The Predator is the new installment of the franchise that saw the light back in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger, leading a group full of testosterone and superboliculated muscles with giant weapons that didn't seem practical but highlighted the biceps, plus the direction of John McTiernan, the bonnet behind Duro de Matar 1 and 3. 30 years of the first Predator passed (we saw it through the air channels like that, not in English) and today is part of pop culture both the film and the alien that We met and with a transmedia narrative that grew up in comics, video games and movies.
This new opportunity to revitalize the franchise takes the reins of the direction Shane Black, who in the first Predator collaborated on the script and acted paradoxically as the first victim of a Yautja (name of the species of this alien predator). The good Shane gets on the train of nostalgia but adds all the ingredients that are fashionable in today's movies or series. This is: an autistic child, a woman with weapons to take, maladaptive heroes, companions with psychological pathologies and, of course, genetic engineering because bigger means better, didn't that teach us the Indominus Rex?
When sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) discovers the presence of a predator during a mission in a Central American jungle (nod to the first film), this leads him to be interrogated by a government agency, which will seek the help of the biologist Casey Brackett (Olivia Munn) to study the predator. Quinn is sent with a group of former soldiers who are crazy, to be silenced, while the Predator for being analyzed escapes while a larger, stronger and smarter Yautja arrives with two predatory dogs (yes, the Yautja have similar dogs to them). Now, both predators go for the lost technology in the hands of Rory McKenna (Jacob Tremblay), Quinn's autistic son.
The performances are not bad but you can't say they stand out: they comply. The most reprehensible is in the construction of characters and namely, script holes. At times we want to mark that the father-son relationship is null or problematic but never manages to develop well to achieve even some emotion. The character of Olivia Munn, although she leaves the stereotype of damsel in danger, falls several times in the section of sexist jokes of the crazy military group, which although they function as an action group as opposed to the male alpha military group of the 1987 film , the excessive amount of jokes at times give the feeling of not being watching a Predator movie. Already getting into the jokes the same Predator and one of these new predators mark that the roads chosen to revitalize this franchise were not the best. On the genetic engineering of the Yautja, which does not develop or explain itself well, it is only said that they are now bigger, stronger and smarter because they combine the DNA of the species they hunt with their own.
Before releasing The Predator, Shane Black clarified that it is a continuation of Predator (1987) and Predator II (1990) but this Predator beyond appearance has nothing to do with the one we met; Where was the stealthy hunter who ambushed the best Yankee soldiers? Black forgot about this and now we have a Predator that goes around exploding everything in a troche and moche; Where was the Predator who carried heads like trophies of a great hunt? Now he wants to take a child because he is intelligent and represents a new evolution for his genetic engineering.
So many inconsistencies makes Predators (2010) look more original and fresh directed by Nimród Antal. I am not saying that the same should be done as in the first one, because it is immaculate, but with a Yautja universe that was enriched in comics, novels and videogames and that covers from culture, laws, religion, rituals, social order, technology and many and so on, you have a lot of where to grab and show.