Creative fight scenes make ‘The Predator’ B-grade action fun.
The first “Predator” movie took place in the jungle. The sequel was set in the inner city.
Shane Black’s franchise comeback “The Predator” seems to take place in the middle of a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” group therapy meeting. It’s scattered and messy and startling and electric and fun. A series is resurrected, by intentionally flying off the rails.
“The Predator” contains the DNA of the original film, which also happens to be a major story point in the movie. The continuity begins with Black, who wrote the first two “Lethal Weapon” movies, and actually had an acting role in the original “Predator” — a lean and critically panned 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film about human military men hunted by an alien.
Black chooses interesting and unexpected turns over story coherence and pacing – a filmmaking approach that has led to interesting messes from the director. (Black’s “Iron Man 3” had a similar structure, with lesser results.) This movie feels like it was put in a blender, then it takes confusing detours, and finally it ends like an unfinished symphony.
But with these drawbacks comes a lighter, faster and more crowd-friendly tone. “The Predator” is not as good as James Cameron’s “Aliens,” but it makes some of the same wise sequel decisions.
Wise decision #1: “The Predator” is less serious than “Predator,” mostly thanks to the band of misfits acting as protagonists. The cast of military types getting picked off one-by-one is a colorful, funny and sympathetic group, introduced in varying states of sanity. Augusto Aguilera stands out as a brain-damaged helicopter pilot, with some endearing boundaries issues.
Wise decision #2: After a series of movies where the Predators are mostly hidden, the camouflage is off. Black opens the movie with a fully visible Predator crash-landing on Earth, and crafts exciting man-versus-alien slugfests, including many in broad daylight. The alien was a secret until the end of the 1987 film. Now the Predators and their attack dogs (Predadoodles?) are part of the cast.
“The Predator” begins with military sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) surviving a skirmish with a crash-landed Predator, once again using Earth as a hunting ground. McKenna becomes a pariah for his alien stories, and is paired with a group of soldiers headed to a high-security mental ward. Meanwhile, a scientist (Olivia Munn) joins military leaders tasked with investigating aliens.
After a gory alien escape attempt, the two sides join, add an on-the-spectrum young boy to the team, and try to discover the Predators’ master plan.
The movie as whole is scattered, clearly in a need of another edit. (Or perhaps it had three too many already.) A female predator, who appears to be featured in promotional marketing, is not seen in the finished product. The motivations of the predators — something to do with climate change and warring predator political factions — are unclear at best and frustrating-to-the-point-of-insult at worst. It’s clear very little of “The Predator” will hold up after repeated viewings.
But the film is almost always right in the moment. There are clever and satisfying scenes buried in the narrative muck, whether it’s a moment of sweetness between two mentally unstable goofballs, or a bullied kid who gets the ultimate revenge on his tormenters.
The script by Black and “The Monster Squad” writer/ director Fred Dekker has a throwback 1980s wisecracking action movie vibe, with dialogue detours that are on the mark. A running joke about why the alien has been labeled a “predator” (“That’s not a predator, it’s a sports hunter …” “… Well we took a vote and ‘predator’ is cooler …”) are appropriately self-referential in a series that is on its sixth incarnation.
Best of all, Black understands the geography of an action sequence and the advantage of an R rating. There’s a lot of creativity thrown into the fight sequences, augmented by some strong visual effects artistry, which give the aliens extreme fighting skills worthy of their history. At one point a man is skewered, then two more are beheaded, in one confident Predator move.
How can seasoned B-action movie connoisseurs watch that, and not walk away thinking they got their money’s worth?