[GROANING]
[CLICKING]
The original Predator is a master class in filmmaking.
It ratchets up the suspense and horror with every scene.
The central narrative mechanic at the heart of the film
is a mystery.
We are constantly trying to answer
the questions like, why is this creature hunting
these soldiers?
And what does it want out of this situation?
However, once the franchise answered those questions,
we're all asking something else.
Why isn't Predator scary anymore?
Yah!
Stick around.
Directed by John McTiernan with a script
from John and Jim Thomas, Predator
was released in the action boom of the late '80s.
It told the story of an elite group of soldiers played
by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura
and Shane Black, amongst others who
seem to meet their match in an unstoppable force haunting them
through a South American jungle.
What is it?
There's something in those trees.
But Predator differentiated itself from other men
blasting guns at things movies by injecting itself
with a sense of horror and dread.
Something explicitly demanded by star Schwarzenegger
in order to get him to play our hero Dutch.
His signing on boosted the moderate budget up
to around $15 million.
So much of this movie pulls on traditional horror tropes,
albeit twisted into a specific type of weird war story.
The jungle landscape works as a haunted house of sorts.
Strange noises and paths that double back on themselves.
A tension that ratchets against our chest as each impossibly
powerful soldier is picked off brutally and without reason.
When the killer, are titular Predator, often referred
to in the extended media as the Yautja, is finally revealed,
the tension turns to horror and the audience is left to wonder,
why is this happening?
Horror writers have always utilized the unknown
as a central tool in crafting a story.
As a people, we feel this desire to know or comprehend.
And Predator refuses to give those audiences those answers
until its final act.
You're one ugly motherfucker.
[ROARS]
The answer to all these questions
flows back to a simple point, the Predator
is an alien from a species that hunts adversaries for sport.
Once we, the audience, know this, the tension is released
and the credits roll.
The Predator is a perfect horror story.
It's atmospheric, brooding and has
an end that sheds light on all the motivations
of its central antagonist.
So if you were going to tell more stories in this universe,
you'd have to think of a new way forward, right?
You'd have to, in many ways, reinvent the narrative reel.
You need new questions to entice the audience with.
What the hell are you?
The sequels that Fox produced decided to just ask
the same questions again.
After the success of Predator, 20th Century Fox
asked the Thomas's for sequel ideas.
Of the sixth they proposed, the idea of the Predator stalking--
and we're using strong air quotes here--
an urban jungle was chosen.
Predator 2 was released in 1990, this time,
helmed by Nightmare on Elm Street Dream Child director
Stephen Hopkins, which on paper, seems like a good fit
until you realize the horror of Nightmare on Elm Street
doesn't exactly line up with what
made Predator so intimidating.
Elm Street's antagonist, Freddie Krueger, is, at his heart,
a showman.
Someone to carry the audience along,
often breaking the fourth wall through an almost
funhouse spectacle of horror.
But the Predator's intimidation lies in their silence.
Barely a word is muttered, let alone directly to us.
And Hopkins just doesn't seem to have
a clear handle on the tone.
He's said since the film's release
that he was young and just wanted
everything bigger and bloodier.
But Predator worked as a small albeit violent haunted house.
Uncertainty around every hill and tree trunk,
a folk horror-ish terror in broad daylight.
The key conceit of Predator's mystery, the why is also gone.
We, as an audience and fans of the first movie,
know this is a sport hunt.
We are left to watch the main character and bright spot
of the movie, LAPD officer Mike Harrigan
played deftly by Danny Glover, work
through a riddle we already know.
And as Hopkins insists on constantly pulling us away
to focus on the Predator's gore, there's
no time for us to empathize with Harrigan
or why this means so much to him other than the surface level,
he's a cop who stops crime.
OK, who's next?
While there were the Aliens Versus Predators
movies in 2004 and 2007, we wouldn't see a full Predator
return until Predators in 2010.
While initially conceived by Robert Rodriguez in 1994
while he worked on Desperado, the movie
was shelved as the budget grew.
But after AvP's moderate success,
Fox brought back Rodriguez to return to his initial idea.
While too busy with other commitments,
Rodriguez agreed to produce, keeping it
within his Troublemaker Studios to keep
a close eye on production.
Rodriguez personally hired Nimrod Antal,
a Hungarian director known for the moderately successful
Vacancy.
Predators, a reference to James Cameron's Aliens,
Rodriguez's script takes us back to the jungle.
Only now, it's the jungle of an alien planet.
And since we've seen these movies before,
we already know this alien jungle is a hunting ground.
One of the first problems with the script
is there is so much tell instead of show.
This planet is a game preserve and we're the game.
When the original Predator opened,
we followed Dutch and his unit on a mission.
We see their success and skill, which
makes it so much more impactful when the Predator easily
overcomes the soldiers one by one.
With Predators though, it's more bragging.
Our main tells each other and us who they are.
You IDF?
Yeah.
You in the service?
Not exactly.
Adrien Brody plays the reluctant leader and mercenary, Royce.
Alice Braga is given the traditional peacekeeper role
as Isabelle.
And the almost always amazing Walton Goggins
is sorely underused as a run of the mill psychopath.
Topher Grace plays both into and against type
as a meakish outsider revealed to be a serial killer.
It's a smart attempt playing on the word predator
that still feels like it falls short.
You can see me for what I really am.
See back home, I'm a murder.
And unfortunately, Predators never finds its groove
within the terror.
Without the mystery to drive us along,
we're left with characters the title
itself told us are bad people.
And there's a story to tell there.
Should we be cheering on the Yautja?
Do we want them to succeed over our titular predators?
The movie never leans into the idea
enough to question ourselves.
Where Predators really tries to differentiate
itself is in its worldbuilding.
Not only are we seeing the Predator's-- for lack
of a better word-- game reserve, we also learn that several
factions are infighting and using our hunted humans
as points of pride.
Which again, is just the least scary or tense inducing idea.
Do we really want to see our Yautja bickering and competing
with one another?
Please stop doing that.
In 2014, Fox announced former co-star of Predator Shane Black
now enjoying a successful career as writer director of Kiss Kiss
Bang Bang and The Nice Guys and others
would bring Predator back to the cultural zeitgeist
with The Predator.
I know, the titles get confusing and we haven't even
gotten to the plot yet.
Much of the plot revolves around Army Ranger Quinn McKenna
portrayed plainly by Boyd Holbrook
as he attempts to prove the existence of Yautja
after an encounter left his unit killed.
You could call it a spiritual successor
to the original movie.
A sort of fanfic of what if Dutch came back with proof.
Black has stated the original intent of the film
was to flesh out who the Yautja are.
The initial idea was that they were in search of a new planet
to populate as their world dies.
Their plan of splicing DNA with their prey
was to acclimate their species to live on Earth in order
to expand, which puts them at odds with other predators,
I guess.
What?
Are they hunting each other now?
What we're left with is a third act
that seems cut from another film and stitched
on to an assortment of loose ideas.
And while Black is a gifted writer and director,
his wheelhouse has never been terror.
He himself has said his strong suit is the unexpected.
Using our familiarity with tropes to
defy our expectations.
And that was an exciting idea, until we saw the movie.
While we kept waiting for some sort of horror
to poke out of the rat-a-tat dialogue,
there was nothing there.
No tension or suspense, just a few jump scares
and a lot of blood.
And again, there is the complete absence of horror or tension.
Everything OK back there?
The Predator works more as a franchise entry point
to a sci-fi universe we just aren't interested in.
The Predator takes the weakest bits
of Predator 2 and Predators and slaps a code of clever writing
over it.
The problem is, it still retains the shoddy foundation
of each sequel.
We have the unnecessary worldbuilding,
the in-fighting amongst Predators,
the two-dimensional characters, but there's
none of the suspense we need to invest in the franchise.
You ain't afraid of no man.
There's something out there waiting for us
and it ain't no man.
Maybe the sequel's filmmakers realized the comfort
in focusing on the action and over-the-top muscles.
There's a warmth there, I get it.
But it's not what made Predator scary.
Hitchcock once said, there is no horror in the bang,
only in the anticipation of it.
I can't think of a better example
than that of a strange clicking in the forest, a somewhat
familiar and still alien reticle.
All of it just out of our understanding.
So what do you think?
Will Predator Prey make us the hunted again?
Will we be terrified one more time of what's
just beyond the tree line?
Let us in the comments below.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]