- I only saw the original Predator for the first time on Wednesday night, so it was pretty fresh in my mind and made all the little references to the original scattered all over this sequel much more enjoyable.
- On the other hand, I did not love the standard one upmanship that is required for a sequel, where instead of one predator creature we now have many, and where we had one creature design in the first one we now have to have a new-and-improved even more bad ass creature design. This doesn’t raise the stakes for me as a viewer, although of course I’m forced to concede that my expectations of something this ridiculous are possibly not in line with those of the intended audience.
- Topher Grace’s story arc was phenomenally stupid. He was fine when his role was limited to being the voice of the audience, but since I had been waiting for him to do something Evil™ ever since he had his prolonged scene with the scalpel and the Plant of Extreme Poisonous Doom, I was pretty bored with what ended up happening.
- I kind of died a little when they revealed they were on another planet all together. Their reaction was also a little underwhelming given that space travel for non-astronauts is not commonplace in 2010 and that the odds of you getting off the planet for any reason are practically non-existent. Freak the hell out, people!
- I am going to go out on a limb and assume that was a Hatori Hanzo sword in name, and possibly the same literal sword used in Kill Bill and Sin City.
- I love it when there is a huge build-up to a character revealing their name and then you find out it’s something completely terrible. Royce. ROYCE. Oh god. I wish his name had been Jeff. Jeff is my go-to douchey name, and it really would have made the scene for me if his name had been Jeff. Go big or go home!
- Adrien Brody was hilariously husky and somewhat badass. The whole movie seemed to be building to his hilarious shirtless, mud-covered romp through the woods. I did like the fire perimeter he created, though, which I believe I’ve mentioned before is one of my favourite battle tactics.
- I enjoyed the use of “Long Tall Sally” over the closing credits given its usage in the original film.
- Don’t people get sick of killing off the non-white characters first?
- Speaking of Danny Trejo: saw the Machete trailer before this and I was significantly underwhelmed. It has absolutely none of the awesome that was in the fake version that spawned the movie in the first place. Ugh. Maybe it was just poorly put together because god knows this is not the movie I hoped I’d be getting when I saw this before Grindhouse four years ago.
- Apologies if this review is lacklustre; I saw it last Thursday but didn’t get around to writing it now on account of spending the weekend visiting family.
Predators
Lacks the original’s dated sense of cheesy action, and that’s not a good thing.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A group of elite warriors are hunted by members of a merciless alien race known as Predators.
No apologies required – great review, as usual!
2. Since we agree that one-upmanship is standard for a movie of this type, what else could the producers have done? I suppose they could have been a bit more creative with their one-upmanship, and not gone with the first, most obvious thing that popped into their heads.
3. You knew Topher was evil? Actually, in hindsight, it totally makes sense. I was thinking they brought him along to keep the humans alive longer, being a doctor and all. I was caught off-guard by what ended up happening, thought it was a nice twist! Clearly your movie clairvoyance is superior to mine…
Only 2 stars? This movie only achieved 40% of perfection? Yeah, I guess that’s about right. Still, If you had experienced the badness of some of its Predecessors, maybe you would not judge quite as harshly…
I’m kind of afraid of Machete myself.
Great review! I was really disappointed with Predators myself even though so many people enjoyed it. Whatever made the original awesome simply weren’t in this movie. It was a 5/10 for me…