The Predator (2018)
Directed by Shane Black
When a young boy accidentally triggers the universe's most lethal hunters' return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled scientist can prevent the end of the human race.
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29 films that influenced The Predator
What critics say influenced The Predator
Director Shane Black is no stranger to the Predator franchise having starred as Rick Hawkins in 1987’s Predator.
This is the quintessential question that the latest and sixth, blockbusting Predator instalment (including the Aliens vs Predator franchise) repeatedly provokes from the viewer as it hurls everything including the sci-fi sink at the screen.
There is a running inside joke perpetuated by Olivia Munn and Sterling K. Brown’s characters in The Predator that calls into question the titular nickname as an incorrect moniker for the dexterously deadly alien life-form bouncing around their Georgia landscape.
Sporting the taxonomically useless title “The Predator,” the latest movie in the “Predator” franchise comes courtesy of Shane Black ( “The Nice Guys” ), who appeared as comic relief in the 1987 original and seems to have taken that experience to heart.
You walk into each new Predator movie with a very specific, and very rigid, set of questions.
Far be it for me to engage in spoilers right off the bat, so let’s keep this vague and just state that a particular character in The Predator, the latest in the stop-start series that began back in 1987, dies.
Shane Black is primarily known in some circles for appearing in a supporting role in the original Predator, better known in other circles for penning such action romps as Lethal Weapon and Last Action Hero, and mainly known in my circle for writing and directing the underrated gems Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys.
Ever since he first came up with the characters of Riggs and Murtaugh in 1987’s Lethal Weapon, Black has been slowly but surely building up his resume and experience with the likes of The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight.
The flat jokes are a strange misstep for writer-director Shane Black, who, between The Nice Guys, The Long Kiss Goodnight (and yeah, let’s throw Last Action Hero in there too), has a proven track record with quick-witted characters.
For those who don’t know, Shane Black is responsible for writing cult-classic films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Lethal Weapon (1987), The Monster Squad (1987), The Last Boy Scout (1991), Last Action Hero (1993) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).
Director John McTiernan, the popcorn-action savant best known for the following year’s Die Hard, brought in Winston to remagine the character after the first iteration of the Predator, who was meant to be played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, proved to be a hilarious failure.
Next came 1990’s Predator 2, directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Danny Glover as an unhinged cop in cartoon-war-zone Los Angeles, where another Predator is vacationing for reasons that are never entirely explained.
McKenna is pursued by Brown’s Will Traeger and his operation of exploitative agents and technicians, including Jake Busey’s Sean Keyes, the son of Gary Busey’s Peter Keyes from Predator 2, and Munn’s enlisted stargazing biologist Casey Brackett, looking to capture and study the invasive foe.
There are moments in the film that suggest Black is attempting a new angle on the story of the silent alien villain that’s stalked action heroes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (Predator), Danny Glover (Predator 2), and … Adrien Brody ( the serious misfire Predators).
Belatedly following on from the events of the cult classic Predator and its urban sequel Predator 2 (and thankfully ignoring the Predator/Alien hybrids), the film picks up mid-pursuit between two Predator space-ships.
Black, who costarred in the original Predator and cowrote this new installment, has intermittently flourished as both a writer (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout) and a writer-director (Iron Man 3, The Nice Guys), and he remains a reliable source of zippy and fantastically profane dialogue, the laughs and the winces layered just so.
Black had a reputation for being a purveyor of some of the greatest action movie screenplays of the 80’s and 90’s, including Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight, before breaking out into directing with 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Ever since he first came up with the characters of Riggs and Murtaugh in 1987’s Lethal Weapon, Black has been slowly but surely building up his resume and experience with the likes of The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Shane Black may have a reputation as an action writer (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout), but his true stock in trade is smart-ass repartée, especially in some of the films he has directed, including Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys.
Cela dit, j’avais quand même espoir que The Predator serait un retour en force, étant coscénarisé (avec Fred Dekker) et réalisé par nul autre que Shane Black, à qui l'on doit notamment les scénarios de Lethal Weapon et The Last Boy Scout ainsi que les films Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3 et The Nice Guys.
For those who don’t know, Shane Black is responsible for writing cult-classic films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Lethal Weapon (1987), The Monster Squad (1987), The Last Boy Scout (1991), Last Action Hero (1993) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).
These films were legendary, from Rambo (1982) to Commando (1985) and Lethal Weapon (1987), Cobra (1986) and Action Jackson (1988), and, of course, Predator.
In its Rambo-alike moments, the first Predator converted echoes of Vietnam into cheesy thrills.
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The path from the hallowed 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator to Friday’s Shane Black–directed The Predator —the sixth movie in the series, counting a ludicrous two-flick hookup with the Alien franchise—is fraught with chaos, wild-eyed diversions, grody overindulgence, and geysers of blood both red and fluorescent green.
Esta es quizás una de las reglas más importantes que una película de sci-fi o terror (como son El Depredador o Alien) debe respetar.
Sure, it was involved with the “Alien” series for a bit, but it’s primarily stayed simplistic and true to the original film–unlike the “Terminator” and “Alien” movie series.
After that came the two horrifically bad Alien v. Predator movies ( the first was B-movie garbage; the second was an atrocity) and an attempt by Nimrod Antal to reclaim things.
The fourth (or sixth if you count the dreadful Alien cross-over events) installment in the Rastafarian space slayer series manages no shortage of missteps – waddling into the three-pronged crosshair of some hot topic controversy along the way – but comes out the other side as a buoyant, bloody joyride of cinematic ridiculousness that revels in its throwback homaging of the excesses of the 1980s.
In its Rambo-alike moments, the first Predator converted echoes of Vietnam into cheesy thrills.
Action movies like 2008’s Rambo work just fine with characters designed to breathe, then die.
Though he didn’t pen this one — Fred Dekker of “RoboCop 3” has that distinction — all of those films possess one positive that is desperately needed to make a horror film believable.
Black and co-writer Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad, Robocop 3) have stuffed the movie to the brim with plot and characters that unfortunately cannot fit into the movie’s 107-minute runtime.
This being a Shane Black script (co-written with The Monster Squad pal Fred Dekker), special attention is paid to adding as many quips, bon mots, and vulgarities as he can, transforming each character into an insufferable wiseacre.
It’s not a very complicated mythology, and Black, co-writing with Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad), expands on it just enough to set up additional sequels, making sure not to get bogged down in world-building or references-to-previous-movies-inserting.
Black and co-writer Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad, Robocop 3) have stuffed the movie to the brim with plot and characters that unfortunately cannot fit into the movie’s 107-minute runtime.
In its narrative, as co-written by Black (The Nice Guys) and Fred Dekker (Black’s writing partner on 1987’s The Monster Squad), The Predator first takes one of the film’s protagonists to the eponymous creature.
For those who don’t know, Shane Black is responsible for writing cult-classic films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Lethal Weapon (1987), The Monster Squad (1987), The Last Boy Scout (1991), Last Action Hero (1993) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).
Director/co-writer Shane Black and co-writer Fred Dekker last worked together on 1987’s The Monster Squad, and while both have far better films on their resume — you know it’s true — the movie showed their talent at blending horror, action, and comedy into something memorable.
Using humor and gore as his lethal weapons, Black — who co-wrote the screenplay with veteran genre junkie Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps) — kicks his film off like the first movie as an alien spaceship crashes in the middle of the jungle, right when a U.S. military sniper, McKenna (Holbrook), is trying to take out a gang of narcos.
So much in The Predator that springs from the imaginations of Black and his co-writer Fred Dekker (Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps) feels like the work of people who put genuine thought into every cool and fun possibility the predator aliens can offer.
Sin embargo, la empresa no es solamente suya, ya que colabora en el libreto Fred Dekker, que escribió películas como Night of the Creeps y varios episodios de Tales from the Crypt.
It resembled 2016’s Independence Day: Resurgence in the sense that bigger does not necessarily mean better for franchise sequels.
Touching on almost every aspect of the Predator movie franchise while world-building to rapidly expand it, director Shane Black along with writer Fred Dekker have created the Superman Returns of Predator movies, trying to remind us of everything before it, throw in more than a little fan service, and still end everything with an Independence Day: Resurgence sequel-if-we-succeed promise of more coolness to come.
Add to that a deeply messy final act that finally puts our heroes in a forest to hunt down a Predator, but stinks heavily of hasty reshoots and a preposterous ending that teases a sequel in the same obnoxious manner as Independence Day: Resurgence.
Were it not for the hard-R violence and a generous amount of computerized splatter, The Predator would play like a slightly naughtier Independence Day or Armageddon, sci-fi movies that had their squareness dirtied up by pop-culture-riffing jokesters hired to polish up a draft or two.
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These films were legendary, from Rambo (1982) to Commando (1985) and Lethal Weapon (1987), Cobra (1986) and Action Jackson (1988), and, of course, Predator.
The scene is played for laughs, and although the inspiration is clearly Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the optics are queasy—especially for a movie mired in controversy over an entire cut scene involving an actor whom Munn rightly outed to the director and the studio as a convicted sex offender.