Remember all of those meaningful moments of character development in the original Predator from 1987? Sure you do. How can help you but recall all of those deep, revealing conversations between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers? And when Jesse Ventura joined in, it was almost enough to make the heart melt, wasn’t it? Oh, and that plot! The mind boggles at the labyrinthine intricacies of the storyline, doesn’t it? Who to this day isn’t still trying to unravel all of the twists and turns the narrative took? And, oh my Lord, the eternal existential truths contained in the Predator’s final words, “What are you?” That’s stuck with you your entire life, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it !?!
Okay, that’s enough. You get the point. Almost every man alive with an ounce of testosterone in their body loved Predator when it came out and I can’t think of one who cared about its lack of artistic merit. So, as I exited the recent screening for 2018’s The Predator and listened to my fellow critics bemoan the film’s lack of defined characters and its overly simple narrative, I’m not sure what movie they came to see. I mean, come on, you know how they defined characters in the original Predator? One guy was Arnold, one guy carried a big knife, one guy incessantly shaved his dry face with a disposable razor, and one guy was a girl. That’s it!
Apparently, Shane Black and I are the only ones who remember this. To that effect, Mr. Black has crafted a sequel that defines characters the same way its progenitor did. One guy is Boyd Holbrook, one guy is a psycho who likes ‘yo mama’ jokes, one guy has Tourette’s, and one guy is a girl. The only difference is that it’s 2018, so the girl is a scientist. Also there’s a kid with Asperger’s who’s smarter than everybody else, even the girl if you can believe that. But that’s almost all you get to know about these characters because Shane Black actually watched the original Predator and understands nobody cared about those character’s motivations or childhood traumas or whatever else my fellow critics would have shoehorned into the story.
Similarly simple, the plot of The Predator is as follows. The world’s best covert soldier runs across an alien hunter and takes some of its equipment as proof the encounter happened. Naturally, the alien hunter wants his stuff back and comes looking for it. So does an evil government agency and a much larger second alien hunter and his alien hunting dogs. Intent on staying alive, the soldier teams up with a band of Section 8 misfits, a girl scientist, and his own autistic son to put the hurt on everyone who would do them harm. Much bloody destruction ensues.
If you need more than that, avoid The Predator like the plague. If you can handle intentionally dumb fun with all the character and plot development of a cheaply made Saturday morning cartoon, then by all means buy a bag of popcorn and have a seat. But please, if you do, don’t go on afterwards about how you expected anything else other than what the movie delivers. Don’t become the kind of critic G.K. Chesterton derided in his Defense of Penny Dreadfuls. Instead, recognize as Chesterton did that simple, stupid, and sometimes even vulgar pulp stories more often than not “express the sanguine and heroic truisms on which civilisation is built; for it is clear that unless civilisation is built on truisms, it is not built at all.”
The Predator is pulp trash, but it’s fun pulp trash wherein the good guys, with some necessary sacrifice, beat the bad guys and have a happy ending. Sometimes, that’s enough, at least for G.K. Chesterton and the rest of us peons. Let us enjoy it please.
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