ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

From Wikipedia comes this info about the new film.
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The Predator (also known as Predator 4)[2] is an upcoming American science fiction action horror film directed by Shane Black and written by Black and Fred Dekker. It is the fourth (chronologically, the third) installment in the Predator film series, set to take place between Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010).

A young boy accidentally triggers the Predators to return to Earth. The universe’s most lethal hunters have genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species. Only a crew of former soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can stop the hunters before anybody becomes their prey.

______________ THE PREDATOR Trailer (2018)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

A new trailer has arrived!


____________ THE PREDATOR Official Trailer #2


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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[orzel-w]

Written by "Black and Dekker"??
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Bud Brewster]

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I loved the quick, slam-bang opening scene in space. Intriguing. All the FX of the spaceships are great. But the plot is riddle with questionable elements that make the viewer scratch his head and think, “Why the hell did they do THAT?”

Here's a few examples.

Beware of * * * * * * * * SPOILERS!! * * * * * * * *

The Predators crash lands and promptly leaves it’s lifepod, kills one of the three soldiers, ties it by the feet, and drops it down from a tree limb in front of the other two soldiers. Then it stupidly walks toward the other two soldiers, exposing itself despite, being in a less-than perfect stealth mode.





The soldier — who stupidly stuck his arm inside the Predator’s forearm gizmo without knowing what it was or what it would do — “accidentally” fires off a flying-slicing weapon that wounds the Predator (causing it to fall down unconscious, for some reason), after which the soldier makes off with a backpack containing Predator gear so he can prove the existence of aliens.

I must admit, the youngest star of the movie (Jacob Tremblay) is a great actor. His portrayal of a gifted child, along with the script and the direction, is one of the better aspects of this movie.





The casting is actually very good. Olivia Munn’s lady scientist is quite believable, and the smart kid’s mother (Yvonne Strahovski ) is lovely and lively and gutsy.







Boyd Holbrook is the kickass hero and war vet who loves his super-smart son and his hot wife from whom he’s separated, because husbands who are off fighting wars can’t keep a gal’s feet warm at night (or any other part of her for that matter).





The dialog ranges from very good to absolutely dreadful — depending on which scene you’re watching. The entire scene of wisecracking veterans riding in a prison bus is painfully dumb. They crack unfunny jokes, spout dirty words randomly, and cackle like idiots on laughing gas.

There was enough intelligence in this movie to make me want to understand all the good parts, despite the bad parts. I’ve watched the movie twice, but I still don’t know how wacky combat guys just happened to team up with the hero and become a team of Predator-fighting comic-relief characters. It’s plum inexplicable, I tell ya!

It’s as if two different scriptwriters (one talented, one a hack) wrote sections of the script and then the director just shuffled the pages together.

Actually the script WAS written by two people, Shane Black (who is also the director) and Fred Dekker. That’s right . . . the script was written by Black & Dekker. Funny, eh?

Admittedly the “bus scene” redeems itself to some degree when we realize that the wisecracking G.I.’s are not just hyperactive knuckleheads trading insults. They turn into a clever team who trick the guards on the bus into thinking they’ve started attacking each other, and this lures the guards back into the prison compartment where they're overpowered.

From this point on, the hero and this psuedo A-Team unite to battle the threat of the alien menace. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it isn’t entirely unsuccessful.

The one thing this movie does that I admire is to give the Predator race a depth and complexity they’ve badly needed since the first movie came out. I’ve never been happy with the idea that these savage, bloodthirsty aliens possess advanced technology. Obviously the entire race can’t be composed entirely of vicious “sport hunters” who get their jollies by killing intelligent beings!





There’s got to be scientists, engineers, technicians, and all the other members of a stable society!

This movie at least shows us that the aliens have a plan to alter their physiology by combining their own DNA with that of other species so that they can become . . . even MORE vicious “sport hunters” who get their jollies by killing intelligent beings.

Okay, that’s not the part I really liked, but the alien who escapes from his own violent, single-minded society and comes to Earth has brought a gift for mankind. We don’t find out what this gift is until the very end, but it turns out to be hi-tech suit that makes human’s tough enough to kill Predators!

Okay, THAT’S the part I do really like!

The idea that there’s a rogue faction of the Predator species who rebels against their brutal culture and wants to help humans defend themselves is pretty damn good.

After understanding the story better and watching the movie for the second time, I noticed that even though the first predator came to Earth so it could deliver the anti-Predator armor, it slaughtered the scientists and doctors in the facility where it had been imprisoned during its escape.





And yet it did pause and gaze down at a terrified Olivia Munn, the lady scientist, and then walk out, sparing her. The Predator seemed to know that she represented the kind of human it had come to save.





I think the problem with this movie is that it packed the plot with too much slam-bang action and didn’t include the kind of calm, thoughtful scenes which explained the story, the way James Cameron did in movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

In other words, the plot of this movie has some very intelligent concepts, but director Shane Black buried them amidst the numerous action scenes he mistakenly thought the film needed to be successful.

The YouTube video below explains some the ideas I described above, and the attractive lady host says that if the movie had been successful, we might have gotten sequels based on it.

Sadly, since it was NOT successful . . . we won’t.


______________ The Predator Ending Explained


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Predator_(film) just before the production section.

The Predators were portrayed in-suit and via motion capture by stuntmen Brian A. Prince and Kyle Strauts.

Actress Françoise Yip, who briefly appears as Cullen, an operative of "Project Stargazer", previously appeared in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem as Ms. Yutani.

Stuntwoman Breanna Watkins, in scenes that were filmed but not used, portrayed Ellen Ripley in one alternate ending, and an adult Rebecca "Newt" Jorden in a second alternate ending, meant to tie in to the Alien franchise in which those characters first appeared.

Edward James Olmos had a supporting role as a military general, but his scenes were cut due to time constraints.
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Bud Brewster]

[The Spike]

The hopes were high for this latest Predator rebirth, not because Shane Black starred in the great first Predator film, so therefore he surely must care about the project? But because he's an excellent writer and director. Shane Black can count Lethal Weapon(S), The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight on his CV, he was the man who put Iron Man back on track after the sag of part 2. Plus he is the creator of two of the best buddy buddy neo-noirs this millennium (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang/The Nice Guys), So how come The Predator stinks of lazy cash cow manure?

Plot in a nutshell sees the universe's most lethal hunters unleashed on Earth due to the meddling of a soldiers kid and some nosey scientist types. The fate of mankind rests with a group of damaged ex-soldiers and a rather cheesed off female scientist.

We have a rehash mishmash of what we have seen before in Predator 87 and Predators 2010. A group dynamic fighting a seemingly invincible foe. The subsequent science aspects such as human DNA inference/reasoning etc never really add up to much, serving only for a bunch of standard actors shouting, swearing and spouting hopelessly weak jokes and series re-treads. When you think the pic is about to up a gear, get rivetingly dramatic, a poor slice of humour comes our way either by vocal spillage or visual drivel (puppy pet Predator dog, really?). There's a bunch of plot threads that just dangle never to be pulled (PTSD/our hero's family strife et al), and the Predators loose on Earth - with different agendas - are confusingly shifted about by a screenplay not sure where it wants to land.

Plus points? Well the cinematography is superb (Larry Fong), and you can't fault this for action quotas, there's plenty of it and it's bloody (both red and green type). The score is the traditional one we had from Alan Silvestri back in the 87 film, in fact it hardly deviates from it and yet Henry Jackman gets the credit. Of course some of the jokes will work for some folk (I would be lying if I said a Whoopi Goldberg gag didn't make me laugh), but the terror has gone, these Predators are no longer scary creatures. This reeks of a troubled production going hand in hand with a cash cow that not only narratively adds up to nothing really, but of a franchise death knell. Shame. 3.5/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[tmlindsey]

We just watched this Friday night. I'm not a particular Predator fan, but my wife likes Predator and Predators a lot, and we both thought this one was a one-and-done movie. She thought it was bad, I thought it was terrible.

It has decent enough action scenes, but also mostly unlikable characters and very poor story structure. Their understanding of autism is also questionable, to say the least.

We'd be curious to see the original version before all of the changes were made, which resulted in the removal of Edward James Olmos' character and changed the plot.

A pretty good article about the changes can be read here for anyone who doesn't know: https://screenrant.com/predator-movie-reshoots-changes-shane-black-fox/
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"