#weapons don't have feelings and can't stop due to their emotions they serve a purpose or they are ultimately a failure

[birthclod]

really good and cool thing to think about: pvp tabi and detachment from personhood

[gaykarstaagforever]

MOVIES I AM SURPRISED I HAVEN'T SEEN

Predator (1987)

This is weird to me, because I love the Predator(s) as a monster, and I've seen a bunch of terrible Italian and Hong Kong movies that were shamelessly ripping this off. And I love Arnold more than I should. But I was 5 when this movie came out, and by the time I was old enough to see it without it giving me terrible nightmares, I didn't have an older brother or cousin to illicitly show it to me (which I'm pretty sure is how most people around my age saw it). Plus it was immediately eclipsed by all of the "Xtreme" 90s action movies it inspired, many starring Arnold, so it kind of immediately got lost in the shuffle of that VHS world.

Going into it without nostalgia and only an eye-rolling regard for most of the other movies in the franchise (most of which I also don't remember seeing more than bits of), I can say that it is a better movie than it has any right to be. But it is also kind of a mess. Basic B-.

The performances are pretty good. Carl Weathers (RIP) is fantastic as always, and Arnold is Arnold, though he seems like he's playing three different characters at various points. Which makes sense, because this feels like it is at least three different movies edited together.

One is a serious war movie about big men killing in a jungle, because they got tricked into doing it by the CIA. Another is a goofy macho over-the-top action blockbuster parody, where Arnold does one-liners and everyone else is hamming it up with random sex jokes and wacky character beats. Then the third is an action-horror movie where a lone desperate man is hunted and hunts a murderous alien monster. Accompanied by a score from a hypothetical Steven Spielberg movie about toys coming to life to save Christmas from a mean old troll.

No part of any of this gets to work on its own for more than 3 minutes, before another part of one of the other movies, or the godforsaken score, elbows its way in to throw it off. There is absolutely no tonal consistency. Which isn't automatically a bad thing, but kind of is here. I'm supposed to care about these characters enough that I care they are being murdered by a Space creature; but I don't, because I'm too distracted by which movie is doing what to them right now. If I was 14 I probably wouldn't have cared, but as an adult, I just can't get into it.

Especially not with that score. Oh my god. It's a good score, just for a totally different movie. This story needed some incidental drums and maybe a synth hook as a theme for the Predator. What it gets is a full orchestral score that has to scream the intended emotion of a scene at me like I'm not paying attention. It is unbearable and ruins everything, constantly. I very nearly watched the last 20 minutes on mute. It is just...stop. Leave me alone, inappropriate string section.

Another highly unnecessary thing is the stupid "Predator vision" sequences. The Predator is only on screen for like 15 minutes of the hour, 47 minute runtime, but I swear it feels like 45 minutes of this movie is eye-straining incomprehensible fakey thermal vision POV shots from the Predator's helmet cam.

Was this exciting new technology in 1987? It must have been, because why else would there be so much of it? And no, it doesn't build tension or reveal anything notable about the Predator. It serves no structural purpose. It just wastes valuable time that would be better used actually showing the Predator. There is exactly one cool shot using it, and that shot would have been just as cool as a regular camera shot:

As for the legitimate good, the special effects - the practical Predstor costume, his invisibility shield and weapons, all of the gory killings and explosions and gunfire - are great. As I said, Carl Weathers is the only character who is tonally consistent throughout, and I have no doubt that is mostly due to his skill as an actor. It is a genuine shame he isn't the one who survived long enough to force the Predator to rage-quit.

The last 20 minutes are the absolute best part and should have been most of the movie, where Arnold is unarmed, caked in mud, using the jungle and improvised traps to confuse and abuse the Predator. It unfortunately raises questions about how skilled the Predator actually is at the one thing he does, since with all his advanced alien tech, he can't see you if you're muddy for some reason, and he also won't kill you with a gun unless you have a gun, even if he's been hunting you and you've been seriously wounding him with sticks for like 2 days. I realize he has to folllow these kinds of rules to make the fight fair. But it also makes me wonder if the Predator is just a big narcissist whose hubris makes him a shitty hunter. You're whole thing is hunting sentient creatures in swamps, you boob. Probably get mask goggles that can see them when they get dirty?

Especially when the movie makes it clear that he, or other Predators, have been doing this shit in this exact area for decades, at least. Like, figure it out already, guys. You have interplanetary space flight, but Earth mud kills your laser / nuclear advantage? Please.

Also, how does the "fair fight" crap apply when you're strapped with both an advanced first aid kit AND a suicide vest? Those are a perpetual unfair advantage. Being weird about things because the prey dropped their gun or ran out of ammo seems arbitrarily pedantic.

Also also, you as a species are 8 feet tall, can leap from tree to tree, and have massive punching daggers mounted on your wrists. Tossing your own gun to wrestle a tired human man isn't being fair, it is cheating a little differently. Why bother? What do you gain by this?

Especially when you know that if you lose, you're going to explode, and take several surrounding acres out with you?

It is still a cool premise and a cool monster, and the movie overall is way, way better than it could have been. It has parts that are good, and lots of fun, idiotic 1980s action movie lines that we have been rightly quoting for 37 years. It is gratuitous fun, and that feels like all it intended to be, so good on it. But it's no RoboCop or Total Recall or anything. Paul Verhoeven always nails the hambone tone of these kinds of things, even when he's making something awful like Showgirls. That's hard to do, and Predator doesn't quite manage it.

I think a lot of the intense love for this movie is simple nostalgia. And that's fine. But that doesn't make it a great movie.