When Hollywood
wants to label you as stupid, they don’t try to be subtle.
The Predator is a movie that reeks of, “the audience won’t mind if we just
slip in some impossible, stupid ideas here and there.”
It’s an action movie with no class. The Predator is a science fiction
action comedy and the fourth movie in the series (not counting the Alien
vs. Predator crossovers).
This version of
the Predator series is not the best. After the first Predator movie
with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the second
with Danny Glover, the last one
and this one are just reaching.
The first had a good story attached, the second was all-around violence, while
the last one and this one are caught in-between what was meant to be good.
The movie’s plot
goes like this: in Mexico, an army ranger sniper named Quinn and his team are
on a hostage retrieval mission. There, they’re attacked by the Predator (an
alien race of hunters). Quinn incapacitates the Predator, steals its armor, and
mails it to his home. The Predator is then captured and placed in a secret
base.
Here’s where
something stupid happens. Imagine this scenario: a woman who happens to be some
kind of genetic scientist is in a secret medical facility with a sedated alien.
The alien breaks free, kills everyone in sight—except her, because she’s
cowering in the corner, naked. The alien leaves, the lady gets dressed, picks
up a tranquilizer gun, and starts chasing the alien. Why is she chasing
something that just killed a dozen people right in front of her?
From that point on, I knew this movie wants you to suspend all reason.
It then
complicates things by changing the Predator’s backstory as we knew it. We find
out that the Predators we’re used to seeing in the previous movies are just
hybrids, and there are more advanced ones.
What Quinn sent
home was decoded by his autistic son, and the alien who escaped was after it.
The more advanced Predators were also after the missing gear Quinn stole, and
we have an army that seems confused about whose side they’re on.
You see, they speculate that the Predator they found was a deserter who wanted
to help them defeat the bigger ones.
Question for the writers of this film: why would the army sedate and plan to
experiment on their supposed savior?
The movie
doesn’t try to improve on the mess it creates—it just dives right into it with
no better ideas in mind.
I won’t be recommending this movie to anyone. Just don’t bother.
The movie is directed by Shane Black, a name we’re familiar with, who was behind Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout (1991), and The Nice Guys (2016).
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