TIFF 2018: THE PREDATOR Review – A Disappointing Return for The Universe’s Greatest Hunter
Starring Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Tremblay, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Janes
Written by Fred Dekker, Shane Black
Directed by Shane Black
***Spoilers Ahead***
It’s no secret that John McTiernan’s Predator is one of the greatest movies of the 80’s. A brilliant display of machismo action, gratuitous violence, interesting characters, and a memorable villain all add up to a film that has rightfully earned its place in movie history as a “must-see” title for all cinema lovers. It seems such a shame that every sequel has failed to figure out the formula that made the first film so successful, a trend that now continues with Shane Black’s The Predator.
The film follows Quinn McKenna (Holbrook), a military sniper who has a run-in with a predator after its ship crashes near his mission. After he manages to be the sole survivor of the encounter, he is held by a secret group of the US government who know of the existence of the predator encounters over the years and will do anything to keep it quiet. Meanwhile, Dr. Bracket (Munn) is called in to offer her scientific expertise when the predator research team believes that the Yautja they’ve captured is a hybrid of human and predator DNA. Oh, and it turns out that the predator that attacked McKenna and his team was actually on the run from another predator, a super-sized version that is on a hunt of his own.
If what I’ve written seems convoluted, just you wait until you see the film and get a load of the rest that it has to offer. There’s way too much going on here that simply is not needed and it feels like the majority of it is done to pad an already overly long runtime. While everyone embraces their role with glee, and their dialogue is full of charmingly witty banter, the characters feel forgettable, are easily dismissed, and often engage in behavior that makes no sense. For example, Munn is a scientist who also happens to be trained in weapons and has no concern about, quite literally, jumping on the back of a predator when the situation calls for it. The problem is that none of this fits in with her extremely limited character development.
Additionally, the decision to give Jacob Tremblay’s character, Rory, Asperger’s is questionable at best, ill-advised at worst. It makes sense in the grand scheme of the story, but what they try to do with it feels almost offensively ignorant. The human/predator hybrid theory that was brought up earlier is a thread that is carried throughout the film, and it turns out that the super predator is after Rory because, get this, all the trophies that predators collect are not just for show, but they also harvest spinal fluid samples for their genetic engineering program, and Asperger’s is “the next step in human evolution”. No, I’m not joking. This is an actual part of the story. That being said, Tremblay has the greatest line in the film when he says something along the lines of “That’s reverse psychology. I can do that too. Don’t go fuck yourself.” Pure gold, kid. Pure goddamn gold.
An homage that The Predator makes to McTiernan’s original is through the music, which essentially lifts Alan Silvestri’s score. However, there’s also additional music that feels tonally and thematically different, resulting in this strange feeling that two different composers worked on the film but failed to work together.
But look, it’s not all bad. There’s a delightful amount of gore, and the winks and nods to the original film are plentiful, if not a bit on-the-nose. Still, these aren’t enough for us to overlook just how jagged and abrupt the story moves from one segment to the next. The opening jumps awkwardly from one character’s introduction to another and the ending seems to want to do everything in its power to get things over and done with as quickly as possible. Even many of the deaths are done almost dismissively, such as Sterling K. Brown’s demise, which was so quick and nonchalant that I thought I must have been mistaken in thinking he died.
Shane Black directs the film competently enough but there’s so much more that could’ve happened. To that point, there’s also so much less that should’ve been done.
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The Predator
Summary
The Predator is a genuinely fun movie, but it’s impossible to overlook the issues that plague nearly every moment. Poor story choices and strange, if not outright silly, character decisions result in an experience that will ultimately leave audiences feeling a great amount of “meh”.
Categorized:Reviews
