sometimes a movey is ideologically unpleasant in a way i'm able to simply compartmentalize, and to enjoy what merits it has even as i shake my head at the sucks parts so my greek chorus knows i disapprove. i was not able to do this with schwarzenegger predator due to how little there was of merit.
STUFF I LIKED IN SCHWARZENEGGER PREDATOR:
- my Freaking ex-wife and her roommate and i pogged and pointed at all the shots that became memes and he said the line moments
- the eponymous predator's alien clicks and trills and distorted vocal mimicry are cute
- i like jungle that's where i'm from
- everybody talks about the flayed corpses scene but nobody talks about the much more iconic scene shortly after in which a dude angrily punts a vulture. and it's like a pink bald head type vulture which i dont think is the flavor of vulture they got in mexico.
- predator face reveal was pretty fun
- the credits sequence that has every character smiling sitcom intro style despite the fact that all of them were either reduced to giblets or visibly haunted and haggard when last we saw them.
STUFF I JACKED THE AIR OFF ABOUT IN SCHWARZENEGGER PREDATOR: - my Freaking ex-wife and her roommate and i pogged and pointed at all the shots that became memes and he said the line moments
- the eponymous predator's alien clicks and trills and distorted vocal mimicry are cute
- i like jungle that's where i'm from
- everybody talks about the flayed corpses scene but nobody talks about the much more iconic scene shortly after in which a dude angrily punts a vulture. and it's like a pink bald head type vulture which i dont think is the flavor of vulture they got in mexico.
- predator face reveal was pretty fun
- the credits sequence that has every character smiling sitcom intro style despite the fact that all of them were either reduced to giblets or visibly haunted and haggard when last we saw them.
- ambiguously defined mexican terrorist cell is dangerous enough to have kidnapped a member of cabinet (gasp) but completely hapless in the face of superior US grit and firepower. as we can see in a borderline slapstick montage of our brave troops lighting up a lot of brown people to establish their competence.
- speaking of which vulnavia (<3) recently told me about a nick carter novel in which he survives a lady shooting at him by successfully tricking her into thinking she's not out of ammo by firing his gun behind his back to replicate the sound. and that's what i was thinking about watching a feckless white boy standing right out in the open to "covertly" plant explosives on a truck and loudly struggle to push it downhill and for this plan to work without a hitch lol
- and the only brown character whose life matters earns that distinction by being a pretty young woman
- and it's pretty weird and honestly comes across as orientalist the way she has the lowdown on the predator in a way none of the americans do? and in a way that doesn't really make sense?
- and frankly so does the cadence of all her english dialogue. with the sole exception of the line "it changed colors like the chameleón" which sounds like something my friend soraya would say to me as a joke, her dialogue feels like ESL english written by people who've never had an actual conversation with an ESL spanish speaker.
- i think the movey's worst crime of all though is that it's a meandering and boring action flick lol
- the predator's stupid fucking beam cannon sucks ass. like the triangular sightfinder and laser sight are cute and it's good when it turns a guy into mist with frag bullets. just have it use real guns and not a limp dicked pew pew star wars blaster.
- the fucking human laugh it does when it activates its suicide bomb. its vocal mimicry sounds cool and alien why come it laughs like a normal guy at the end
as an aside, pathetic and self-effacing struggleposting was not understood technology at the point of human history where this movey was becoming memes or else the shot of haggard arnie would be one such and we'd be posting shit like this
there's a more enjoyable version of predator (1987) that i can imagine and it's On Purpose About dumb chud US marines deploying into the jungle because they just want to kill, and in-universe are of the impression they'll get to mow down brown people with impunity bc they have american guns and an ostensible mission. and then all of them get picked off gradually by a space alien that is also a stupid chud that just wants to kill, and now they're outmatched by its actually superior munitions. although my Freaking ex wife told me there's a predator movey i haven't seen that's kind of like that and her review of it was "it was okay. should have been more explicit". so maybe woke predator is not possible in our world.
so badass to rip up parts of a real actual jungle to make special effects for a movey that just was not very good at all
they added a yautja to fortnite while i was writing this post
