This review originally appeared on Cosmic Comics
This past Monday night, even though I was extremely disappointed by Iron Man 3, I was excited to see Shane Black‘s The Predator, especially since he was in the original Schwarzenegger flick back in 1987. What? That’s right, Shane Black starred in Predator as Rick Hawkins: The joke telling soldier who was the first of Dutch’s men to fall victim to that “ugly motherf***er” in the jungle back in ’87. Here’s a clip to jog your memory:Think that was gross? Dude, that’s got nothing on this new flick. It is gratuitously gory from the very start.
I feel like I should preface this with, I’m a huge fan of the original, I enjoyed Predator 2, and I really enjoyed Predators. If you are a fan of those movies too and are expecting to see something along the same lines, you’re going to be disappointed in the end. But, if you’re just looking for a popcorn movie, this will be right up your alley. It’s more comedy than suspenseful thriller and the comedy felt like it was written by a teenage boy with raging hormones. The jokes are all pretty much incredibly outrageous hard-R jokes with a lot of dark slapstick humor. By the end of the movie, it was just too much for me. It came off as mostly silly and absurd to me. They even have the Predators use prop humor and jokes in the movie. (Mild spoiler: we can translate their speech now and vice versa.)
What bummed me out the most was the movie started out mostly good. Sure, the dark humor was there from the start (not the slapstick over-the-top stuff though) and the gore certainly was too, but, as the father of an autistic child, I immediately fell in love with Rory (Jacob Tremblay), the autistic son of the main character, Quinn (Boyd Holbrook) and I also really enjoyed Oliva Munn (who deserved better billing BTW) as Dr. Casey Bracket.
Just finished watching #ThePredator and the 1st question I asked myself was, "How come @OliviaMunn didn't get at least second billing?" 😭 The 2nd, "How did her character, a scientist, know how to handle weapons and kick so much ass?" 😂 Review coming soon for @CosmicComicsLV.
— The Dork Knight (@DorkKnightLV) September 11, 2018
So I must admit, I’ve had a crush on her since the old G4tv days so I might have some bias. She is a bit of a Mary Sue in this movie though as she kicks way too much ass for someone who is supposed to be a nerdy doctor, but I didn’t mind that too much.
After these three main characters are introduced, we get to meet the crazy band of misfits who really take this movie to new heights of absurdity. Have you ever seen that Michael Keaton movie, The Dream Team? If felt kind of like that meets the A-Team meets Predator. Some of the humor worked for me, but most of it didn’t. This movie really started to feel confused about what it wanted to be at this point of the film.
By the time the third act arrives there’s a lot of choppy editing and shaking cameras in a dark, dark setting with really fast-paced action that confused myself and a few of the other movie reviewers there. There was actually a scene where one of the big name stars dies, but it’s so hard to see and happens so fast, that I wasn’t sure how this person was killed and one of the movie reviewers I spoke with after the movie swore that person was still alive by the end of it. The ending felt so rushed and quite frankly made no sense. All it does is serve as a setup for a sequel.
There seems to be a theme to how I feel about Shane Black’s movies as of late. 🙁
