By guest columnist dyron_rises.
After two sequels and a couple of crossovers with the Alien franchise, the dormant Predator film series is up and running again with the latest installment, The Predator, with director Shane Black at the helm, and for all the excitement and anticipation I had for since the announcement that he was going to be creatively involved, the end result was a complete bust.
During an assignment that gets interrupted by the crash-landing of a spacecraft, Army Ranger Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) comes face to face with eponymous alien creature but manages to survive, make off with most of its equipment and mail it back to his home address before being taken in by government officials and placed in a transport bus with PTSD soldiers when they don’t believe him. When Quinn’s son comes across the mail, he accidentally signals the arrival of said Predator and a more advanced creature to their small Georgia town, and it’s up to Quinn, the soldiers and a biologist (Olivia Munn) to save humanity.
This film definitely has traces of Black’s DNA, right down to the dark humor and the clever, irreverent quips coming from the mouths of these characters. It’s expected from a film he’s involved with, and his ties to the original made him a solid fit. The film also harkens back to the old school “suburban civilians verses malevolent monsters” template of Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad, which were also penned by him and collaborator Fred Dekker (the director of those films), but the film manages to fail in all of those areas.
The Predator sees an bit of an expansion of the mythology but it’s bogged down by a haphazard and lazily constructed script that is beneath the high quality writing Black is known for, and goes for an overabundance of awkward, sitcom-esque comedic beats that overwhelms the edgy tone, and is backed by one poorly conceived plot point after another.
The Predator does deliver on the astoundingly gory and inventive action set-pieces that we came to see, but the film as a whole was thinly scripted and had no idea of what tone to go for or how to piece these generic and brainless plot points together. I know the original wasn’t Oscar worthy material, but it had a bunch of larger-than-life characters we rooted for and laughed with once they spouted something gratuitously macho or displayed particular types of character tics, but at a minimum, and the tension was well executed and made us care for them when they get taken out.
Here, we settled for a bunch of rag-tag soldiers that felt like a parody of Dutch’s team, with the over exaggerated mental deficiencies (save for Trevante Rhodes role) and overdose of jokes that felt out of place for a Predator movie that misses way more than it hits. I know Shane Black is a hell of a wordsmith when it comes to his snappy dialogue and self referential humor but these qualities are not on par with his past work as nothing these people say or do worked, and came off like sitcom material within the realm of a badass action-horror film.
For example, there are debates over whether “Predator” is a right term to describe the titular creature, poor comebacks from Keegan Michael Key’s character, a whole scene where the Thomas Jane character’s Tourettes is mistaken for something even more inappropriate towards Olivia Munn, and lame tacked-on throwbacks to classic film lines. It’s because of those qualities that these moments were more cringeworthy than enjoyable. Then there’s the whole subplot where Quinn’s son is capable of understanding Predator language due to his autism, which was treated like a superpower and described as the “next step of evolution”. As a person with high-functioning autism, I find this to be the dumbest shit Black could ever imagine for the sake of lazy plot contrivances.
To wrap up this review/rant, The Predator is a movie that’s only audacious in the amount of stupidity it gets away with and the mismanaged creative decisions Black took. This was a film I had faith in only due to Black’s track record and his history with the franchise as Hawkins from the original, despite all the skepticism and disinterest many have had; but I was truly disappointed with this movie, which gets even messier and bloated by the third act. The action was good and composer Henry Jackman’s reprise of Alan Silvestri’s iconic score was a awesome treat. But the characters were either lacking or obnoxious, and the large emphasis on humor was a detriment to the film and said characters, especially with a villain we’re suppose to root against but he also gets in on the jokes and wisecracks, so whatever attempts at making him threatening is diminished.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I believe that some would be down for Black’s stamp on it and the shift in an action comedy direction, but some would be turned off after being led on that it would be close in tone to past installments. The Predator is a hodge podge of conflicting tones, less convincing CGI, and uneven, eyebrow-raising writing that boasts a large cast and big ideas but fails to do justice with most of them and allows itself to function as more of a spoof of the film series than a real established entry.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10.
Dyron_rises writes about film, TV, nostalgia, music, LA, and geek culture galore. Find more of his thoughts on instagram.