Review of The Predator (2018) by Taylord99 — 15 Sep 2018

If you’re a fan of the original predator, it is fair to say what you want in a new Predator movie is the Predator killing people, action, and grisly violence. This movie gives you all those things, without a doubt.

However, where The Predator suffers is in its pacing, it’s overly chaotic CGI fueled action sequences, and its poor character development. The characters for the most part are likeable, but their character development, or lack thereof, is mostly identifiable by quirks.

For example, there is a character who tells jokes, there’s a character that has Tourette’s, and there’s a character that’s a bit creepy. This is all the development we get from these three characters, respectively named Coyle, Baxley, and Nettles.

The only characters that have any sort of development are the main character, Quinn Mckenna, and a character named Nebraska Williams, and Quinn’s son, Rory. The action scenes are enjoyable in some parts, but they are mostly overly CGI-d and ridiculous.

The only action sequence I was impressed with was the lab action sequence with the Predator. This is because the predator they used in this action sequence was fully practical with makeup and everything and there was little to no CGI used at all.

The other, larger predator was completely CGI for all the scenes he was in, and he looked very fake. This completely takes the intimidation factor out for me. The only thing that felt intimidating was, you guessed it, the practical Predator because he looked real and convincing.

The dialogue, for the most part, is smartly written and has some memorable lines here or there and a lot of the jokes land, but some don’t. Sometimes, the humor made me laugh out loud, but at a point it got to be a bit too much.

Shane Black clearly wanted this Predator movie to have a more light-hearted tone, which is fine, but it felt a bit forced in places. However, Shane Black still displays his talent with dialogue and chemistry here and these are the only things that make me care at all for the characters.

The Predator is entertaining for the first two thirds of the movie, but then ultimately devolves into a CGI action-fueled mess that made me wish it hadn’t gone in that direction. The movie’s relentlessly quick pace makes the movie go by quick, but it also feels jumbled as well.

Basically, if you are a huge predator fan and you are curious about this movie, go see it, but if you were questioning it, don’t see it. Overall, The Predator is entertaining in many parts, but it is very inconsistent and not executed as well as it could’ve been.