THE PREDATOR is Garbage - Part One | Cynical Reviews

the predator has to be the funniest comedy of 2018 it's so it's not a comedy what what do you mean it's not a comedy oh I've always had a soft spot for the predator first appearing in 1987's predator the Predators are a mysterious alien race who used their highly advanced technology to hunt other beings for sport and collect their body parts as trophies that sounds familiar it's an intriguing premise but just like everything else good in this world it was soon squandered as later installments in the franchise failed to deliver on this potential and let's not even talk about the crossovers so when I heard that Fox were releasing a new one lazily titled the predator my first thought was how badly are they going to this one up a lot it turns out because they made what should have been a horror film into a comedy test audiences couldn't stop pissing themselves with laughter which is not an ideal reaction to a sci-fi horror action I pee a leak script as well as testimony from those who worked on the film confirmed that Fox had cooked up a real sandwich the studio resorted to some serious cuts reshoots and reddit's desperately trying to stave off an impending disaster not that it worked if these changes improve the film I can't even imagine what it was like before because the result is a butchered and crudely stitched together Frankenstein's monster full of bad editing forced fanservice and a nonsensical story with glaring and fatal plot holes and you all know how I feel about those and these changes completely failed to remove the unintentional hilarity from the film while also failing to add any horror the elements that are supposed to be frightening aren't the violence is so slapstick and over-the-top that I burst out laughing multiple times it doesn't help that the CGI is atrocious at times reminding me of food fight in terms of quality don't tell the cinematographer and the parts that are supposed to be funny hey Baxley if your mom's vagina were a video game it'd be rated E for Everyone often aren't this is not surprising given that writer director Shane Black was responsible for sine splitters like this I was going down to my girlfriend said to her chase you got a big [ __ ] juice you got a big [ __ ] she said why did you say that twice and I said I did since he was in the original film you'd think he'd treat the franchise with a great deal of respect but that's not what comes across besides the rest of the abysmal writing the Predators have lost most of what made them compelling in the first place some of the early posters featured the slogan you'll never see him coming well that's not true because we see them almost as soon as the film starts and their infamous active camouflage and stalking techniques are thrown aside as they repeatedly D cloak and reveal themselves for no reason one of the Predators loses its cloaking abilities right at the start of the film but this significant handicap feels rushed and unearned and forcing it into full view like this makes it feel very unpretty Tori there's one scene where it's just walking around casually gunning people down like it's in GTA it's ridiculous all the mysteries stripped away there's nothing special about the Predators anymore they're just like any other movie monster now it's not just a letdown it's insulting and to add insult to injury there's some retconning so unbelievably bad it would make JK Rowling cringe the rest of the characters are also questionable the protagonist is boring the quirky group of sidekicks are irritating and the supporting cast is forgettable in fact Olivia Munn might be the best thing about this film there's just something about the way she looks when she's naked and cowering in fear now she's just as bad as everyone else but considering what they were working with there was no way they were going to come out on top the writing is more on not only do the characters act like idiots but too many times the film outright explains to the audience what has just been established by the action on screen as if we're idiots and on the other hand sometimes it doesn't explain things that need to be explained hence the logical gaps in the story the predator is an utter mess the reason this review took me so long to make is because it has so many problems that I kept finding new ones even as I was editing and I'm having to gloss over a lot of them stuff like continuity errors the completely forgettable soundtrack the obvious stock sound effects and the piss-poor editing and believe it or not there are some things about this film that it even worse than what I've already talked about but there's already so much to shovel through so I better get on with it I guess yay it opens with a predator ship crushing down to earth in daylight but when it actually hits the ground it's the middle of the night great start we're introduced to Quinn our forgettable action hero who wastes no time establishing himself as an [ __ ] by betting that the Mexican drug cartel he is spying on have murdered their hostages two morons really making bets on whether a drug cartel has executed these hostages I'm in for 20 nice the predator ship quite literally crushes the party and Quinn goes to investigate he finds the Predators mask and gauntlet and decides to take them as evidence it's evidence ain't nobody gonna believe this one the predator kills one of Quinns men and takes the time to string him up having removed his spinal cord but not his skull as is traditional for predators to do when they collect trophies details like these will become important later so bear them in mind the predator kills Quinn's other body but the gauntlet fires in self-defense knocking the predator down it also cuts his friends body in half which is quite funny he wakes up and he cheated it a helicopter drops off some area 51 wannabes who are here to capture the predator their leader spouts off about how the predator is extremely dangerous but then why is he only brought four men to capture it man crew for me salt and I'm sorry but I cannot take this guy seriously as an authority figure and antagonist when he's chewing nicorette gum bring back cigars you [ __ ] Quinn reaches a bar and wants the owner to mail the Predators stuff into the u.s. why does he trust that this guy will send it off and not just steal it Quinn is arrested right after this so why wouldn't the owner just take it after he sees him getting arrested and why don't the people who arrest him interrogate the owner and search the premises so many assumptions have to be made here ooh but that's the thorah just go with it earlier the gauntlet spat out a silver ball which Quinn somehow now knows is a cloaking device and how to use it despite there being no previous scene establishing this he decides to swallow it which is pretty dumb considering what it is then he gets captured and we cut to a school attended by Quinn's autistic son Rory some [ __ ] pull the fire alarm and because of his autism Rory reacts badly to this but if the pupil would react this way to a fire alarm why on earth has he not been put in a special-needs school or at least assigned a special needs assistant to help him evacuate in the event of a fire and why did everyone else in the class including the teacher just leave him to burn bastards the [ __ ] bully him for having Asperger's before also abandoning him he picks up the chess pieces and puts them back on the boards in what is supposed to be the same order they were before this is meant to establish him as a savant and it might if the pieces were actually put back in the same order which they're not and at this point we need to talk about autism Rory's autism is heavily employed throughout the film and is essential to its story it's another example of Hollywood autism where in a character's disability makes them a super genius or gives them some incredible skill or ability glossing over the fact that the vast majority of autistic people aren't like this at all it's a tired trope but it wouldn't be so bad if the autistic characters were portrayed with a level of sensitivity and consistency but neither of those is present here the predator uses autism lazily as a crutch to hold up the plot making barely any attempt to address the issues that come with being an autistic savant and throwing around the R word with no nuance and Rory's autism is all over the spectrum there's no consistency most of the time he can't look people in the eye but sometimes he deliberately does so he gets freaked out by loud noises like fire alarms and dogs barking but is completely unfazed by the explosions and gunfire he experiences later sometimes he seems to be severely autistic and other times he's perfectly normal he can do whatever the plot needs him to do because his autism was written to fit the story and not the other way around as well repeatedly see when he gets home he finds a note from his mum saying not to mess up the house or else she'll cut him Jesus that's not an appropriate thing to say to a kid with autism on the plus side his mom is played by the actress who modeled Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect's oh happy memories a postman delivers his dad's package to the house because his p.o box payments have passed you this combined with the mailing of the package via a shady barman is a really contrived way of making sure that predators gear ends up in Rory's hands elsewhere some goons go to pick up Olivia Munn's character dr. Brackett and for some reason she already looks absolutely traumatized they don't say who they are where they're from or show any ID but she goes off with them anyway didn't you ever learn about stranger danger on that note fun fact in this scene she was originally meant to rebuff some creep who was hitting on her but then it turned out that that actor was a convicted sex offender and the director knew about this so when she found out she outed him to everyone and demanded the studio cut his scene completely which they did and yes it did make things awkward as behind the scenes I could understand wanting to give you a friend a second chance but casting someone who's been convicted of luring a fourteen-year-old girl as a sexual predator what ah words fail me you can't make this [ __ ] up I could just end the video right now because that fact alone is funnier than anything I could have said about this film what a complete [ __ ] show meanwhile Quinn is being interrogated while the g-men watch if they know he's had contact with aliens and their technology why would they not take him straight to their super secret base especial they're the ones who captured him even if they're trying to make him look insane so they can blame the Mexico incident on him and cover up the predator a prisoner with such sensitive information would not be held for interrogation at the Department of Veterans Affairs which doesn't have the authority to handcuff him or transport him on a prison bus this is how he meets the gang of disturbed veterans affectionately known as the loonies get it because they're all crazy they go around the room and explain who they are like they're at an AAA meeting which is the most ham fisted way they could have done this introduction they all have one defining characteristic which is to do with mental illness and that's pretty much all we get to learn about them they're meant to be a motley crew of lovable screwball misfits but they're poorly developed and annoying how do you circumcised a homeless man here it goes kick your mom in the chin in fact this entire scene is them acting like teenagers especially Coyle the Joker of the group when you're standing at attention before your maker I always stand at attention before I make her good one I'm sure all the over 18s watching this are rolling in the aisles and then there's Baxley he has to rest that's his character in the feast with an aardvark occasionally it's used as a plot point but mostly it's just an excuse to make [ __ ] jokes and for the film to use an embarrassing condition for a cheap laugh why that's the way we make classy at the super secret base Brackett meets the chief scientist who practically comes in his pants turns out she's an evolutionary biologist they even used the cliched line I heard you basically wrote the book on evolutionary biology Oh oh that's alien technology no [ __ ] and quick question why have they left the alien technology so blatantly on display why is it not stored away in some kind of vault I'll give you a hint but what they actually want her to examine aside from his prostate is the captured predator the film hammers home just how insufferable both it and one's character are with this stupid mad antic dialog why do you call the predator you know the data suggests that it tracks its prey exploits weakness seems to well enjoy it it's not a predator that's a sports hunter a predator kills its prey to survive and what you're describing is more like a bass fisherman well we took a vote predators cooler right I'll bet the writers thought they were being very clever and self-aware when they wrote this so they find that the predator has human DNA and they called her in because of her expertise in hybrid strains which gets condescendingly reduced - you want to know something alien remember audience dumb she's shown some photos of previous predators the first is a still from the original predator film but since Dutch was the only one alive to witness this and didn't have a camera how was this picture taken the second is from predator - which came out in 1990 but is set in 97 which is when the photo should be dated - you imbeciles Brackett wants to know about the Predators technology and to talk to Quinn why though she's there to test whether or not the predator is a hybrid strain or crossed with a human so what relevance - those have who is this we made first contact with the predator well technically not first contact but yeah but because of this Quinn's prison bus gets rerouted back at the house Rory opens his dad's parcel the nosy cop of all he's messing around with the predator tech he accidentally summons Cthulhu sorry another predator and this one's a super predator and at the super secret base they discover it's heading straight towards them the other predator conveniently wakes up easily breaks free of his restraints and starts murdering everyone I understand I'm not a morning person either the chief scientist gets shot but they keep it in the background because Kim I guess Brackett a vial of the Predators piss but can't get past the decontamination room the predator ignores her probably because he didn't want to get cut out of the film as well he's pissed off about his missing masks and gauntlet and is somehow able to use one of the other masks to see through a camera in his own mask thereby discovering that Rory has it and sets off to find him bracket now fully clothed unfortunately decides to try to subdue the predator with a tranquilizer gun considering everything she'd just witnessed that seems like a pretty dumb idea but okay the loonies who have now arrived at the super secret base see the predator escaping and they decide they need to get the [ __ ] out of there too coil tells more dumb jokes what's the difference between five big black guys and a joke in order to start a fight which lures in the guards so they can overpower them and break free and the guards walk right into it because they're King morons as are all the grunts in this film surely they would have waited until they'd made the other prisoners lie down on the ground and why didn't the god with the gun hang back out of reach to threaten the prisoners with it this is so dumb then instead of escaping Quinn decides he wants to kill the predator and the others are just like all right well they are loonies I suppose in her pursuit of the predator Brackett jumps onto the roof of their boss that is one tough evolutionary biologist like really Quinn's attempts to kill the predator go about as well as you'd expect she quite literally shoots herself in the foot just like her acting career and then falls off the bus to the top you know that reference we just made that was cool right you remember that this is a good movie you're enjoying this movie a soldier Fiennes bracket on the ground and the head alien guy whose name's Trager by the way tells him to kill her she was trying to help them get the predator back so why kill her was it because she stole some alien piss that seems a bit harsh but she gets saved when did chopper comes to her she holds on to Quinn as they ride off how she's meant to maintain her grip after being tranquilized is anyone's guess meanwhile the predator kills a bunch of troops and escapes in their truck everything okay back there [Music] tonight is everyone in this film a [ __ ] idiot the loonies go to a motel and Brackett gets left alone with these nutcases but it's okay apparently because they're soldiers soldiers man sleeping ladies now well alrighty then this porno has really high production values though morning sunshine I really wish people would stop calling me that what are you talking about nobody's called you that in the last 40 minutes Oh God we're only 40 minutes in things escalate quickly Tourette's guy has Tourette's a Jacuzzi what are you doing and they make a big thing of that you're insane right well that's not a very nice thing to say considering he has Tourette's despite the terrible jokes they decide to join forces and they dump their hot steamy info all over each other the film does a lot of this lazy exposition it's called the predator it hunts people for sport second ago that's not a it's not a predator oh [ __ ] off you smug pranks I took his gear what so what I have evidence evidence of what the Predators are killing his men the guys in Mexico had killed they yours they're gonna need a patsy for that you're looking at him but he said he needed it as evidence before he knew his men were dead so that doesn't make sense Quinn comes to the house looking for the package with the Predators gear but Rory isn't there despite his saying earlier that he doesn't want to wear a mask for Halloween because people will still know it's him I guess he decided that this mask was cool enough the loonies are around in the house they tell his ex-wife about the predator it's a creature seriously it's not a person from the Bible revelations from the Bible that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard it's a space alien and she believes them very quickly which is somewhat odd considering what they just said and the fact that Quinn just called them loonies but alright Quinn goes off to find Rory most of the loonies want to sit tight so Nebraska asks about Quinn and his ex-wife basically reads out his service record and probably knows more than she should about his military career and killcount then we get a dragged out scene where one by one the loonies decide to follow Quinn I didn't like your speech it didn't really inspire me what he called me a [ __ ] and nobody calls me [ __ ] so why does he have a picture of Rory under his arm why is he taking that with him oh yeah it's because there's one character trait is being weird as the picture never appears again and I don't even want to hazard a guess as to what he does with it the bullies from earlier recognized Rory he tries to get away from them by trick-or-treating nobody answers and while he's walking off some douche throws a can at him so the mask activates kills the douche and blows up the entire house you see what I mean about this being a comedy not only is Rory not fazed by this in the slightest but he uses the mask to scare off the bullies this film is really making people with disabilities look great isn't it also the fact that he just wiped out a house full of people is never addressed again there are no consequences for this and for absolutely no reason at all he drops the mask this [ __ ] movie man I can't keep doing this to myself yeah I'm gonna leave it here for now because I've been off antidepressants for a while and I'd quite like to keep it that way so part two will be out next week and rest assured you'll want to tune in for that because this film gets so much worse see you then [Music]

Channel: Cynical Reviews

Views: 779,067

Rating: 4.9052253 out of 5

Keywords: Cynical Reviews, Cynical CJ, Cynical Reviews The Predator, Cynical CJ The Predator, The Predator The Funniest Comedy of 2018, The Predator, The Predator 2018, The Predator 2018 Review, The Predator Review, Predator, Predator Franchise, Predator 2, Shane Black, Olivia Munn, Keegan Michael-Key, Awful Movie, Unintentionally Hilarious, Bad Movie, Worst Movies of 2018, Worst Films of 2018, Movie Review, Film Review, Terrible Films, Ruined Franchise, Disappointment, Letdown, Yautja

Id: jbTrm2HUakU

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019