Although it leaves an opening for yet another Predator film, my hope is that this makeshift franchise has reached its finale.
When the original Predator was released in 1987, I don’t think anyone intended it to be the launch of a movie franchise. But, yet, here we are five movies later with 2018’s The Predator. What began as a interesting (and successful) mash-up of the action and science fiction genres has morphed into a steady string of mostly mediocre (and occasionally awful) sequels that really don’t add anything to the overall story.
None of what’s come before really matters in The Predator, which is one of those reboot/sequel hybrids that seem to be popular lately. You don’t need to know the backstory of the Predators to follow the action but you’ll get more enjoyment out of it if you do. Mainly because this film is somewhat incapable of telling its own story very well. The Predator needs all the help in can get.
As the film opens, a spaceship enters Earth’s atmosphere. Its lone occupant, a Predator, ejects before impact and crash lands in a jungle. (The first of many callbacks to the original film.) The crash interrupts a U.S. Army Ranger mission as a sniper named Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is just about to fire on a drug lord. The Predator takes out the rest of his team, but McKenna survives the encounter. He recovers some nifty Predator weaponry from the crash site and ships them home to the States before they can be recovered by the government.
McKenna is then sent to a psych ward to keep him quiet. On the way there, he meets a busload full of self-proclaimed “loonies” who eventually become his allies against the Predator (and the government.)
Unfortunately for McKenna, his son, Rory (Jacob Tremblay,) opens the box with the alien gadgets and begins to play with them. Rory is on the autism spectrum and seems to have an immediate understanding of how to operate the stuff. But by doing so, he unwittingly announces the location of the equipment to the Predator, who wants to reclaim what is rightfully his.
There’s a little more to the story but explaining things just points out how little sense it makes. Olivia Munn plays Casey Bracket, an “evolutionary biologist” who immediately wields weapons as if she was trained at Camp Lejeune. Sterling K. Brown is cast as Traeger, an arrogant government agent who leads “Project Stargazer,” a Predator research project. He also inexplicably pops up everywhere there is any action.
Shane Black and Fred Dekker, who co-wrote The Monster Squad, deliver a very 80s-styled script. The banter between characters is frequently hilarious (and extremely juvenile) and is, by far, the highlight of this otherwise scatterbrained affair. The final act of the film was reportedly re-shot due to negative reactions from test audiences. The retooled ending has a “square peg in a round hole” feel to it. But it’s not as if the first two-thirds of the film feel very cohesive either. I was often left wondering where characters went or how they managed to be where they eventually wound up.
The Predator earns its R rating with intense and gory violence. Oddly enough, the most offensive thing about the movie is its take on autism. Without getting into details, Rory’s “gift” of autism is merely an ill-advised plot device.
Although it leaves an opening for yet another Predator film, my hope is that this makeshift franchise has reached its finale. Nothing other than the first entry has really been worth watching.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
Buy on Amazon!
