The Predator (2018)

January 16, 2024 5:42 PM

When a young boy accidentally triggers the universe's most lethal hunters' return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled scientist can prevent the end of the human race. This is the one you power through between Predators and Prey.

Part of the Great Predawatch of 2024 with me and Kitteh; coming just before Prey and knowing Prey is coming, it's kind of hard to sit through this one.

I'm a Shane Black fan, I even liked Iron Man 3 and think Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the apex of comedy-action, but this just never felt like it cohered. Some good action, a few tense moments, a few laughs, but held together by a lot of idiotball and wild coincidences to drive the plot, a villain that never seems to have much to do, and a busload of "fun-crazy" people.

It's hard to articulate it, but it's like the movie Shane Black would have written if he'd been hired to write Predator back in '87 (instead of, weirdly, being in it), with no real attempt to bring it up to more modern film-writing and -making snuff.

And by those standards, it kind of makes a weird sense. After all, this packs in two '80s action tropes: "insane people are your wacky friends," and "autism is magic". It has a blandly good-looking white-guy star, a child in peril, a geeky scientist (played by a Busey, no less), heavy armament...

Weirdly flabby, kinda dumb, jokey but not always good jokey, but maybe it's exactly the movie Shane Black wanted to make? His own divergent-timeline '87 Predator.

It wasn't great, and I don't think I'd want to watch it again, but maybe it succeeds on its own terms? I don't know.

posted by Shepherd (6 comments total)

The protagonist is played by Boyd Holbrook, who also played Pierce (the cyborg who is hunting Laura) in Logan, and he is soooo much more fun in that film. Really, it's got a great cast who have all done better stuff elsewhere; even Jake Busey had the original Starship Troopers.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:56 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

Sterling K. Brown is the one bright spot I remember from this movie. He is never not good, but he especially stood out here in the villain role. Both he and his character seem to be having a good time and every time he's on screen I feel the movie get a little more energy.
posted by slimepuppy at 12:58 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]

I believe Black wrote something called Shadow Company back in the early 80's about supersoldiers in the jungles of Vietnam, and that's why Silver brought him on board Predator '87 to do unofficial rewrites in the style of Shadow Company as a consolation prize since, with Predator in production, Shadow Company was never realistically going to be made. I must admit, I haven't read the Shadow Company script though.
posted by Molesome at 3:06 AM on January 17

I quite liked this movie more than Shepherd but just by a little. I like Boyd Holbrook in this and upon rewatching it, no wonder he ended up The Corinthian in The Sandman TV series. He's a bog standard generic blonde white guy but I find him watchable.

Sterling K. Brown is just having a good ole time chewing up the scenery as a villain.

Holy shit, I forgot about how much I loved Trevante Rhodes as Nebraska. He's just so good. I recalled really liking him the first time we watched this and I still feel the same.

Anyway, it's fun but not great.
posted by Kitteh at 5:19 AM on January 17

I saw this in theaters, maybe the opening weekend? A Predator movie from Shane "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" Black? Sounded promising. It wasn't great.

But, and I swear I'm not doing this as a tedious fanboy bit, it was apparently not great enough that I'd fully forgotten it existed. If you'd bothered to ask me about the chronology of the last few Predator movies before I saw this post, I would have dredged up AvP2, Predators and Prey, with nothing in between.
posted by figurant at 4:23 PM on January 18

I always found this one to be a mixed bag. Such an odd collection of bits and pieces barely held together by gum and string. I think the narrative of the PTSD soldiers is really interesting, the stuff with the kid and government secrets is bad, super predator is silly. Dumb in a non-enjoyable way for me.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:27 AM on January 19