Predators

20th Century Fox have put a third ALIEN VS PREDATOR movie on hold to delve back into the original PREDATOR franchise line, dusted off an old Robert Rodriguez written script and asked him to reboot the series (ignoring PREDATOR 2 and the AVP time line) and bring us a better bolder set of PREDATORS for the 21st century.

A group of desparate soldiers, mercenaries and freedom fighters find themselves abducted and brought to an otherworldly game reserve where they serve as the prey to a clan of an alien hunters with advanced technology against which the humans can have no hope of survival. Left with little choice or option to escape Royce (Brody) leads the misfit humans in a hunt against the hunters.

If PREDATORS had graced our screens a year or two after the original film it would be universally put down. This is a simple re-hash of many of the Schwarzenegger films key sequences; replace an Indian for a Yakuza, replace a nondescript former Soviet with a mini-gun instead of Blaine with a mini-gun, have a Venezuelan female deliver exposition, jump off waterfalls, cover yourself in mud etc. The new alien environment looks like the familiar Rodriguez trick of an initial lush exotic location such, as Hawaii, and then the rest of the action takes place on a Texan nature preserve once the audience has bought the set up (see SPY KIDS 2). For an alien world there is no alien fauna, this in no Pandora, and we are supposed to believe from the brief glimpses we get that mankind is not the only species hunted here and yet the whole world is overtly Earth-like. The casting is pretty hopeless, Brody isn't tough enough and the rest can't act enough. The films lags for an hour as the characters quick ascertain their situation but have no mission like the mercenaries of the original. It then shows promise as the Predators turn up though we only ever get four in total, and bogs down again with an unpleasant Lawrence Fishburne cameo (how did he get so fat living on an alien world for ten seasons?) and anti-climatic climax without the expected return of Arnie himself as a Predator tribe leader (believe me it was in one of the drafts). Most of the hunting is actually Michael myers/Jason like stalking or standing around. Like the recent FRIDAY THE 13TH movie this is a greatest hits collection that sadly misses.

Considering Rodriguez '94 tour-de-force script played more like STARSHIP TROOPERS this movie had to undergo some serious overhaul to get it in on a $40 million budget (less than AVP!) and the result is a cheat on the franchise. Stephen Hopkins PREDATOR 2 will be more fondly remembered for at least giving the alien hunters a new playground and for my money the AVP series was tieing in better with the Dark Horse comic series. If there is to be another sequel my Predators versus Space Marines on an abandoned alien space station is available for option.

I'm left flacid and floppy.