- Sir DonkeyPunch
- Mar 23, 2007
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I didn't hear no bell
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And now, a science fiction double-feature.
Predator 2 - 1990, dir. Stephen Hopkins, starring Donald Glover and Gary Busey
C'mon, that's a pretty good tag line.
This is sort of cheating - I've seen very tiny chunks of Predator 2 before, but only on broadcast TV and all that entails. It's not as good as the first Predator, but it is funnier.
Donald Glover plays Lieutenant Mike Harrigan, who is absolutely legally distinct from Roger Murtaugh. The plot is mostly a result of someone sitting down with a notepad and going "urban jungle??" with all the subtlety and nuance that you'd expect from a script writer working in the very late 80s. The Predator's back, going trophy hunting in a 1997 version of LA that Fox News stole wholesale for describing Portland, OR in the last few years. Our hero prevails and wins the most dangerous game, the end.
Good bits include the only thing that terrifies Harrigan more than an alien monster is an empty, unthreatening subway tunnel, the gigantic arsenal he keeps in the trunk of his car, and how the 90s humans almost come up with a pretty good plan to defeat the Predator that isn't an honor duel. There's also Gary Busey.
The effects aren't as good as the first film - it feels sorta like they had to cover for some damage to the monster suit with how they shot the thing - and they give us a lot more of the infrared vision shenanigans than we really needed. I guess they spent a lot of that budget on doofy stuff to stick on guns, because every single gun-like object in this movie is encrusted with gadgets; special mention to the federal monster hunter team's liquid nitrogen cannons for being some amazingly greebly budget props.
Bless 'im, Donny Glover is not one of nature's action protagonists, but he's doing his best. I'm not sure how I feel about Harrigan, since the performance is pretty solid and he does some clever things for an action movie protagonist, like aiming. But whoever was writing his one-liners was content with gems like "that's right, rear end in a top hat," and who could forget "Not again! poo poo!"?
In addition to a little cutting and a little more consistency with the cinematography, the picture could really benefit from fewer references to Aliens and Predator 1, which it lifts wholesale in ways that feel less like homages and more like struggling for things to do with its runtime.
The deck is stacked against this movie as a sequel to one of the great action films. I'm also coming to it after years of other Predator media that've taken the good parts of this film and run with 'em. Abstractly, it's got some problems, and it's more than a little silly, but I can also fully accept that if I'd seen this movie around the same early age I'd seen Aliens, it would have changed my life, so I can't be too harsh on it. And it's certainly not the worst Predator film, which despite the best efforts of the AvP franchise is still The Predator.
Prey - dir. Dan Trachtenberg, starring Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers
Spoilering this because it's relatively recent. For non-spoiler content, don't watch this movie if you don't like to watch animals getting decapitated and having their spines extracted.
And this is one of those things that takes the cool part of Predator 2 and runs with it, answering the question of "just where did that flintlock that Murtaugh won as his deadliest gameshow prize come from?" Naru is a young Comanche woman who has an excellent dog and, all things considered, a pretty cool brother, Taabe. Instead of some variety of jungle, our story takes place in the upper Great Plains, and it's picturesque as hell until the white man shows up. They're French, though, so we can feel okay about them doing a colonialism and getting merked.
It's probably the best thing to come out of Calgary. Good action, good characters, good acting, great landscapes. The list of gripes are few -
This particular Predator is a total chump. Like, wow, you beat a snake when you've got interstellar travel, good job buddy.
The escalating series of predator-prey contrasts is a bit on the nose.
They really missed a chance to make the main theme an inversion of the Predator theme.
This is a perfectly good film made with care by someone who really likes the extended Predatorverse, and it shows. Watch it, preferably with the extremely cool Comanche dub.
I enjoyed both those movies
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Feb 18, 2023 21:58
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Apr 28, 2024 21:21
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- Sir DonkeyPunch
- Mar 23, 2007
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I didn't hear no bell
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The biggest gap in the film for me was the absence of any Bill Murray. I found out afterwards that he contract COVID during the shoot and his part was recast to Steve Carrell. Carrell did an admirable job in the role, but looking back, that role was SO written for Bill Murray specifically and he would've knocked it out of the park. As it is, Murray showed up to the set in the final stages of filming and Anderson gave him a fictional promoter role so they do this to advertise the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBYU7JMqp3o
It's... fine. I would have LOVED Bill Murray in the role played by Carrell, but so it goes.
You know, I haven’t finished it yet, but I think I like Steve Carell in the role, a lot. He’s got an earnestness that I don’t think Murray could have done in the same way?
He’s just kind of a weird little guy? ”Sorry, burned down the cabin, here’s a tent. Buy some land for 10 bucks?” Personally I really dug the martini machine in concept
Again I am not done yet, but I think I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Last Wes Anderson movie I watched was… Life Aquatic? Or maybe Royal Tenenbaums. (Either way I think those are the only two of his I have seen)
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Jul 18, 2023 18:24
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Feb 18, 2023 21:58
