Predators (2010) is a unique specimen of a movie, filled with truly fantastic ideas but delivered with lackluster results. For that, I don't know if I should love the film or hate it. This is, afterall, the film that came up with the idea of a predator/samurai swordfight, which is awesome, but they made it boring, so where should one's opinion stand? I'm thinking one step south of neutral.
The film opens with an unconscious Adrien Brody in freefall high up in the clouds. He soon awakes, and one can only imagine what runs through his mind as he plummets through the muggy atmosphere down to the jungle canopy. Suddenly, a parachute, which he apparently didn't know was strapped to his back, deploys, and he crashes into the trees with less-than-lethal force. And then the title screen comes up.
On the ground, Brody quickly finds seven other people who have landed in the jungle who are all equally-clueless as to how they got there.
Now, I had a lot of wary concerns going into this movie. I knew the setup, and I was excited for it, so I was worried they (the filmmakers) would rush through it just to get to some lame trophy-kills and some predictable action sequences. I was pleasantly surprised when characters refused to make heavy-handed and stupidly-accurate predictions regarding the nature of their scenario. Brody declares at one point that he was pushed out of a plane. This would certainly be my first assumption, too. When they finally break through the trees and spy the sky, which is filled with several planets and a sun that doesn't move, their shock is that much more powerful.
But there is a lot of bad in this movie, too. The few brief bits of characterization are often simply genius, but they're few and far between, and in the end every character definitely feels more like a killing style than an actual person. People would die and then in the next scene I would literally forget who was now missing. Laaaaame. It's way too bad that so little characterization is done, because a proper screenwriter could've really played up the conflict between a group of murderers being forced to work together to survive a hunt. Instead, the conflict kinda just sits there on the front step.
Speaking of conflict, more problems: the three predators hunting our crew are simply not scary, especially when they're shown in CGI-form. Part of what made the original so tense is that it was clear our characters were being watched from the very beginning. There really isn't much actual hunting on display in this film. There's one brief firefight, one big free-for-all chase, and then the final showdown. That's it. It probably doesn't help that the three chase-sequences are some of the most boring in the whole film.
Rodriguez invented a new breed of predator for the film, the Beserker, which is supposedly stronger and faster than the PredClassic (which also makes an appearance), but the only difference I could spot was that they look more like fish. Certainly no differences were scripted. In short, the predators weren't characters, either. They bring along some attack-hounds, which could've been a good idea, but instead the tension they bring to their one scene is quickly and artificially deflated by a cliched script.
Also, I think it's time we hand the reigns of this franchise over to someone who isn't a self-professed fanboy. I can only assume Rodriguez thought he was doing the fans a favor by including a positively mind-numbing number of "nods" to the original film, but all these ever do is violate the aesthetic distance, not honor the original. When Brody starts yelling at one predator "Do it, come on, do it, I'm here, kill me, DO IT NOW!" all I can do is groan. How does Brody's character bring down one of the big bad predators? He hides his body-heat with mud, starts a big fire, and pummels it to death. Now, where have we seen that before?
Alright, alright, back to the good. This is such a weird film to discuss, partially because of this constant flipping back and forth between "Man, that was such a cool idea, but wait, they did it all wrong!"
I've whined before about the over-utilization of the predator's self-destruct bomb in other Predator films. I am happy to report that it makes no appearance in Predators. In fact, one of the humans springs the ol' "I'm-taking-you-with-me" routine on one of the predators this time around. More good: there is a third-act twist involving one of the characters which is just brilliant, and one of the film's few great moments of plotting. It's not a spoiler you can't guess, but it's the perfect explanation for one of the film's few mysteries. I am also a whole-hearted supporter of the casting of the likes of Adrien Brody and Topher Grace in roles previously reserved for meatier individuals.
Anything else to mention? So the film surprised me with some great ideas on the page which unfortunately felt lame/forced/unfocused/haphazard on the actual screen. I have an idea to overcome this problem. My idea is to get an award-winning filmmaker, who has no interest in making a Predator film, kidnap him/her, and not let him/her go until s/he agrees to make a predator film which seeks not to fellate the original but rather work on its own as a great action movie.
This film wasn't nearly as atrocious as the abysmally apocryphal and downright boring film that was Alien vs. Predator (2004), but it's certainly not the follow-up Dutch deserves.
--Serge
PS: One final most-perplexing issue: there are two shots in the trailer which are not in the final film, shots I was really looking forward to seeing play out. The first is the shot of Adrien Brody with fifteen laser-sights trained on him. Yeah, that's not in the film. The second is Danny Trejo asking "Does this look like a team orientated group of individuals to you?" (emphasis added)
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