How Not To Reboot A Movie

if you wanted to find a master class in how not to review to franchise 2018 s the predator really is the perfect case study but before we break it down let's ask why did the original predator work so well the original predator was built on a simple premise what happens if we take our macho action heroes we take our Rambo's and commandos and the cast of the Expendables the ones whose guns never need reloading and whose enemies always have stormtrooper aim and we throw them up against one of the most fearsome monsters in movie history that is part of the reason predator is just so interesting because it twists the whole invincible action hero trope on its head and combines it with horror in an incredibly original way almost performing a serious satire of its own genre the film starts with your bog-standard action scene tons of explosions and enemies that fly into the air and they get shot every one of the main heroes just shrugs off explosions like they're nothing all the while throwing in their wussy one-liners stick around the opening of predator establishes clearly that these guys are badasses they are your overpowered super capable 80s action heroes and then the film devolves from a seemingly generic 80s action film into one of the best action Horrors ever made where they go up against a director they are woefully unprepared for with their abilities who've never need to reload is useless because when they're shooting at the predator they'll never live past their first couple shots it takes your average Opie action heroes and turns them into little Girl Scouts because in the relative power dynamic they are nowhere near as competent as the enemy that's hunting them the truth is the original predator is a perfect standalone movie it is a tightly plotted well acted well scripted action film it is a one-off story that is delivered incredibly well and it is the exact kind of story where making a decent sequel to it would be exceptionally hard and if you want to make a sequel or reboot the franchise in the modern day you would have to provide a larger scope store that builds on top of the prior films rather than retreads the old if there's one thing positive I can say about 2018 s predator at least Shane Black seemed to understand that concept Black understood he couldn't just make the same movie as the original because we've already seen that movie three times no less including predator 2 and 2010's predator as they both use very similar plots to the original in order to please the audience the critics and kickstart a new trilogy he would have to provide a larger more epic story and unfortunately the fact that blacks seem to understand that concept is the only thing this film has going for it now if were to realize why this film fails to do the original justice where better to start than genre the original predator film was a thriller and an action film but I'd argue it was foremost a horror now you may disagree with me but here's the thing the original predator film was a film that took itself seriously sure it had a few jokes but there were only about 5 of them in the whole film and they were really for characterization rather than for making the audience laugh such as Hawkins who keeps making really blunt jokes about women's naughty bits and thus telling us that he is a somewhat vulgar person those jokes Hawkins says just so happened to account for about three of the five jokes in this movie when we look at humor the original predator had the dial turned to one and four twenty 18s the predator black grabs that dial and toned it all the way up to eleven this film is jam-packed with your mum jokes and funny banter and physical humor and some jokes so over-the-top that they are borderline parody take this one for example [ __ ] guys now I'm sure this is quite arguably a funny moment but just because something is funny that doesn't mean it's good the predator is supposed to be an imposing monster that inspires fear in the characters and the audience and in this moment he saw us being that scary monster and for a brief five seconds he becomes Deadpool with the same sadistic sense of humor how can we be afraid of a monster when said monster is also the comic relief and is being used for cheap gags how could the predator be terrifying when he's being parodied in the very film that is trying to make us take him seriously now here's a thing there are some genres out there that blend together really well let's look at sci-fi for example sci-fi is fantastic as a genre because it is just so malleable you can combine it with essentially any other genre out there so you want to combine sci-fi with comedy well then you get Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy so you want to combine sci-fi with horror well then you get the alien series or how about combining sci-fi with fantasy well then you get Star Wars honestly combined sci-fi with any genre out there and it could totally work when it comes to combining different genres you can get away with almost any combination the keywords being almost because there are some genres out there that simply do not blend certain genres where it would be possible to combine them but to do so would be an uphill struggle because by their very nature the to contradict and if there were two genres in all of fiction that were the hardest combined it would be horror and comedy which just happens to be exactly what the predator strikes to do horror by its very nature is all about creating tension and comedy by its very nature is all about relieving tension this right here is why combining horror and comedy rarely works and it can be an extremely dangerous combination because it's like combining acids with alkaline it's like combining hot with cold now ice cream is nice and tea is nice as an Englishman would know but when you combine the two you get this slushy unappealing lukewarm mess that fails to be either of the extremes where 50% of the story is dragging towards one tone and 50% is dragging towards the other on this channel I've been very vocal on the whole idea of tonal consistency such as my video on the last Jedi that's because it's true if you want your audience to feel palpable dread you do exactly what the original predator did you have very few jokes and the few jokes that you do use are more toned-down not over-the-top and also come off as realistic banter between soldiers now that is a good joke because it's subtle and it's how people in the military really talk to each other it's authentic banter that you could imagine real people might say in a situation like this it's not one of the many your mum jokes that the reboot so haphazardly crams in hay Baxley if your mom's vagina were a video game it'd be rated E for Everyone what is this try not to cranes challenge pick your tone and stick to it say what you like about Terminator Salvation and terminator genisys but one thing you have to give those movies credit for is at least they got the genre right in my opinion Terminator Salvation and Genesis were better films and the predator 2018 because at least those movies knew what they wanted to be well the predator is stuck in an identity crisis but in order to realize why the predator has this palpable dread at the 2018 remake dozen there are two scenes which are fundamentally quite similar and when we compare them they've really answer that question quite well the first scene is from the original film so one of the characters when he separated from the group is murdered by the predator they rushed towards his screams but his body is nowhere to be seen so they spread out to find his body when another one of their group gets killed horribly - just then one of the soldiers gets a glimpse of the almost invisible predator before he immediately disappears into the trees then every single character fires everything they have into the bush towards where they just saw the monster however apart from a tiny bit of blood the predator escapes without injury now the second scene from the 2018 film is the climax and it's honestly so much easier to explain because it's a hell of a lot more generic the characters are running away in the forest while there is this super advanced predator that's hunting them down while the original film took its time to kill its characters in the climax of the 2018 film he runs around with a similar power level to the Hulk as he is immune to all damage and with essentially zero effort kills almost all of the soldiers now it's really an objective fact that the first scene from predator is a far more compelling one and there are two critical reasons why reason 1 in the original there is a great deal more mystery around the monster the original scene is oozing with tension long drawn-out shots the audience barely see is the monster rather we see the trail he is leaving behind after the first guy died someone is searching for Hawkins body and instead he finds this pile of ghoul then he goes back to the group and says this in the original scene that tension those elements of horror are so much more palpable as McTiernan has confidence in his craft he takes his time slowly building up the monster the monster doesn't run around killing dozens of people at a time like a generic Marvel villain like he does in the 2018 film he uses hit-and-run strategies killing one and then retreating and it's a tactic that the soldiers just don't know how to counter we can see that not only are these grizzled soldiers totally confused they're terrified and then after two of their number died and they destroy the jungle bush they check the area and he says this now [ __ ] tres no blood no bodies nothing when we see how confused and terrified these soldiers are we can't help but feel that ourselves in the first scene we only get a few glimpses of the monster and all of those glimpses are playing right now what do you see it's unclear we never get a good look at the monster we only see him camouflage and some shots are only partial where we just see his arm for example the original has such a strong mystery towards the predator and a mystery around the antagonist is really the bread and butter of any good horror film but let's compare this to the scene in the recent film we get shot after shot of the predator he is well lit for all to see and he is standing just standing still in the open he is clearly not afraid of the soldiers as he absorbs every bullet like a tank that element of mystery and fear towards the predator in this film it's entirely gone because now he is nothing more than generic movie monster 336 in an interview Shane black actually talks specifically about this scene and how he tried to make it terrifying it's on me when I saw the footage during the day there's the climax of the movie he doesn't look right it doesn't look scary in the daytime and then we decided to to streamline the plot so we could afford to go back up and really just concentrate on the scarier elements of doing it at night we took everything out of day and put it into a darkness the difference is night and day I'm sorry to break it to you Shane but your climax is not scary the concept that changing the time of day has a large effect on how scary a scene is is flat-out wrong because when you use the right rules you attack the scene from the right direction the time of day is irrelevant I mean the original film has two scenes that take place in the night the scene where the predator sneaks in and steals their dead friend's body and of course the final fight every single other seen in predator 1 takes place during the day which means every single character death every single encounter with the monster with the exception of the very final showdown takes place when the Sun is high in the sky the problem is the predator 2018 is clearly a film that tries to be a horror it tries to have those terrifying palpable scenes with a tension is high but it fails at them as almost every fight scene comes across less so a horror and more so part of a generic action film but going back to comparing those two scenes there is a second and dare I say considerably more important reason where the first scene is more gripping now I know what I'm about to say may sound contradictory so please bear with me but one of the critical reasons there is so much tension in the first predator is because the villain is vulnerable and one of the critical reasons the predator 20-18 has such a lack of tension is because the villain is not vulnerable now what do I mean by that in the first scene after firing a thousand rounds downrange they only hit the predator once however that one bullet does damage and then after we have a short scene with the predator is giving himself first day to heal that single bullet wound in the first film it is clearly established the monster is mortal he is not bulletproof and all it would take to kill him is several well-placed shots it's why the predator does hit-and-run strategies because if he didn't and he just rode straight up to the group they'd kill him however in the newer film that feeling that the predator is vulnerable is completely gone all within a minute he gets shot by a plasma gun get set on fire get shot point-blank in the back with an assault rifle stabbed a dozen times more in the back gets hit directly with a grenade launcher and then falls a great height into a hole not even a minute later he is back out of the hole and is walking around showing no signs of injury when a fight is impossible when the viewer feels it is 100% guaranteed that one party is going to win the viewer doesn't feel invested because they know exactly how it will play out but when there is hope just a tiny possibility that the result of the fight could go either way it makes that scene so much more compelling I mean Arnie straight-up says this in the original please we can kill it that's the whole thing in the original the predator was incredibly powerful but he could be hurt he bleeds bullets do cause damage and this means in every scene there is a glimpse of hope that they might actually kill the monster but in the remake the monster is so opie that it totally kills that dramatic tension now I said at the start that this movie needed a more epic plot ultimately the plot for this film can be broken down to predator comes to earth and kills a bunch of people and even bigger more spooky predator comes and kills that first predator and then that extra spooky predator runs around and kills a bunch of people himself until he dies it's not exactly gripping now here's a thing it is easy to just slate a film and criticize it so today I want to try and do something a little different and I want to try and be constructive what would have been a better plot for this movie so if you'll indulge me I'm about to embrace my inner fanfic writer but let's try come up with a better idea so it starts in a similar way the predator crashes to earth and gets in a fight with the protagonist lots of shots are fired lots of blood is spilled but the predator wins that fight and the protagonist is at his mercy however after sharing a blog I contact he chooses to spare the human and lets him live this itself would create quite a lot of mystery because this totally goes against the Predators code as they always finish their kill so the viewer gets intrigued as to why this predator is just so merciful and what is he up to so we go along a bit and it gets revealed that the Predators do this self-induced evolution they cherry pick the very best specimens from across the galaxy and fold their DNA into their ranks usually this happens just by taking DNA samples but sometimes they will genetically transform a being into one of the predator species and indoctrinate them however only the absolute most impressive most badass people receive this honor but here's where things start to get quite cool it gets revealed that this predator the one who refuses to kill the humans he used to be one of these people he was a human until got converted however the indoctrination process failed and he was the first-ever case of someone keeping their mind after the conversion this actually makes quite a bit of sense as in this actual film the predator goes rogue to help humanity and if he had human memories and was once a human that would perfectly explain his motivations but then he is another twist so in the 2010 film predators the capture ROI survives after being thrown into a premise a game planet so many years have passed since then what if they were so impressed by Royce as he survived year after year on that planet killing predator after predator so chuffed with his badassery they turned him into one of them using their forced evolution giving him the great honor of joining their species so this predator is actually Royce six years after he survived the events of the Predators film now I know that idea is a little silly it does spoil a bit of the mystery around the predator species but if they embrace that idea and went full-on sci-fi action it could have been fascinating it probably breaks the established law of things but that idea has the potential to be a really interesting foundation to this new predator trilogy they clearly wanted to starve just imagine all that potential for juicy character conflict where the predator hates himself because he isn't a human anymore and he is a repulsive monster and he refuses to look at his own reflection in the mirror because every time he sees his disgusting face he throws up that has the potential for such an interesting character what if his film pulled a fully-fledged Terminator 2 and made the predator villain a principal character with dialogue where he protects the more feeble less capable humans now I'm not saying this is the idea they should have used but I am saying that this film desperately needed a fresh twist on the predator formula simply making a new predator of a larger size but this time he is bulletproof doesn't count as an interesting twist if they wanted this film to be the next step in the predator franchise they had to be bold they had to approach the Predators in a more creative way and this would have been a fantastic way to do them now I love making these essays I had a blast researching what made the original predator so great and coming with that alternate story idea honestly things are going so well right now channel is growing steadily every day you guys are being so supportive and I actually feel like I finally have a purpose in life for those of you who don't know up until the end of last year I was sort of just existing in life I was really passive with no dreams or aspirations I mean when I was a kid all the way up until I was 20 I always had trouble just getting out of bed in the morning I mean some mornings I'd spend a whole half hours just looking at the ceiling trying to get myself up and failing and often I'd look at my phone and just ask if I just pretend to be sick and take the day off and just have a break from my mundane life why not and honestly on those days where I pretended to be ill those were some of the best days I had as a kid without your support I'd still be like that but as I'm sure you can imagine these videos really do take quite a long time to create I mean that's part of the reason I can't upload more than once a month I mean this video in particular took me about 12 days worth of full-time work just to make so yeah it takes a lot of time now if like me you enjoy watching these videos and you want to support me in my dream career of making content for you guys then please consider supporting me on patreon there is a link in the description down below right now I am doing the closer look full-time and I love it but as much as I love doing YouTube it's not without its worries for example I want to move out of my parents house quite soon you know have a little independence but I have no clue if this job will even exist in a year's time because of article 13 and even so my income can vary by as much as three hundred percent each month I mean fat luck I will ever get a mortgage with income like that the truth is is my income is incredibly unreliable but with your support on patreon I'll be able to have a steady reliable source of money which will help me in making my passion my long-term viable career with your support I can stop worrying about how much money advertisers might break in and just get my head down and crack out even more videos there's a link to my patreon page in the description if you want to support me there on patreon I have a whole bunch of cool rewards for example if you support me with $1.00 you'll be able to join my patron exclusive discord where you can talk to me and have long conversations about films writing and everything else if you support me at the $5 tier you get to watch all of my videos 5 days early and also I've got consultation sessions where me and you get into a one-on-one cool so maybe you want to achieve what I've done and do YouTube full-time if so I'll review your channel and I'll give you some really valuable feedback and advice on how you can make youtube your full-time job or maybe you just want me to look at your writing one writer to another and I'll use those 20 minutes to just read your stuff and give you some pointers or just some feedback on a story idea so if you want any of that well all the more reason of you to join our little community on patreon again the link is in the description anyway thanks for watching don't forget to support me on patreon and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,646,495

Keywords: predator, the predator, shane black, predator 2, video, essay, video essay, the closer look, the closer, closer look, closer, review, trailer, scene, clip, 2018, predator 2018, reaction, lore, explained, sequel, movie, alien, ending, how to, how, how to begin a movie, tarantino, article 13, begin, film, cinematic universes, the epidemic of cinematic universes

Id: 5Arua2vFOQ8

Length: 22min 37sec (1357 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 26 2018