So what did I see last night?
I don't want to say this was a
BAD movie per say... but I was definitely disappointed. And I think this is going to get very
spoiler'ish, so consider yourself forewarned!
(I'm not actually going to put spoiler tags in)-First off, it suffers from
Bayformer-itis. Too much focus on humans, which I give zero ****s about. Also too much humor. Think MCU only 18+.
-There's 2 Predator's. Big Pred, and lil Pred.
Lil Pred is on the scene first, and has some pretty decent kills, but he gets his head literally ripped off in the first minutes of big Pred being on the scene. Which is shocking, but anticlimactic. And honestly this is where the "Predator fun" ended for me. Because big Pred doesn't really do anything a traditional Predator does. He's a tank, and acts like a tank. Nothing stealthy, doesn't avoid getting hit by bullets cause they don't hurt him, uses zero melee weapons, has no shoulder cannon thingy, and has no armor besides a wrist thingy which sort of acts as a cannon or chain weapon. Honestly it's hard to distinguish what that thing does. But he's just seriously boring.
-They introduce new plot devices, that either go nowhere OR shake the foundation of everything that came before it.
APPARENTLY, the Predators collect skulls and spinal columns in order to extract DNA from the strongest of any given species, to incorporate into themselves, to make them more superior. That gave me flashbacks to Midichlorians. The go-nowhere bits are pretty much all the exposition regarding human's being endangered, why big Pred was after lil Pred, why big Pred is so big, and so on.
-The shadowy government villain man (Sterling K. Brown), if you blink, disappears in one of the final scenes. During a firefight, he's using his own Predator shoulder cannon, turns his head, which turns the gun at his own head, fires, and blows his head off. And it all happens so fast, that if you blink you will literally miss it. Which is another incredibly anticlimactic moment.
-The Pred dogs are weird. In "Predators" they had alien canine looking things which was all well and good, because they looked quite different. But in this movie, they have dogs, that
look like Predators. It's like, a Predator face, on a dog body. How... does this make any sense. Think about if our earth canines had human looking faces. Wut?
-The final scene is essentially the main army dude and Olivia Munn VS big Pred. Big Pred has so many opportunities to one hand murder the pair of them but simply tosses them around because I guess the plot demands it? They manage to put themselves together in time and end him, but it's pretty annoying to watch big Pred unwaveringly slaughter 100 people and then "decide" to take it slow for the last two.
-Dear Movie Makers: enough with the children already, and ex machina devices. The weird brilliant child resets 20 chess boards at the start of the movie and I think "dammit he's going to be able to decipher Pred tech or something stupid like that, saving the day". I was right, he does, it's annoying.
-Lil Pred, really survived until the end of the movie, being a crucial cog in taking down big Pred. I feel it was a missed opportunity and he was really underused. And while we're on lil Pred, he was there essentially to save humanity. So... why all the murdering when you landed bro? He's like "LET ME HELP YOU"
*stab stab stab*-The very end, reveals what lil Pred was here to give humanity: the anti-Predator suit. Which is literally an Ironman suit that looks like a Predator but I assume can't fly. After you see it, I did a facepalm. I just find it very uninspired.
So you might think I hated this movie, but I didn't. There were still some good things in there. Jake Busey playing Keyes Junior. The call-backs to Pred 1-2. The music. But I can easily say that this is the weakest Predator movie (maybe only ranked above AVP2 Requiem). If you're a casual fan, I'd say don't waste your time. As a hardcore fan, wait for home release. I'm rarely upset about seeing a movie in the theater, and I'm still ok with this one, but can't recommend it.
