Predators

It's pretty clear with this film that producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimród Antal set out to do two things. The first was to pay tribute to one of the best action movies of the 80s. The second was to be the only film since the original featuring the titular antagonists to actually be entertaining. It mostly succeeded on both fronts. It's not a great movie, and it honestly handcuffs itself quite a bit by adhering so steadfastly to the story beats set in place by Predator, but it does succeed by combining science fiction, action, and a bit of horror in a similar way. There's nothing terribly original or surprising about the movie, but it has a few likable characters, some brutal and exciting action scenes, and some solid fan service without overdoing it.

There have been comparisons made between Predators and Aliens, both sequels to classic monster movies that up the stakes, which is obviously something they were going for. That's pretty much where the similarities end for me, though. It points to the difference between truly great sequels and merely solidly entertaining ones like this. Anything Predators and Aliens have in common is something that the Predator already did, excepting multiple antagonists. Aliens changed the game by following up a tense, claustrophobic thriller with bombastic large scale action, while Predators just copies Predator with more blood and special effects. It's an approach that works well enough, but it makes any parallels with superior movies seem hollow.

Anyway, the movie itself. It kicks off with a bang as the heroes are forcefully introduced to the wilderness and continues in a fairly wonderful slow burn as they try to figure out where they are and why they were picked. The danger ratchets up slowly, before they eventually discover what they're really up against, and after a slight detour involving a pretty great scene of exposition where everything is laid out by a wonderfully unhinged Laurence Fishburne, it starts to get really violent. I don't think the balls-out violence of the second half is as effective as the slow burn of the first, but I guess I went to see the movie for some Predator violence after all, so I can't complain that much. The mix of characters adds some fun and humor to what could have been a pretty flat script, and Adrien Brody somehow pulls off the gruff loner act without looking like a fool. That was key, because while he's no Dutch, he does manage to keep the movie going as the tough hero, something I wasn't really expecting to see him do quite so well. A lot of the cast is recognizable, including Rodriguez' cousin Danny Trejo as an early victim, Topher Grace as a doctor who doesn't seem to belong, and Walton Goggins from The Shield as a version of his completely trashy persona that's on the wrong side of the law this time.

So anyway, the gang of survivors gets slowly whittled down over time by their hunters, before the telegraphed climactic conclusion where the shirts come off in favor of mud as the humans make their last stand. It's a pretty predictable movie, which is one of the reasons its reliance on reminding you of why Predator was awesome makes for a slightly less impressive final product. Maybe that was necessary though, because the other movies with predators in them tried to take them to difference places or situations and it just didn't work out. It's interesting how the film makes it clear that it's in the same universe as the original, yet completely ignores anything else that may or may not have happened. It seems like a genuine attempt to make the series relevant again after the pandering yet generally terrible crossovers with that other alien series, and I'd be interested in seeing more of what they can do even if the conclusion and ending weren't nearly as strong as the beginning. There were some issues with the foundation of the premise and a few odd directorial choices here and there, but it was mostly a fun time at the movies.

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

I don't remember a lot about the first movie, other than it being mostly crap, managing to screw with the established continuity for both franchises it involves, and ending with an alien fetus inside a predator. Oh my! That's pretty much where the sequel picks up - a hybrid between the two emerges, messes up the ship kills the other predators, and lands (in a very crashing sort of way) on Earth, where it and some face huggers (Which I guess were on the ship because the predators were studying them? I don't care enough to remember or look it up) proceed to wreak havoc on a small town in the United States. I won't say AVPR is anything close to a good movie, but I did enjoy it more than the first, which seems to be an uncommon sentiment. It's sort of the typical slasher set-up, unlike what we've really seen in either series previously, as it establishes a handful of interconnected and not terribly interesting characters, and then picks them off gradually in increasingly gruesome ways. Not usually my cup of tea, but it's a formula that I guess works and doesn't seem that out of place with the idea of putting either of these sci-fi killers in that setting.

Of course... those killers shouldn't be in that setting in the first place. The predator in the movie is a badass cleaner who comes in to cover up the chaos caused by the incident in the beginning. He doesn't do a very good job of it, as before long the entire town is overrun with aliens and the government has to call in the big guns. But why do they care about the cover up in the first place? They're hunters, not galactic police men. It just leads to another annoying predator who kills everyone he comes across, which is less compelling than the original characterization. Sorry to spoil this crappy movie that you don't care about the plot of, but there's a tie-in at the end to the Weyland-Yutani corporation of the Alien movies, supposing that predator technology helped humans eventually get out into space in a serious way in the first place. Um, okay... so why do they still use flamethrowers and bullets in the future if they have a predator's energy-whatever gun, and how come the company claims to have no recorded cases of the aliens previously in the future? The entire point of the Nostromo's diversion was to get a living sample of one of the creatures, but we're supposed to think it took them that long to get one when there was an outbreak of them ON EARTH during our time? They should have just made their movie with adequately gory deaths and fan-pleasing homages instead of trying to get cute and tying it all together. Also, the Predalien looks too much like the predator. Aliens from humans don't look nearly that human. Oh well.

Predator 2

I think the original film is one of the best action movies of the 80s, but I wasn't a big fan of the series' step into the 90s. It takes place in Los Angeles in the then-future of 1997, and replaces the terminator and the jungle environment with city streets and a guy who is perpetually too old for this shit. It's from that dated style of film where gratuitous blood and violence is obviously better than the alternative and a swear word that we haven't heard in four minutes is as clever as it needs to be. The first movie had some corny bits - "stick around!" comes to mind - but it somehow felt different. The predator itself was a deadly enemy to be feared, and the guys it was hunting down were serious, dedicated men. In Predator 2, Danny Glover sneaks up behind gang members in a shootout with the cops in the middle of the street during the day and shouts "Hey, assholes" anyway so he can see the looks on their faces when he mows them down. He's surrounded by as cliched a group of cops as you can find, and this is in the middle of the period where Bill Paxton had the market on over-loud obnoxious douches absolutely cornered. The police angle did absolutely nothing for me, and unfortunately a lot of the movie hinges on it.

The predator in the first film had a goal - he was on a hunt, collecting the trophies of one of the best fighting forces on Earth. In this movie any actual goal either doesn't exist or is so unapparent as to be trivial. It just goes around killing anyone it wants to - mostly those at least brandishing weapons, yes, but there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just pointless, going around killing while the police futilely try to track it down. Later a special team investigating the creature and trying to acquire its technology - a team surprisingly willing to divulge its secrets to any cop tenacious enough to confront them say two or three times - tries to take it down in a warehouse, and from there is a prolonged, poorly paced sequence of events where Glover follows it around as the two play cat and also-cat. The film lurches to a conclusion promising a sequel that never really came, and ties up a truly disappointing successor to a pretty darn good movie. Just like with Alien, the first half of the series is all you need to see.