In this age of the drive for content and to just simply make films out of anything, The Predator series has been added to that list of reboots.
The famous film series that once featured Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first film has been redesigned for a new audience, and the results that it shows is actually one of the weirdest and at times laziest films of the year.
The film revolves around several plot points which results in a very messy structure. The main point of the whole film revolves around that when the Predator arrives on earth, it is up to Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), his crew of ex-soldiers and biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) to stop the Predator and the chaos that ensues from it.
There are many points throughout the film that literally do make any sense whatsoever. There are many plot points that are mentioned just in one scene and are never brought up again. A ‘global warming’ storyline to the evolution aspect of the storyline it’s literally mentioned once and then never brought up again.
The character of Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key) is another of the weird aspects of the film. About the first half of his screen is just literally him saying jokes and about half of it works and the other half just simply falls flat on its face. It just seems like they pointed a camera on him for like an hour and got him to improve and they just took out what they felt was the best jokes.
There is also a really weird kind of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 tone problem to it in the way that they don’t know when to take the film seriously. There are scenes where you’d think they come off as serious emotional moments, but having watched with a crowd of people, the scenes just came off as weirdly comedic. In the more emotional scenes there’s the lazy dramatic music that’s almost like a nudge to the audience to ‘feel really emotional here’. Even the weird Tourette’s comedy angle for one of the characters is just bizarre.
Even the ending dramatic fight scene just feels really anti-climactic. The whole thing just comes across as a giant mess.
There is one topic that could actually explain why the film just comes across as a mess. One of the controversies about the film is that there was a scene between Munn’s character and actor Steven Wilder Striegal. The controversy here is that Striegal is a friend of the director Shane Black, but is more importantly a registered sex offender. Having just learned this, Munn went to executives of Fox Studios and the scene was removed. That’s just one area where the film could’ve been hit when it came to editing.
But there’s a better explanation for how the film comes across as a big mess, there was reshoots done to the film by Fox studios. The studio rewrote the film, which as a result changed director Shane Black’s idea for the film. This could be a better explanation for how messy the film comes across.
So despite all that, the film is actually fine oddly enough. The action scenes are easily the best part of the film. The film is one those ‘dumb’ films more or less, not that that’s a criticism of the film. It’s like watching a very entertaining car crash.
At the end of the day, despite all the messes and all the bad that is in the film, The Predator is a fine action/sci-fi film. It’s a perfect film to leave your brain at the door.
By Emmet McCabe