Predators

Too bad this movie wasn’t in 3D. That would have been … well, it would have made the gruesome scenes even more gruesome. And by gruesome, I mean awesome.

This was a good movie, so let me start off with the bad. I don't do this to bash the movie, but because in good movies, the bad stuff stands out (just like in bad movies, the occasional good thing stands out).

First off, the music isn’t good. It tends to clash a lot, and be over the top when it doesn’t have to be. It really distracts from the movie. And there’s no melody that you’d actually want stuck in your head. Just not good.

Secondly, there’s an overuse of a particular shot. To build tension, a lot of movies will delay showing whatever it is that a character or characters are reacting to. So in this movie, the team will come across something strange, and the camera will pan across all of their faces, and the music will build, and then (with a loud/annoying clash), it’ll show the whatever. But they kept doing it for every new and strange thing they discover, so by the end, I just wanted to see the darn thing. I already know what a surprised Adrien Brody looks like. I saw that five minutes ago. Stop wasting my time!

Thirdly, there are two fights that are pretty silly. The first is a fight between a Yakuza member (he’s Japanese, so he must know how to use a katana) and a predator with a type of bladed tonfa. If there’s to be any equality in the fight (so it’s not a curb stomp battle … who wants that), the yakuza member and the predator have to be roughly equal in strength, speed, and reaction time. But since they evolved on two different planets, what are the chances of that happening? The second fight is a ridiculous one between two predators. It looked like two football players tackling each other over and over again.

Fourthly, the villain decay. In the first Predator, the titular alien came down to South America and took out a special operations team. It took Arnold Schwarzenegger (hey, my spellcheck knows his name!) to kill him. The second movie had Danny Glover. Then the predators teamed up with humans to kill some Xenomorphs (what nerds call the aliens from Alien). The Next movie (Aliens vs Predator 2: Requiem) I didn't watch because it looked like it was made of awful. And now it’s up to Adrien Brody. Adrien Brody! The guy who could play Bill Gates if they ever made a movie about Microsoft (oh wait, they did. They had Tim Robbins playing Bill Gates … sorry, Bill Shmates. It was a terrible but fun movie called Antitrust, and its most redeeming feature is Claire Forlani. That girl is beautiful).

Fifthly, the trailer lied. Not just misled. Lied. There’s a scene in the trailer that has Brody lit up by about a dozen alien weapons (like a laser sight on a sniper rifle). It directly contradicts facts in the movie. It’d be like if the trailer for Return of the Jedi has shown a dozen lightsabers. Robert Rodriguez (the producer) talks about it here.

Fifthly, Laurence Fishburne. Don’t get me wrong, his acting is terrific. His character is slightly off at first, and gradually gets crazier. The only problem is … well, I can’t actually explain what it is without spoiling part of the movie. Also, he delivers a lot of exposition. It’d be even more boring, but Fishburne’s delivery makes it a lot better. Still a lot of dialogue to explain what goes on, though.

Sixthly, some minor plot holes. I can’t really elaborate on those without spoiling the movie, so we’ll just have to have that conversation after you see it.

I think that’s about it. Everything else is pretty good, and there are a few scenes that are fantastic. Seriously, Evan and I turned to each other and said “Awesome!” at times. They’re just that good. The plot starts off pretty generic, but gets better as it goes along. There’s a lot of violence. Just when I was wondering if there was any green blood (surely not all the blood in every species is red), they showed green blood. There are decapitations, and an epic spine removal. The actors can act, and the settings were fantastic. They relied on real-world costumes and special effects, and kept the CGI to a minimum (except for a shot of the solar system, which looked fantastic). There is a lot of good stuff here.

Overall though, there are just a few too many problems for it to be a theatre movie. It’s definitely a DVD movie, hopefully on a big TV with an awesome sound system. With the lights off. At midnight. On Halloween.