Thursday, July 15, 2010

Movie Review: Predators

You wake up to a loud noise and a falling sensation. Are you falling out of bed? No. Something much, much higher. You look around to see if there's a whale or bowl of petunias falling with you. You start slapping what would normally be the parachute release button, but it doesn't work. You're starting to think the last thing that will go through your mind will be your shoes when the parachute deploys on it's own. Despite all your years of jump experience you make a very rough landing in a very strange jungle. Having cut yourself free you start to look around. This isn't a familiar jungle and you've seen a lot. You see another guy in a parachute land nearby. You go to investigate. You don't know him, or he you. So you pull guns on each other. You're both well armed. The last thing you remember before waking up is being in battle somewhere. Two separate battles. You're threatening each other when a third person lands between you. His parachute didn't open. Soon the two of your find six more survivors. You better learn to work together. You're being hunted by Predators.

Predators have a complex social make up. They are a hunter/warrior species. When their young come of age they must face a worthy adversary. Having run out of worthy prey on their home planet they must find it elsewhere. They have a sense of honor. They have personal cloaking devices that they can use in a hunt, but turn off during a fight. Exceptions to this rule are made.

In the movie "Predator" (1987) a young Predator was dropped in a Central American jungle to kill a squad of American commandos. In "Predator 2" one was dropped in a major city to fight gangs and a cop it decided was worthy. We got a look inside it's ship during that movie and saw it's trophy case. Skulls from a variety of creatures that it had killed. Including an Alien (think Sigourney Weaver). It was meant as an homage, but launched a series of comics, video games, and, eventually, a couple of movies. In "Alien vs Predator" (a better movie than is generally thought) some young Predators return to their ancient Earth outpost for fighting a passel of Aliens. "Alien vs Predator 2" might as well have had Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers, too. It was crap.

"Predators" is supposed to be another sequel to "Predator". Kinda like how "Superman Returns" was a sequel to "Superman 2" instead of "Superman 4". But, honestly, if you were the sort of person who likes this sort of movie you'd probably know most of this already. The movie is about eight of the most deadly fighters Earth has to offer being dropped in a game preserve on another planet. Heck, it seems that the whole planet is the game preserve. They're not the first and they're not the last humans to be dropped here. It gets gory in a few places, but they generally keep it brief. No shots of people getting hurt just to get an audience reaction. Lots of action. I went by myself since this isn't really Yummy's kind of movie. You just have to determine if it's yours.

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