Movies That Suck/Franchises: Predator. Predators (2010)

I'll start this one off by saying that I, like just about everyone else, had been waiting for a third Predator movie for a long time, particularly due to the fact that, since Predator 2, the only other big-screen appearances of the intergalactic hunters were the horrible attempts to bring the Alien vs. Predator concept to the big screen. That idea was ripe for film and there were many who were excited about it, myself included, but, both times they tried, it just didn't work out for various reasons and, unless they came up with a good script and a capable director for another crack at an AVP flick, separating the franchises again and going forward with solitary films for each was the only other way to go. So, in 2009, it was announced that the Predators would indeed return in a film simply called Predators, which would be produced by Robert Rodriguez. I was very happy that another stand-alone Predator movie was being produced and, despite some questionable actions on the part of the filmmakers, like some of the casting choices and Rodriguez's insistence that Predator 2 doesn't exist in this continuity (I'll get more into that presently), I was looking forward to this flick. I didn't see it in the theater, though, and it wasn't until early 2012 when I finally saw it on Blu-Ray... and, boy, was I ever disappointed. This makes me hate Rodriguez's attitude towards Predator 2 even more because Predator 2 is bad-ass, while this is one sorry, dull, miscast joke of a sci-fi/action movie that wishes it could be in the same league as both that movie and the 1987 original.

A mercenary awakens to find himself falling in mid-air with a parachute on his back, which deploys and lands him in a jungle. Upon arriving, he meets up with seven other people who arrive in the same manner, including a Mexican drug cartel member, a Russian soldier, a female sniper for the Israeli Defense Force, a Serra Leoa militia, a death-row inmate, a silent Yakuza, and a doctor. The last thing each of one of them remembers is seeing a bright light before finding themselves in the middle of the free fall. The group then attempts to find out where they are, eventually discovering that they're not even on Earth. They continue speculating why they were brought to the planet but after they're attacked by several strange beasts which retreat after hearing a whistle, they deduce that the planet is one large game preserve and that they're being hunted. Before long, they meet the deadly Predators and learn the full details about them from one of their party, who has heard of them before. From there on out, it becomes a struggle for the group to survive and find a way off the planet.

I can remember back to a summer of 2009 episode of a podcast I used to listen to where one of the co-hosts announced, "We may have a nimrod directing the next Predator movie," and then he proceeded to name the director: Nimrod Antal. I thought it was a joke at first. Just think about that for a second: there's a guy, a filmmaker no less, whose first name is Nimrod and that really is his name. He's of Hungarian descent and I've heard that it's a fairly common name in other countries and, as one would hope, doesn't mean what it does over here, (apparently it's actually pronounced Neemrod), but, again, I can't get over that. Nimord. (In fact, that proper pronunciation sounds a bit worse to me.) In any case, Antal (I'd feel bad if I called him by his first name throughout this review because I'd be snickering in my head, as immature as that would be) has only directed two shorts and four films to date. His first film Kontroll is pretty well-liked and Vacancy is a claustrophobic horror film that I haven't seen but I hear good things about. However, if Predators is any indication as to where this guy's evolution as a filmmaker is going, I doubt we'll see anything worth a crap from him again. (I was going to make a joke that, after seeing this movie, I can understand why everybody calls him Nimrod but I decided that was a little too mean.)

One of the film's major problems is the fact that Adrien Brody is the lead. Now don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Adrien Brody, but he is NOT an action hero. I didn't mind him in Peter Jackson's King Kong but he wasn't trying to be a 80's type of action star in that movie. When I heard that he was the lead in Predators, I was puzzled but decided to take a leap faith, figuring that an Oscar-winning actor who doesn't look the part might be able to pull it off. Nope. There are so many better actors who would have been better choices, like Jason Statham, Thomas Jane, Mickey Rourke, and so on but nope, they decided to be cast against type and go with Brody. Now, I will give Brody credit, his physique in this movie is quite impressive when you finally do see it. He looks good. But, that said, he looks like a geek in the face and does not come across as a mercenary at all to me. I know the reason that they gave for going with him, that they didn't want to cast a big, burly Arnold Schwarzenegger-type of guy because that's not realistic. First off, those guys I mentioned above aren't big and burly but they're a lot more believable as mercenaries than Brody. Second, I am so sick of everything having to be realistic nowadays. Whatever happened to escapism, which is what the original Predator and all of those great action movies of the 80's were all about? Also, Brody's acting in this movie is such a joke. Throughout the entire film, he talks in this raspy, Clint Eastwood-like voice that you hear so many would-be action heroes like Christian Bale use nowadays (I was about to say that I would have rather had Bale as the lead here but I know he would have used that voice as well). When are people going to learn that that kind of voice does not make you sound bad-ass or intimidating but rather makes you sound like an idiot who's trying to compensate for something?

Putting everything that I've already said about Brody aside, I also just plain didn't like his character, Royce (whose name you don't learn until the end of the movie). He's one of two things. First, he's a cliche: the brooding loner who has a troubled past and doesn't want to get close to anybody, is forced to assume leadership through circumstance, and so on. That worked for Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's The Thing because Russell was able to make himself feel like someone with that kind of history and personality but, when Brody tries to do it, I just can't take him seriously. Second, Royce is a prick. He's selfish, really douchey about his need to be alone, uses the people around him simply as a means to an end, actually uses them to draw out the Predators at one point, and leaves several, wounded team members behind to die. I know that those aforementioned wounded team members were, unbeknownst to him either, already dead or turned out to be a psycho but still, the way he treated them and those who wanted to help them really rubbed me the wrong way. I know you can't always save someone who's in danger but he was just a douche about it. By the time he did come back and help the last two survivors, it was too late for me to grow to like him. I didn't care whether this guy lived (which I knew he was going to) or died, whereas I cared about about both Dutch and Mike Harrigan. Not only did those guys have charisma but they were loyal to their comrades. I know Royce didn't start out as their leader but he didn't endear himself to them or to me. The choice of Brody just did not work at all.

I will say that I did kind of like Alice Braga's role of Isabelle, the Israeli sniper. She's a tough woman (like Anna in the original Predator, she's the only female in the movie) but has a good heart. She's the one who's determined not to leave anybody behind, which puts her in conflict with Royce's "every man for himself" type of personality. She feels guilty about not being able to save her spotter in a mission she partook in before being brought to the planet and feels that this is her chance for redemption. Also like Anna, she's the one who knows a little bit about the Predators, telling the group of the events of the original film and explaining a bit about the aliens themselves. (By the way, she tells them how Dutch used mud to mask his body heat from the Predator's thermal vision but do these guys ever do this? Nope.) She's also (predictably) the only other survivor besides Royce. There was a budding romance between the two of them by the end of the movie (which you can see coming a mile away) but it's so contrived and I was just thinking, "Lady, you can do a lot better than him. He didn't even tell you (or us, for that matter) his name until a few minutes before the movie ended!" That was ultimately the only thing I didn't like about her character; otherwise, I thought she was a nicely done character.

The most head-scratching casting choice in the entire movie to me is not even Adrien Brody: it's Topher Grace as Edwin, the doctor who is revealed at the end to actually be a serial killer. Someone said that the very idea of Topher Grace in a Predator movie just isn't right and I agree with that notion wholeheartedly. Throughout the entire movie, I found him to be just unbearable, with his complaining and sniveling and how he's going on with all of this medical jargon, no doubt to reinforce that he's a supposed doctor. Also, when he's revealed at the end of the movie to be a serial killer, I rolled my eyes because, while I figured that there was going to be some kind of catch, I thought it would be more creative. I thought that maybe he was in on it with the Predators and that they took him because he was a doctor and, therefore, could help them figure out how humans' bodies work. But no, he's just a serial killer who's also possibly a doctor or perhaps has such a large amount of medical knowledge simply because he is a killer. It doesn't really matter because, one, I can't buy Grace as a serial killer (he's not scary or intimidating in the slightest when the reveal is made), and two, he decides he wants to stay on the planet because he fits in among the monsters there and is actually the normal one when compared to them, which is so stupid and pretentious. The bottom line is that Topher Grace does not belong in this kind of movie, let alone as somebody who doesn't die until very near the end.

While we're on the subject of the psychos in this movie, let's go ahead and mention Walton Goggins as Stans, the death-row inmate. Among the group, he's the least likable because he's an unrepentant psychopath who threatens Mombasa with a knife to make him give him his gun and, at one point, mentions that if he gets back to Earth, he's going to rape so many women. He's such a creep that even Edwin, the serial killer, feels uncomfortable around him! The problem with his character is the same problem with a good majority of the characters in Alien 3 (even though I don't completely hate that movie): it's hard to grow to like somebody who's an unremorseful killer and rapist. It's akin to if you put those horrible characters of Percy and Wild Bill from The Green Mile in this situation: they're so loathsome and hateful that I'm not going to care one iota about what happens to them. And like Edwin, Stans survives until very late in the movie, so that just makes it even worse.

The rest of the group are characters that I kind of liked but the problem is that they're either dispatched far too quickly or don't do much. I did like Oleg Taktarov's character of Nikolai, the Russian commando because he feels like a very decent, honorable person and I like that when Edwin keeps him from touching a poisonous plant, he promises to look out for him. You get the impression that there is potential for him to be a bad-ass character but he doesn't get to do much other than sacrifice his life to kill one of the Predators as well as to save Edwin (which turns out to be a waste because of what we find out about Edwin soon afterward). I also thought Louis Ozawa Changchien was one of the cooler aspects of the group as Hanzo, the Yakuza. He's awesome because he's the strong, silent type, with almost no dialogue and when he does reveal that he can speak English very late in the movie, he also shows that he's actually missing two fingers because, "I talk too much." But, what should have been his bad-ass moment is kind of botched for a couple of reasons. As the remainders of the group are escaping, he decides for no reason to stay behind and battle one of the pursuing Predators, in an attempt by the filmmakers to make a callback to Billy's last stand in the original movie. That's fine and dandy but here's the thing: Billy decided to stay and fight after he heard Dillon's death scream back in the jungle and knew he had to hold the Predator off so the others could escape; Hanzo, on the other hand, makes this decision to fight one of them out of the blue and with no reason to do so. He makes use of a katana sword to duel with one of the Predators but, while it is a cool scene and is no doubt meant to satisfy those who wondered what went down between Billy and the Predator, I thought it was messed up by the fact that Hanzo actually manages to kill the Predator but gets himself killed in the process as well. I'll explain why I feel like that later on.

One of the biggest wastes casting-wise is Danny Trejo as Cuchillo, an enforcer of a Mexican drug cartel. Trejo is a guy who would have been perfect in this type of movie but he ultimately gets to do little other than have a brief skirmish with Royce at the very beginning of the movie. He doesn't get a chance to battle the Predators and we don't even see him fight with their attack dog-like creatures. He's actually the first one to get killed, with the Predators then using his body as bait to try to trap the other team members, which makes me wonder what the point was of putting Trejo in here and outfitting him with twin submachine guns. Such a freaking waste, and another one is Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (boy, that's a mouthful) as Mombasa, a soldier from Sierra Leone. Like Nikolai, this character had potential to be an enjoyable member of the cast. He has a good presence to him and even though he's sort of a rip-off of Billy given how he's the first one to sense the Predators' presence, I didn't really mind it because I liked the way the character looked and acted. But, that's thrown away when he ends up being the second one to die and, like Cuchillo, he doesn't get a chance to fight the Predators. Yeah, God forbid that one of the cool characters actually lives to the end. It really felt like Antal and Rodriguez had the wrong priorities when developing these characters because they let the lame and unlikable ones live to the end and then either killed the cool ones off far too early or didn't let them do anything. These past few characters that I've been talking about are the ones I wanted to see as the leads, not the star of The Pianist trying to be an action hero or some guy from That 70's Show trying to pass himself off as a serial killer.

The biggest waste of an actor in this movie by far is Laurence Fishburne as Noland, a soldier who has been stuck on the planet for a long time and has been living in a downed aircraft. He's learned all about the Predators' hunting habits and a bit of their culture, explaining it to the group, as well as how to use the Predators' technology for his own purposes, but all the years of living on the planet by himself have taken their toll on Noland's head. He's completely crazy, constantly talking to someone who's not there, and after he gains the group's trust, he attempts to murder them so he can steal their supplies and weapons. I will say it's interesting to see Fishburne play this type of character and he is good... for all of the fifteen minutes he's in the movie. After he attempts to murder the group, he gets killed by one of the Predators. Like Danny Trejo, I have to ask why you would put an actor like Fishburne in a role where you know he's not going to last long. If you're going to have him come into the movie as this character, why not have him be stable and helpful to the group, perhaps even living to the end of the movie? Hell, why not put him in the role of Roye? He'd be much more compelling than Adrien Brody. I know I must sound like a broken record at this point but the casting choices and priorities in this movie just blow my mind.

One compliment that I can give the movie is that the location work is good. As much crap as I've given Antal and Rodriguez for everything else, they at least understand that part of the appeal of the original Predator was that it was shot in real jungles and they decided to follow suit. A good portion of film was shot in Hawaii and the rainforests do look beautiful, especially when filmed in HD. It doesn't feel quite as harsh as the jungles of Mexico that were used for the original movie but it still has the right vibe. They filmed the interiors at the studio in Texas that Rodriguez owns but they also filmed some exteriors at Canyon Lake Gorge, which is where I'm guessing that they filmed the scene where the group falls down a waterfall into a big lake or lagoon after encountering the Predators for the first time. All of my compliments about the location aside, though, there is a missed opportunity here with the movie's actual setting. If this is supposed to be a game preserve where the Predators bring their intended prey in order to hunt them, why don't they run into many other different types of creatures besides that one thing that chases Edwin at one point? What was the point of that moment where they find all these cages that clearly contained other alien creatures when you don't even get to see them? (I actually thought those things contained the Predators' tracking dogs at first but now that I think about it, I guess that wouldn't make sense.) You might argue, "Well, the Predators have already killed the other creatures they brought there," but not only is that one creature still alive, so is Noland. All I'm saying is if you're going to set a movie on an alien game preserve, do something with it!

The questionable casting choices and ill-advised treatment of the really cool characters are bad enough but this movie fails in the action department as well. It's really boring for the most part, which is NOT what a Predator movie should be, with a good section of it consisting of the characters wandering around the jungle, trying to figure out where they are and who brought them there. Granted, Predator had a bit of a buildup to it as well but you spent that buildup with characters that you like, unlike these people. Also, the buildup was well worth it because the action scenes were fantastic; the action scenes in this movie, however, are either very generic or too short. It opens with a skirmish between Royce and several of the other actors but that ends rather quickly and shortly afterward, they trip a booby trap left behind by a deceased soldier but that doesn't last long. After a while, they're attacked by a group of four-legged creatures which are later revealed to be some type of hunting dogs that the Predators use and while that scene is okay, I wanted to see them fighting the Predators, not their pets. After that, they finally run into the Predators but it's not that impressive because all they do is run off as the Predators try to shoot them. From there on, the action scenes consist of brief skirmishes, long periods of running, and a final battle between Royce and the leader Predator that I had lost interest in long before it took place.

Another reason why the buildup doesn't work is because if you've seen the other movies (and you wouldn't be watching this if you weren't a fan of the other movies), you're far ahead of the characters and are just waiting for them to catch up. You know what the Predators are and what they do, so there's no suspense in the buildup and as a result, the jungle, as much as I complimented the way it's shot, isn't atmospheric and the movie as a whole is just dull. Now, that's not to say that this type of sequel can't be done well, because it most certainly can. Case in point, let's take a quick look at one of the best examples of a sequel that there is: Aliens. If you've seen Alien, you already know what the monsters are and what they do but there is still a lot of buildup as you wait for the marines to discover what they're dealing with. But, again, you've spent the buildup with a team of very likable, charismatic characters and therefore, the setting, atmosphere, and anticipation is very effective. Even though the Aliens don't come into the movie until quite a while in, the buildup is worth it and the remainder of the movie after it is so much better for it. There is a long lull between action scenes, yes, but you have the great characters to fall back on. I know I keep going around in circles on this matter but it's the truth: Aliens was a sequel with a structure similar to this that worked, while Predators doesn't.

Rodriguez and Antal love Predator so much (which they should) that not only did they want to give audiences an experience similar to that movie, they also decided to put in some nods of the hat to it as well. While I don't mind sequels or remakes doing that, it can be tricky to avoid doing it to the point where you make the viewer wish they were watching the original movie instead; Predators fails that on all counts, with the references to the original film being so blatant and jarring that I was about ready to say, "To hell with it," take the disc out of the player, and pop in the original Predator. They include Royce saying, "Do it now! Kill me!", Mombasa sensing the Predators' presence before anyone else just as Billy did, one of the Predators (the "classic" one, no less) inspecting Royce just as the original one did to Dutch, the aforementioned fall over a waterfall into a large body of water, Noland whispering "Over here" and "Turn around" when he uses the Predators' cloaking technology (that really made me groan), and, as I mentioned earlier, the scene between Hanzo and one of the Predators is very similar to Billy's last stand. I'll comment more thoroughly on the musical references when I actually talk about the score but I will say now that is distracting as well. One reference that I thought was kind of clever, though, was the creature that chases Edwin through the jungle at one point. Apparently, that was based on the original design of the Predator in the first movie that was abandoned when Stan Winston came in. I have to give them that nice little in-joke for hardcore fans. But, for the most part, the references to the original Predator were very egregious and this movie already has enough problems without that added issue of it wanting to make you watch something else on top of it.

I know that when I reviewed Predator 2 I defended it to the grave but, because certain people involved with this film give it crap, I feel the need to bring it up again. First off, Robert Rodriguez said that when developing the script for this movie, he took all of his inspiration from the original and saw Predator 2, along with the AVP movies, as examples of what not to do. Uh, Rob, to begin with, I think you drew a little too much inspiration from the original given what I mentioned above. The great thing about Predator 2 was that it did its own thing, told its own story, and didn't try to constantly remind you of its predecessor, unlike this movie. Plus, I just look at Predator 2 and then at Predators and think, "You really believe you did better with this movie?" Predator 2 was an exciting, bad-ass action movie with great characters and a wallop of an antagonist; Predators is dull, cliched, with characters that are either lame, unlikable, or thrown away, and the Predators themselves (as I'll get into next) are complete jokes. What Topher Grace said about Predator 2 particularly made me despise his involvement with this movie even more: "I really liked the first Predator but all the sequels haven't been as good. Then when I read this, I thought, 'What Aliens was to Alien, this will be to Predator.' Because Predator never got its due; it never really got that sequel." As if that wasn't bad enough, he even went as far as to compare Antal's direction of Predators with that of James Cameron for Aliens in remaining faithful to the original work but taking the concept in a different work. Predator 2 did that, you moron! But, oh no, to all of them, Predator 2 doesn't exist; this is the real sequel (at least that's how Rodriguez feels)! I will give Antal some credit in that he does acknowledge that Predator 2 does exist in the continuity of this movie and doesn't disregard it as Rodriguez would like it to, although I don't think he's all that crazy about it either. I'm sorry if I sound like such a whiny fanboy here but when I see how badly this movie sucks and yet the majority of those involved with it think they've done better than Predator 2, it just makes me hate this movie even more.

Now let's get on to the Predators themselves and the havoc that they cause. Taking over from the late Stan Winston's studio, as well as from Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis, who handled them in the AVP movies, are Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger and, if there's another thing here that I can't complain about, it's the gore and creature effects in this movie. The fake skinned corpses that the group finds at the camp, the corpse of the dead soldier they find near the beginning of the movie, the dead Predator dog, and the creature that chases Edwin all look really good. In addition, KNB has always excelled at gore and this film is certainly no exception. Mombasa's death where he is impaled by a booby trap looks good and Stans' death, in which a Predator rips his spine and skull out, is quick but looks very realistic and nasty (we could have had more good gore effects but the other characters' deaths are either off-camera or CGI explosion and vaporized deaths). I also would be lying if I said that the Predators themselves looked bad, because they don't. They look top-notch, much better than in the AVP movies, and I really appreciate that they decided to go with suit work again instead of making them completely computer-generated. The design of the "classic" Predator is basically an exact replica of the original movie's design, which is nice, and when you see the faces of the new "super" Predators, they look very cool. The special effects used for their weapons are also top notch but that's a given that their camouflage and laser blasts are going to look better now than they ever have before. And finally, the death scene for the last Predator is also well orchestrated, with plenty of its glowing, green blood spraying everywhere. Never let it be said that I'm not fair because I freely admit that, as bad as this movie is, the practical makeup and creature effects and the effects for the weapons are the best parts by far.

While I love their designs, the conception and characterization of the Predators here is what I have a major problem with. I really don't like the notion of there being two classes of Predators, with the higher class hunting and killing the low-class ones in a blood feud. I realize that this was never officially established before but I just felt that, because the Predators have an honor code, they wouldn't have wars and murder each other. It was made clear before that the Predators are ruthless killing machines and you could imagine that becoming a top hunter among their race is no doubt an arduous ritual where death is probably punishment for failure but I just felt that was the only reason the Predators might kill each other and, in a way, that made them a more civilized race than humans. I know that this is all assumption made by myself alone but that's how I felt and, therefore, I didn't like it when they introduced these Super Predators that prey on the lower class ones because they're weaker. Plus, the Super Predators don't follow the code of honor that the others do, as seen when one of them just wantonly shoots Stans even though he was only armed with a knife instead of some type of gun. The previous Predators would attack you according to what your situation was: if you had a bladed weapon, they would duel with you with their own bladed weapons, like when that one Predator used his wrist blades to duel with Harrigan when he was armed with his own smart disc (he also used his net gun on Harrigan but he didn't shoot one of his laser blasts at him). The same thing goes for the original Predator, who challenged Dutch to hand to hand combat because he was unarmed. And yes, that Predator killed Poncho when he was unarmed but I've always felt that he was aiming for Dutch and missed. The thing is that beforehand, the Predators always had a code of honor that distinguished them most other movie monsters but then along come these Super Predators who are closer to being mindless killers than the ones before them ever were. Rodriguez has tried to explain that the Super Predators simply don't follow the code of honor, implying that they're rogues amongst the Predator society, something I would accept had someone like Noland officially established it but he doesn't, so how was I supposed to know that? And in any case, Rodriguez can't seem to keep it straight because, if the Super Predators don't follow the code of honor, then why did that one challenge Hanzo to a sword fight? You can't have it both ways.

What also really got to me was the film's treatment of the classic Predator. At first, when I heard that Derek Mears was going to play a Predator in this movie, I was very happy because I loved his portrayal of Jason Voorhess in the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th. But, the thing is he's not one of the Super Predators; instead, he's the classic one. You might be thinking, "Well, you don't like the Super Predators, so what are you complaining about?" I'm complaining because the classic Predator spends the entirety of the movie tied to a post and is only allowed to do something when Royce frees him near the end of the movie so he find out from him where the ship is so he can use it to escape the planet. (I should be irritated that the Predator actually does let Royce know where the ship but at least here, he didn't become his sidekick, as happened between the last Predator and the lead woman in the first AVP.) Even more insulting is the fact that once he's freed, the classic Predator dukes it out with a Super Predator and unceremoniously gets his ass handed to him before being butchered. To add even more insult to injury, there's this well-filmed, awesome moment before the fight where the classic Predator puts his helmet back on, making you think, "Yes, the Predator I know and love is back in action!", which will result in the outcome of the fight pissing you off even more. I just hated how the classic Predator is treated like a dog and, on top of that, you have a great monster actor like Derek Mears put into this thankless role. Worst of all, this movie was meant to distance the Predator franchise from those horrid AVP movies but look what you have here: you don't have Predators fighting Aliens but rather Predators fighting other Predators. All I wanted was to see in another stand-alone Predator was them doing what they do best: hunting down dangerous quarries. I didn't want to see this blood feud that amounts to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Here's my next gripe (yes, there's more): this movie tries to make the Super Predators look all bad-ass when, in reality, the classic Predators are ten times more awesome. First, they simply bring their quarries to this game reserve, which they've no doubt hunted in before and know the layout of, making them look less daring than the classic Predators, who would hunt their prey on their own turf, on strange planets that they're unfamiliar with. I know you could argue that each individual Super Predator is different and probably hasn't been on the game reserve planet before but I find it a lot braver for these hunters to go after their intended quarries in their own environments. Second, the Super Predators need to use a certain species of alien creature as hunting dogs to hunt their victims? The classic Predators never needed that. And while we're on the subject, those "Predator Hounds" as they're officially called look silly. They look like the end result of some type of four-legged dinosaur mating with that forest spirit from Princess Mononoke. And like I said earlier, I don't want to see the group fighting them off, I want to see them fighting off the Predators! Third, you would think that since they're higher up on the evolutionary chain, they would have developed more bad-ass weapons. Nope. They just have the typical camouflage, shoulder cannons, and wrist blades that the classic Predators do. They do use a bird-like tracking device at one point to discover the humans' location (which is never followed up on) but other than that, no new toys, whereas according to Predator 2, the classic Predators have a hell of lot of different weapons at their disposal. But, of course, since Rodriguez has such a thorn up his ass about that movie, none of the weapons from it make an appearance here. Speaking of their technology, it feels like the filmmakers changed the rules to make the Super Predators look awesome because the last one can still see Royce's body heat even though he's put mud on himself (not much, mind you, but he did eventually do it, unlike everyone else). And don't tell me that the mud on this planet wouldn't act like the mud on Earth because that's really reaching. Finally, the classic Predators can take a whole lot more punishment than the super predators. They've survived explosions, being shot repeatedly with high-powered weapons, falling from great heights, and having heavy objects falling on them, while the Super Predators can't survive a claymore or being cut by an old sword. (I didn't mention the last one being beheaded because I think Royce beheaded him with an actual Predator blade, which I have an easier time buying.) By the way, why is it that when the Predators are on their own, they're unstoppable but when they're in groups, not only in this movie but also in the first AVP, they're wusses?

Not only does this film have a bad habit of making you want to just watch Predator again with its constant references to that movie, its tendency to use variations of the musical cues and themes that Alan Silvestri composed doesn't help either. Silvestri himself was unable to do the music for this film so John Debney stepped in since he'd worked with Robert Rodriguez before but, that said, I don't know if he composed any original music for this movie and if he did, I sure as hell don't remember it. All I remember are his remixes of the Silvestri music, which I will say do sound very cool, and Long Tall Sally playing over the first part of the ending credits as well. It does indeed make for a nice tribute to the music of Predator but, like all the other references to it, it ultimately just makes me want to watch that again instead of Predators (among many other reasons, obviously).

At the end of the day, Predators is nothing more than a very sorry excuse of a follow-up to Predator and Predator 2. It's dull, uninteresting, with lame characters as the leads while the interesting ones either aren't allowed to do much or are killed very early on, it's so in love with the original Predator that its references to it make you want to turn it off and instead watch that again, and it tosses the classic Predators that we all know and love aside for these new "super" Predators who, if you think about it, are feeble by comparison. It's just the latest in a recent trend of some of my favorite franchises being pounded into pudding with bad sequels and remakes, with the others being Rob Zombie's atrocious Halloween movies and the abysmal remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Unfortunately, the film made quite a bit of money worldwide and there is a talk of a sequel, either with Rodriguez and Antal possibly being involved again and Adrien Brody returning as Royce or, as was announced in 2014, Shane Black, Hawkins from the original, returning to direct from a script by Fred Dekker. So, who knows what'll happen next? Bottom line, though, if you like this movie, as I know many do, and are excited about the possibility of more films in this direction, power to you but personally, if that is where the Predator franchise is going, then I'm just going to stick with the first two movies and leave it at that.