SPOILERific Thoughts on PREDATORS
July 23, 2010 | 1 Comment
Now that Predators has been in theaters for two weeks…
Warning, here be spoilers. Although I try to keep a few things mysterious. Still, avert your eyes if you wish to remain pure and untainted and unspoiled.
No kidding. Really. Spoilers. SPOILERS. Like that sign says in the dark forest on the way to the Wicked Witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz, [I'D TURN BACK IF I WERE YOU!]!
I enjoyed Predators quite a bit (here’s the MFG review), but, it’s still fun to nitpick at the details, if only because our glimpses of Predator society are so brief and enigmatic that they invite speculation.
* I have to wonder about the Predator selection process, for finding these Earthlings that make particularly good prey. Particularly in one instance, which I can’t discuss without too many spoilers. Seems like some Predator must spend a lot of time in treetops on battlefields (and in more urban environments) invisible to pick out the prey with the potential to be asskickers. Are our Predator-hunters the ones who abducted them, or are there other Predators running this as a business, like, they offer Wild Safari Weekend for Accountant Predators? Which, if so, might explain why, ultimately, this batch of Predators really isn’t quite as good at hunting as they might think they are.
* Throwing your prey out of the spaceship from a great height over a jungle is great fun, but is it really cost-effective? Like the one who died on impact when his PredaChute (TM) didn’t open. Some Predator who spent all that time invisible spying on the Russian Mafia to get their enforcer (or whatever) must feel, well, that was time wasted. Similarly, although in this instance our protagonists came out relatively unscathed from their encounter with the alien-hunting-dogs, I can picture other expeditions that, despite the rough tough human killers, they were reduced in seconds to kibbles and bits. I picture the Predators dejectedly sitting around their campfire when that happens, moaning, “That was the worst hunt ever! The dogs killed everybody, I didn’t get to use my zap gun or any of these fancy springing-spinning blades! I wonder if I can take all this stuff back to Galactic Bass Pro Shop!”
* What were those things in the boxes? We see the one dead one…which looks a tiny bit like a Giger alien, but not enough for it to really be one. Are they other sentient aliens, abducted from their own planet the way the humans were, or are these just animals, for example, just Predator Homeworld Grizzly-bears? Is the purpose of releasing them to make it more interesting for the Predators, something else for them to shoot at in the bushes, or to give the humans more to worry about? And again, if the latter, what if those monsters succeed in making mincemeat out of the humans, it means a pretty sucky hunt for the Predators.
* I understand the closing shot, with even more boxes parachuting in (I’d have to view it freeze-framed on DVD to see if there are also more humans being dropped in), to end on a dramatic note, but it seems a little too soon….. like this jungle is Grand Central Station for Predator hunts. I mean, if Morpheus has been hanging out in the abandoned mining ship undetected, visitors (human, Predator, and otherwise) can’t be all THAT frequent.
Or is the Predator Game-Warden just being a dick; noticing that the humans wiped out that batch of Predators, and so sending in some more alien-grizzly-bears to finish ‘em off?
* The depiction of two Predator clans that are enemies, or whatever, is interesting. But again, assuming this is, sort of a weekend warrior hunt, why did they pick that weekend to both hunt humans and clash with this other rival group of Predators? Was it like golfers finding that the foursome playing the hole ahead of theirs is really slow and so holding them up? Were they rival fraternities in college? I mean, they’ve skinned at least one of ‘em, and are torturing the other. Was it just because this group of Predators had paid to be hunting on this 100-square mile patch of hunting preserve, and these other guys showed up, drinking beer and hollering?
For the record, there’s a 4-part prequel to the film from Dark Horse comics:
June 9, June 16, June 23, June 30.
Also, a sequel comic book to the film, apparently a one-shot. July 14.
And this coming July 27, apparently a graphic novel adaptation of the film for $6.99.
Then November 16, for $13.59, what looks like a collection of all of the above, the 4-issue prequel, the film adaptation, and the one-shot sequel.
There doesn’t seem to be a novelization of the film. I guess Alan Dean Foster was taking the summer off.
Popularity: 32% [?]
The Other Guys – Vote on Facebook for 2nd premiere city
July 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment
The Other Guys will have a 2nd city premiere on August 5th. You can vote on Facebook to make it in your city. If you happen to live in one of those 20 cities, that is:
Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Orlando, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa/St. Petersburg, and Washington, DC.
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg will announce the winning city on August 2nd, and will attend the screening in the winning city on August 5th.
The movie has its New York City premiere August 2nd, then this 2nd city premiere August 5th, and it opens in wide release on August 6th.
The Facebook page is here: www.facebook.com/otherguysmovie.
Since I live in Atlanta, I’m voting for Atlanta! Your mileage may differ.
The Other Guys has Ferrell and Wahlberg as second-string NYPD detectives who suddenly find themselves on the proverbial Big Case. You can view the trailer here on YouTube.
Popularity: 29% [?]
The Disappearance of Alice Creed – Sneak peek
July 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment
The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a thriller starring Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time). It opens in theaters August 6.
You can view the first 5 minutes here:
Or you can watch the video here, or download it here.
Here’s the official site for the film.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Predators
July 9, 2010 | 4 Comments
Better than Predator 2, far better than the Alien Vs. Predator movies, and almost as good as the original 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator.
If an action-adventure TV series (particularly science fiction) goes on long enough, they usually do “The Most Dangerous Game” episode. This was a 1924 short story by Richard Connell, where an eccentric millionaire kidnaps people to hunt them on his private island.
Here’s a Predator movie that goes along these lines.
Predators
The movie starts out in a literally breathtaking way. Soon, a motley crew of bad-ass killers find themselves in a strange jungle with no idea how they got there. Adrien Brody, Danny Trajo (Also in the end-of-summer Machete, which started out as a joke fake trailer in Grindhouse, now it’s a real movie!), Lawrence Fishburne, and Topher Grace are in the cast. Alice Braga plays the only woman in the bunch. Soon they figure out that the jungle they’re in may be rather further away from any jungle any of them has ever been in before. Light-years away. And Most Dangerous Game-style, they’re being hunted by alien warrior-critters.
The Predator aliens are sort of uglier Klingons. They’re a race of hunters (Well, at least the ones we see are: somewhere I guess there has to be a PredaTailor, making all their clothes, and PredaEngineers making all their nifty hunting gadgets and spaceships). They’ve made hunting a ritual, almost a fetish. They seem to have some sort of noble warrior code; they generally don’t kill non-combatants. Though it must be said, they aren’t too much into fair play; they really stack the deck in their favor.
They like hunting those feisty humans, but every once in while, a human turns out to be better at hunting than they are.
A lot of descriptions of this movie claim it takes place on the Predator homeworld, but that doesn’t seem to be the case; it’s more like a terraformed planet (literally terraformed, since the plants on it are from Earth) just for hunting (and apparently mining).
Produced by Robert Rodriguez, and directed by Nimród Antal (Vacancy, Armored).
This movie does a pretty good job of packing the visceral punch of the original movie, while still bringing a new angle to it.
Popularity: 40% [?]
Iron Man 2
July 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Sequel to the 2008 Iron Man, John Favreau returns as director.
This time around, Tony Stark must deal with an ambitious industrialist (Sam Rockwell) and a Russian bent on revenge (Mickey Roarke, playing Whiplash, although never mentioned by moniker).
Gwyneth Paltrow returns as his secretary-maybe-love-interest, and Scarlett Johannson plays Black Widow (Although again, the character is never named in the movie).
And Don Cheadle has replaced Terence Howard as Tony Stark’s military buddy. Not really necessary, but it works fine.
This is fun stuff, but the movie is a little too busy; there’s too much going on. It lacks the streamlined storytelling of the better original movie.
As usual, stay through the end credits for a Marvel surprise at the end.
Popularity: 36% [?]
Sherlock Holmes
July 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Guy Richie is best known for directing modern-day British gangster movies. Here he does a revisionist Sherlock Holmes movie with a lot of action.
Robert Downey, Jr. plays Holmes as a quirky-but-cool eccentric. He doesn’t do a lot of detecting, but he’s ready to box, shoot guns, and generally get into dangerous situations.
Jude Law is Watson, and the two have a funny, bickering, cop-buddy-movie bromance going on.
Lest they’re a little too much into each other, we’ve got Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, in the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories the only woman to ever outwit Sherlock Holmes, to be the spunky heroine.
This all works pretty well. The mystery seems pretty secondary, but that was sometimes true in the original stories. And there’s a lot of nice touches that show the writers have actually read the stories. And there’s a nice CGI recreation of Victorian London, complete with an under-construction Tower Bridge. As a general rule in movies, if you see a building is under construction, the climax of the movie will usually be there, with heroes and villains dangling off the building in question.
Popularity: 31% [?]
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