Predators: a fangirl's nod
Jul. 16th, 2010 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirdletJust saw the movie Predators, and it's not bad. Unlike the last two hackjobs, this was pretty good- did a lot of sideflings to the original movies without being painful, nonsensical copypastes, had great effects. My main complaints are that it does a fairly good job on the human end of things, but A) the planet is too earthlike, B) they need to crank the octane up just a touch higher- the jungle's not claustrophic and dark enough in the beginning, and C) they needed more Pred moments. Those were some of the coolest bits in the first two movies, I always thought- where you're following the human action, and then suddenly you're seeing the monster going about its preparations and repairwork.
And they wasted a perfectly good Enemy Mine subplot that should have taken up the later half of the movie, in a grand total of about five minutes onscreen. That was over way too fast- this is the sort of film where you should be hearing AC/DC's Night of the Long Knives in the back of your head the whole time. Who's going to betray you, who's going to honor the deal, and can you trust an honorable monster more than a fellow human monster? That's what was very lightly touched on, but passed over way too quickly in this film.
Aside from that, well- the action was pretty cool, the last-folks-standing used their gambits well. I keep thinking of bits that were cool, but could have been cooler- like the katana duel with Hanzo. Some people have complained that it's stupid to get to the middle of a Predator flick and see something cut out of a samurai movie. I disagree in principal, but agree in execution- it was cool looking, but it shouldn't have looked quite so classical and ritual. The tension should have been higher- they should have been looking at each other, trying to figure each other out, adapting their styles as they fought. I know I've seen samurai swordfights that weren't so clean-looking- this should have been filmed as a tense getting-into-each-other's-heads duel, not a withdrawn ballet.
I never thought I would be able to take Adrien Brodie seriously as a badass, callous action hero. I mean, I just saw him in Splice, which was advertised as Species: the Remake but turned out to be Frankenstein meets Flowers in the Attic. But he's pretty good in this.
And they wasted a perfectly good Enemy Mine subplot that should have taken up the later half of the movie, in a grand total of about five minutes onscreen. That was over way too fast- this is the sort of film where you should be hearing AC/DC's Night of the Long Knives in the back of your head the whole time. Who's going to betray you, who's going to honor the deal, and can you trust an honorable monster more than a fellow human monster? That's what was very lightly touched on, but passed over way too quickly in this film.
Aside from that, well- the action was pretty cool, the last-folks-standing used their gambits well. I keep thinking of bits that were cool, but could have been cooler- like the katana duel with Hanzo. Some people have complained that it's stupid to get to the middle of a Predator flick and see something cut out of a samurai movie. I disagree in principal, but agree in execution- it was cool looking, but it shouldn't have looked quite so classical and ritual. The tension should have been higher- they should have been looking at each other, trying to figure each other out, adapting their styles as they fought. I know I've seen samurai swordfights that weren't so clean-looking- this should have been filmed as a tense getting-into-each-other's-heads duel, not a withdrawn ballet.
I never thought I would be able to take Adrien Brodie seriously as a badass, callous action hero. I mean, I just saw him in Splice, which was advertised as Species: the Remake but turned out to be Frankenstein meets Flowers in the Attic. But he's pretty good in this.
