*** Official PREDATORS Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[Simon Massey]

Wow had to go back four pages to find this thread


Caught this film last night. Have to say it is a big improvement on the AvP films thought it is a touch too much of a re-tread of a lot of bits seen in the first film. Thought Brody was surprisingly good as was the main female lead. Enjoyed seeing Walton Goggins again too!


*** out of *****


Enjoyable enough!! I fully expect a so-called "uncut" version from Fox though when this comes to Blu-Ray or DVD.

 

[Doug Wallen]

Just finished a matinee showing and I felt the film was pretty good. It did seem to be a sequel to the first film, even referenced as exposition by a character. I found Brody to be a better than average lead and certainly able to kick some serious behind.


All in all, an excellent summer popcorn flick that is a throwback to the film that inspired it.


Doug

 

[Patrick Sun]

I thought this follow-up to "Predator" had a good start, but stumbles in the mid-section, and ends up a bit murky and felt like they were on a set filming the final act. The mid-section stumble just robs the film of its momentum, and didn't really add to the film.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.

 

[Robert Crawford]

This thread is now the Official Review Thread for "Predators". Please post all HTF member reviews in this thread.

Any other comments, links to other reviews, or discussion items will be deleted from this thread without warning!

If you need to discuss those type of issues then I have designated an [COLOR= rgb(68, 112, 140)]Official Discussion Thread[/COLOR].




Crawdaddy

 

[TravisR]

Predators was pretty good and is easily the best movie with the Predator since the first one. The cast is fun, there's some good carnage, the makeup is cool, and it harkens back to the original (in a good way).

 

[MattFini]

REALLY disappointed. This isn't a wart on the ass of Predator 2, let alone the first one.


Not sure where to begin: the movie has a fairly cheap look and clunky direction that I found really hard to overlook. I know Rodriguez and Antal weren't working with a megabudget here, but both previous Predator films packed far more tension, suspense and visual panache into their proceedings.


With this new version, everything just falls flat. The Predators are fairly stupid and are dispatched far too easily. Arnie could barely kill one, resulting in one of the genre's all time great battles, but here they're wiped out anticlimactically. A samurai sword? Really? Besides, aren't the Predator weapons made from alien metal that wouldn't have a problem hacking through an ancient sword. Okay, that one's a nitpick ...


But Fishburne's character is not a nitpick. Not only is he awful, but this guy is amazingly stupid for a guy that supposedly survived by himself for 10 seasons.

The pacing is pretty bad, too. It takes a while for the Preds to start picking off the humans which, considering the audience is fully familiar with these creatures by now, felt like a budgetary constriction than anything else.

And what really surprises me is that this isn't anywhere near as gory/violent as previous films in the series. Deaths are uninspired and bland, while most of the characters are forgettable. Someone please explain to me why a devious serial killer would suddenly WANT to stay on a planet where he is not the dominant one.

The whole movie just wreaks of 'we didn't think this through' and, instead, threw a bunch of 'cool' ideas into a thinly veiled remake of the first movie. Speaking of which, Brody's mudcaked battle with the final alien is forced, unintentionally hilarious (suddenly he's stripped down AND covered in mud) and not the least bit exciting. And that's the movie's ultimate problem: it lumbers along without leaving an impression.


Walt Goggins was the REAL highlight of the film, with the Russian guy (forget his name) a close second.


I feel like everyone's heart was in the right place while making this, and i didn't hate it. But it didn't like it, either.

 

[Paul_Medenwaldt]

Fishburne's character was an actual waste of a character. You set him up to a all knowing character that may help this group of people and turn him into a nut. Waste of talent and time.

I thought the movie was good compared to the last 2 offerings we got from the AvP series. I liked the idea, its like Surviving The Game, but on another planet.

Paul

 

[Johnny Angell]

Originally Posted by MattFini

REALLY disappointed. This isn't a wart on the ass of Predator 2, let alone the first one.


Not sure where to begin: the movie has a fairly cheap look and clunky direction that I found really hard to overlook.

I mostly agreed with your comments except I didn't think it looked cheap and I'm not a fan of P2, so I think this movie is on a level with P2. I thought they got the dollars up on the screen well enough. But the film left me going, meh. It did not grab me. I enjoyed the first AVP more than this movie. Yeah, I know, that's sacrilegious.


I halfway got the idea the idea there was something wrong with the doc. I was thinking why is he here? He's not a fighter, he has no weapons, he does not fit in with the group. The only justification for him to be there, I thought, was to treat the wounded. But he never does that as there are only dead.


One thing I'm not clear on is why the one predator was strung up as a prisoner by other predators?


At the end, if I had liked the movie, I should have been left wanting a sequel to get them off the planet, but who cares. At least I had movie money for a free ticket.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Really liked it. Movie went back to basics and was the better for it.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Lou Sytsma

Really liked it. Movie went back to basics and was the better for it.

 

[Patrick H.]

Went and saw this tonight while waiting to get into 'Inception.'

Thought the first half or so was really good. Between the visuals, the group dynamic, and the reuse of the classic Alan Silvestri score, it really felt like an old-school Predator movie. Adrien Brody was a surprisingly convincing badass, and the other actors fit together well. It got iffy, though, with the intro of the "new" Predators, which should've been a big moment but felt strangely thrown-away. I actually liked the interlude with Lawrence Fishburne...whether intentional or not, I thought the turns his character took were strangely amusing, and his one monologue did at least restore some mystique to the Predators themselves.

Unfortunately, this just went completely off the rails in the third act. Totally irrational behavior by the surviving humans is one thing, but when I start thinking "no Predator would ever do that!" repeatedly, the movie's not going to recover. Also, it's at this point that the film gives up on clever homages to the original and pretty much just starts ripping it off. (And, somewhere in here, is also one of the worst visual effects I can remember seeing, involving an explosion.)

Overall, a disappointment considering the talent involved, made frustrating because it was a decent concept that they came close to pulling off for a while. Once again, though, the whole thing is sabotaged by a script that degenerates into something a 14-year-old might've written, and a noble effort to redeem the franchise turns into another cynical exercise in studio exploitation of it.

 

[Tim Glover]

Very disappointed in Predators. No originality at all. I like Adrian Brody but I felt nothing for any of these people. Nothing. And I usually feel something in movies being such a warm & fuzzy guy myself LOL. I thought the Predators were actually a technological step down in the way they looked, moved, and acted. Yes, the Predator was WAY smarter and terrifying and cool back in 1987.

Brody just can't do the same scenes that Arnold S did and really should have been given a better script. Too many similar setups that don't work. Hate to be a downer and I'm glad some here enjoyed it.

I give Predators a generous 4/10.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

This was decent, that's about all I can say.


Had a nice build of the type of atmosphere the first classic had which probably isn't that hard to do considering the film is also set in a jungle setting.


The characters did do really stupid things from time to time which hindered them IMO but all in all they were fine, particularly Brody. I did take issue with the scene involving a Pred tied to a tree and Brody expecting it to be nice and help him out simply because he asked lol.


Nice use of a recreated Silvestri-esque score, too.

 

[brentl]

I don't know I can review this movie when the first one seems to to a perfect mix of action suspense and the unknown. All I will say is Adrian Brody was passable as a lead in an action flick, and the rest of them were pretty much cookie cutter personalities.


The best part were the obvious homage of sights and sound to the original Predator, otherwise this rates lower on my list that Alien VS predator, and only slightly above Requiem in the Alien/Predator Hierarchy


D


Brent