The New ‘Predator’ Reboot Will Not Go Anywhere Near 2018’s Rendition
By George Robbins
Many franchises hold a place in the hearts of movies fans everywhere for some reason or another and among those franchises are some that manage to worm their way into people’s hearts in the weirdest ways. A surprise to no one, some people are just into watching different things, even if there are reasons why people didn’t like the movie to begin with. In fact, it is due to this strange love for certain films that people sometimes go back to see what other people were talking about and end up liking the film after a re-watch. Thus, cult classic films became a thing for this very reason and have become wildly popular over the years, bringing in a lot of people who originally turned their heads to these types of films. Most notably among those types of films were the horror genre films which drove many people away from theaters instead of bringing them in.
Despite the wide variety of issues that people have with going out to see horror movies of all types, the fact remains that there is a dedicated crowd who are willing to go out and see these films. This drive is what eventually led more people to go out to theaters to see what others were talking about and therefore created new horror movie fans. This is easily how an entire generation of horror movie fans was created because originally, horror movies found it hard to make a spot for themselves among other movies. There were a lot of horror movies which ended up releasing in the 70’s and 80’s and for the longest time, they couldn’t find a way to draw people in to see those movies. This is where it came in handy to have people come in after some time had passed because it brought interest back to the genre.
Of course, there have been some notable exceptions to horror movies where the movie immediately gained critical acclaim, but most movies in the genre were not so fortunate in the end. Over time people would start to flock to the genre because there were many interesting movies to be made with horror as a base component. Eventually, we got hybrid movies which combined the adrenaline inducing horror with things like action thrown into the mix to spice the film up a bit. With the hybridization of movies in this way, they have had no choice but to try and one up themselves with every sequel that would follow. Most of the time this would end up not working out because movies that constantly tried to one-up themselves eventually collapsed under their own weight.
The most notable horror film to have strong action elements was the ‘Predator‘ movie which released back in 1987 and introduced the world to a different type of film. This film did something that no one expected and that was the fact that the movie was a combination of a few different genres which ended up meshing together to make something great. At first glance, people only saw it as another action film which may have had some kinds of twist added to it. Since the main premise of the film is set in a jungle with a group of deadly commandos, no one expected to see aliens making an appearance in the movie. This is what we ended up with though because that was the plan; to lull people into wanting to watch a crazy action film, but it ended up a crazy hybrid film.
The movie starts with a group of commandos pretty much wiping out a group of insurgents with very minimal effort on their part and finding a woman that they must escort out of the jungle. What followed was something that nobody would have expected if not for the promotional material and that was that the script was flipped. Normally, people would have expected a type of ‘Rambo’ film where the commandos would tactically hunt their targets in the jungle, but this is far from the end result we got. Instead, the commandos were the ones being hunted after taking out all of their former enemies within the first few minutes of the film. This created an epic game of cat and mouse that people very quickly flocked to theaters to see. After all, seeing a group of big dangerous commandos go from predators to prey was something that completely changed what people expected from an action film.
The first movie culminated with the main chracter “Dutch,” portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, coming face to face with the creature that had hunted down the rest of his crew. All throughout the film, hints were given that the creature was nothing of this world and that the final battle would end up being a spectacle because it was unknown how they could beat such a being. Between the insane physical differences and the highly advanced weaponry, the characters in the movie had no real way of fighting the titular Predator the way they normally would. It ended up taking the main character using guerilla tactics as well as other tricks to be able to finally bring the alien menace down. Unfortunately, the remaining members of his group were not fortunate enough to make it out with their lives and only he and the woman survived.
The first movie did an unbelievable job at blending both action and horror because it had people guessing when the next person would end up dying and in what way. It also had people wondering whether the characters would even end up making it out of the jungle at all and they made this an even bigger question at the climax when the alien almost blew up the main character. Now this was a film that certainly caught people’s attention and got them interested so, of course, they did not stop after one movie. They would go on to create the aptly named ‘Predator 2‘ which ended up releasing in 1990 and this time it was a bit closer to home. Unlike the previous movie which took place in a jungle in Central America, the sequel took place in the urban jungle of Los Angeles.
With the release of the second film, the filmmakers were able to give more personality to the titular Predators as a race and expand upon what makes them so terrifying. Unlike the last movie where it was just one group of men being hunted, this time saw gangs all across L.A. being wiped out by the alien hunter. On top of this, government agents who know about the alien’s existence have arrived in the city trying to capture it as a means to study it in some way and prevent it from doing what the other one did in Central America. Lieutenant Michael R. Harrigan, played by Donald Glover, is the person that the Predator holds the most interest in this time around as it witnessed his acts of heroism during the gang wars. It was because of this acknowledgement and some of the actions of the Predator that we discovered that they were not what we actually expected them to be.
By the end of the movie, we discovered that the race that the Predators were from has been hunting people on Earth for years dating back centuries. After their hunts, they would collect trophies to tout as their proof that they had taken down a worthy opponent and that they have earned their place among their people as great warriors. Not only that, but we learned that they will only attack those that they recognize as a threat or a worthy foe and they will not kill innocents. On top of this, they will not kill pregnant women because it would go against the rules of their hunt and it would be incredibly dishonorable for them to do. By the end of the movie, there was a ton of lore which had been added to the backstory of the Predators and that lore is widely accepted by fans over the years.
What followed after what many considered the hay day of the Predator movies was a long drought where we saw no new films about the now iconic aliens. In truth, the films only really just made back the money that was put into them, but the fact remained that there was a very dedicated fanbase which wanted to keep watching films with the aliens in them. Thus, in 2004 we ended up getting the crossover film ‘Alien vs. Predator’ which combined the two beloved alien franchises after a throwaway Easter egg in ‘Predator 2’ showed a xenomorph from the Alien franchise. While the movie may not have been as loved the films that came before, people were still kind of excited to see the match-up happen in the end. There would go on to be another sequel for AvP which was much less loved by people than the film that came before which led to a lot of disappointed fans.
What came next was something many people did not expect which was a direct sequel to the original films which released in 2010 which instead took the dangerous humans and brought them to the Predator hunting grounds. This is where we were introduced to a variety of Predators and we got to see how they functioned among their own kind through the eyes of humans being hunted by them on their own hunting world. The film wasn’t as great as the originals but it was something, but what followed with the 2018 film was just considered horrid by fans because it added way too much. Everything about the 2018 film just ended up feeling “off” in the end and so it is no surprise that fans did not like the movie in the end. However, it would appear that director Dan Trachtenberg’s upcoming Predator movie will not have anything to do with the 2018 film and it will instead be a reboot. Here is to hoping that the film turns out like fans hope it does and we get a good Predator film again.