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The Predator Franchise (cont’d)

The Predator Franchise (cont’d)

Hey all. It’s been awhile since I opened this topic and I’ve been a bit negligent. But that’s what happens when you get on a tangent with me. You go far and wide and somehow, maybe, you accidentally find your way back to the point… what was I saying?

Oh, yeah! So getting back to the Predator universe, we left off last time with a recap of the first movie and what it was all about. Today, I’d like to tackle its sequel and the basis for the eventual crossover between the Predator and Alien franchises. In short, today it’s Predator 2!

Plot Synopsis:
The movie opens on a thermal image of a new jungle, the concrete jungle of LA to be specific. It is the not-too-distant future of 1997, where terrible summer heat and an escalating turf war between the Colombian and Jamaican cartels are threatening to tear the city apart.

Cut to a gun fight in progress, where police have cordoned off a Scorpion (Colombian cartel) compound and are taking casualties. Luckily, Lt. Mike Harringan (Danny Glover) arrives on scene and begins to coordinate things with his partners, Danny (Rubén Blades) and Leona (Maria Conchita Alonso). After some daring driving moves, he ensures that some wounded officers are finally able to get the help they need. Then he blows five Scorpion thugs away single-handedly!

However, the other five members of the gang manage to get into their hideout in the midst of the confusion and begin strapping on some heavy artillery. After grabbing all they can and coking up, something happens… the skylight above them breaks, glass rains down on their heads, and something wicked their way comes…

The police raid the building to find all but one man eviscerated. Harrington pursues the remaining one to the roof where he corners the last man, who loses it when he sees an apparition and begins shooting. Harrington shoots him down, sees the same apparition, and reasons that the heat is causing him to lose his mind.

They are in complete confusion about what happened inside the building though. The sliced bodies and the fact that one is hanging naked upside down from the ceiling just don’t seem to add up. Unfortunately, their investigation ends when the Commissioner shows up and tells them some special team is looking over it and to pull back. They naturally fight and exchange the usual, “you’re insubordinate”, “you’re a pencil-pusher” talk, and things move on…

Back at the station, we get some comic relief as the new guy, Det. Lambert (played by Bill Paxton), shows up and cracks wise and Harrington gives him the pep talk about sticking together. He then gets called into the Captains office where he’s given the usual talk about how they’re in a war and how they have to cooperate with the some federal task force that is coming in. Their boss introduces himself, who goes by the name of Special Agent Peter Keyes (played by Gary Busey).

And of course, its not long before the mystery man strikes again. This time, its at the Scorpion boss’ lair where an attack squad of Jamaicans breaks in and begins sacrificing him Voodoo style. As soon as the knife in his heart, they begin to drop when an apparition begins moving through them and taking them out one by one. The police show up, and of course are ordered to hang back and let the feds deal with it. Harrington naturally disobeys…

They break in to find the place covered in blood and broken glass, and a naked Colombian woman who keeps saying “the devil came for them”. Shortly thereafter, Keyes and the feds show up and tell Harrington to get lost. They take over the scene and ferry the woman away without incident. Harrington has Lambert tail them, but they lose him in the meat packing district.

Meanwhile, Harrington tells Danny to hang back and wait for the feds to leave the scene. But Danny has plans of his own, which include retrieving the strange blade he saw stuck in the wall from earlier. Having grown tired of waiting, Danny goes in ahead, and is caught when the Predator reveals himself. Seems he had the same idea, returning to the scene to retrieve his lost weapon. Danny dies…

His autopsy revealed the COD was a blade inserted directly into his heart. The coroner also does a test on the retrieved blade and reveals that it is composed of a completely unknown metal. And last, but not least, they notice that it is covered in cattle blood and steroids, indicating that its owner was recently in a slaughter house. Interesting…

Meanwhile, Harrington decides its time to reach out to the enemy of his enemy. He meets with Jamaican kingpin King Willy to discuss their mutual problem. However, King Willy proves to be of little help since he thinks their enemy comes to them from the spirit world to wreak death on them. Harrington leaves, and the Predator arrives to confront Willy. He falls quickly, and the Predator carries his disembodied head back to his lair to polish the skull and mount it on its wall.

The third attack comes on a subway when Lambert and Leona get caught up in an attempted robbery. The lights go out on the tram and the Predator enters, taking down everyone who was armed but leaving the civvies alone. Lambert tells Leona to lead the passengers to safety while he covers them, and he soon falls…

Leona returns to the cart as soon as the civvies are away and is attacked herself. However, the Predator leaves her be as soon as he realizes she is pregnant. Harrington arrives on the scene and begins to notice a pattern. He runs from the train and pursues the mystery man, a chase which takes him all the way to the meat packing district.

Harrington loses his quarry when his car is sideswiped by a truck. His semi-unconscious body is dragged into a portable command center where Keyes and his people are waiting. Finally, Harrington is given the answers he desires. It seems Keyes was talking literally when he said “You don’t know what you’re dealing with!”

A precis follows, where they explain how they’ve been tracking the alien ever since he showed up. It seems the first encounter in Central America (involving Arny and his commandos) prompted a great deal of interest from the feds. And thanks to Arny’s debreifing, they learned a lot from that encounter and have been waiting for another one ever since.

Ever since they realized that he comes to the slaughterhouse to feed between hunts, they’ve been lying in wait. Tonight is the night they close in! Naturally, they have a plan to capture it, involving insulated suits, UV lights, and liquid nitrogen guns. By blocking out their heat, they will be invisible to the Predator’s IR vision and able to freeze him intact.

However, the plan goes horribly wrong when the Predator realizes he’s being stalked and begins cycling through different vision modes. Selecting UV mode, he zeroes in on their lights and begins to kill them with ease. Harrington escapes from the unit, grabs some heavy artillery from his trunk, and proceeds inside. After an intense firefight, Harrington manages to corner it and knocks it flat with several blasts from his shotgun.

He begins inspecting the body, and delivers the first half of the signature line. “You’re one ugly mother – ” However, the Predator wakes up and finishes it for him. They continue to fight, Keyes jumps in the middle (seems he survived the initial attack) and then is sliced in half by the Predator’s throwing disc.  It then begins beating a retreat, and Harrington follows.

After a confrontation on the roof, Harrington and the Predator end up hanging over the edge of the building. The Predator decides he’s facing capture and sets his self-destruct sequence. Harrington narrowly grabs his disc and cuts the Predator’s arm off, terminating the sequence. The Predator falls and begins retreating again with Harrington in pursuit.

This chase eventually leads Harrington into the underground space beneath an apartment block. He falls into darkness, and lands on what is clearly their mothership. Proceeding inside, he sees the Predator’s trophy case, resplendent with different skulls. He’s almost killed when the Predator surprise attacks him, but manages to defend himself long enough to deliver the death blow with the Predator’s own disc.

Standing over the dead body, he is somewhat startled when another targeting laser appears on his face. Many, many Predators emerge from the mist to uncloak and carry their dead friend away. The lead Predator tosses him a musket from 1750 and says “take it”. Must be the prize… The ship begins its take off sequence, and Harrington jumps off the back just in time to be caked in dust. He walks outside, following a burning trail, where Keyes second (played by Adam Baldwin) tells him they “were so close!”. Toting his musket, he smugly proclaims “You’ll get another chance…”

Final Thoughts:
Relative to the first movie, this one garnered a rather mixed reception. Critics generally liked Danny Glover’s portrayal of a bewildered inner-city cop, and approved of him as the choice for the hero. While the role retained a hell of a lot of elements from his recurring character from Lethal Weapon, he brought just enough anger and borderline crazy behavior to the role to distinguish them and make it work. However, critics were divided over the plot and whether it was a cliche-riddled mess or a fun addition to the franchise.

Personally, I find this movie to be a nostalgic guilty pleasure, even more so than the first. As such, it’s hard for me to point out what wasn’t so good about it. But even I am willing to admit that the cliches ran deep, and that the story was full of some rather implausible twists. For example, why did Danny Glover chase the Predator all the way back to its ship? Why not call in some back up after the encounter at the slaughterhouse?

What’s more, this necessitated that they find a way to make it possible for an aging cop to beat a seven foot killing machine. Remember how the last one beat the crap out of Arny in the first one, and only managed to win by catching it in a trap? Yet this time around, Glover manages to kill one in single combat through sheer luck and determination. And it really wasn’t believable, in fact it felt totally contrived.

Aside from that, I actually liked this movie. For one, they managed to develop the whole aspect of the Predator and it’s methods. As with the first movie, the Predator began by familiarizing itself with the field of engagement, scoping out its targets, and then eliminating them one by one. It was only at the end that he chose to go up against the top carnivore in single combat.

What’s more, the scene where they showed the Predator’s trophy case was also inspired, and provided the impetus for the later crossover with Alien. By displaying such a diverse array of skulls, which included the xenomorph, the Predator was at last established as a truly interstellar hunter.

And last, the setting of the story was actually quite fitting. Whereas the first fight took place in a literal jungle, this time around, they chose a metaphorical jungle of concrete and steel. And the near-future prediction of an LA torn apart by gang violence was quite accurate from a 1990 perspective, and I felt they pulled it off quite well. Even the terrible summer heat was a fitting metaphor for the mounting violence and chaos.

Well that’s about it for the Predator movies. To this day, I wonder why they didn’t make a third, but the fact that this particular movie didn’t do so well might be a possible answer. From here on out, the franchise would become married to Alien and in the form of AVP, which consisted entirely of comics, novelizations and video games until the studios decided it was time for a full-length film.

And frankly, the less said about those movies the better! I mean really, why the hell would you an AVP movie and set it in the modern world? The whole premise of AVP was that it took place in the future when humanity had all those cool gadgets, like Smartguns, Pulse Rifles and Drop Ships. Otherwise, humanity didn’t stand a chance against both acid-blooded xenomorphs and plasma-casting invisible Hunters! And the whole Ancient Astronomers concept of how the Hunters built all the temples on Earth, that was just plain insulting…

Ah well, at least the video games were cool. And I will be dealing with those soon enough. Stay tuned, the Predator franchise has not yet begun to be reviewed!

Predator 2:
Entertainment Value: 7/10
Plot: 7.5/10
Direction: 7/10
Total: 7/10

The Predator Franchise

If there were a contest for which alien life form is the most badass in the universe, then Predators would be at the top of the list! Why? Because they’re big, powerful, stealthy, scary-looking, and pack enough artillery to take out an entire city block!

Yes, Predators is one of those franchises that contained some true seeds of genius, but kind of fell flat for a couple of reasons. Chief amongst them, in my opinion, was money and the desire to appeal to the “lowest-common denominator”. How else can you explain the whole AVP cinematic fiasco?

Still, the Predator concept has had some impressive renditions over the years, not the least of which came with the first two movies and a slew of crossover video games, novels and comics. And with the latest movie, there are clear attempts to break them away from their Alien peers. So I thought I’d get right into it and see what makes these badasses just so bad! First off, the movie that started it all…

Predator (1987):
The movie opens with an alien spacecraft flying towards Earth and jettisoning a small pod down into Central America. Cut to the surface, where we see an American base located somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala. A bunch of hooligans are being flown into an Army base and Arny is in the front seat with a massive stogie in his mouth. Very quickly, it is established that this man is elite commando named Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer, the best in the business.

In the course of his briefing, he is told that his team is needed to rescue a Guatemalan cabinet minister and his aides who have been kidnapped by guerrillas. He’s also reunited with old friend George Dillon (Carl Weathers), a former military man who has since joined the CIA. Apparently, he will be acting a liaison during the mission, and stresses to Dutch that this is going to be no cake walk!

We learn all we need to know about the mission from a single exchange, even if we didn’t know it at the time:

Dillon: “How come you passed on Libya?”
Dutch: “Libya’s not my style.”
Dillon: “You aint got no style!”
Dutch: (pause to light a fresh stogie) “We’re a rescue team, not a bunch of assassins.”

We then get to meet the team: Mac Eliot (Bill Duke), Blain Cooper (Jesse Ventura), Billy Sole (Sonny Landham), Jorge “Poncho” Ramirez (Richard Chaves), and Rick Hawkins (Shane Black). Grabbing their heavy artillery, they hop into their choppers and are inserted into the jungle.

What follows is some obvious build-up as the team discovers the crashed chopper which was supposedly holding the minister and his aides and finds a whole bunch of skinned bodies hanging upside down. Assuming the guerrillas did this, the team sets off post-haste for their hideout with payback on their minds. When they find it, they proceed to blow the shit out of it and kill anything that moves, save for one woman named Anna (Elpidia Carrillo).

This scene is something that was surely impressive to audiences in 1987, but which has gone down as one of the cheesiest action sequences ever since. For one, elite commando teams that are on a rescue mission aren’t supposed to blow shit up! That’s how you get the people you’re trying to save killed! Second, these guys were obviously not trained for the role. Basically, they just walk around and shoot people with no effort! Kind of like he did in Commando! Way to research that role guys!

But in the end, Dutch and his team realize that there are no hostages. The base was merely an encampment where some Soviet advisers were known to be. Dutch’s team were thus set up to attack the place and kill everyone as part of some CIA black op. Dutch is pissed and wants to tear Dillon’s head off, but they are forced to beat a retreat since their blowing the shit out of the place couldn’t help to draw attention. They thus take Anna and head on out. Meanwhile, we get some extended (really extended) scenes where the Predator watches them through its thermal vision.

Things start to get interesting shortly thereafter when the Predator begins to do its thing: take down the team one by one.  Naturally, it kills the weakest guy first, the one who carried only small guns and made all the bad jokes. Yeah, he goes down faster than a… I can’t think of a way to finish that sentence. Jesse Ventura, the man with the ridiculous portable minigun is blown apart shortly thereafter too. Luckily, the team learns from these early encounters a few important tidbits. One, the creature can camouflage itself. Two, that it bleeds. And as Arny says: “If it bleeds, we can kill it!”

Unfortunately, this proves more difficult than it sounds. Despite some clever traps and lying in wait, the Predator still manages to get the upper hand on them and continues picking them off one by one. In the end, Arny is wounded and sends his last remaining man with the Anna with instructions to “get to the choppa!” He narrowly escapes death by crawling through some cold mud which masks his thermal signature.

After prepping some more traps, crafting some jungle weapons and smearing himself with warpaint (more mud), Arny lets out a giant bellow to draw the Predators attention. They have their final battle, Arny gets to see exactly what one looks like, and is generally unimpressed. “You’re one ugly motherfucker!” is the way he put it. The Predator must have understood too, because he proceeds to whoop Arny’s ass!

However, Arny still has one trap which he uses to pin the alien hunter under a log and then picks up a rock. However, he hesitates on the verge of delivering the final blow, giving him time to set off his little self-destruct sequence. Arny runs and barely survives the explosions, and the rescue chopper crew find him shortly thereafter looking shell shocked and dirty!

Well, that’s the first movie in a nutshell. Over the top, with lots of explosions, deaths and the constant sense of impending death.

Final Thoughts:
Naturally, this movie had its strong points. For one, the concept of the Predator itself was quite interesting and well illustrated. And I don’t just mean its weapons and active camouflage, even though those were pretty cool too! No, what was most interesting, in my opinion, was the rules that the Predator observed. In the beginning, it chose its arena carefully, being drawn to a region where there was active fighting. Second, it took the time to assess its environment and identify worthy game, and then went about stalking them. Last, it made sure to identify the individual hunters that made up the pack and worked its way through them, leaving the best for last and making sure that fight was hand to hand and one on one.

Oh, and let’s not forget that when faced with capture, it chose to blow itself up rather than let its remains (and technology) fall into its prey’s hands. Smart thinking! From all this, you can tell that these aliens have been doing this a long time and developed rules, tactics and equipment accordingly. Most of this would be further developed and explained in the second movie, but it was apparent from the first that some thought went into the alien development.

Really, the only problem I saw with this movie was the cheese factor. The commandos are way too brawny and brazen, nothing like the stealthy, quick and deadly tactics that actual Special Forces are known for. Second, the ensemble was just a huge bunch of macho stereotypes! Arny is, as with all his 80’s movies, the picture-perfect macho badass – smoking stogies, talking war stories, and flexing his muscles every chance he gets. Similarly, Ventura plays the massive gun-toting, cowboy hat-wearing Texan who chews tobacco and says shit like “he’s burrowed in their deeper than an Alabama tick!” Why didn’t they just call him “Tex” and get it over with already?

Then there’s Mac, the cold crazy dude dry shaves and makes chilling threats, but who naturally goes nuts when the Predator attacks and gets himself killed chasing it. And of course, there’s Billy, the token Native American who is real quite, stoic, and is the first to know they are being hunted. He also figures out that what’s after them is not a man, that they are all going to die, and seems to accept that with fatalistic calm. Oh, and did I mentioned he decides to stay behind and face death, fighting the Predator alone with his knife rather than die? Yeah, that was real “it’s a good day to die” moment there, a final Native warrior stereotype to cap off a blatantly cliched portrayal.

But hey, I already said the movie had signs of quality. It just so happens that they were buried under piles and piles of cheese! And what the hell, the action was pretty cool too. And ultimately, most of these strengths would go on to be developed further by the second movie and other installments in the franchise, culminating in a crossover with the Alien universe in 1989/90. More on that soon enough!

Predator:
Entertainment Value: 7/10 (cheesy but fun)
Plot: 6.5/10
Direction: 7/10
Total: 6.5/10 (Guilty pleasure movie, mainly)

FYI: Cool site to check out for Alien and Predator info, the AVP Wiki: http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page