After watching Prey, Killer of Killers, Badlands, Predator, Predator 2, and Predators while I haven’t seen The Predator or Alien Vs. Predator yet I feel like my opinion won’t change after seeing them.
After watching Predators I had many complaints, it was uninspired, the camera work was shoddy, the acting and characters felt like cardboard cutouts, etc.
Here’s what I liked: The idea of having multiple Predators hunting kidnapped humans on an alien planet is interesting. Having the cast be a diverse group of international killers is interesting. Introducing a rivalry between classic Predators and these Super Predators is interesting. Unfortunately the film in my eyes fails to properly execute all of these interesting ideas effectively and comes off completely uninspired.
With the film taking place on an alien planet there was so many possibilities in the distinct flora, fauna, and terrain of the planet but unfortunately it’s just a jungle like the first film only with a much less lush and beautiful terrain. For some reason poisonous plants from earth are on the alien planet? And on top of all that we only see two completely new creatures, one is a humanoid who died almost as fast as he was introduced and the other was alien hunting dogs that disappeared from the film after their introduction. Lastly, with such a diverse cast why did they all happen to speak English and why did they make the protagonist an American mercenary again?
And all those gripes don’t even compare to the number of things it takes from the original, the climax is literally a repeat of the Dutch fight except Dutch is replaced with a less athletic mercenary with less traps and no vines or anything to swing behind trees. Instead the whole fight just was him running back and forth taking cheap shots with an axe. And another thing, why did Royce have to say the same line as Dutch? Why did he have the same strategy of covering himself with mud? Couldn’t the writers come up with a different way to have a character fight a predator?
When I went online (my mistake) to see what other people thought about Predators I was surprised to see a large number of people giving it an average to high rating. Many claimed it was their second favourite film in the franchise!
Is Predator 2 the second weakest of the films? Yes. But is it way better than Predators? 100% while it is a flawed film just like the original Predators 2 works mainly because shit just happens and it’s cool. Predator getting struck by lightning while roaring from the top of a building? Dope. Predator hunting voodoo gangsters? Dope.
Predator 2 knows is a dumb violent action movie and that’s why it works in my opinion. Another thing is that Predator 2 is actually a good sequel unlike Predators. It’s a sensible evolution of the original idea. To move the hunting grounds from a jungle to a concrete jungle was a wonderful decision in my opinion. Furthermore the protagonists in Predator 2 are much more fleshed out than Predators. Having Mike Harrigan learn the lore through the special agents trying to catch a predator makes way more sense than Isabelle the random soldier in Predators just happening to know without any explanation as to why. Lastly Harrigan and the other characters are actually memorable and unique at least in comparison to the Predators cast.
I could go on and on but this poorly executed and disorienting rant is getting out of hand, I just wanted to put my opinion out there and see what people on this sub think.
By the way, to everyone who read this far I hope you all have a nice day.
