Monday's Interesting Things
What's going on with Predator these days?
The new Predator trailer (not the animated one, the movie coming out in November - yes I know this is needlessly complicated but no one has asked me to help them figure things out so…) recently bounced and I have some thoughts…
Now, the caveat here is, I know nothing more than what is out there on the internet about this movie. So this is only going by the trailer and some other info - and yes, this movie could be fantastic. I have no way of knowing. But there are some things here that suggest we may be in some Predator trouble here…
Let’s start with the fact that this new movie is not set on Earth, but on some weird new planet. That means we’re already starting off on some potentially un-solid footing.
Next, we have the new idea that the predator in this movie will be the protagonist, fighting something bigger and meaner. Which… fine except I now have to turn off the “predator = bad” part of my brain and kinda throw out all the history of predators I have to swear allegiance to a mostly CGI creature on an alien planet in the future.
And last… well last may be a huge spoiler, or a huge reveal or… i don’t know but it’s splashed up on the wikipedia page and… I don’t want to be the one to haphazardly toss it in here lest you want to go into a Predator sequel pure and virginal. So without going too into specifics, I guess you could say a Predator franchise fan would think it cool when they read it and then maybe roll their eyes a bit after giving it about five minutes of thought. It’s not spoiling the end of the movie or anything, so if you want to know, you can check it out here. To me, it feels kinda tacked on to suggest something clever and maybe coming down the pike should this movie do well.
And that’s something I want to explore a bit here too; the idea about where the Predator franchise is going to be taken. The original Predator was the first rate R movie I ever snuck into and it was a glorious mashup of homoerotic machismo built around vagina jokes, ass-kicking and (at the time) cool special effects. You know, the perfect 13 year old boy heroin. It was the most amazing thing I had to pretend not to have seen to my parents. But seriously, it was a fine action flick professionally made and yes, the sequels kinda went weird and people tried things and I’m sure cocaine was involved and then in 2022 Dan Trachtenberg gave us Prey, a throwback to that original movie. If you haven’t seen Prey I recommend it - not only was it a fun ride, it opened the door to the possibilities of different time periods dealing with a hunting predator. I could see an entire franchise built on the idea of a predator visiting Earth at different moments of its history, and how it would be dealt with.
Predator: Samurai
Predator: Roman Legion
Predator: Custer’s Real Last Stand
Predator: Incas
I could go on and on but tell me which of these you WOULDN’T go see. Derivative? Sure, but uh, give me the example when Hollywood turned down exploitation for the sake of art. I’ll wait. Hollywood could have feasted releasing a new Predator movie in a different time period every three years or so.
Now, come this June we’re getting a new animate Predator movie which seems to suggest this very idea: it has not just have samurai culture but also a WWII time period and that’s intriguing. But this movie also feels like a compromise of sorts, a deal made in a Hollywood office so that we can get a weird future hero predator. Maybe I’m crazy but the expansion of the Predator universe beyond predator hunts people and people have to kill it feels a tad risky. I don’t need a bigger, badder alien hunting a predator. The Jurassic Park franchise lives squarely on that corner.
Predator: Badlands could be a great movie. And I’m sure in the pitching stage, throwing around cool ideas got people fired up for stuff. But it also reminds me of another movie that was cool and then went off the rails, and that’s how we got The Chronicles of Riddick.
Fincher is working with… puppets?
Looking for David Fincher’s latest work? You’re going to have to dig into Love, Death and Robots, the Netflix anthology series based on Heavy Metal. Also, you’re going to have to endure the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Listen to Star Wars Like You’ve Never Listened to It Before
A fun time was had by all during this live reading of the original screenplay of Star Wars. And now, you can have fun with it too because it’s on youtube.
But this got me thinking, since I knew there were many iterations of (The) Star Wars script before the one we all got… was there another reading buried on Youtube that tackled that very first script.
And the answer is… no. At least nothing I could find after about 36 seconds of searching.
HOWEVER…
There IS a (now defunct) podcast who did do a live read of that original script, and if you want to listen to it (it’s wildly different than the movie we all know and love) you can do that here.