Warning! Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!
I didn’t have high expectations for Nimród Antal’s Predators, but even so it let me down. Of course it’s the third movie in the Predator movie series, or fifth if you count the Alien vs. Predator movies. It was produced by Robert Rodriguez, director of the awesome Desperado.
For those not familiar with the series, Predators are basically big, strong, ugly aliens who hunt creatures like humans for sport. In the first movie we had Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Jesse Ventura facing off against them in a South American jungle. In the second one it was Danny Glover in an American city.
This time the movie takes place on an alien planet that we learn is basically a big game preserve where the Predators bring in worthy creatures to hunt from other planets. The movie opens with Royce, played by Adrien Brody in free fall above the planet, eventually parachuting to the ground with no memory of how he got there. He’s joined by several other humans from different parts of Earth including Isabelle, played by Alice Braga, and Edwin, played by Topher Grace. I know what you’re thinking. Adrien Brody? Topher Grace? And you’d be right. Topher Grace is playing the weak whiner you’d expect him to play, but at least Brody does a decent job of playing a tough guy. Along the way they run into Laurence Fishburne’s Noland, who has survived multiple hunting seasons on the planet, but is a little crazy after all of that time. Basically our cast of characters are the baddest of the bad on planet Earth including murderers, military personnel, and mercenaries.
The biggest problem with the characters is that we really have no protagonist. It’s not long before Royce and Isabelle become the main characters, but everyone in the movie is pretty bad in some way or other. That makes it hard to have anyone to root for. In the original Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Duke was the leader of a U.S. military rescue squad, and he was pretty heroic. In Predators, your main guy Royce is only in it for number one, even using other characters as bait without their knowledge (and later on with), and being totally willing to leave someone to die if he’ll slow the others down. About the closest thing you get to a good person is Isabelle who basically serves as Royce’s conscience throughout the movie. There’s really not much reason to care what happens to any of them.
The Predators themselves follow the usual Predator script. The only thing interesting we learn about them in this movie that I don’t remember from previous installments is that there are apparently two different castes of Predators that are at war with each other.
There are some lame moments in this film including a totally cliched sword fight. Even if you haven’t seen Predators, you’ve seen this fight before. Two sword fighters face off against each other and three times charge each other. After the third charge the “protagonist” runs toward the camera and stops. Then there’s a pause followed by the “bad guy” falling over dead in the background.
That lame sword fight sets up another lame moment. So Royce and Isabelle know that the first of three Predators has been killed in an explosion, but as best as I could tell they have no idea the second one died in the sword fight. So after they kill the third one, shouldn’t they be looking out for the second one that for all they know is still very much alive?
The last thing I’ll bring up is a pretty major spoiler that involved Topher Grace’s character. Turn back now if you don’t want to be spoiled. Still with me? Good. So Edwin is the one character throughout the movie that feels out of place. He’s not a tough guy like the others. He tells the others that the last thing he can remember before parachuting onto the planet is going to work at a hospital. So I think, alright, the Predators brought him to be the medic for the other guys. Only none of the characters jump to that conclusion in the movie. So at the very end we find out that Edwin is basically a serial killer and that he really does belong on the planet full of horrible people and creatures. So I get that the Predators are listening in on Earth and have figured out who all of the tough guy people are. But is their surveillance of Earth so complete that they even found this serial killer that seemingly even the cops don’t know about? It seemed a bit of a stretch to me.
The movie sets up a sequel, and we see more parachutes falling at the end. (What, more Predators arrived? What if the others weren’t done with their hunt? Did the others know the Predators were all killed on the planet?) But I’m really not that interested in seeing what happens next. The second Alien vs. Predator movie was garbage, but after seeing Predators I have to say I liked the first Alien vs. Predator movie more, and that’s not saying much.
