I Don't Believe in Naturally Occurring Styrofoam Planets
A couple of weekends back I saw Predators with the Game Night crowd (plus Chelsea). In short, I thought it was awfully boring and full of somewhat stupid things, but if you don't mind the spoilers, I'll expound upon my boredom below. Hint: By "spoilers" I mean "what you guessed was going to happen from the trailers/previews."
To begin, I should fairly state that I have an enormous gripe with the Predators. They're cheats! HUGE cheats! When they go "hunting" for humans, they're mostly like your obscenely rich dude who fancies himself a hunter because he shoots a gun at things and has a lot of fancy gadgets that replace actual knowledge and skill. Throwing confused humans on a planet and hunting them down is pretty much the equivalent of taking big cats that have outlived their usefulness for either entertainment or breeding purposes and putting them on a private hunting reserve so aforementioned rich guys can take pot shots at the confused and frightened animals until they take one down. And then they take the trophies home and fancy themselves big game hunters like their forebears who probably actually needed skill to hunt. For a supposed race of warriors, they're surprisingly dependent upon their gear and put little value in actual skill and knowledge. With their level of technology, you'd think they'd be able to make holographic, 3D immersion video games far more interesting and more cheaply than their silly game preserve. But they're just too stupid. Also, their only skill is apparently striking that "menacing" stance with their chest stuck way out like a busty lady hoping to convince a guy to do whatever it is she wants, except with the hissing four-mandible thing going on, too.
For the record, this is not to say that I don't respect any hunter who uses advanced technology. If they actually do have the skill without the technology, they're probably using the technology for efficiency, so they're probably hunting game they're actually planning on eating etc. rather than hanging on a wall (although that may also happen). They aren't "proving themselves" when they go out hunting, and I can accept that. If a hunter is going out there to prove his/her worth as a hunter, he/she damn well better be able to do it without fancy toys. If they really want to prove themselves, they'll do it with nothing but primitive tools, a la knives, spears, bows, and arrows... (ie. I have respect for Les Stroud and Bear Grylls because they know what the heck they're doing and do so with reasonably little, but very little for the rich guys on "safari" in Africa or elsewhere.) If you can't do it without the fancy toy, don't fancy yourself a hunter--Predator is as much a hunter as I am for playing the Hunter class in WoW.
Phew, so, now that that's out of the way, I can get down to the movie-specific gripes. First off, the acting was... not the greatest :/ But it's an action movie, so that's easy to forgive! (Plus cameo!Morpheus' awesome acting kind of makes up for the rest of them, and the doctor and yakuza guy were not too bad either.) The stereotypes were kind of sad, although could maybe be justified as the Predators trying to choose a variety of prey types. Standard token female, token black guy, token Hispanic guy, token Asian guy, and clearly-the-hero/leader guy. Call me crazy, but I think I would have mixed the roles up a little and maybe not killed off two of the tokens first (because the female is pretty much always going to survive this type of movie, especially when she's established as a sort of second-in-command fairly early on). Roles were pretty obvious from the get-go, actually. You had your crass prison punk who turns out to be not as bad as you'd think (although definitely not really a good guy ever); The innocent-seeming helpless guy who turns out to be a twisted leech; The super tough guy with his "logical" decisions and "nobody but myself to look after" attitude who ends up going soft. Okay, granted, the doctor turning out to be a psychopath killer was supposed to be a twist, but there was too much set-up for it. Once a "nice" character does one or two dick-ish things, you know there's something up--don't give me warning like that! Let me get attached to him, then rip the rug out from under me without obvious warning tugs. (At least the showing-someone-else's-kids-and-claiming-that's-my-family thing was somewhat subtle, but really, once you've given me two hints, I'm onto you. And I'm not that bright.)
Falling into stupid stereotypes is also not appreciated. Like the obnoxious samurai showdown in the grassy clearing... He's a modern Japanese guy. I kind of doubt he has done that much sword training as a yakuza thug in today's Japan, and while I understand this might be because he has fingers missing on one hand or because I am no expert on martial arts or swordplay, he totally does not look like he's wielding that sword right :/ Even more WTF, is that Predator just being cocky? You've got a shoulder-mounted GUN. Your compatriot had no qualms about shooting his prey and then ambling over at a leisurely pace (allowing the secondary target to escape) to kill his target. Granted, this ended with a grenade in his mandible-digit-filled face, but really... a sword showdown? Yakuza dude may have held his sword funny, but you pretty clearly had less skill :/ My only conclusion is that Predators are all terminally stupid.
Also, if you're going to have a character with useful knowledge of present flora, as in the doctor's knowledge of the neurotoxins, why on earth wouldn't you try to make use of it against the Predators? (I'm squarely looking at you, lady. And you, Russian dude. You guys witnessed it.) Predators are practically shirtless in this one, so it wouldn't be that hard. In fact, had I been a writer, I probably would have killed someone off in a gambit to get a Predator with a neurotoxin and discover that their alien chemistry means it doesn't work on them. (Instead of killing someone in a dumb trap in the camp. Royce makes the doctor run around as bait to try and attract the Predator later, which demonstrates his "only out to save me" attitude fine on its own with minimal tweaking). Or toss in an extra person for the task (or don't kill anyone off in the attempt); it's not like the movie hadn't pared down its starting cast to a minimum that supported the necessary stereotypes already.
Now for the things that REALLY kill me. First up: The home-made compass that spins and spins and spins... Seriously, you could have just shown us that the compass didn't point anywhere, that the planet hasn't got magnetic poles like Earth. The fact that putting a magnet on a leaf in the water makes it spin non-stop means... well, other than bending the laws of physics, it means you have an infinite power source. From nothing. No wonder that drill's power is still working. It's got a gorram magnet on a leaf in a puddle of water in it! Clearly, this planet is the solution to all our technological needs. Except for those pesky Predators, that is.
Second: The sky. I'm all for visible planets in the sky and all that, but... that one planet? The one REALLY BIG planet? The one whose curvature was a fairly close match for the curvature of the planet you're actually on? UNPOSSIBLE. (And yes, I'm aware that I just typed "unpossible" instead of the correct "impossible." I'm part LOLCat. Deal with it.) I can think of very few situations where that wouldn't end up in two masses crashing into each other... I'm no astro-physicist, but that can't be right. You don't see the "moon" moving, so speed isn't keeping it from crashing into the planet, and since the sun supposedly hadn't moved all morning (according to quote by Royce), the planets aren't spinning around each other fast enough to overcome gravitational pull. It can't be a lightweight planet because a gas giant would need a HUGE gravitational pull to hold down the gasses to a point of looking solid like that. Also, I don't believe in naturally occurring styrofoam planets. Two suns would have been a fine illustration of the "OMG, I don't think we're on Earth anymore" moment, and would have probably been more realistic--apparently there are actually a bunch of systems out there with two suns (not just Tatooine).
Third: The two different Predator types. How can you put something that might actually be interesting into the story and NOT go anywhere with it? Not to mention make the trussed-up Predator so... wimpy :( I expected a real battle there from an enraged little Predator :/ Instead, I think it fired like one shot from its shoulder canon before they decided to duke it out with hand-to-hand combat. Hand to hand combat. As in melee. WTF. Again, they are apparently all terminally dumb... or fatally prideful. That might explain the ridiculous sticking-out-of-chest stance.
I half expected the smaller Predator to be less technologically dependent, but apparently not. It needed to be very little in terms of combat worth, and merely served as a distraction and a tool for having us believe that Royce died and Isabel was about to be horribly disfigured/killed/whatever by psycho!doc. Bigger predator could barely even make use of its own toys, taking quite some time before switching over to a sound sensor to find Royce after he apparently negated his heat signature by setting the surrounding environment on fire. (Somehow this necessitated him taking his shirt off and smearing himself with mud as an homage to the original, featuring the Governator... except smearing with mud was supposed to block your heat signature so you seemed cooler, like your environment, so smearing yourself with mud and setting the bushes on fire really seems like the wrong tactic entirely. You'd be making yourself cool and your environment hot, so you'd just invert the colors on his heat vision, accomplishing nothing useful.) If the Predator just used its eyes, I'm pretty sure it could have seen Royce just fine in the fire, too, but I guess it was just too attached to its toys to ditch them when they weren't working anymore. Somehow, I feel like little Predator was totally wronged in this movie--didn't get much revenge at all, spent most of the movie trussed up in what can't be a comfortable position, and then got hacked up. I really wish I knew what the difference was and why it was being treated so poorly by its larger relatives.
Granted, I can't remember anything I've seen of the other movies with Predator in it (but I've only ever had respect for the one that cauterizes its own arm using bathroom tile chips and some stuff from its kit. They're largely all skill-less cheats). Maybe whatever blood feud there might have been between the "races" of Predator was explained there, maybe not. I still can't believe they went nowhere with it--a crying shame, because that's the only interesting point in the movie. Most of the plot was flailing at pointing out that the humans and the "monsters" are the same, and I'd probably feel like I'd been hit over the head with it a couple of times if they hadn't missed the mark or if the writers or whatever didn't have such a wussy swing. Seriously, the 'social commentary' bit feels like an afterthought, because it's only vaguely there. (Unless I fell asleep for part of the movie, which I don't think I did, but some of the folks I went with did, so maybe it happened... it was pretty bad...) Sadly, that's about all we got for plot.
That's probably all there is to say about it. In summary, zzzzz...
To begin, I should fairly state that I have an enormous gripe with the Predators. They're cheats! HUGE cheats! When they go "hunting" for humans, they're mostly like your obscenely rich dude who fancies himself a hunter because he shoots a gun at things and has a lot of fancy gadgets that replace actual knowledge and skill. Throwing confused humans on a planet and hunting them down is pretty much the equivalent of taking big cats that have outlived their usefulness for either entertainment or breeding purposes and putting them on a private hunting reserve so aforementioned rich guys can take pot shots at the confused and frightened animals until they take one down. And then they take the trophies home and fancy themselves big game hunters like their forebears who probably actually needed skill to hunt. For a supposed race of warriors, they're surprisingly dependent upon their gear and put little value in actual skill and knowledge. With their level of technology, you'd think they'd be able to make holographic, 3D immersion video games far more interesting and more cheaply than their silly game preserve. But they're just too stupid. Also, their only skill is apparently striking that "menacing" stance with their chest stuck way out like a busty lady hoping to convince a guy to do whatever it is she wants, except with the hissing four-mandible thing going on, too.
For the record, this is not to say that I don't respect any hunter who uses advanced technology. If they actually do have the skill without the technology, they're probably using the technology for efficiency, so they're probably hunting game they're actually planning on eating etc. rather than hanging on a wall (although that may also happen). They aren't "proving themselves" when they go out hunting, and I can accept that. If a hunter is going out there to prove his/her worth as a hunter, he/she damn well better be able to do it without fancy toys. If they really want to prove themselves, they'll do it with nothing but primitive tools, a la knives, spears, bows, and arrows... (ie. I have respect for Les Stroud and Bear Grylls because they know what the heck they're doing and do so with reasonably little, but very little for the rich guys on "safari" in Africa or elsewhere.) If you can't do it without the fancy toy, don't fancy yourself a hunter--Predator is as much a hunter as I am for playing the Hunter class in WoW.
Phew, so, now that that's out of the way, I can get down to the movie-specific gripes. First off, the acting was... not the greatest :/ But it's an action movie, so that's easy to forgive! (Plus cameo!Morpheus' awesome acting kind of makes up for the rest of them, and the doctor and yakuza guy were not too bad either.) The stereotypes were kind of sad, although could maybe be justified as the Predators trying to choose a variety of prey types. Standard token female, token black guy, token Hispanic guy, token Asian guy, and clearly-the-hero/leader guy. Call me crazy, but I think I would have mixed the roles up a little and maybe not killed off two of the tokens first (because the female is pretty much always going to survive this type of movie, especially when she's established as a sort of second-in-command fairly early on). Roles were pretty obvious from the get-go, actually. You had your crass prison punk who turns out to be not as bad as you'd think (although definitely not really a good guy ever); The innocent-seeming helpless guy who turns out to be a twisted leech; The super tough guy with his "logical" decisions and "nobody but myself to look after" attitude who ends up going soft. Okay, granted, the doctor turning out to be a psychopath killer was supposed to be a twist, but there was too much set-up for it. Once a "nice" character does one or two dick-ish things, you know there's something up--don't give me warning like that! Let me get attached to him, then rip the rug out from under me without obvious warning tugs. (At least the showing-someone-else's-kids-and-claiming-that's-my-family thing was somewhat subtle, but really, once you've given me two hints, I'm onto you. And I'm not that bright.)
Falling into stupid stereotypes is also not appreciated. Like the obnoxious samurai showdown in the grassy clearing... He's a modern Japanese guy. I kind of doubt he has done that much sword training as a yakuza thug in today's Japan, and while I understand this might be because he has fingers missing on one hand or because I am no expert on martial arts or swordplay, he totally does not look like he's wielding that sword right :/ Even more WTF, is that Predator just being cocky? You've got a shoulder-mounted GUN. Your compatriot had no qualms about shooting his prey and then ambling over at a leisurely pace (allowing the secondary target to escape) to kill his target. Granted, this ended with a grenade in his mandible-digit-filled face, but really... a sword showdown? Yakuza dude may have held his sword funny, but you pretty clearly had less skill :/ My only conclusion is that Predators are all terminally stupid.
Also, if you're going to have a character with useful knowledge of present flora, as in the doctor's knowledge of the neurotoxins, why on earth wouldn't you try to make use of it against the Predators? (I'm squarely looking at you, lady. And you, Russian dude. You guys witnessed it.) Predators are practically shirtless in this one, so it wouldn't be that hard. In fact, had I been a writer, I probably would have killed someone off in a gambit to get a Predator with a neurotoxin and discover that their alien chemistry means it doesn't work on them. (Instead of killing someone in a dumb trap in the camp. Royce makes the doctor run around as bait to try and attract the Predator later, which demonstrates his "only out to save me" attitude fine on its own with minimal tweaking). Or toss in an extra person for the task (or don't kill anyone off in the attempt); it's not like the movie hadn't pared down its starting cast to a minimum that supported the necessary stereotypes already.
Now for the things that REALLY kill me. First up: The home-made compass that spins and spins and spins... Seriously, you could have just shown us that the compass didn't point anywhere, that the planet hasn't got magnetic poles like Earth. The fact that putting a magnet on a leaf in the water makes it spin non-stop means... well, other than bending the laws of physics, it means you have an infinite power source. From nothing. No wonder that drill's power is still working. It's got a gorram magnet on a leaf in a puddle of water in it! Clearly, this planet is the solution to all our technological needs. Except for those pesky Predators, that is.
Second: The sky. I'm all for visible planets in the sky and all that, but... that one planet? The one REALLY BIG planet? The one whose curvature was a fairly close match for the curvature of the planet you're actually on? UNPOSSIBLE. (And yes, I'm aware that I just typed "unpossible" instead of the correct "impossible." I'm part LOLCat. Deal with it.) I can think of very few situations where that wouldn't end up in two masses crashing into each other... I'm no astro-physicist, but that can't be right. You don't see the "moon" moving, so speed isn't keeping it from crashing into the planet, and since the sun supposedly hadn't moved all morning (according to quote by Royce), the planets aren't spinning around each other fast enough to overcome gravitational pull. It can't be a lightweight planet because a gas giant would need a HUGE gravitational pull to hold down the gasses to a point of looking solid like that. Also, I don't believe in naturally occurring styrofoam planets. Two suns would have been a fine illustration of the "OMG, I don't think we're on Earth anymore" moment, and would have probably been more realistic--apparently there are actually a bunch of systems out there with two suns (not just Tatooine).
Third: The two different Predator types. How can you put something that might actually be interesting into the story and NOT go anywhere with it? Not to mention make the trussed-up Predator so... wimpy :( I expected a real battle there from an enraged little Predator :/ Instead, I think it fired like one shot from its shoulder canon before they decided to duke it out with hand-to-hand combat. Hand to hand combat. As in melee. WTF. Again, they are apparently all terminally dumb... or fatally prideful. That might explain the ridiculous sticking-out-of-chest stance.
I half expected the smaller Predator to be less technologically dependent, but apparently not. It needed to be very little in terms of combat worth, and merely served as a distraction and a tool for having us believe that Royce died and Isabel was about to be horribly disfigured/killed/whatever by psycho!doc. Bigger predator could barely even make use of its own toys, taking quite some time before switching over to a sound sensor to find Royce after he apparently negated his heat signature by setting the surrounding environment on fire. (Somehow this necessitated him taking his shirt off and smearing himself with mud as an homage to the original, featuring the Governator... except smearing with mud was supposed to block your heat signature so you seemed cooler, like your environment, so smearing yourself with mud and setting the bushes on fire really seems like the wrong tactic entirely. You'd be making yourself cool and your environment hot, so you'd just invert the colors on his heat vision, accomplishing nothing useful.) If the Predator just used its eyes, I'm pretty sure it could have seen Royce just fine in the fire, too, but I guess it was just too attached to its toys to ditch them when they weren't working anymore. Somehow, I feel like little Predator was totally wronged in this movie--didn't get much revenge at all, spent most of the movie trussed up in what can't be a comfortable position, and then got hacked up. I really wish I knew what the difference was and why it was being treated so poorly by its larger relatives.
Granted, I can't remember anything I've seen of the other movies with Predator in it (but I've only ever had respect for the one that cauterizes its own arm using bathroom tile chips and some stuff from its kit. They're largely all skill-less cheats). Maybe whatever blood feud there might have been between the "races" of Predator was explained there, maybe not. I still can't believe they went nowhere with it--a crying shame, because that's the only interesting point in the movie. Most of the plot was flailing at pointing out that the humans and the "monsters" are the same, and I'd probably feel like I'd been hit over the head with it a couple of times if they hadn't missed the mark or if the writers or whatever didn't have such a wussy swing. Seriously, the 'social commentary' bit feels like an afterthought, because it's only vaguely there. (Unless I fell asleep for part of the movie, which I don't think I did, but some of the folks I went with did, so maybe it happened... it was pretty bad...) Sadly, that's about all we got for plot.
That's probably all there is to say about it. In summary, zzzzz...