When Arnold Schwarzenegger took the lead role in the original “Predator” from 1987, it began a franchise. It continued with a sequel in 1990, which I skipped, two battles between the Predator and the Alien (“Alien vs. Predator” and it’s awful sequel “Requiem”), and finally, another sequel in 2010, which I liked on its own terms.
Now, in 2018, we have another movie, and apparently, it chose to be a comedy. I know, because the audience was laughing their a**es off, and parts of the movie goof off. In certain cases, it can liven things up, but in other cases, it can fall flat. This one falls flat.
The movie opens with the Predator crash-landing on Earth in Mexico, and then badly injured; so solider Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) takes its helmet and gauntlet, and has a Mexican bartender mail the items home. His Autistic son Rory (Jacob Trembley) finds the package and accidentally signals another Predator to Earth. Turns out, based on its DNA, it has evolved.
The movie also features biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), who is sent to a secret lab to check out the injured Predator’s sedated body. Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) is the boss, who decides to call it the Predator, although she considers it a sports hunter. Apparently, he’s not smart enough to give the Predator stronger restraints (maybe metal, I don’t know), because Rory’s signal wakes it up, and it escapes.
She ends up joining forces with a few soldier fugitives, including Quinn, Nebraska (Trevante Rhodes), Baxley (Thomas Jane), Lynch (Alfie Allen), Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key), and Nettles (Augusto Aguilera), in order to find the Predator. That’s when Quinn learns his stupid mistake of mailing the package home, where his son takes the gear for trick-or-treating.
And eventually the evolved Predator and the bad Traeger’s team respectively find them, and you can pretty much tell what’s next.
This “Predator” movie may have been directed by Shane Black (a star of the original), but this was cheesy, annoying, noisy, and idiotic on all accounts. Parts of the story, like Traeger’s side, make no sense; the characters are annoying, and the talented actors portraying them (from Holbrook to Munn to Key to Rhodes to Tremblay) are wasted; and none of the jokes made me laugh. Although a guy’s comment in the audience made me giggle a little.
Pretty much the Predator is smarter than anything else in the movie. It kills a bunch of soldiers on a bus, and when a driver asks if things are okay, it grabs a soldiers arm and gives him a thumbs up. The special effects for his gear are amazing, as usual, and the make-up is decent; but everything surrounding it is lackluster.
⭐️
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