PREDATORS Post-Release - Page 5

the thing about the Billy fight is that you didn't need to see it, something that's been lost from cinema these days.

It is a damn good sign that the movie made quite a bit this weekend. I won't be surprised if they announce a sequel in the next few weeks. If not an announcement, then maybe just "rumors".

But why would you need to see Billy get killed in seconds?

It was pretty obvious he wasn't going to make it, since Arnold hadn't fought the Predator yet.

In a TEN LITTLE INDIANS situation, the best thing to do is give each person their own version of a noble death, or whatever. We get that with Billy. I think the samurai sword sequence could have been great, but Billy's off-screen death is smart because we know it's inevitable.

That woodbeast alien was freaky. That's the exact fucking thing I used to dread was going to chase after me as a kid whenever I was bushwalking on holiday. Or just coming back to the house after dark.

I think there's room for a "friendly" alien in a follow-up. But it would be too much to take on for a re-boot effort like this. This movie was about reconnecting with Predator 1 & 2, to create a connective trilogy and erase the AvP continuity. Mission accomplished in my eyes. The film is flawed, but it felt of a kind to the original two.

My friend actually jumped the gun on Brody at the end and said "And now I have an army.", which kind of trumped the "let's get the fuck off this rock" line. The point should have been that it's time to turn the tables and get seriously organised.

Oh, and no ALIEN Aliens ever. That's turd. Both franchises deserve better than shitty crossover fan-service bullshit.

YES! That was as dramatic an exercise in missing the point as I have ever seen - fanedit.org level point-missing. Not only didn't you need to see the Billy fight, it's actually far more shocking not to.

This is exactly the problem with the whole movie, in fact - they never thought about whether or not anything was needed. It plays out as if they had a brainstorming session, wrote down all their ideas (and I'm not saying the ideas were all bad) in the order they came up with them, and then just filmed that without doing any further work on it first. And that's why despite the resultant movie not really being terrible, just surprisingly bland, it makes me angry. When filmmakers put that little thought into what they're doing it's like being talked down to, and it's offensive.

What's interesting is Rob Rod and company had ample time to consider many options to make a grand movie. They had the comic books; novels; VG's; all 4 movies (take it or leave it) and the pulse of the fanbase. And yet they still manage to make a movie that most are not satisfied with.

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RE: PREDATOR MOVIE & DESIGN

What made the first iconic was something that was created with a great end product in mind. The creature design initially changed because it wasn't up to par and then you had Stan Winston and company come and rock the fuck out of it. And now we're talking about a movie; its creature; its sequels (for better or worse) because the first was based on an idea that was executed properly.

No offense. But the general feeling I've had at the Alien/Predator sites is that most of them liked it. They admit there are a lot of things that could've been improved. But this entry was definitely a step in the right direction.

Is that so? @forsakennomore

I think, most of us agree with the fact that I is an amazing, timeless classic. II is weaker, but still an enjoyable sequel. AVP is way below that and mostly bad. Now AVPR is unwatchable shit. Anyone disagree?

Now if you had to put III anywhere, I bet it comes at either second or third place on mostly every list. It's good. Not great, but certainly worth a watch. Isn't that enough? Did anyone expect a new classic and not go in with lowered expectations? That doesn't mean I accept all the faults, because there are some and it'd be wrong to say it's completely awesome, but this is a fifth movie with the Predator race in it. With an Oscar winner in the lead.

After the mess AVP was it's a wonder there actually is a new Predator movie and that it's rated R and without teens and overblown CGI use. Wishful thinking could imagine an even darker, more badass Predators with The Rock in his first super badass role as an Arnold replacement, directed by Paul Verhoeven, but that shit ain't gonna happen. It could have been a better movie but I think chances were astronomically higher it'd suck and be bad. I think Antals film is pretty close to what could have been and what was before. It's the JAWS II of Predator movies.

I think Jaws actually is a pretty good example as the Predator is as one-note as the shark. No director could ever made a Jaws or Predator sequel that would be on-par with the original.

Agreed.

Considering how low budget these AVP flicks are and the solid fanbase, its no surprise that we'll get a Pred flick every 2 years or so. And if they keep up with this quality, I am not complaining.

Uuuuuuugh. So many missed opportunities in this film. So flat and lazy in parts.

The guy in me who wanted a fun night out at the movies was mildly entertained, the geeky predator fanboy on the other hand...

First off, the good: Brody was really believable as a bad arse for my money, Grace continues to shine with not a lot, Goggins is it and a bit and ummmm there were the kernals of a decent film here.

So that leaves what shat me: I had trouble caring about most of the characters, I thought Fishburne was sleep-walking through his performance (how did he remain so chunky for ten years living off what he could scavenge?), the direction was completely flat, the constant homaging to the original film just became fucking lazy and irritating after a while, the script needed at least a draft or two more of polishing for things to go from just basically making sense to being an interesting story and I didn't feel very much chemistry between the leads at all.

Now, the predators - supposedly the guys who for all intents and purposes are meant to be the fucking POINT of the story - where the hell were they and when they were around how fucking useless were they? Getting taken down by booby trapped bodies? Dying in a fucking sword fight? The fuck???

I've kind of made my nerd peace with these new Predators being the lazy country club variety of the species, without any of the codes of honour the original versions have (with the first film having the uber-hunter variety and the second being a young untried initiate) - but even if you come up with that elaborate fan wankery to explain it, why would you WANT these guys for your antagonists in a Predator movie? This film basically tossed out what made the Predators so interesting and gave us these new, shitty versions that couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, were lazy as shit, used all these extra elements like dogs and hawks and shit and worst of all didn't actually do any hunting. By the time we got to the Predator on Predator action towards the end I was actually getting weird end-of-Alien Resurrection vibes and that just can't be good. The whole thing was coming from such a wrong-headed place it's like the film just didn't get why the monster worked in the first two films.

Look, it wasn't a travesty, but it was a pretty massive dropped ball, Antal shouldn't be allowed near an action sequence again and if this is what Rodriguez thinks makes the Predators tick, he shouldn't be let near them again either. I want this film to do well so we get more Predator films, but I want better ones than this in the future personally.

If I was watching the three films back to back on a Saturday afternoon with lots of pizza and alcohol, this film would be okay because it'd be at the end when I was drunk and full and didn't care as much, as it is tho, it's not a patch on the first two. With all the constant riffing and homages it was like bad, lazy fanfic at many points - I mean this made Predator 2 seem like a much more original take on the predator for chrissake, think about that for a second.

All in all I didn't hate it, but it's sort of left me feeling pretty epically 'meh'. Which is a real shame. Next time go back to the hunter on earth template, maybe give us a period piece - predator vs vikings, predator in Africa in WW2, predator vs samurai - fuck anything, I just don't give a shit about their game preserve/country club planet and I don't care if Brody and whats-her-name ever make it off of there.

Next time go back to what works - it's not fucking rocket science.

As a predator fanboy, as much as I agree with SOME of what you said...it didn't nearly bother me as much as it apparently did you.

And I liked Predator 2. So there.

Take your period pieces up where the sun don't shine. Predators with all their tech vs dudes with muskets or broadswords just isn't interesting. That's just watching what happened to Billy on a loop for 90 minutes until Captain Kirk shows up with his makeshift cannon.

I juts like my Predators to be, well Predatorish. I dunno what these new guys were, but they certainly didn't strike me as that. These new fellas would last about five fucking minutes if they were hunting on earth alone. Harrigan would have killed them and still had time to clean up the streets of LA. Hell they wouldn't have even made it to Dutchs crew - Hopper and his men would have taken them out.

Can someone explain to me how the off-screen deaths in P1 and P2 meant anything, or why I'm supposed to hold these up as something to be emulated? Both of them always felt like they needed a way to get rid of the characters in question, but couldn't think of a way to do it so they just said "Oh, he's dead."

I can't speak for the folks above, but it's about letting the viewers' imagination fill in the blanks. And that we KNOW Billy (from P1) is dying a noble warrior's death; there's no emotional payoff in seeing him eviscerated (as there was when Carl Weather's character was, since he was the one who set up the team for failure in the first place).

Exactly, but you know if you don't actually have much of an imagination, or insist on everything being spelled out for you I can see how that would be a problem.

I'm pretty sure what he means is...why should they be emulated?

Almost every creature movie has a scene where some character is ready to face the creature or is stalked by the creature, then it cuts to the other characters who hear the scream of the person just killed or it just cuts away and a scream is heard. Pitch Black, the Blob, Slither, even AVP-R had one. So why does this one need one?

Oh and King Willie wasn't really killed offscreen. He screams like a bitch then as the camera zooms into his mouth, it pulls out to us seeing his decapitated head. It's pretty obvious how that went down.

I think the general flat shittiness of the yakuza fight is all the evidence you need to answer that question. Not only was it a shitty, shitty callback to Billys last stand, it was handled terribly.

Well I disagree it was shitty and I disagree that it was a throwback to Billy.

If you want to think of it as a throwback to Billy, then yeah...it's lame...but the only things they have in common AT ALL is a character choosing to stay and fight a predator with a blade (since that's the only weapon the yakuza guy had, versus Billy who had a full on choice of weaponry but settled on the machete for honor I guess). They didn't even seem to do it for the same reasons.

Are you seriously trying to suggest that in a film that featured the lines, "over here", "turn around" and "kill me I'm here, kill me" and moments like this, among many other moments I could mention, that that wasn't an attempt at yet another clunky homage?

If you don't want to see it then that's cool, but you can't tell me it isn't there.

I've already stated my reasoning on this earlier in the thread but I'll say it again.

1) Not showing their death avoids the issue of seeing a grown man fighting an extremely tall man in a rubber suit. This is much harder to shoot than you probably account for, no offense.

2) By not showing showing the battle, you solidify the idea subconsciously that the Predator is unstoppable. The implied conflict is either portrayed or edited into appearing like it wasn't much of a conflict for this amazing monster. It escalates tension for our hero. HE'S going to HAVE to face THAT.

3) Seeing a Predator fighting and being matched by a human in hand to hand combat has an adverse effect. He's no longer a scary unstoppable creature, he's a shitty hunter. For the Predator to be killed completely and utterly demystifies tension. We're supposed to believe that the Predators are a threat when two of them have died in ten minutes?

On the contrary. Did he die a warriors death? Did he duel the Predator? Did he just get one shotted by the thing's cannon?

We don't know, so there's no emotional payoff.

Given the audience(s)'s reactions of excitement and enjoyment from that scene, I don't think your viewpoint stands up.

Predators did it in such a way that I, and the audiences I've been with, have found very enjoying. So #1 is gone.

So the trick to making the Predator look unstoppable, in your eyes, is to completely take away a scene that lets you see just how badass this alien hunter is? Like a Common Infected hit with the non-business end of a shotgun, #2 falls and soils itself.

Seeing the Predator fighting and being matched by a human in hand to hand combat sends a searing burst of revelation into the minds of the audience: Why would the Predator race choose human beings as objects to hunt: because we can beat them.

It is you, not the movie, that is humanizing the Predators. You're seeing Predators as hunting as humans do (generally, especially post-caveman ones): hunting things that can't fight back at the same level. Predators aren't like that. They hunt things that can kill them. The fact that two of them died at the hands of the humans in this movie don't weaken the Predators; it shows the Predators chose these specific people.

Again the human imagination is a potent and powerful thing - if you have a decent one to begin with.


You really want to play this game? Okay, the entirely lackluster and indifferent reaction of my packed cinema to the scene makes me think my viewpoint has some merit, but really, unless we've both been in every cinema this has shown in, what point does bringing that up prove exactly?

Again, others feel differently, so #1 has gone nowhere.

Either you're stubbornly refusing to see the point being made or you're simply missing it spectacularly - but by all means, please continue with the cute condescending, it's just adorable.

Maybe if a) the Predator hadn't been taken out as easily as it was and b) the scene was actually shot well. As it is it didn't achieve either of those things it simply made the Predator look weak.

Again, if the two of them had died in manners that didn't suggest they were simply fodder I may agree with you. The two Predators in the first two films put up a serious fight, they really were smart, adaptable and deadly, these new ones were simply meat bags that fell for very simply traps or got taken out far too easily.

Well, thanks Rain Dog. Saved me a reply.

Rain Dog, as I a fellow Melbournian Predator Geek, I share your outrage at the general ineptitude the predators showed towards hunting in this flick.

My (rather strong negative) opinions on this flick have been shared on this thread so I'm not going to repeat myself. Having rewatched Predator 2 and the newer "Repo Men", I've managed to get rid of most of the lingering bad after taste this film left me with. I suggest you do the same, Rain dog.

Excelsior dear brother!

I have a wonderful imagination, and I'm great at fanwanking until even the most plothole-riddled movie is coherent.

But it's still just fanwank. Completely irrelevant. The movie didn't tell me what happened to Billy. They didn't think Billy's way of death meant anything, so I'm not going to either.

We know what happened to Yakuza guy. His death meant something. Billy's? King Willy's?

Well, I've seen it three times in packed theaters, and noticed a similar response each time. I'd say that's a fine sample size for me, especially when one favors real-life experiences with people over internet-based text. After all, if you asked people on the Internet, Firefly was popular.

I see the point just fine: an off-screen kill is supposed to show the Predator as unstoppable. Of course, it's a wrong point, since all it does is show that the one off-screen died.

What is the level of ease of Predator Elimination? I saw one of them burned in a giant alien drill, one killed in a formalized combat ritual by an expert swordsman with an excellently made weapon, and one with his arms and head hacked off with an axe that didn't look like the bearer made it, after being in a knock-down brawl with a member of its own species.

I don't need to see Billy die to know what happened. I guess you could argue since the Yakuza guy killed a predator, you needed to see that. But unnecessary and barely motivated spectacle is one of the single biggest problems with movies these days. Perhaps Billy lasted a couple rounds, maybe it was quick, who's to say. But when Billy holds up his knife, he's chosen his fate, and it works because we know enough to know what we're not seeing.

Scumbag, 3 times in the theatres. Really? Jesus, You've got some good tolerance there for utter bullshit.

As fan of the predator creature itself, I rank this flick behind the AVP flicks. Seriously. Crappy plots & characters aside, those movies had predators that behaved somewhat like the predators we know from the original films. Unlike the Jason clones we got here.

We're gonna get a sequel from the looks of things. Just hire Neil Marshall already, Robert.

I can't believe a person has seen this three times already.

Yakusa guys death meant nothing to me. Billy's meant something because he was a cool character. I'd have a beer with the guy. Maybe not much of a conversation but if my jokes were on par who knows?

Movie was alright. I was reasonably entertained while watching it. But not going to rush out and buy the dvd.

I agree with Raindog that the Predators were too easily dispatched and there were too many homages to the original. Using the music is fine, in fact that helped a lot. But why COPY so many moments from the original. Like the african guy staring into the trees and seeing the Predator. It went nowhere. He died 10 minutes later.

I think they spent too much time thinking 'what will the fans like??' and too little time thinking up an original story and characters. I mean really, who cares about the Russian guys family?

And the trailers had the most blatant case of false advertising ever. At the end of the trailer and tv spots Brody sees a 3 point laser target on his chest and then about 20 more pop up. Indicating that there a lot more than 3 Predators in the country club.

That didn't happen in the movie I saw.

The point of Billy's scene is not to depict a noble warrior's death, hence the reason you hear Billy squealing like a goddamn pig five seconds after he confronts the Predator. The point is: No matter how badass you are, and rest assured, Billy was badass, badassedness cannot take the motherfucking Predator down. What wins out in the end is cleverness, not badassedness.

Neither way Trejos' "Does this look like a team orientated group of individuals to you" line while we're at it. Fair amount of baiting and switching going on with that trailer and the final product. Not sure how I feel about that.

I think the biggest problem with Predators is that I wasn't seven years old when I watched it. I mean, I get that the original is the best of the series, but isn't a lot of the appeal predicated on nostalgia? And I don't mean that as a slam, really. Predator 1 is absolutely rockin'. But then, I love watching the Running Man, but it's not a good movie, not even as good as this new film. I see people getting up in arms here about how Predators shits all over the legacy of 1 and 2, and I can't help but think that 25 years from now, the next generation of chud geeks will be up in arms over the legacy-staining shittiness of the new Blade reboot, or some such.

That said, the Billy scene was way better than the sword fight, although that's mostly because the swordfight was badly shot and staged. The fan service stuff all worked for me, maybe because I take the original as grade A cheese rather than holy writ, and I had more fun with this movie than any other stupid film I've seen this summer.

I understand not liking this, but loving Predator 2 and hating this is weird to me. Also, Brody was great in this, and I'm not really a fan. If you want to call him out, y'all ain't nothin but haterz.

Well cutting out a line of dialogue is par for the course. Although it's a reasonably witty line, especially considering this script.

But the laser target thing is ridiculous. It's not a scene they cut out to trim the running time. It completely changes the plot. It gives the impression that there at least 15-20 Predators running around. I'll get over it, but I was suprised. Don't think I've ever seen moviegoers lied to as blatantly as that. Although there are probably lots of examples I haven't thought of.

I don't see what's so surprising. When you suggest seeing movies you like, do you have trouble getting friends / acquaintances to accept the idea?

Well, it's not as egregious as the previous examples. Remember how Alien 3 was set on Earth? Anyone? Or how Bruce Payne had superpowers in Highlander: Endgame?

The laser thing bothers me a little. It's misleading, yeah, but the movie would have suffered from having too many Predators. They'd have to be taken out even more easily than the three in the film were just to give the characters a chance at survival. Personally I thought it was going to be some sort of ending scene.

The teaser for Alien 3 came out about 9 months before the movie. They completely changed the plot after that.

Highlander:Endgame barely qualifies as a movie so it's irrelevant.

In PREDATORS it was obviously a case of the Fox marketing department saying a couple of months ago – after the movie was completed - “Hey, It’s called Predators so lets make the fans believe there are tons of them kicking around! They’ll think it’s so cool!”.

Well, it would be retarded to have so many PREDATORS, but to lie about it is even worse.

This trailer from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake had the footage re-ordered so that when Keanu is asked if he knows of on intended attack on Earth, he says "yes", which is not what happened in the movie at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KKO_...eature=related

Scumbag: Quote/
So the trick to making the Predator look unstoppable, in your eyes, is to completely take away a scene that lets you see just how badass this alien hunter is? /Quote


I think you're watching the film with the eye of somebody who's already seen the film. In a movie full of Bad Asses, we've already seen Super-Bad Ass #1 Blaine taken out (gun for gun/firepower for firepower - this was very very shocking first time out) and a number of lesser Bad Asses without revealing the Predator. When Billy decides it's better to stand and fight than be hunted, the audience thinks "Okay, this is it - Billy's so Bad Ass (proven by his complete lack of action through-out - he's being "saved" for a big fight) the monster will be forced to slow down and we can get a look at him". The audience is set up to think we're going to get a big set-piece based on the way Billy has been positioned in the story so far. Billy is still going to die, but we think his death is going to buy us a money shot of the monster. When none of this happens and Super-Bad Ass #2 Billy gets taken out so easily it's not even worth showing, the audience gets another shock to the system (as well as a few questions like "What the hell did it do to him to makes him scream like that?" - No, nobody thinks it took him out with a laser blast - blades or claws were involved - that's why Billy cuts himself, to put his cut flesh in the audience's mind). After a big shock like that (again, it's big big shock on the first viewing) Dutch's eventual victory feels less assured. In fact Dutch only survives his initial One-on-One encounter with the mysterious monster through dumb luck (the mud). That's what buys us our first look at the monster. By surviving Round 1 Dutch is rewarded with important information, that he can now exploit - how it sees.

Movies aren't just money shot after money shot. At least good ones aren't. It's about creating emotional responses in the audience. To create a really big emotion at the end you have to set it up through the entire movie by denying the release of smaller emotions - by killing Blaine and Billy you create tension because your expectations have been frustrated - the tension of Predator was so great by the end that only a small nuclear bomb could deliver the emotional payoff the audience needed. Crushing the Predator with a heavy object wasn't enough. The audience needed that thing to be obliterated.

I think that's why Brody's final attack on the Country Club Predator/Mrs Predator was so vicious and artless. These Predators weren't worthy of respect or a "fair" fight or a big explosion - they needed their skulls violently smashed in.

Yakuza Sword Fight:
I agree that wasn't a "Billy" moment (though it was a nod and both characters stand and fight rather than continue to let themselves be hunted), it was there purely for entertainment reasons. I totally believe there was a third (pretty useless) Predator in the hunting group specifically to die in an entertaining way in that scene. I agree with others that it wasn't executed that great (those predator heads obviously weigh a ton) but I liked the Yakuza guy enough to indulge in the fun of the scene and the series is far along enough now that a Billy fake-out scene isn't necessary/required/effective. And as above, these Predators kind of deserved to go out like bitches because they'd weighed the hunt so heavily in their own favor.

Fish Chunks:
If he wasn't ranting "Six more mouths to feed, I can't even feed one!!" while trying to smoke them, I would have guessed Fishburne was cannibalizing other prey. Or maybe he was chowing down on Predator meat and that was what was turning him crazy (like drinking sea water or something). His crazy-talk was effective enough that I didn't see the trap coming.

According to comic lore, eating the flesh of the Yautja (particularly the heart) brings a longer than average lifespan. One of the comics had a feudal Japanese man happen across a downed Pred ship, eat a dead one's heart, and continue hunting them into post-modern times to eat and live.

The guy was a like a ghoul for Pred flesh.

But since it's not in continuity, *shrugs*.

How about at the most simple level, if they'd shown Billy having a big long fight with the Predator and then at the end of the film, a big long fight between Dutch and the Predator, wouldn't that have thrown the pacing of the film off?

I like it that it's left to our imagination, we don't even know how long the fight was; just because it went from the thermal imaging scene on the bridge and cut straight to the scream doesn't mean a fair amount of time didn't elapse.

With lowered expectations, this movie rocks. If you go into it like it's a slasher movie, with all that implies, it turns out really fun and enjoyable.

Hated how Danny Trejo went out, though. Offscreen? For Trejo? Come on. How'd that happen, Rodriguez?

Something just struck me. That Hunting Preserve is a large place and I bet there are a lot of other people besides Brody's crew in it. How do three Preds cover the whole place?

They used the hawk to find them. And I think they were all dropped in roughly the same area.

It's really shocking to see people making excuses for the failings of this film. Look, if you like it, fine, but don't even begin to suggest things like allowing the "multi-laser Brody shot" into the trailer are excusable from a fan perspective. It's not a simple re-ordering of lines, as was hinted at earlier. It's a visual effect. It didn't need to be there and didn't say anything truthful about the story. I cannot conceive of how that many Predators could be edited out of the film since the trailer was released, and even if they somehow were, removing that shot from later trailers would have been the best option. I've heard from several people who neither care about the franchise nor care too much about movies in general that this aspect of the film bothered them. Clearly it's not a throw-away shot if my little sister notices it.

I thought it was a fun movie at times, don't get me wrong, but if this was a direct sequel to Predator 2, we'd all be talking about how terrible this movie was compared to the first TWO movies in the series, and I think that speaks volumes about its true quality.

Alan "Nordling" Cerny, RR had to save...SOMETHING, for the director's cut!

I've heard news that there isn't going to be a Director's Cut, duke. What we saw is what we get.

This is spot on.

I think after a few years, people will look back a little more favorably on Predators; I'm wondering if Predator 2 was as hated by fans of the original at the time of its release. Because lets face it - Predator 2 is not a good movie. It's a lot of fun, but I can't believe that people are actually making the argument that Predator 2 is a better, smarter movie than Predators.

Please note that I really enjoy both Predator 2 and Predators.