Retro Reviews: Predator series Part I: Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990)

Having recently seen Shane Black's newest entry into the Predator film series, I had the urge to go back and watch (or rewatch) a few of the earlier movies which I hadn't seen in a number of years. This year's The Predator marks the sixth movie in the series, and I'd seen all but one of the previous five with varying degrees of recency. Without further ado:

This is the actual poster that I had on
my bedroom wall as a kid.

Predator (1987)

Director: John McTiernan

I didn't need to bother going out of my way to rewatch the original movie, as I watch it every couple of years or so. This keeps it rather fresh in my mind, even aside from the fact that my Predator-loving friends and I have been quoting the movie for a couple of decades now.

For those who have somehow never seen it, the brief summary is that a rescue team of special forces soldiers, led by Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), go into the Central American jungle on what is supposed to be a rescue mission. After the mission goes south, Dutch and his team start to be brutally killed, one-by-one, by some mysterious, unseen being. The being turns out to be an extra-terrestrial hunter that pursues the most challenging "game" on this planet. Dutch and his crew try to survive, with all but Dutch and a local freedom fighter, Anna, being slain by "the Predator."

This movie is, quite simply, a masterpiece of action film-making. It was the first major film by action movie directing legend John McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October), and this was the movie that got him larger budgets for his later films. With a relatively paltry budget of $15 million, he transported viewers into a Central American jungle to follow Schwarzenegger's small platoon of completely badasses, as they are ruthlessly hunted by a mysterious killer using impossibly advanced technology. The story is relatively simple, but the characters are great, the pacing and dialogue are perfect, and the action and tension are top-notch. I have to assume that it was the quality of this film that urged movie studios to throw far greater sums at McTiernan for his next movie - the following year's iconic Die Hard, another absolute masterpiece of action cinema.

Back to Predator. It's not often that a movie gets made that is so much of its own time yet is timelessly enjoyable. The great noir cinema of the '40s and '50s comes to mind, as do several other films. Predator is one of those. A friend of mine once brilliantly described the movie as "Beowulf told through the lens of Reagan-era America," which I found astoundingly fitting. Like so many things in the 1980s, this movie was about undiluted machismo. You have several famously muscle-bound dudes: Arnie. Carl "Apollo Creed" Weathers. Jesse "The Body" Ventura. And several other obvious tough guys, most of whom were military veterans. This resulted in a very organic, humorous Alpha-male chemistry between everyone in the platoon. Without authentic soldiers playing these roles, it's easy to imagine how this movie could have fallen very flat. A strong argument can also be made that Schwarzenegger - never known as being a particularly great actor - was at his acting best in this movie. No, the role didn't demand much, but it fit Arnie like a glove, and he nailed it to a tee.

Two more of the obvious strengths of the film are the narrative pace and dialogPredator have tried to work in a fraction of this movie's great lines and flawless deliveries, and nearly all have failed.

Dutch and his men. They look like serious badasses probably
because nearly all of them were in real life. Even beyond the
muscles and hard stares, though, each character quickly
displays some charisma, making many of the deaths
meaningful to us viewers.

ue. The movie does spend a little time setting up the "rescue mission" story, but it's barely five minutes before we're with the guys on a chopper, listening to "Long Tall Sally" blasting over the radio and Hawkins fire off one of his crass jokes, and getting to love the entire squad through their busting of each others' balls. The movie is then off and truly running, with the slower, tenser moments bridged to the explosive action sequences through a highly memorable and quotable script, compliments of the punch-up writing of Shane Black, who plays Hawkins in the film. Countless action movies before and since

One last observation about this movie - the ending. I think it's often a somewhat overlooked piece of genius. Whereas so many lesser action/horror movies follow the trope of ending the movie with the surviving hero firing off a one-liner, or the movie leaving us viewers with an obvious teaser for a potential sequel, Predator doesn't do that. The final shots of this movie are of Dutch being carried off in a rescue helicopter, staring into the distance as the reality of his men's deaths sets in. No more pithy one-liners. No hints of further "Predators" arising to seek revenge. Just the haunted stare of an elite soldier who has survived a horrific ordeal - one which has taken the lives of every one of his closest brothers-in-arms. It's rare that such an overtly "action" movie chooses to end on such an effectively somber note, but Predator pulls it off.

There is a very good reason that this single film spawned so many other stories, mainly in movies and comic books. In terms of the films, none of the five succeeding ones has come anywhere close to matching the muscled-up magic of the original.

Predator 2 (1990)

Director: Stephen Hopkins

A sequel that was rather disappointing when it was released, given how very different it was from its predecessor. It is one, however, that holds up fairly well.

Predator 2 completely shifted the setting from a tropical rainforest to a blisteringly hot Los Angeles in which a wildly violent gang war is taking place. This was the first jarring shift away from the memorably primitive setting of the original movie. Another is that, while a sequel, not a single character and only one brief reference is made to the horrors which Dutch and his men suffered in Predator. And the final large difference is simply the complexity of the plot, which includes more than the simple survival tale of the original film. Here you have a Dirty Harry-like cop, Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover), who catches the eye of a new "Predator" alien. The Predator, for whatever reason, decides to toy with Harrigan by following him around and gradually killing of members of his squad. Hovering around all of this is a shadowy government group who is interested in trapping the Predator, in order to study it and its amazingly advanced weapons technology.

While it never really comes close to the overall quality of the original, Predator 2 is a decent follow-up and a solid enough action movie. I admire the film-makers' willingness to completely change settings, and it was fun to dig a bit deeper into the culture of the Predator species. While the drug war plotline never gets terribly interesting, it serves well enough as a hotbed of action in which the Predator and Harrigan can play their cat-and-mouse game. The cast it also strong. Although Maria Conchita Alonso can overact and over-inflect quite a bit, Ruben Blades, Gary Busey, and Bill Paxton are all great. There are a few moments when the tone is just a tad off - basically when anyone not named Bill Paxton tries to be funny - but this was a decent entry into the series.

Though never noted as an "action star," per se, Danny Glover
actually plays the part of hard-charging super-cop Mike
Harrigan fairly well. His epic chase-down of the hunter
alien packs a solid amount of intensity to it.

I feel that one thing that weakens this movie is that a fair bit of the violence is purely gratuitous. Namely, some of the gang violence, especially the scene in which Jamaican gang members string up a rival and mercilessly thrust a massive knife into his chest. This scene also includes one of several clumsy attempts to emulate the memorable one-liners from the original film. The knife-wielding Jamaican in this scene, for no clear reason, utters the line, "Shit happens," with his thick accent. This becomes a line that the Predator alien utters later, much the same way that the alien utters "What the hell are you?" in the original movie. These were just two of several moments which seemed to be going for a little more shock value or "cool" factor than the original movie, which achieved its strength and coolness in a nearly effortless and organic manner. When Predator 2 tries, it comes off as cheap B-movie fare.

I wasn't able to find a final budget for this movie, but it made notably less that the original. This is why, I assume, the series was put to sleep for well over a decade.

New Release! The Predator (2018) [No spoilers]

Director: Shane Black

Disappointing, but not as bad as the generally negative reviews might suggest.

Before getting to my thoughts on The Predator, a little background on me and the previous films (I'm currently writing up a longer post on the five previous Predator movies. Coming Soon.). I have a certain, almost irrational love for the original Predator from 1987. No, it's not high art. It's not even the best action movie one will ever see. But it is one of the leanest, most well-executed and uncluttered blends of sci-fi and action that has ever been put to film. It was also one of, if not the, best example of certain glorious excesses of muscled-up, macho films that were the hallmark of the 1980s. I still watch it every few years and greatly enjoy it every single time. The 1990 sequel starring Danny Glover was a dropoff but still an entertaining action flick. 2004's Aliens vs. Predator was a further step back, but has some worthy elements, while it's follow-up AVP: Requiem was one of the worst movies I've recently seen. Robert Rodriguez's stab at the franchise in 2010s Predators I found to be a highly derivative, strangely dull letdown, so I was not surprised that the franchise was deep-sixed for several years. It was also why I grew tremendously excited when, about three years ago, Shane Black's name was attached to direct a new Predator movie. Black is not only a great screen-writer and director, all of whose films I enjoy, but he co-wrote and was actually in the original Predator film. What could go wrong?

A few things, apparently.

Following the continuity of the previous Predator "solo" movies (and perhaps the first Aliens vs. Predator movie), The Predator follows U.S. Marine sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), who comes across an alien hunter, a "Predator," while on a mission in Central America. He manages to gather a few pieces of the alien's gear, evades a mysterious group who converges on the sight, and sends the gear home to his son and wife for safekeeping. Quinn is eventually picked up by his mysterious pursuers and sent to a compound back in the U.S. There, he is packed onto a bus with other mentally unstable, former servicemen. Before long, the Predator, who has also been imprisoned on the compound for study, escapes and starts wreaking havoc. Quinn and his new companions quickly band together, along with biologist Casey Brackett (Olivia Munn) in a race back to Quinn's son, to whom the Predator is now heading. Things escalate as we learn that the lone Predator is far from the only extraterrestrial with its eyes on earth.

The Predator is actually a moderately entertaining movie. Shane Black's trademark dialogue is present in many places, most notably the humorous banter between the main characters. And there's plenty of decent action, with a Predator running around causing all the carnage that one would ask of an intergalactic sport hunter. The action is never as captivating as the original film or the best parts of Predator 2, but it definitely showed more imagination and skill than any of the following movies in the series. I also have to give the movie credit for avoiding the primary mistake of Predators, which simply copied too many elements from the original. Most notably, the slow reveal of the Predator lost its effectiveness after the original film, so there is really no reason to tease the audience with it any more. The Predator doesn't waste our time with such a tease, but rather gets to the "Predator versus humans" action rather quickly. More quickly, in fact, than any other movie in the franchise. Sure, it does remind one of the brilliance of the original's slow burn, but that can never be recreated. I think Black was right to just get things going quickly.

But here is where the greatest problem lies. The plot is simply way too busy. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won't get into the details. Suffice it to say that I found there to be way too many plot threads to keep up with, creating a muddle. At first, it's all just a bit dizzying. Then, with time to think back on it, one recognizes more than a few loose elements and even outright holes in the plot. Thanks to a few other strengths, these issues don't completely kill the movie. They do, however, betray some lack of confidence in any sort of deeper tensions which could have been built through a simpler story and more measured pacing.

The crew of "troubled" veterans that throw in with Quinn and
Dr. Bracket to take on the latest visiting predator. The banter
between these misfits is what keeps the movie afloat at times.

I think one issue is that Shane Black's noir narrative sensibilities got in his way this time. Several of Black's films, most notably Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and The Nice Guys, make highly effective use of the laughably labyrinthine plots so wonderfully used by noir master novelists like James M. Cain and Dashielle Hammett, which were then effectively adapted into classic films like Double Indemnity and its ilk. And such narratives have fit Black's crime-focused movies to a tee. The problem here is that The Predator is not a crime story revolving around relatively realistic and grounded characters. The strength of this franchise's best films has been a fairly straightforward struggle between small groups of badass human fighters and a badass alien hunter that wants to kill them for sport. When it's been done correctly (again, most obviously in the original film), it's a blast. When the plot starts to get overly clever and complex, it just muddies the waters and robs the movie of potential thrills and suspense. The original Predator did have a bit of a story beyond the pursuit of Dutch's men by the Predator, but it was all introduced and effectively reconciled by the beginning of the second act. In The Predator, new plot twists and complications are still being introduced right up into and through the final ten minutes of the movie. Instead of just letting us sit back and take in some solid action and fun banter, the movie keeps raising and dealing with endless questions that it never really needed to raise in the first place.

Would I watch this movie again? Yes. And this is something I can't really say for Predators, which I hadn't watched since I saw it upon its release in 2010, and only rewatched for the purposes of doing a post on the entire film franchise. While I would love to one day see another Predator movie that can recapture a bit more of the magic of the original, I know that this is a very tall order. In fact, the tease of a sequel at the end of this movie left me thoroughly uninterested in the implied premise. In the meantime, an entry like The Predator is a decent placeholder. I was hoping for a bit more from Shane Black, whom I hold in rather high esteem, but perhaps I simply need to accept that the original movie has left shoes that are too large for even a skilled writer/director to fill. 

New Release! The Nice Guys

Director: Shane Black

One of the best times I've had at the movies in recent years. It might not be perfect or blindingly original in all facets, but The Nice Guys is a hilarious entry into the oft-botched genre of R-rated buddy flicks.

The movie follows Holland March (Ryan Gosling), a private investigator who is put on the case of finding a missing young woman, Amelia, in the drug-fueled Sodom and Gomorrah that was 1977 Hollywood, California. The case itself bears several odd elements, made all the more challenging by the fact that March is not only an alcoholic but also oddly inept at his job. Fortunately for him, he is joined by the sober and much more capable muscle-for-hire Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe). The two find themselves trying to navigate the winding, bizarre trail that Amelia leaves through the Hollywood porn industry, justice department, and even the U.S. automotive industry.

Writers Shane Black and Anthony Bagarozzi fully embraced the neo-noir style and did it tremendous justice, while at the same time turning plenty of its familiar cliches on their ears. There are more than a few sequences which begin in very familiar fashion to crime movie lovers, but which take sly little comic turns. In a move gleefully similar to The Big Lebowski, making the "hero" detective a booze-addled goof creates plenty of opportunity for humor, and the movie capitalizes.  And the characters only enhance the gags. While March does have reasons for being so down on his luck, it doesn't lessen the hilarity of his missteps and posturing. He's the perfect pairing to the grizzled, no-nonsense Healy, and their dynamic is a blast to watch. Peppered throughout all of this are several great little sight gags which are among some of the best I've seen in some time.

Gosling and Crowe make the blend of tough and hilarious
look deceptively smooth and easy. They enhance Black's
already-great script to another level.

It is difficult to imagine better casting for March and Healy than Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. They play their characters to a tee, and left me with the same feeling that any successful buddy movie should leave - the desire to see more of them. There are a few minor characters that may not have completely fit the bill, but these were the few exceptions among the mostly-strong supporting cast.

As I write this review, the movie has been out for about two weeks and hasn't done exceptionally well at the box office. I do hope that it picks up, as I feel that this type of quality, R-rated comedy is a bit of a dying breed in movies.