The Predator (Shane Black)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb / Wiki

[Stay Puft]

You at TIFF?

I sort of enjoyed it as it was going, but less and less so as it approached the finish line. And then, in retrospect... did any of that even make sense? What the hell was the Predator trying to do here? I actually liked the tone Shane Black was going for, could appreciate Predator as an action-comedy, but thought it was largely a mess in the edit; and it commits the sin of coming up with answers for questions that didn't need them.

[Henry Gale]

I am!

And I enjoyed it quite a bit as a throwback action comedy and a Shane Black movie than a Predator movie,though I think it delivers those sort of monster and horror thrills when it wants to too, it's just weird that that aspect of it is the afterthought.

Laughed a lot, smiled a bunch, winced at gory bits, and it was my first movie of TIFF (and my first-ever Midnight Madness, no less!), so very few complaints, even if I don't think the film is especially exceptional. It is very solid and pretty hilarious and that's more than most blockbusters in summers like this past one can say.

[transmogrifier]

Holy shit this came out in wide release in Korea last Wednesday but I was too busy to see it, so thought I’d catch it this weekend - there are only 6 theaters in the country still showing it, and only one weekend showing listed anywhere in Seoul. This thing bombed HARD.

[Dukefrukem]

Not sorry that I kinda loved this. Absolutely am a sucker for these kinds of ensemble casts e.g. Riddick, Hateful 8, the Thing- The thing about this movie, is it is relentless. It is the fastest moving, quickest paced film I think I've ever seen. There is no downtime, there is no time for the audience to even react to the exposition. I thought the action was perfectly fine and fun, the dialog was a bit iffy at times (Olivia Munn's one beautiful motherfucka line), the premise was a bit odd and overly complicated. It's overly complicated because at this point in the Predator mythology, there are multiple spaceships and predators running around in the open, and yet we are somehow to still believe there is this government conspiracy to keep it all under wraps and kill everyone who sees a Predator. Why exactly? A 10 year old kid just blew up a house.I think it's a bit late for this kind of cover-up. Where are all the local authorities? Regardless, I had fun with it. The CGI blood was sad to see. Olivia Munn was actually pretty convincing as a doctor! Imagine that.

[Mal]

Wow, this movie is fucking hideous to look at and terribly edited- but somehow there's enough body parts being ripped and sliced in insane ways that I dug it. Trevante Rhodes, Boyd Holbrook, and Olivia Munn were pretty good- the script, eh, its fine but doesn't really do anything unique. My official take is that its the best straight-to-dvd movie ever made.

[Wryan]

What was that note left to the kid from his mom about? Keep the house clean or I'll cut you? That's...a weird thing to say to your autistic child, even if it's like some "cute" family inside joke. At first I thought it was from an older sister, which would have made more sense. But nope, signed mom. The fuck? Is that supposed to be edgy humor that just missed by a country mile? Weird.

[Dukefrukem]

What was that note left to the kid from his mom about? Keep the house clean or I'll cut you? That's...a weird thing to say to your autistic child, even if it's like some "cute" family inside joke. At first I thought it was from an older sister, which would have made more sense. But nope, signed mom. The fuck? Is that supposed to be edgy humor that just missed by a country mile? Weird.

HAHA yeh I forgot about that. Such a weird thing to put into a movie.

[Mal]

Yeah that note was fuuucked.

[Grouchy]

terribly edited

This is my main take away from the film. It's poorly edited to a fault - the exposition has no time to sink in, the growing relationships between main characters are an afterthought and the extended action sequence that is the final third doesn't make spatial sense a lot of the time. Recently, having seen Solo and this, I'm beginning to get a bit pissed. Here are well established and beloved franchises in need of a resurrection by Hollywood studios that have gargantual amounts of money and resources at their disposal. If you can't deliver a good movie about the coming of age of a space bounty hounter named Han Solo or a bunch of military rejects finding a Predator... you don't really deserve a second chance at it. The worst Clint Eastwood or John Wayne vehicles from the 1970s are well made movies.

This being said, Shane Black is basically a comedy writer and there were plenty of funny scenes in the movie. But it wasted its cast. Theon Greyjoy and Thomas Jane were awesome in their roles, but the film didn't take time to give those characters some dramatic relevance.

[Skitch]

So uh...this was a film. I believe this film was missing several reels. And it sure as shit shouldve been missing the last scene.

[Henry Gale]

So uh...this was a film. I believe this film was missing several reels. And it sure as shit shouldve been missing the last scene.

Scene is definitely bad and feels incredibly tacked on by the studio for a cliffhanger of sorts, but given that feeling it had, did it cross anyone else's mind that Fox would've tried to orchestrate some clunky universe-building and out out that space capsule would come Fassbender's David from Prometheus and Covenant?

But nah, it was just a shinier Predator suit..