Film fanatics who have been weaned on a cinematic diet of schlock B-grade 1950s science fiction films with outlandish action and dubious creature make-up, such as The Thing from Another World and The Blob – and I put my hand up to identify as one of those fanatics – will have looked forward to the release of The Predator.
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With The Predator, I expected a high-budget, mainstream film with exploitation-style content that doesn’t require you to exert a great deal of cerebral energy.
The Predator starts on the correct beat with a team of military snipers, led by crack assassin Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), in a remote region about to kill their intended targets.
They are rudely interrupted by the arrival of an alien spacecraft with its attendant alien monster, The Predator of the film’s title.
To make matters worse, a second predator spaceship with an even nastier predator follows the first invader. It’s just one damn thing after another.
The set-up for a B-grade exploitation action film is established and we’re ready to have our senses slammed by the ensuing mindless carnage.
At this critical moment, director Shane Black decides to introduce the protagonist’s backstory, his family situation and son, Rory, who has difficulties with social communication and interaction and exhibits repetitive behaviour patterns.
Rory’s concentrated self-absorption sets him up perfectly to understand and decode the alien predator’s communication systems.
This is where the film begins to unravel.
The Predator changes from a creature feature that pits elite human soldiers against advanced technology alien predators in a fight to save humankind, to a cringe-worthy psychological study of human interaction and the nature of mental illness. It reverts to the worst, outmoded depictions of soldiers suffering trauma, a child who is excluded from social circles and an attempt to bathe everything in a veil of awkward puns.
The Predator was a missed opportunity for a film with a heritage that includes the original Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger (including The Predator’s director Shane Black as a mercenary). It is high-budget and mainstream but delivers low-level dialogue, stereotypes and offensive representations of mental illness.
The Predator, despite its name, is more about human inadequacy than a fundamental survival story of humans pitted against alien hunter warriors.
The predators are secondary in a story that should be about them and their threat to human existence.
Perhaps it all comes down to the fact that The Predator doesn’t have Arnold Schwarzenegger as the champion and saviour of the human race. When it comes to delivering B-grade debauchery and cringe worthy one-liners, there is no one like Big Arnie.
