#oneaday, Day 173: The Adventures of Captain Generic

My buddy Kalam invited me out for a late-night cinema showing tonight as his buddy had some free tickets. We went to go and see the new film Predators, which I knew nothing about. I don’t really keep up on movies that much, so it’s often a nice surprise to go to the cinema and find out what’s on.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t see the original Predator until much later than many others, as I discovered a videotape stuffed down the back of the sofa in my second-year university flat containing three episodes of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Predator as broadcast on ITV in the early 90s. No, I’m not making that up. My sole exposure to the movie was via a discarded VHS tape left behind by previous tenants. I’ve never seen Predator 2. In fact, I’ve not seen that many Arnie movies generally. To be honest, I don’t feel like I’ve missed that much, except maybe a few pop culture references.

Spoilarz ahead. Not that there’s much in the way of substance to spoil, really.

Anyway, Predators. Or as I’ve decided to redub it, The Adventures of Captain Generic and the Stereotype Brigade. I mean seriously. We have gravelly-voiced main man who is, of course, American. We have female lead who ping-pongs between having a bit of an exotic foreign accent and being American. We have a Latino bloke with a mustache who is dressed like a janitor but has two Uzis. We have a black dude who knows all about tribal behaviour. We have an ex-convict who is handy with a knife and inexplicably hates the black dude. We have a Yakuza who doesn’t say much, who has a shirtless katana-fighting scene with a Predator later in the movie. (OMG SPOILARZ. Sorry.) And we have a bland, boring doctor bloke who actually turns out to be a psychopath. (OMG SPOILARZ AGAIN. Oops.) Oh, and Laurence Fishburne. Who explodes.

This movie is a strong contender for the worst thing I have ever let anyone put in my eyes and ears. But at least it was terrible in an enjoyable sort of way. It was immensely predictable, and the various lines that characters come out with in every movie like this ever came out at exactly the expected moments. And, as all good action movies shouldn’t, it doesn’t make a blind bit of sense. The movie opens with all these disparate characters waking up in free-fall, conveniently equipped with a parachute and one signature weapon each, and landing in a mysterious jungle which is on an alien planet but actually has some Earth flora on it. There’s no explanation at any point for why this happens, besides “we’re being hunted…” and by the end it just kind of doesn’t really matter any more. Laurence Fishburne’s presence doesn’t make any sense. He has a Predator hat and can turn invisible. But he’s mental, has an invisible friend, helps out our merry band of generic stereotypes and, uh oh, turns out he’s actually evil mental not endearing mental. Fortunately, he gets exploded by a Predator quite quickly.

Oh, and talking of explosions, roughly halfway through this film there is the absolute worst pyrotechnic effect I’ve ever seen. It’s a massive explosion. You’d think Hollywood could get these right by now. But no. This is terrible, terrible stuff. Leave aside the fact that an absolutely enormous conflagration that rips through an entire ruined spacecraft comes from a small claymore mine. It doesn’t even look right. The colours are all off and it looks distinctly cartoony. Not good.

Oh, and there’s lots of unnecessary swearing, just like every good 80s action movie.

So, basically, if you want a good laugh, go and see Predators. If you enjoyed the old films, I don’t know, you might get a kick out of it. But I walked away thinking “what the fuck was that”? I enjoyed it, but for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps it was intended to be an homage to 80s action movies. If so, it did a great job.