Review The Predator (2018)

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“The Predator” Headed For $30M Opening


20th Century Fox and Shane Black’s “The Predator” is reportedly heading for a $25-30 million opening weekend when it opens on September 14th.

That’s an improvement on the $24.7 million that 2010’s “Predators” opened to in 2010, but behind the $38.2 million haul of “Alien vs. Predator” in 2004. It’s also way ahead of the $11.2 million that Black’s last film, “The Nice Guys,” opened to in 2016.

The movie will open against mystery thriller “A Simple Favor” which is tracking for a $12-15M opening, and “White Boy Rick” which is headed for a $5-9 million opening. “The Predator” will have its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival on September 6th ahead of a nationwide debut on September 14th. Check out a new featurette below:



 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“The Predator” TV Spot Teases Predator Dogs


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We’re three weeks away from its release in cinemas, and so 20th Century Fox is really ramping up promotion of Shane Black’s “The Predator” with the release today of a new featurette about the return of the franchise, along with a new TV spot showing off what are dubbed the ‘Predator Hounds’.

Black dubs this the scariest entry in the franchise, some of which is to do with the new Mega Predator who has no love for either humans or more regular-sized Predators.

In the new film, the universe’s most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before, having genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species. When a young boy accidentally triggers their return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race.

Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Alfie Allen, Thomas Jane, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey and Yvonne Strahovski star in “The Predator” which is slated to open on September 14th.




New Featurette....




 
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
TV Spot...

And in comparison to other previous "underwhelming" trailers, this one is being touted as a huge step up......



 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“The Predator” Cuts A Scene Due To Casting


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Just days out from locking the picture, 20th Century Fox suddenly took the initiative to delete a single scene from Shane Black’s “The Predator”.

The LA Times reports that the scene deleted featured 47-year-old actor Steven Wilder Striegel (“Melrose Place,” “Days of Our Lives”) who shared it with actress Olivia Munn. Striegel plays a jogger who repeatedly hits on her character.

Last month Munn learned that Striegel is a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty and served six months in jail in 2010 after facing allegations that he attempted to lure a 14-year-old female into a sexual relationship via the internet.

When Munn shared the information with Fox, studio executives quickly decided to cut him from the movie – and from the sounds of it, it wasn’t a crucial scene making the extraction easy. In a statement, Fox said: “Our studio was not aware of Mr. Striegel’s background when he was hired. We were not aware of his background during the casting process due to legal limitations that impede studios from running background checks on actors.”

Black reportedly was aware and has defended his decision to cast Striegel in a small part saying: “I personally chose to help a friend. I can understand others might disapprove, as his conviction was on a sensitive charge and not to be taken lightly” and adds he believes that Striegel was “caught up in a bad situation versus something lecherous”.

Striegel said in an e-mail to the outlet: “The character I played was named after a mutual friend of ours, and it seemed a good fit. I’ve known Shane Black 14 years, well before this incident, and I think it’s worth noting that he was aware of the facts. Shane can speak for himself, but I’m quite certain that if he felt I was a danger in any way to have around, he would not have.”

Munn said she found it “surprising and unsettling” Black didn’t share this information during production, but was “relieved” when Fox, upon hearing the news, responded so quickly.

Update: Black has issued a new statement: “Having read this morning’s news reports, it has sadly become clear to me that I was misled by a friend I really wanted to believe was telling me the truth when he described the circumstances of his conviction. I believe strongly in giving people second chances – but sometimes you discover that chance is not as warranted as you may have hoped. After learning more about the affidavit, transcripts and additional details surrounding Steve Striegel’s sentence, I am deeply disappointed in myself. I apologize to all of those, past and present, I’ve let down by having Steve around them without giving them a voice in the decision.”

The film premieres tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival and opens in theaters nationwide September 14th.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“The Predator” Screens To Mixed Reviews


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Filmmaker Shane Black screened his sci-fi action sequel “The Predator” at the Toronto Film Festival last night and reviews have been divisive. The film currently stands at 67% on Rotten Tomatoes with reviews painting an interesting picture – that the film is far more comedic and action-centric than expected with little to no horror.

Jumping between quips and brutality, the film veers all over the place in tone – something that doesn’t bother many people but the kind of thing that can really get some cinephile’s knickers in a twist. There’s certainly praise for numerous moments, even as the whole isn’t quite what some expected – even the Shane Black fans. Here’s a sampling of reviews:

Variety: “A mixture of the flippant-knucklehead-machismo species with frantic comic-book action. Though there’s gore and creatures aplenty, say goodbye to any remaining horror element in this series. Now we’ve got a sort of mashup of Indiana Jones, ‘Jurassic Park,’ and a flying-kung-fu movie, no longer scary in the least but hella loud and busy.”

The Hollywood Reporter: “Black applies a more-is-more approach to the material, revealing the extraterrestrial hunter in the very first sequence, then doubling down on the number of predators and corpses we see on screen… It’s a totally gonzo method that mostly pays off because of all the snappy dialogue, gross-out gags and tongue-in-cheek camaraderie of the cast.”

The Playlist: “‘The Predator’ knows exactly what type of picture it is – an action-filled, popcorn movie with no aspirations for anything more. This movie throws caution to the wind in service of creating two-hours worth of brain-melting thrills. Black knows his genre tropes inside and out and he loves throwing out cliché setups and then subverting your expectation for the payoff. Most often, he does this for laughs…This tactic never cheapens the movie, though.”

TImeOut: “Just this side of meta, the verbal action-sci-fi update loves telling you how much fun you’re having. Predator is exactly the sort of flick he would have made 30 years ago when he played that gangly supporting clown. It’s aggressively pacey, overloaded with smug one-liners, gore-laden and unlikely to have much of a future. It’s a so-so movie for grown-up kids who like the smell of their own trash.”

IGN: “With its bawdy sense of humor, disorderly cast of characters, and hardcore kills and action, ‘The Predator’ does a lot right to reinvigorate the 31-year-old series. But everything crashes down during its frenzied, messy final act, a disappointing conclusion to what had largely been a fun romp up until that point.”

JoBlo: “‘The Predator’ is Shane Black through and through. This feels very much like a hybrid of [Fred] Dekker’s eighties output, as filtered through Black’s sensibility and know-how, mixed with the predator mythology, which is turned inside out here in a way that will thrill some and put off others.”

Nerdist: “In ‘The Predator,’ comedy and action are at war with each other. Characters spew rat-a-tat quips, while tussling with Predators and their pets, essentially neutralizing the effect of both the humor and the action. We’re given nothing to hook into, so it’s impossible to care about any of the events, which are wildly incomprehensible anyway.”

“The Predator” opens in cinemas on September 14th.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Overcoming mixed reviews, Shane Black’s “The Predator” took the top spot at the domestic box office with a solid $24.2 million for the three day weekend – about on par with 2010’s “Predators”. The film also opened in several overseas markets, taking in a further $30 million.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
THE PREDATOR Holiday Special, Airing December 19 on Comedy Central


A first look at the stop-motion animated Holiday Special featuring THE PREDATOR as he tangles with his most formidable foe yet – Santa and his reindeer. Catch the entire special December 19 on Comedy Central during BoJack Horseman at 10:30pm / 9:30 CT.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“Predator” Ending Almost Had Ripley


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We saw the ending it had, and we heard about the scrapped ending with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch character coming back. Now VFX artist Yuri Everson has released a photo of another alternate ending that was considered for Shane Black’s “The Predator” – and this one almost happened.

Everson has posted a photo confirming a photo of the character of Ellen Ripley in the Predator Killer pod with a Facehugger-esque breathing mask on and a name tag clearly visible. Stuntwoman Breanna Watkins reportedly took on the role for the ending, even though she was essentially motionless and masked for the shoot.


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Everson indicates they shot three different endings for the movie, but they did not go with the “Alien” plot twist connection at the end – how it would figure into the “Alien” mythology also isn’t clear. The film itself famously went through several reshoots that left the final product a bit of a mess.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“The Predator” Co-Writer Talks Original Ending




http://www.darkhorizons.com/the-predator-co-writer-talks-original-ending/




“The Predator” came and went like a wet fart last year, the film was highly anticipated with a strong cast and Shane Black’s hand at the helm.


However the buzz took a turn a few months out from release when word came of extensive reshoots being required, including much of the last act, following poor test screenings. In addition, the delay of trailers suggested something was not right.

When it finally arrived, the film’s reviews were weak and its $160.5 million gross off an $88 million budget is seen as a big disappointment. The film itself feels compromised with obvious conflicting visions in place.

This week, Moviefone spoke to co-writer Fred Dekker about he and director Shane Black’s original intentions for the film and the resulting explanation reveals what those behind the movie were initially going for.

It seems much of the back half of the film involved our heroes having to “get from point A to point B and they commandeer a military convoy”. At the same time, they had established “a pair of Predator emissaries, basically good guy predators”. Thus the third act has the two predators come aboard and want to communicate and team up, so the convoy is trying to get the emissaries to the ship to get away from two threats.

The first threat is the upgraded Predator which is still in the final film, and the other was the big change from their initial premise:

At the beginning of the movie, you see the first Predator that shows up in the movie. He leaves the ship and we push in on this container in the ship. And what they ended up with was the terrible ending that I have nothing to do with it. Shane didn’t write either. That was sort of someone decided it was a good idea. There’s something on the ship. Well, originally there was a whole bunch of those in the ship. And what those were was those were the gestating hybrids.

Essentially what they were nurturing and growing in these pods were the hybrids of Predator DNA mixed with the DNA of creatures from all over the galaxy that would enable them to basically eradicate mankind so that they could populate it themselves. And so the convoy chase, the idea was that it would be all of our heroes on these badass, big military vehicles and the upgrade releases the hybrids and chases them and the hybrids jump onto the convoy. And it’s a big, rootin’, tootin’ fantastic action sequence.”

Dekker says one of the big appeals to he and Black with the project was to explore what do predators do outside of hunting as “they’ve invented interstellar spacecraft. so they’re not stupid… they actually have a civilization and a culture.” So they came up with the idea that their home planet is dying and so along with upgrading themselves, they’re looking at other warm places to colonise.

Dekker went on to explain that the studio said the third act needed to be at night to be ‘scarier’ and so it was retooled back to just another hunt. He confirmed they did try and get Arnold Schwarzenegger back for a cameo but they couldn’t pay him enough to do a half-day’s shoot up in Canada. They also toyed with the idea of making it Ripley or Newt from “Aliens” in the pod at the end, and explained why they didn’t go that direction:

“The whole thing seemed to not be in step with that particular franchise. It was one of many ideas that we floated and shot. We shot a version where Ripley was in the cocoon and we shot one where Newt from “Aliens” was in the cocoon. Sigourney didn’t want to clear any future for Ripley in the franchise and ultimately I don’t think anybody remembers Newt well enough for that to have meant anything… Hollywood does this all the time by, trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.”

“The Predator” is now out on home video everywhere.
 
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