"The" Predator (2018) - good stuff

Anybody watch this yet? I've liked the Predator series since I was a kid. The first is a fuckin' Schwarzenegger movie where he fights a goddamn alien in the jungle. How cool is that? Part 2 is a decent take where the location moves to the city, then we have those shitty AVP movies...

When I first saw AVP, I was really disappointed with it. They didn't put any effort into the story for that one. They had nothing new to say, and were mostly trying to cash-in on the crossover aspects of Freddy vs Jason, which came out a year earlier. Suffice to say, they failed miserably, and those two movies are generally not considered canon, because the timelines contradict themselves. Most notably because of Prometheus, setting the creation of the Aliens in the future, whereas the AVP movies had them around for hundreds of years before our time. Not that this would matter to a true fan, who can force the pieces to fit with imaginative and other media lore, but I digress...

My point is that the AVP movies are kinda shit. In retrospect, they're at least somewhat entertaining, and I'll give them that. AVP2 is arguably better, but it suffers from the unfortunate bad lighting, as everything in that movie is literally too dark to see.

Then, in 2010, Robert Rodriguez produced Nimrod Antal's "Predators", which is a "reboot" that focuses on a lot of the aspects of the original Predator film, in which a group of mercenaries have to fight predator(s). It's a cool sequel, featuring one of the coolest actors of all time... Walton Goggins. But again, I digress... now, it's time to talk about... THE Predator!


Shane Black, who co-wrote the original and played "Hawkins" in it, writes and directs this sequel, and he was firm on making this an R-rated romp. He gets it. Fortunatley, the infamous sex offender's cut scene didn't hinder the plot, because the movie was easy enough to understand. If anything, it adds a good amount to the Predator mythology.

Shane didn't want to do a remake/reboot. He wanted this to be a sequel, and he even got Jake Busey to play Gary Busey's character (from part 2)'s son. They reference the events of the first movie (filmed/set in 1987) and the second movie (set in 1997), and understandably, they aren't quite aware of the events of "Predators". 🙄

So again, we have military-trained outcasts, who are pitted up against a big fucking predator. They're all pretty decent characters, because Shane Black is a bad-ass and knows how to make cool movies. We got Tom Jane as a guy with tourrettes, and he's got a love/hate relationship with Keegan Michael Keyes, who's a pretty fuckin' funny guy if you didn't know. All the side characters are alright, as well as the main dude Boyd Holbrook (from "Logan"), who's got to steer the premise with his autistic son, who inadvertantly activates this whole mess by understanding the patterns and shit from the predator tech's interface.

A lot of reviews say this movie is kind of a mess. I can kind of agree, but I thought it was a fun ride, and the chaotic nature of it didn't bother me at all. I think it flowed well enough.

Like most Predator sequels, they wanted Arnold to cameo in some capacity, but Arnold wont do it unless he's got a big role. He doesn't want to be a side character or a cameo, but he admits that he'd do more predator if it was a worthwhile part. Why the hell has he never done another Predator movie?!

I liked it. Talk about Predator. Or don't.