Predators

[xt1me]

I’ve never considered myself a fan of the predator movies. I’ve watched the first two and liked them well enough, but that’s pretty much it. So when I was invited to go see the new movie I decided ‘why not’ and turned my brain off and sat back to watched it.

It was pretty good. There are no surprises in the plot but it kept itself going and did well for itself as a mindless action movie. It could have easily been a lot worse.

 

I liked the opening. Main Guy falling. It was a nice way to literally drop us into the action. As my film teacher told us, the first ten seconds/first minute should give us a feel for the movie and this pretty much accomplished that. And the whole 'the characters don’t know what’s going on/ find out what’s happening along with the audience' is only a cliché because it works.

I must admit, though, I never bothered to learn any of the characters' names. You don’t need them. We have Main Guy, Girl, Mexican, Yakuza, Big Gun Russian, Convict, Suicide squid member and the Wimp.

Incidentally I saw a clip with the Yakuza guy facing a Predator with a katana and all I could think about when I saw him for the rest of the movie is ‘ I wonder where he finds the samurai sword?’

 

So first off Main Guy shows us that if you act like you know what your doing when no one else does then you’re the leader. Token Girl and Main Guy established that they don’t like each other so we know they will somehow get together at the end. To the movies credit they don’t force it down our throats and they never actually get together and make-out at the end so that immediately gets them points from me.

We meet the other characters and establish them as bad asses. Except the wimp which means he’s either some kind of badass bookworm (if he’s a good guy) or he’s a serial killer. Place your bets.

We also have a bit with a plant (why are there earth flora on another planet, anyway?) that might as well have a sign above it saying “look at this. It come up near the end of the movie. Watch out for it.” Wimp now has the Chekhov's scalpel of paralysing stuff. I wonder what he’ll use it for?

They wonder around the jungle, discover they’re on another planet (no simple two sun or multiple moon trick for this movie, there’s giant planets hanging in the sky. It looks like someone's computer desktop.) and not one person goes “holy $&^%! We’re on another planet!”. I guess they're all too badass (even the wimp, apparently).

 

There’s also a neat little homage to the original movie when they find a bunch of traps left by a dead guy. I liked it.

 

They get attacked by the predators hunting dogs, because the predators have hunting dogs. Eh, it’s their planet, I’ll go with it. And that’s how they figure out they’re being hunted. By the way, why did they freak out about the dogs. “Your bad, but there’re worse”. They’re weird, sure, but they’re obviously animals. Having big spikes do not suddenly make them eldritch horrors or anything. It’s just confusing since they didn’t react that badly to the fact they were abducted by aliens.

Oh wait, maybe I’m mixing up the order of things. Did they see the sky before or after the dogs? Oh well, not important.

 

Mexican gets killed and used as bait but they don’t fall for it. They follow the dogs to the predator camp (is this where he gets the sword? No) and find a predator tied up. Suicide squad guy gets skewered and they find out there are three (bad) Preds.

 

Girl fills in the rest with the plot of the first movie so now the audience and the characters are all on the same page and they decide to lay traps to lure out the Preds.  We don’t see any of this though.

Next it’s night time (I thought the sun didn’t move) and after some action a Pred appears. That’s the funniest looking pre- oh, it’s a person in a Pred mask. Hi Laurence Fishburne, I heard they waste you in this move.

Laurence Fishburne brings them to an abandoned space ship (that’s where he gets the sword) and then traps them to kill them and take their stuff. Main guy makes noise to attract the Preds and Fishburne gets shot. Bye Laurence Fishburne.

They escape but Big Gun Russian gets killed, taking one of the Preds with him. And we establish that Wimp is a prick, cementing the conclusion that he’s a serial killer and practically guaranteeing he’ll turn on one of the others, most likely the Girl.

 

Convict gets stabity on a Pred before getting killed allowing the others to escape and the Pred performs a Fatality on him by ripping out his spine and skull. Yakuza has his showdown with his Pred and they both go down. So now we’re left with Girl, Guy and Wimp trying to free the captured Pred so he can pilot the Pred’s ship and they can go home.

 

Wimp gets injured and Main Guy goes off on his own because Girl won’t leave Wimp behind. Wimp and Girl get captured while Guy frees good Pred. Good Pred programs the ship for earth and other Pred come back. Guy runs for ship and Preds fight.

Thankfully the Predator Vs Predator fight isn’t too long. They never would have been able to make it epic enough to hold the audiences interest so the good Pred gets killed fairly quick. Then the Pred blows up the ship that’s taking off and you realise you’re suppose to think Main Guy was on it.

 

We then have the ‘wimp is a serial killer’ revel when he pokes Girl with the scalpel of paralysing stuff (see, it came up near the end of the movie. Aren’t you glad you paid attention) but Main Guy come back to save the day. I did like the bit they did with the cover-self-with-mud-to-hid-heat-signature call back along with the more sensible light-everything-on-fire-to-hid-heat-signature thing. All we're really waiting for now is will movie surprise us and kill the other two when they somehow beat the Predator. No. Movie ends with a new batch being dropped in as Main Guy declares he wants off this planet.

 

I can see where some people could complain about it but nothing pissed me off, so:

Not a bad movie, I liked it. Well done.