[Raine24]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kernel

You liked prey better than Predator 2? Agreed about the face on the feral predator was lame

I have a bunch of issues with Predator 2. Some of it's the editing, some of it's the story, but a lot of it is just the characters and bizarre acting choices. Plus all the badly looped dialogue of everyone speaking in whispers despite clearly speaking normally makes the whole thing just feel weird and unreal makes it really hard for me to suspend disbelief when watching it. That said, the new Pred tech is awesome, the concept of the cold-blooded creature going to a city under a heat wave is a sharp way to move locations, and the expansion of the universe is cool thanks to the trophy case and flintlock. And Kevin Peter Hall is still the best in the suit.

AVP 1&2 are trash, and Predators was a nifty idea that got buried under unlikable characters, bad effects, and meandering "plot" that I couldn't engage with. Never saw The Predator, and probably won't.

But Prey? It's got a grounded, relatable set-up in a rarely seen world built around an actual human character, like, a real person with totally understandable goals and desires and frustrations, that has to work hard to achieve anything in the story and you want to see succeed. And the movie gets how to build up "bad guys" that aren't cartoon characters, but then also straight-up Bad Guys that you're just dying to see get what they deserve. The Predator's shift from antagonist to nigh-antihero by placing such awful people between the villain and the lead helps the movie to change gears and tone, build up audience anticipation for something new, and keep itself interesting without losing track of what it's doing or introducing some pointless twist.

And I dig that the Predator's tech is so toned down from what we've seen. Whether that's a reflection of where the species is technologically at that time, or indicative of it stripping its equipment down to better match the local population, I don't know. But I also like that I don't know. It's a cool when a movie can have the audience ask questions because they want to know more rather than trying to figure what the hell just happened, you know?