The Predator Review

Let’s talk about The Predator.

I feel like Predator gets overshadowed a bit. Because it is tied into the Alien series due to their crossover movies, games and comics, it is often the xenomorph which gets more attention. While every new Alien movie and video game gets all the press in the world discussing it, a new Predator movie can sneak out without many people really noticing. And so is the case for this Predator movie.

Even though the Predator series hasn’t had the lows the alien series has, this movie is being seen as a reboot, though the movie acknowledges that the previous movies have happen so it’s a sequel really. It could have easily just been a retread of the original and it definitely borrows from that by having a crew of soldiers being the main character. But instead of being in the jungle, we are transported to an urban environment. And the movie also tries to say things about mental health and the environment, good messages but also very simplified because the main point here is the action.

If you are looking for a goresome action movie, you are going to be well served by this. When the movie started, I was wondering if this was an R-Rated movie or if they had wimped out and gone fo PG-13. This question was answered when we panned up to see one of the Predator’s victims who has lost half of his body and his intestines are hanging out. Yeah, this is R-Rated and it’s not just over the edge, it’s leaped over it and is falling with style. Gore like this is divisive because some people can’t handle it and I understand it. I will also say that if you are like that, this movie is not for you. But if you are a fan of seeing constant blood splatter, this is definitely fo you as the movie delivers in truck loads. This is something the series has always delivered on and I’m happy to see it continue in this one.

There are a lot of fun action scenes because of it. The movie tries to refrain from doing the classic predator stuff of having a group of people in a forest being hunted until the very end which is nice as it forces them to try a few different things in the middle of the movie. And that leads to some fun action scenes where our band of sort-of heroes try to evade and take down the predator. And his dogs too, because of course the predator has some dogs. I suppose you need something weaker to beat earlier in movie and a massive mutant dog thing does that job perfectly.

The major problem with the movie is that the editing is a mess. I seem to be more forgiving of this than other movies, I sort-of liked Suicide Squad even though it was edited with an axe, but I have to raise it as a problem with this movie. Several bits of the movie seem to be missing and it leads to some scenes making little sense. In the big last action movie, the Predator gets knocked over a mini-cliff in a way that while it shouldn’t kill him, it should at least knock him out of action for a bit in order for the movie to take a breather. However the movie bounds on and the Predator is back without an explanation or even a big shock as it is revealed he is alive. This sort of thing happens a lot throughout the movie. As the movie clocks in at 1 hour and 58 minutes, I imagine there was a keenness from the editing team to get the movie under two hours. But if the movie needs to be over two hours to work, make it two hours. The problem with long movies is not that they are long but that some long movies have a lot of fluff that could be cut. Don’t cut scenes that make the movie make sense!

There are some other problems with the movie though. Spoiler alert, but there are two predators in this movie, a normal predator and also a super predator because for some reason this is the year where film makers get inspired by the Family Guy skit Big Jaws. The normal predator is like the ones we know and love and is thankfully done on camera with an actual suit and it looks awesome because of it. However because the super predator is 11ft tall, it needs to be done in CGI. Most of the time it looks fine but there are also times when it looks terrible as it can be with CGI characters like this. Also there’s a kid character because Jacob Tremblay is already more successful than me as a little child and for some reason needs more work. He’s not irritating like many but you know because he’s a kid and the director is not a sicko that he’s going to have all the plot armour. In fact that’s also an issue as many of the lead characters some how don’t get killed because they are needed later on in the movie.

The Predator is a fun movie. It has a lot of good action scenes and if you are in need a of a gore fix, this will tide you over. It’s certainly not an insult to the franchise like some of the worst Alien movies, though the more I think about it the more this movie actually borrows some of the ideas from those movies. But it does have serious problems which might stop some from enjoying it. The editing is a mess and while I was able to cope with this, some will just end up being lost. And you really shouldn’t be lost when watching a Predator movie. Though, you should probably be concerned with those three red dots on your forehead right now…