I don't want to immediately start complaining about The Predator, but even on a second viewing I'm finding it hard to find much in the film to actually like. Whilst the film looks pretty enough, and has a half decent cast the script just lets it down time and time again.
Now, this might not be completely fair for the film, as with a little look at the behind the scenes, or even the first trailer which had loads of scenes that weren't in the final film, it becomes clear that The Predator fell foul of constant re-writes, studio interference, and being unsure of what kind of story it wanted to tell.
In the final film a rogue Predator comes to earth, apparently to give the human race a piece of advanced alien technology to allow us to fight the 'evil' Predators. Okay, not too bad a premise, except that this 'good' Predator spends all his time attacking and killing humans, and makes no attempt to make any form of alliance with them or appear to wants to help them at all. In conflict with this Predator is the new Hybrid, who wants to kill the 'good' Predator and destroy his ship.
The plot feels incredibly clunky, and seems to develop in ways that feels unnatural. Character motivations change on a whim, the plot doesn't seem to match up with what's happening, and the titular monsters act completely out of character.
It turns out that a lot of this is due to the face that the whole second half of the film was completely changed during production. In the original film Quinn McKenna and the Loonies are recruited by a general who tells them that the Predator they have been in conflict with is a rogue who has been experimenting with combing Predator DNA with various species from Earth. The humans then team up with a pair of Ambassador Predators to take down the rogue. There are a number of scenes from this original story still in the first trailer, including the character of Nebraska riding on top of a tank, which would have been driven by a Predator.
This version of the film also included various Predator hybrid monsters for the team to fight. Unfortunately, a number of preview screenings came back with negative responses and the decision to completely change half the film at the last minute was made. As such, I can kind of forgive The Predator for ending up a complete mess, but I'd personally would have still preferred this original version as it would have given us something different from the other films.
The Predator became a victim of behind the scenes interference, and greatly suffers for it. It had a confident start, but didn't know how to end, which resulted in several alternate endings that included appearances by Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch, and even ones that had Ripley and Newt from the Alien franchise turning up. The ending they did choose, the Predator Killer suit, was so ridiculous that any good the film did have is ruined by a final scene that just felt ridiculous and badly thought through.
The film has some good performances from actors who are struggling with a script that lets them down. The loonies are caricatures of people with a variety of mental health conditions and post traumatic stress that seem to have been added for comedic relief. One, maybe even two characters that are included to elicit a laugh might be okay, but five comedy relief characters is just too much. This isn't a Police Academy film.
The Predator could have been a good film. It could have been a great film. Unfortunately, thanks to production issues it ends up being a broken film, a film that makes little sense within its own universe. If there are more films in the Predator franchise to come I hope that they are able to correct some of issues that this film has made and fall back into line with what the franchise used to be. The worst film in the Predator franchise, and almost as bad as the Aliens vs Predator films, it's only really worth watching if you're a completionist fan.
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I can agree with most of this, even though I enjoyed the movie for what it was. My biggest complaints were the way the bad government guy just died without any sort of fuss- had to see it a few times to make sure he actually died in the movie and not off screen, and that ridiculous ending.
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