Recently, I read a draft of the script for the upcoming sci-fi actioner Predators, dated July '09, written by Robert Rodriguez with rewrites by newcomers Mike Finch and Alex Litvak. There will be spoilers below, and the review will probably be a little confusing if you haven't read the script, so here it is...
Download The Script Here!
Now that you've read it, here are my thoughts!
BELOW HERE I SPOIL THE ENTIRE SCRIPT AND LIKELY MUCH OF THE FILM! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
First off, The premise makes no sense...
The Predators have been coming to Earth to hunt for two movies now and all of a sudden they're taking people offworld to... what? If, as we are led to believe in the previous two films, the Preds value the hunt, what is the point of taking prey from their environment and dropping them into one they don't know? Kinda devalues the hunt, IMO. Oooo, you can kill someone who is lost and confused? Big bad Predator you are.
Do we need Predator Accessory Animals, or have you already made the deal with Hasbro for the toys...
In the previous films the Preds were scary enough. Just these lone hunters made mincemeat of some seriously badass humans. But now they have pets? Predator dogs? How much you wanna bet that those get a design makeover post-Avatar. "That Venator thing Cameron had was AWESOME! Do something like that!" Oh, and the mechanical birds? I can just see the Mac logo on the side just under where it says iFalcon. Seriously, this is the one thing you can crib from Lucas, RR. Just have the Pred toss a ball into the air and have it go whirring off to find the quarry. There isn't a hope in hell you can make "Predator Falcons" look like anything but shit.
But hey, the archetypes are spot on, for an 80s movie!
The russian who has a huge brute force weapon and a "hit 'em head-on" attitude? I thought they were all dusted in Afghanistan 25 years ago. The squirrely convict with the shiv? Please tell me they're gonna get Dave Chappelle to reprise his Tyrone The Crackhead character for that! Topher Grace as the "he was such a quiet neighbor"-style psycho? COME ON! Oh, we need a girl, just make sure we never know her motivations for anything, leave that vague, but mention it every 2 fucking pages. Of course we gotta have the Hispanic gangbanger, the Zulu death squad guy and the Yakuza... I guess affirmative action reaches all the way into the outer galaxy.
Oh and if you have such a hard-on to get Auh-nold into this movie, his cameo is right in the middle, only you spelled the character's name wrong, its D-U-T-C-H not N-O-L-A-N-D.
Could a character be any more random? I mean, I guess we could have met Elvis in the cave, that would be more random, but not much more. At least if you HAVE to have Dutch, that is where you put him, not as some half-baked "wait wasn't it a chick the Pedators accepted as one of their own in the comics" ending. So you make it Dutch and you make him nuttier than Chinese chicken salad. Our gang has no idea, but we the audience get to go "whoa... Dutch has snapped!" Yeah, my idea still sucks, but tell me its not better than some unknown guy surviving on this planet for 35+ years only to try and gas our heroes like a couple Jedi coming to settle a trade dispute.
At least the action read pretty bad ass... actually no, it reads like just ass.
The best part of the 3rd act of Predator was the anticipation of the final fight, ramping up as Dutch sets his traps and makes his weapons. The best part of the 3rd act of Predator 2 was Harrigan going after the Pred like any good movie cop, gun out, no backup, seat of the pants. This time the third act reads like a highschooler's misguided attempt at adding Hitchcockian suspense to an Elmer Fudd/Daffy Duck cartoon. I mean, really, they're trapped in a 30 foot deep hole and this is a good time to play "it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again"? Hey moron, Buffalo Bill wasn't in the hole with the bitch, get it? You're as fucked as she is. Great timing, numbnuts.
Royce. What The Fuck, Over.
How is that for a character arc, huh? He makes no growth as a character until he just decides to fuck himself in the ass and strand himself on the planet for a chick who is probably already dead? You just spent the entire movie showing us how devoid of emotion this guy is, how it has been the key to his survival his whole life. Now he turns all chivalrous in the last 2 minutes of the movie? Wow, brilliant development there. Maybe Adrian Brody can bring a gravitas to this character that can't be read on the page. God, I hope so, because this character carries the whole movie.
But its not all bad. I do have hope... but not much...
Firstly, I don't have RR or Nimrod's vision in my head. Hopefully they see something I don't. I don't like some of the changes, but I'm hoping for something just far enough towards good from AVP or Alien Resurrection to be entertaining. Honestly it wouldn't take many changes to this draft, dated last July, to make an entertaining movie. And lets face it, the original film and its sequel aren't that far from the B-movies of the 50's, and that's the best we can really hope for.
Special thanks to Stringer Pred over at AVP Galaxy for the script link!
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