son. Concentrate. How are you going to defend yourself against an alien hunter if you never learn to tie a half-hitch knot?"

This kind of thing just screams 80:s to me. It was the same thing in Rambo First Blood. And in all spy/cold war movies of the time it was the evil Soviets who had developed the latest supertechnology and our resoursefull heroes who outsmarted them with rope and duct tape. McGyver anyone?

Just your average movie goer, on 19 May 2011 - 12:11 AM, said:

However, it makes no sense why Dutch gets angry about being lied to, as there were still hostages there. As for blowing up everything in sight, that seems in line with his kind of work. They're not a group of medics. They're commandos. What does Dutch mean, they don't do that kind of work? Also, why did Dillon need the cabinet minister story at all? Why didn't he just say there were hostages?

This is a pretty strange approach by a special forces team, even though the team in question is a bit unusual. I can only imagine it was done to impress in the most obvious way possible that our heroes are the right thinking kind of guys. Of course what Dillon should have done is say screw you Major I'm giving you an order and that's it. But as you say it was the eighties and it is easy to forget today that this movie was shot while the cold war was still waiting for it's dying days. Back then both east and west were rather picky about how their military was depicted. Except for Vietnam for some reason. Maybe because we lost that?

This post has been edited by Mr Pye: 19 May 2011 - 08:54 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

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McGyver anyone?

YES! The epitome of 80s film and television. Along with its soundtrack, it'd be the perfect way to show future generations just what the 80s were like - down to the bad hair styles.

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Of course what Dillon should have done is say screw you Major I'm giving you an order and that's it.

Now, it's not entirely clear in the movie but it seems as though Dutch and his men are mercenaries or something - not under the rules and regulations of regular army units - but it does seem clear that for the duration of the mission, Dillon is in charge. And while he is in charge, Dutch back chats to him all the time and Mac threatens to kill him. So, if the predator hadn't picked off everyone except for Dutch, then Dutch and Mac would have been in a lot of trouble when they got back (especially Mac).

[Just your average movie goer]

Unfortunately, unlike the brilliant and far superior movie Alien, there's not as much meat in the original 1987 Predator to get a really long discussion going and I knew this when I started up this thread. It's not going to be as big as the Alien thread was. However, there are still the sequels. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, they're not much chop... but well, here goes.

Sequels: Predator II

Awfulness, resulting in large unwatchable stretches

Now, is this movie as truly awful as everyone says it is? Unfortunately, yes. It is. There are fairly lengthy chunks of this movie that are either horrible, boring or both (generally, in this movie, it's both). There's also some really unnecessary nastiness with some kind of weird voodoo ritual involving characters we've never seen before and we never see again (well, never see alive again anyway). If John McTiernan had been at the helm of this movie, we would have just seen the aftermath when the cops come to investigate what happened - because that was all you needed for the plot.

On a side note, the director Stephen Hopkins has gone on to do more notable work, including the TV series 24. And although I'm not a fan of the ultra-violent adventures of Jack Bauer, along with some of the questionable messages the show promoted, I can appreciate that it was tense and well put-together. So the director obviously found his footing somewhere along the line. Unfortunately, it seems clear that he was still learning the ropes in Predator 2.

I've mentioned some of the uninspired direction in this thread already, including that opening shoot-out, but it'd be unfair to place all the blame on the director's shoulders. The fact is that shoot-out wasn't ever going to be that compelling because it basically comes down to the police intervening in a gunfight between two gangs of drug dealers. Why should we care? Worse, we spend too much time with the gang members. We see close ups of their ugly faces and see their obscene antics after they blow up a cop car. Remember the rebels in Predator? With the exception of Anna, no, you don't. This is because they were of minimal importance. Their purpose was to allow Dutch and his mildly offensive buddies to come into a jungle, blow things up and put get in place so the story could get started.

In Predator 2, the main story seems be lost for a lot of its running time and we spend copious amounts of time (oh, so much damn time) with these awful gang members. It's distasteful and it's not what we want to watch. We want to see the cat and mouse game with the predator.

Confusion

Predator 2 knows it's not going to be a classic, I'll give it that. What's more, it wants to pay homage to the real classics - and there are homages throughout. Some of them are quite clever even. There's a little scene with Danny Glover and Robert Davi (wasted in a tiny role) in a street and in the background, there's shop called 'Sanchez Jeans', a little reference to the character Davi played in Licence to Kill ('Sanchez', that is, not 'Jeans'). There are also huge homages to Robocop. This is interesting. I love Robocop, absolutely love it, but I couldn't work out straightaway why Predator 2 was trying to emulate it so much. I mean, there's the chaotic scene at the police station where fights with suspects are breaking out, there are the news broadcasts running throughout it all, there's the scene on the subway where everyone's packing massive handguns suggesting a society gone mad and there's even the way The Glover Lieutenant Harrigan drives his car near the end of the movie, scraping the rear bumper on a ramp and sending out sparks just as Murphy does. Then I figured that since the first Predator was an 80s commando movie with a predator thrown in, this one is basically a cop movie with a predator thrown in. Why Robocop though, rather than Lethal Weapon? After all, they got both Danny Glover and Gary Busey (you know, that guy who's either insane or having everyone on) - and Shane Black (Hawkins!!!) wrote the screenplay for it. The only thing that I can think of is that they were going for the whole 'futuristic' vibe. You know... 1997?

There's also subtle homage to Alien as well. The apartment where the voodoo nastiness mentioned earlier occurs looks a lot like one of the rooms on the Nostromo that Brett passes through on his way to a grisly demise look for Jonesy. It's nice that the movie pays its respects - even if I disapprove of that little joke at the end where there's a xenomorph skull in the predator's trophy cabinet. I mean, seriously, the fact that a xenomorph would kick a predator's ass aside, they're clearly creatures that have exoskeletons so it's not even possible for a predator to have a skull as it appears in the movie even at the conceptual level.

Now, homages (I think I've got them all). They're really cute and everything but sometimes, a movie can be so bogged down in them that it loses sight of its own storyline. I think the dysfunctional society that Predator 2 took from Robocop distracts from the proceedings quite a lot. That scene in the police station, which actually goes far beyond Robocop in terms of how out of control things are, is problematic especially. Watching that scene, you can't help but think that in terms of Lieutenant Harrigan's day to day life, it's not going to make a huge difference whether he gets the predator or not. It also makes the ending a bit of a downer too, knowing that this is the kind of crap that the main character's going to have to go back to. Mind you, the original Predator's ending wasn't a barrel of laughs either (although it did have that cutesy credit sequence with all the characters grinning - the "Hey, it was just a movie" ending).

The other problem is tone. We've got scenes that are quite shockingly bloody and brutal on the one hand and then later on, we've got a kid offering a predator some candy (which would sound really terrible in reverse) and an old lady planning to knock a predator out with a broom. It's exactly the same kind of problem I had with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We've got a mixture of things that are too brutal for kids and too dumb for adults and the result is an uncomfortable feeling of awkwardness. Now, with the kid and the old lady, I can sort of understand what the movie was trying to do. It was demonstrating that these creatures are only interested in hunting people who they perceive as a threat. However, I'm sure that could have been conveyed in a less embarrassing manner. That said, there is some payoff for the first scene where the main predator in the film confronts Bill Paxton in a dark subway carriage and uses the "Want some candy?" line he sampled. Another side note here - at this point in Bill Paxton's career, he had been killed by a terminator, an alien and a predator. That's pretty impressive.

The third problem is that the movie has two possible plot threads on which it could revolve around. We've got the cop trying to uncover the mystery of who's behind this latest killing spree and we've got the special government agency that is trying to trap the predator. In the end, the movie goes with the first of these, pushing the second into the background, which is a shame because it could well be the more interesting of the two - especially as it would take the series into new territory, expanding on what was discovered in the first movie. I think also that if the movie had gone in that direction, it would have done a better job of justifying its own existence since a good sequel should expand upon the premise of its predecessor and bring something new to the table. Going with the story of the cop uncovering the mystery simply retreads what happened in the first movie - and the story about the government agency gets shoved into the background and ultimately, dropped. So what could have been an interesting development ends up just being padding in the movie's running time. Also, even worse, is when the two plots merge briefly, Special Agent Gary Busey Special Agent Peter Keyes just explains everything about the predator to Harrigan, so it renders the detective story redundant as well. Furthermore, the mystery doesn't work for another reason - namely, the audience will have presumably seen the first Predator. So for viewers, there's never any mystery in the first place. This becomes especially frustrating during a scene where Harrigan asks some voodoo gang leader about the predator and listens to all this nonsense about the predator being some demon from the spirit world. It's a frustrating waste of time for Harrigan, as evidenced by his exp​ressions of boredom, but it's a double waste of time for the audience. Finally, there's little reason for Harrigan to concern himself with tracking down the predator. Now audiences may remember that the predator kills his partner, but that's after he puts his partner on the case of working out who's killing all these highly dangerous drug dealers. I think his partner had the right idea near the beginning when he said of the predator that maybe they should have given him a job and put him on the payroll.

So, it's a complete write-off then?

No, it's not - and this is the sad part. The second half of the movie is a blast - and there are some great moments. It really kicks into gear when the predator attacks a subway full of armed commuters (although it breaks up a potentially far more interesting scene) and from then on, it doesn't let up until the credits roll. There's also some clever touches of a quieter nature as well. There's a brief scene where Harrigan looks at a shop window full of hunting trophies, which is reflected in a scene near the end where he sees the predator's trophy cabinet as well - showing that there are people in human society who are just as amoral as these creatures are. However, in the thrills department, the action starts with that subway sequence and from then on, the movie really is a blast. The fight in the slaughterhouse, the rooftop chase - along with one very spectacular stunt - are terrific. The special effects really come out here as well, with a predator who while he doesn't look quite as convincing as the first one for some reason (his coloration seemed somewhat unnatural to me), has far more facial mobility and therefore looks more lively. And the additional predators at the end, while kind of dumb, make for a fun ending to the movie and for this type of B-grade flick, they're quite appropriate. However, you've got to wonder - if the main one was going to that slaughterhouse every two weeks to feed, what were the rest of them doing? Living off reconstituted long-life beef jerky or something?

However, herein lies the problem - this is all in the second half of the movie. It's never a good sign for a movie when its first hour is a write-off. Then, the real question is, is it worth a look? Unfortunately, given the stretches of awfulness, one cannot in all conscience recommend this film to someone - at least, not without a qualifier about skipping the first hour. However, that said, if it comes on TV at 8.30 and finishes at 11.00, you could tune in 9.40 and have a good time. However, it is a pity. It could never have been a great film. After all, the first Predator was not exactly a masterpiece. However, it could have been a far more enjoyable movie - and a far more successful one too - if the filmmakers had kept things simple, focused on one plot, expanded what should have been expanded (characters' knowledge about the titular creature) and left out all the unnecessary gore and vileness. So in the end, Predator 2 is not a complete loss, but it is a big screw-up... another one of those Hollywood could-have-beens.

[Just your average movie goer]

Sequels: Predators

Some people might think it is unfair to pass judgement on a movie without having seen it. In principle, I would agree, but there are films that warrant exceptions. For example, I judged Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen without watching it - and from everything I heard from those poor people who went and sat through it, I think I was right to put it down. I also saved myself the pain of sitting through the thing.

So what put me off Predators? Well, the setting and premise for one thing. Another jungle, except this time it's a far less attractive jungle. Another team of hardened army types, except this time they're all dangerous killers or something so there's absolutely no reason to root for any of them. So right off the bat, we've got a setting and premise that mirror the first movie, while being far less appealing. Whose bright idea was that, I wonder.

It's on another world but it's not the predator's homeworld. Again, the story is not being taken in new directions. At least, Predator 2 had that government agency that was tracking the predators so it was laying down groundwork. Gary Busey also mentioned Beirut and Cambodia so we could see that what happened in the original Predator was not an isolated incident. That's rather interesting - and it seems that the logical progression in the story would for people to get closer to either acquiring the technology of these creatures (a government interest in Tinsel Town) or figuring out a way to stop these creatures from playing their games on Earth. Wouldn't it be far more interesting to see a sequel set several hundred years in the future where people were in a position to properly deal with these creatures in a more permanent manner? Alas, that's not what the makers of Predators think. So twenty-three years after the original comes out, the best concept these guys can think of is a lame rehash. Well, that's just great.

Also, lessening its appeal is the fact that everything in the promos looks so grim. The characters look dire and humorless in the previews and that's a problem. The concept only worked the first time around because it didn't take itself so seriously. It was fun. This thing however, doesn't look like fun.

It also follows the bigger equals better formula employed so often in Hollywood. I think most audiences are aware that this isn't the case but a lot of Hollywood executives haven't got the memo yet. Anyway, apparently there are bigger predators (because you know, the original ones that were over seven feet tall just didn't cut it)... and there are predator dogs now as well. Oh, and the big ones are being referred to in the marketing as super predators (although I don't know if they're referred to as such in the movie). And their wrist blades are now... like... totally... two feet long, man! Directors of Hollywood, if you are reading this, bigger is not better. It never was.

The designs are uninspired. For some reason, people keep changing designs of things when making a series of films. They change Batman's suit all the time. They changed the awesome design of Giger's original Alien to a new more insectoid-like creature of smaller stature. They changed the predator design in Predator 2 as well - apparently to make the creature look more hip and urban, whatever that means. And this tradition has been applied to Predators as well... and the new designs stink. The predators look less like alien creatures and more like people in suits. The head/body proportions have changed too. Remember the original creatures had heads that were massive compared to their body sizes. Now, they're proportioned more like regular humans.

So we have an uninspired retread of the first movie, except the setting and characters are less appealing this time round. It doesn't take the story into any worthwhile new territory. It's another product of that silly bigger is better mentality that's so rife in Hollywood and the look of the creatures is less interesting than ever.

Have I deprived myself of two hours of enjoyment by passing this thing up? Possibly. However, I'll take my chances.

[Mr Pye]

Just your average movie goer, on 21 May 2011 - 11:01 AM, said:

Also, lessening its appeal is the fact that everything in the promos looks so grim. The characters look dire and humorless in the previews and that's a problem. The concept only worked the first time around because it didn't take itself so seriously. It was fun. This thing however, doesn't look like fun.

I have not seen Predators either but the above sentence reflects a peculiar view which I connect with the AvP movies. After the first one came out there was a lot of talk about the problem beeing how it wasn't R-rated and lacked gore and was too kids-friendly. For me the first AvP always had much more serious flaws than those, but there seemed to be a general belief that a more serious and bloody tone would be the solution and we got the horrible AvP:R. What you write above makes me fear that this attitude was important also for the makers of Predators, and if so I don't consider that a good sign. Neither Alien nor Predator relies heavy on gore or gloom for their success, I've often felt this is a misconception of both franchises. It's true there was a small amount in both movies and it filled a part that had effect in both movies but I should like remakes to capture more the feel of the originals and less the facts.





It has been such a long time since I saw Predator 2 that you should take anything I write here some caution. It's not as taut as the first movie (if taut is the word I'm looking for) but I never thought of it as a really bad movie either. Give it a good editor and some more time to work on it and you could get something really nice out of it.

The movie came out 1990, but I have a faint memory that it is meant to take place in a then future time, say late 1990:s, where criminals and drugs has spread ridiculously out of proportions, and that the gang wars in the early parts are meant to get this point across, though I'm not sure why this was deemed desireable. Both the gangs are pretty over the top and the Voodoo Jamaicans in particular feel out of their place in the concrete jungle. I also recall there beeing a heat wave for that particular year the movie was meant to play out in. This might explain all the sweat on Danny Glover throughout the movie but at least it is consistent with established lore from the first movie. All in all though these things comes together to give us a pretty bleak and unattractive view of (then) future city life. There is also this sense that the world is so shitty not even the police, except for individuals like Harrigan, feel up to save it. It doesn't achieve the same empathy between the audience and the predators victims that the first movie manages.

I liked the idea of Keyes and his government team beeing on the trail of the predators. This also pays respect to the original. If a nuke goes off people don't just forget it, and using cryotechnologies against the predator is a clever way to approach it. What feels odd is that these people are only introduced about halfway into the movie, and have no effect, that we know of, on the early events. They must have been on the trail all along, and it would have been nice with some more obvious early hints of a third unknown player in the game. The time used for the gangs to nasty to each other could have been better spent on that.

It occurs to me right now that a city would be a kind of strange hunting ground for a predator. 90% of the people will be unarmed civilians in their homes and even when it chooses to hunt only police or criminals, civilians would still stand a good risk of getting hurt or get in the way. Not a typical approach for a responsible hunter. I wonder if this is not part of the reason the movie tried to play up the criminals and the gang wars so much. As if to validate the city as a good hunting ground. It's a mixed result I think they spend to much time on it, and they also miss out the possibility of the predator beeing interested in Keyes and his team instead.

The ending always bothers me a little. The leader of the predators give Harrigan an old 17-18th century pistol, as a nice hint of how long things have been going on, and mostly as a sign of respect for his stength and fighting spirit I guess, and then comes a weird scene where they take off and Harrigan has to run like crazy to avoid getting flambéed by the engines of the ship. Ok I understand they wanted to mirror Arnies run from the nuke, but couldn't the predators have given Harrigan, whom they respected, the dignity of getting safely out of the way before they hit the ignition? They certainly must have know he would be forced to dive for his life. Did they want to kill him still?

Very much hit and miss with Predator 2. When it's good it's very good which also makes the lamer stuff seem all the more lame.






Side note: License to kill was a pretty decent Bond movie I thought. Timothy Dalton never hit it big as Bond. Perhaps the more serious approach was not what people expected for that franchise.

This post has been edited by Mr Pye: 21 May 2011 - 05:27 PM

[Just your average movie goer]

Timothy Dalton was ahead of his time. The elements he brought to the franchise that people were complaining about back then are the same things people are praising Daniel Craig for now. Movie audiences are really fickle sometimes.

By the numbers:

About the Alien VS Predator point that you mentioned, I heard that too. People thought the problem was that there wasn't enough gore in the first movie when in reality, the problem was it sucked. Also, Alien, Aliens and Predator are not as gory as people seem to remember them to be - you're right there too. It's unfortunate but so often when people try to emulate the success of an earlier movie, they fail to realise why audiences liked it in the first place. Most people don't actually like the brief gory moments that occur in these films. I don't know anybody who actually enjoys watching the chestburster scene in Alien for instance. It's a very unsettling scene and I always feel nervous around the time the film works itself up to it. For another example, consider Murphy's death in Robocop. It's hard-hitting and it's very disturbing. Again, nobody enjoys it. They're not supposed to. Now, if these movies were made up entirely of scenes like these, most of us wouldn't watch them. However, these scenes are thankfully brief and they only exist to serve the story, not the other way round. I understand that the makers of Alien VS Predator Requiem failed to understand this. Hopefully, the makers of Predators didn't make the same mistake. However, the previews all look grim and joyless.

Now, Predator 2:

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Give it a good editor and some more time to work on it and you could get something really nice out of it.

I agree. You can get a good fun 80 or 90 minute B-grade movie out of the material they've got and it's a shame that the filmmakers didn't. It feels as though they had something but they just took every opportunity they could to shoot themselves in the foot. And yes, there's even fun stuff in the first half too - particularly the way Danny Glover and Bill Paxton play off each other.

The setting - yes, 1997. They made it in 1990 and then they specify that it's 1997 at the beginning of the movie, apparently just so they can have that gang warfare going on because there wasn't any such thing happening in 1990. Well, there also wasn't any alien hunting American soldiers in 1987 but that didn't stop the filmmakers. It's very strange. Also, it makes the film look even more dated since their vision of Los Angeles in 1997 was so far from how it turned out. Honestly, I don't know why they even specified that the events were in Los Angeles. They never specify where Dutch and his men go in the first movie. For all, we know, it could be a made-up country. Also, while the movie was released in 1987, the year is never actually mentioned in the movie. So honestly, why couldn't the makers of Predator 2 leave out any mention of Los Angeles or the fact that it's 1997 and just say that it's set in a city ten years after the events of Predator? With that, I'd say the first thing a good editor would do would be to chop out that frame at the start that screams out "LOS ANGELES: 1997". Then they could give themselves a pat on the back and a have a beer for getting their project off to a flying start.

The heatwave is done nicely, I'll admit. And also, its significance to the predator being there isn't beaten into the audience's skulls. That's rather refreshing actually.

Now, with Keyes and his government agents, they're actually introduced early on. They basically show up after crime scenes and tell Lieutenant Harrigan that they've got a complicated operation in play to deal with the gang warfare and that his organisation will be investigating incidents that are related to it. Then Harrigan decides, screw that, and checks out crime scene number two. Keyes then shows up and tells him off, telling him that he'll turn up missing if he crosses him again. So, with the threat of being abducted by this mystery organisation hanging over his head, Harrigan sends his partner to investigate the crime scene after hours. His partner goes missing, Harrigan gets angry and practically beats Keyes up in front of half the police station. Then the next time Harrigan stumbles onto Keyes' investigation, Keyes just decides to let bygones be bygones and explain the whole plot to him (and any members of the audience who didn't see the next movie). Clearly, Keyes is a forgiving soul.

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It occurs to me right now that a city would be a kind of strange hunting ground for a predator. 90% of the people will be unarmed civilians in their homes and even when it chooses to hunt only police or criminals, civilians would still stand a good risk of getting hurt or get in the way. Not a typical approach for a responsible hunter. I wonder if this is not part of the reason the movie tried to play up the criminals and the gang wars so much. As if to validate the city as a good hunting ground. It's a mixed result I think they spend to much time on it, and they also miss out the possibility of the predator beeing interested in Keyes and his team instead.

Actually, this is kind of interesting - and it's something I think the movie does well. The main creature in this movie is not like the first one. He's played by the same actor, Kevin Peter Hall, but he has a very different approach. Where the first one seemed to savour the hunt, this one seemed to relish the chaos he could cause and he has no finesse. He's also a show-off as seen in that scene where he's standing on top of a building doing his equivalent of... a victory dance, I suppose - you know, his "I rock!" pose. I get the impression that this is a younger creature than the first one and also that he's possibly on probation before being allowed to go out hunting on his own - and that those other predators in the ship were assessing him. I also get the impression that if he had survived, he probably would have flunked whatever test he was on.

All the unarmed civilians in the city would lend themselves to making the urban environment an alluring challenge for the kind of alien hunter that wants to play by the rules. I won't say 'hunt honorably' because that's an oxymoron in the context of sports hunting - but it could be used for a different kind of creature than the one we got. That said though, I admire the fact that the creature is so clearly a different individual from the first one, and that being of the same species doesn't make them the same in every other way. It's actually one of the film's strong points, and it's also a credit to Kevin Peter Hall that he conveyed the differences in these creatures so well. It's a tragedy that he died so shortly after the production of the film. This is another thing about predators in the Alien vs Predator movies and the new Predators. In the new movies, I rather get the impression that the producers just thought all you needed to convey one of these things was a guy of the right stature who could fit into the suit. However, in the original movies, they understood that spoken lines or no spoken lines, you still needed an actor - and in fact, with no spoken lines, having a good actor is probably even more important.

Quote

The ending always bothers me a little. The leader of the predators give Harrigan an old 17-18th century pistol, as a nice hint of how long things have been going on, and mostly as a sign of respect for his stength and fighting spirit I guess, and then comes a weird scene where they take off and Harrigan has to run like crazy to avoid getting flambéed by the engines of the ship. Ok I understand they wanted to mirror Arnies run from the nuke, but couldn't the predators have given Harrigan, whom they respected, the dignity of getting safely out of the way before they hit the ignition? They certainly must have know he would be forced to dive for his life. Did they want to kill him still?

Yes, what is up with that? The old predator gives him the antique pistol, it looks all ceremonial and dignified and then they don't even give him time to get off the ship safely? It seems that even when they are trying to be honorable, predators are bad sports. How any fan of the movies came to consider them to be great honorable warriors is beyond me. The first one just flips out and starts roaring at Dutch like a maniac just because this guy - who he was trying to kill - tried to fight back. Yes, it must have been terrible when his phoney challenging activity suddenly turned into a genuine challenge. Then when he loses, and Dutch shows him mercy, he pulls off that cowardly self-destruct stunt. The second one tries that too, and then his scoutmaster - while apparently acknowledging Harrigan as a worthy opponent, can't even give him time to get safely off his ship. Appallingly bad sports.

It's easy to see why they hunt on technologically inferior worlds, isn't it? Clearly, their uncivilised behaviour and bad sportsmanship has ticked off so many advanced civilisations that they've been driven from their homeworld. So now, they all just fly around the galaxy in their interstellar Combi vans, looking for low-tech worlds for their weekend hunting trips.

Yes, you're absolutely right. Predator 2 is hit and miss. When it's entertaining, it really is a lot of fun, but the missteps are way off track. The second hour though is still a lot of fun.

[Just your average movie goer]

Sorry for the double-post. The edit function timed out.

Where I said, "Keyes just decides to let bygones be bygones and explain the whole plot to him (and any members of the audience who didn't see the next movie)", it should say 'first' movie, not 'next' movie.