The Predator (2018)
Missed this first time round at the cinema, so when it landed on Sky Cinema, I clicked play with a moderate degree of anticipation. What unfolded before my eyes though was an absolute mess of a film. They had 8 years from the damn awful Predators to put things right and give the public what they've been hankering for since 1987. When I heard that Shane Black was helming the movie, I was quietly optimistic that he would deliver.
However, what he did was produce an incoherent mess of a film that looked like it had been lazily and hastily cobbled together. The references to the original were just cringeworthy. Every single one of the actors were grossly mis-cast. The story, if you can call it that was garbage, convoluted and just didn't make any sense. The dialogue was awful. What should have been intense action scenes were ruined by nauseating characters and humour that was completely unnecessary and seemed forced. What made the earlier Predator movies so engaging were the giant actors in that really impressive Predator garb. So to resort to ropey CGI was just a step too far, though I understand the logistics of having to do so.
I will say though that some of the action scenes and the Predator tech were pretty cool. But this wasn't enough to save a film that had so much potential but ended up being a big pile of poop. Black uses the original Predator music to take us back to the Arnie classic, but the sweaty claustrophobic jungle setting, the perfectly cast army unit with that great chemistry, the simple cat-and-mouse dynamic that made that film so great could not even be replicated to any extent....try as he might.
Beset by questionable decision-making in the editing of this film, you're constantly forced to fill in the blanks several times. I'm guessing a lot was left on the cutting room floor and may make it into a Director's Cut or something later down the line. Whether Black has done enough for the franchise to warrant another costly instalment as the ending suggests is up for debate. You can see parallels with the Alien franchise but I don't think it's as resilient. Black had big plans to re-vitalize the Predator series and will need to do a lot better if he is to succeed.
I'm giving this a 4/10.