[Skoob]

@ Dolemite: Your write-up is bang on, especially re: the strange fascination with and misunderstanding of autism.

Everything is derivative, uninspired, debased. I was gobsmacked to read that Black considers this movie a "love letter" to the original, because it seems fundamentally disrespectful, even satirical. I honestly thought it was a parody. The deep questions and existential themes and inner drama that made the original great are glaringly absent. The most important subplot for Dutch didn't involve the Predator at all: I would describe it as his wrestling with self-doubt and ability to rise to a challenge and find his place in a universe beyond his control. You don't pay tribute to 'hard' science fiction by smacking it down and turning it into a sitcom.

There's a scene where I stopped listening to the dialogue and started simply counting the number of times somebody said 'fuck.' What was the point? How did that add value?

Rock bottom for me was the final "predator killer" scene in the epilogue. The design was comedic. The main character's last comment was the cinematic equivalent of spitting on you after you're knocked down. Ugh.

IMO, the most important element that makes the original superior is the enemy as Unknown and Unknowable. Dutch has no idea what he's up against. The movie progresses through stages of discovery, small victories, like a detective story. In that sense, it can be likened to Alien or Silence of the Lambs. Black's movie seems intended to do the opposite, throwing anything and everything about these new retconned predators in your face, taking away all the fun. Yuck.

And the hero wasn't a punk.

Gripe, grouse.