PREDATOR: BADLANDS - A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Sadly, the film is well-written and executed, but it has been compared to the previous movies from the Predator franchise. Why is it a missed opportunity? - It would’ve been the best chance for originality and authenticity to be exposed and promoted on top of the classical family and abuse theme—a new protagonist. But yeah. It is, unfortunately, how these rampant capitalists work. Riding the IP could be the main bait for the public to come out for this one. But with almost an unlimited budget for global marketing, it could’ve been used for what I stated above.
Why was the original 1987 Predator a success? Because it was authentic. Something that today’s mainstream cinema is totally lacking. The studios back then welcomed the gamble on new things, while today’s studio relies on the 'formulas that worked' for quick return of investments. And it was not the ground-breaking special effects work either. That was just the cherry on top. It is actually what the visual effects represent. The 1987 Predator is actually about the fear of the unseen and the unknown. Which lies deep beneath all of us. That versus the peak 80s male masculinity archetype, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's a formula to set the stage on fire. It was indeed, as we know it by now, worth the gamble. Not to mention the epic soundtrack. Ahh…when was the last time mainstream cinema came out with a great thematic soundtrack, eh?
I can give many examples of how the focus now is only on how things look and explode (spectacle), rather than first observing the writing. The mistake with Badlands is that they focused on the denotation (objective) of what Predator is (an entity from the species and from their planet), which connotatively (subjectively) represents a metaphor for the primeval fear of the unseen. Predator is a symbol of that. To apply the theme ‘abused family ties’ and ‘self-redemption’ arc to that symbolism is wrong. Hence, why I said it is a missed opportunity to gamble on a new protagonist and a new IP.
FRANKENSTEIN (2025)
Looking at Guillermo Del Toro's latest, a remake and adaptation of the classic Frankenstein novel, he uses and slightly adjusts the archetype to fit his own stance about a certain topic, in this case, artificial intelligence. He famously said, “He’d rather die than use generative AI in his movies.” With his version of Frankenstein, he delivers a critique of the character of Victor, who wants to play god by giving birth to something without any prior consideration of the pros and cons, which is totally unscientific, which puts Victor into the ‘mad scientists’ archetype.
An archetype that, if we look deep enough into our metamodern life, is not totally short in supply. In one of his recent lectures, Professor Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli medievalist, military historian, public intellectual, and popular science writer, drew parallels between the manic rush in developing and adapting AI, even at the expense of the termination of the livelihood of many (probably by the same breed of rampant capitalist that purchase IPs just to miss the whole point of them totally). He said,
“If you think about it like a car, when they taught me how to drive, the first thing was to learn how to use the brakes. It is a bad idea to teach you to go faster and then, when you are too fast, only then tell you how to stop.”
He then added, “This is what we are doing with AI. You have this chorus of people in place, like Silicon Valley, saying, ‘Let’s go as fast as we can. If there is a problem down the road, we will figure out how to stop it. This is very dangerous.”
Like how back in the early 2000s, the industry and investors were quick to buy and believe whatever a guy from Silicon Valley standing on a stage was selling. Without going through the right process, academics and thinking about what the impact might be on society and the next generation of humanity, by riding the populist culture to the maximum. The best example is of social media. Like what Yuval said above, now we are only thinking of how to stop, only after the effects are already deeply affecting the current generation.
They might be modestly dressed in t-shirts and jeans, but looking deeper into their connotation, they tick all the boxes as the ‘mad scientists’ archetype. Which is what Del Toro is trying to say. The monster is not what Victor gave birth to. The monster is actually himself.
If anybody remembers the classic Disney animation where Mickey Mouse wears the wizard’s hat, and uses a spell from his Master’s magic book to ask a group of brooms to do his chores instead - that is actually another critique of a mad scientist. More in this case, the original author, Goethe, from whom that animation is inspired (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, 1797) said,
“Only a master should invoke powerful spirits.” As we see now with the birth of AI into our lives, many ‘masters’ have only now started questioning how do we stop. God save us from rampant capitalists, tech billionaires (soon, trillionaires), and FOMO fanatics.
Thus, the Del Toro's Frankenstein's tagline - Only monsters play God.
A tragedy. For Victor. As for the unnamed creature, Del Toro gave him the cinematic ending of a hero - facing the sunrise. Something that some Malaysian cinematographers (and film fest juries) do not understand.