I went into this movie with high hopes - Rodriguez being a fantastic action director promising to make an 'Aliens' for 'Predator', what could go wrong?
For the first half hour.. nothing, A tense opening sequence, quick character establishment, good set up of place and an awesome opening battle left me gagging for more.
But after that, no more interesting aliens were introduced and the predators for the most part sit on the sidelines. We're left with nothing more than the characters talking to one another, and a few action sequences which were far too short to be satisfactory. For example Lawrence Fishburne's character is introduced as a hard-core survivor, living through ten seasons and having killed 'two or three' predators. Can't wait to see him go face to face with one, what happens when he does? it kills him. immediately. No fight, it just shoots him and he dies. The only satisfactory fight I found was the sword duel, this was tense and incredibly well filmed, far better than the final duel, which is drawn out but without real structure or seeing anything new: he confounds the predators heat vision, cripples it with traps and beats it to death. incredible.
aside from the lack of action the movie has a profound lack of predators, infrequent use of the thermal images means we don't get the sense of 'being hunted' which made the others so tense, and their new toys barely see any screen time - the UAV is only really deployed once, the 'pred hounds' see one battle and even the new suits are barely seen. And to make things more infuriating, no explanation at all is given to the new predators, Fishburne begins to illuminate but provides nothing solid. Conversely to the first movie, knowing nothing about the hunters does not add anything to the tension.
In short the movie is too focussed around human characters, but it gets worse. The interesting characters are all killed off, leaving only the uber-macho-no backstory-captain bland played by Adrien Brody, and the irritatingly goody-goody portrayed by Alice Braga. Admittedly the doctor also survives, but is killed as soon as he actually reveals who he is, there is an opening for an incredibly unsettling sequence of torture on the paralysed sniper, but this is vetoed before a single cut is made. I'm not bloodthirsty, but if you want to create a character like that, let him do SOMETHING before killing him off. As it is we're left with the two most boring characters standing victorious and looking mournfully into the middle distance as the end credits roll in, truly groundbreaking.
To sum up in short - Predators promised to be a good action movie, the trailers and director interviews suggest a good old fashioned bloodbath, but instead we recieve a human movie, with a light dashing of sci-fi monsters who serve to do no more than move the human plot along.
Aplogies for the poor writing, I just had to get this off my chest.
For the first half hour.. nothing, A tense opening sequence, quick character establishment, good set up of place and an awesome opening battle left me gagging for more.
But after that, no more interesting aliens were introduced and the predators for the most part sit on the sidelines. We're left with nothing more than the characters talking to one another, and a few action sequences which were far too short to be satisfactory. For example Lawrence Fishburne's character is introduced as a hard-core survivor, living through ten seasons and having killed 'two or three' predators. Can't wait to see him go face to face with one, what happens when he does? it kills him. immediately. No fight, it just shoots him and he dies. The only satisfactory fight I found was the sword duel, this was tense and incredibly well filmed, far better than the final duel, which is drawn out but without real structure or seeing anything new: he confounds the predators heat vision, cripples it with traps and beats it to death. incredible.
aside from the lack of action the movie has a profound lack of predators, infrequent use of the thermal images means we don't get the sense of 'being hunted' which made the others so tense, and their new toys barely see any screen time - the UAV is only really deployed once, the 'pred hounds' see one battle and even the new suits are barely seen. And to make things more infuriating, no explanation at all is given to the new predators, Fishburne begins to illuminate but provides nothing solid. Conversely to the first movie, knowing nothing about the hunters does not add anything to the tension.
In short the movie is too focussed around human characters, but it gets worse. The interesting characters are all killed off, leaving only the uber-macho-no backstory-captain bland played by Adrien Brody, and the irritatingly goody-goody portrayed by Alice Braga. Admittedly the doctor also survives, but is killed as soon as he actually reveals who he is, there is an opening for an incredibly unsettling sequence of torture on the paralysed sniper, but this is vetoed before a single cut is made. I'm not bloodthirsty, but if you want to create a character like that, let him do SOMETHING before killing him off. As it is we're left with the two most boring characters standing victorious and looking mournfully into the middle distance as the end credits roll in, truly groundbreaking.
To sum up in short - Predators promised to be a good action movie, the trailers and director interviews suggest a good old fashioned bloodbath, but instead we recieve a human movie, with a light dashing of sci-fi monsters who serve to do no more than move the human plot along.
Aplogies for the poor writing, I just had to get this off my chest.
