The Predator (2018) **1/2
I wasn't expecting a masterpiece from The Predator (2018) but I guess I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so Shane Blackized. By that I mean that all his trademarks are there—the macho humor, sarcastic male camaraderie, the smart/smart aleck child actor, the sassy female—and they just don't work for me in a Predator film (at least not his versions of them). On top of the Black trademarks, there's a whole lot of bad CGI (the Predadogs in particular are terrible), a slapped together script, sloppy editing, mediocre camerawork, action scenes where it's hard to discern what's happening, and characters that somehow magically adapt to everything that happens to them instantly.
My biggest gripe though is that the film is far too comedic (and way too meta). It really just plays out like all the recent superhero films. As in most of Black's films, there's a sense that everything is a joke and the stakes don't really matter that much as long as we have fun along the way. And sure, I had some fun—there's a few choice one-liners and some decent kills—but mostly this new entry in the franchise left me wanting to revisit the other three films proper (the Alien crossover films are about as good this one), all of which are better.
My biggest gripe though is that the film is far too comedic (and way too meta). It really just plays out like all the recent superhero films. As in most of Black's films, there's a sense that everything is a joke and the stakes don't really matter that much as long as we have fun along the way. And sure, I had some fun—there's a few choice one-liners and some decent kills—but mostly this new entry in the franchise left me wanting to revisit the other three films proper (the Alien crossover films are about as good this one), all of which are better.
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