It’s safe to say that last year’s The Predator was not exactly the resounding success we were hoping for.
While the movie did have its merits, a surprising controversy, disappointing box office results, and mixed to negative reviews all but ensured that any plans for a sequel to Shane Black and Fred Dekker’s vision for the franchise would likely be abandoned.
Earlier this year, Co-Writer Fred Dekker expressed his disappointment with the fan reaction to the film and its tacked-on ending, but just recently he sat down with Moviefone for an in-depth interview on how he feels the re-shoots affected the final product:
“At some point or another, the studio, I think, and I’m not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but there were these misgivings that we were straying too far from what people expected the movie to be. And so we sat down and went, “I guess we need to do a hunt and it needs to be at night, so it’s scarier.” So we ended up going in that direction, which I don’t think served us because it didn’t top anything we’d seen before. I’m actually quite pleased with the first half of the movie, but it kind of goes off the rails by, and Hollywood does this all the time by, trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.”
It’s a shame that it seems Dekker and Black’s creative vision for the film was compromised by studio involvement. While additive re-shoots can sometimes help a film become more cohesive, all too often these days they are massive cuts and changes to the planned story to try and increase mainstream appeal.
Dekker also discussed how the original third act panned out, involving the ‘Emissary Predators’ teaming up with the film’s hero gang ‘The Loonies.’ to fight a group of hybrid-monsters:
So our idea was that their planet is dying. And so they’ve decided to take what previously was explored, which is to dope up creatures with the DNA of other types of predators from alien worlds and create new targets for their hunt. But now they realized, well, hey, we need maybe to upgrade ourselves just to survive. And then they go to themselves, well, hey, earth is warming up. We like a warm environment. Maybe we should move in. So the premise of the movie is that in the third act was these two predators come aboard the ship and everybody’s freaking out and the predators actually want to communicate. They want to say, “Hey, we’ve got a problem, you have a problem. Maybe we should team up.”
The interview is actually quite extensive, touching on more topics such as their attempt to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to film a cameo for the ending. Head on over to Moviefone to read the whole thing. If you’re more curious about the many story elements cut from The Predator, be sure to check out our analysis into the deleted scenes.
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I'm going to place this right here....
https://i.ibb.co/Xz0vLbw/IMG-20190321-130005.jpg
...and disappear.
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/HelpfulAlarmedEmperorshrimp-size_restricted.gif
As far as I'm concerned, the franchise excels at close quarters horror and sci-fi. Politics and global implications are just not its thing. Hostile predators hunting people in the subway, in buildings, alleyways, patches of forest. That's where the magic is.
This whole thing of "this happens...and that happens...and this happens" is why the movie failed. This whole idea was garbage.
Yeah, something they call The Predator. Not sure what it is though. But trailers look ... interesting.
It is by far the most unrewatchable predator film. With tiny silvers of entertainment scattered about.
I hope Disney can do better.
This so much. I mean, if you're going to make changes, at least do it incrementally imo. Don't completely change things so its almost like a different franchise altogether.
I need another pay check so make a predator movie dont care the fans will pay anyway.
When you have the balls to conduct interviews pre-release saying "we'd only do this if it's a real event picture!" and talk up how it's their dream project etc. Then the final product looks like a SyFy Original, feeling cheaper than AVPR and dumber than Alien Resurrection. Not to mention the sheer hubris of calling it THE Predator, like some franchise reboot.. God the more I learn about this thing the worse it is.
Interesting that IM3 was the exact same problems as The Predator: abuse of out of place comedy and completely unrelated story and characters to the brand the movie is named after, so i know that is a Shane thing and not a studio being **** thing.
I just hope the people at disney get Legend Studios working on whatever comes next and do not over officiate to the point they ruin the creative direction of the franchise.
Predator still has all the potential in the right hands.
Just too bad about all the wasted time and let downs when the films are being produced.
Haven't you heard?
The film was written just fine. If it wasn't for the studio and the fans, it would've been the best Predator movie ever.
It certainly had nothing to do with writers and directors and that sort of thing.
These two franchises have it rough. That could be a documentary on its own. You have to do something new, but it should probably be slight deviations rather than total overhauls .
I am certain I woud have enjoyed the intended movie more. But not much more.
I honestly hope that I'll warm up to it eventually.
Touche
that first act is trash.
Great point!
With Alien, I think it's easy to identify a lot of that was genesis from and buildup to Alien's 40th Anniversary less than two months ago, a fortunate well-timed palate cleanser for all that saw and felt sour towards Alien Covenant.
With Predator, I feel this pause after The Predator will service it well. It will alow fans and filmgoers to forget this, quite honest, easily forgettable film. Then in 2020 we get the Predator: Hunting Grounds Playstation Console game by IllFonic which, if great, hopefully will recharge the material.
I agree with all of this.
There was just a few things wrong with the execution, and the longer it went more things went wrong.
It's Fox/Disney's decision, yes, they can and will do whatever they want, there are no limits in a fictional universe. That doesn't mean they should.
To quote someone's uncle... "With great power comes great responsibility"
They tried something new, a lot of the fans didn't like where they went with the lore or the writing, lets not forget that, reviews were poor and the casual audience wasn't impressed enough to give it good word of mouth. It just didn't work and didn't perform as well as they hoped. Even with Covenants somewhat disappointment in performance, there's a reason we're having so much alien content now and the predator stuff is put mostly on "silent mode".
IMO the retroactive lore changes didn't work here. From a simple spine and skull loving techno tribal hunter to a rioded up planet invader with a corny sense of humor. The writing was very bad, as far as my taste goes, it didn't fit in well. The ending scene was hilarious and the alternative endings were unbelievable in the worst possible way. And the setting was very dull.
This movie is weird for me. I've never disliked an entry in the Alien/Predator universe this much and I really tried to not be a part of the hate fest, I tried to like the movie but it didn't work. I either enjoyed or loved all the other movies from both franchises as well as the games, comics, novels, but with this entry, my optimism and looking on the bright side of things failed.
I know that not everyone agrees with this though, but I do enjoy AVPR more than The Predator. I have fun more with a movie that tries to be serous and scary but fails than a movie that tries to be funny and fails. I've watched AVPR multiple times, I at least find it has fun moments, but I really can't make myself watch The Predator again with the only nice bit being the lab escape scene.
P.S. Every time I see mentioned about the change to the night setting cause that's where the scary comes from, I literally laugh.
It's make believe. They can literally do anything.
Close. Whoever it was, they just "doo" things, and hope it passes for entertainment.
Besides Newt and Ripley died. Its wouldn't be just time travel but alternative timelines as well. At least this didn't happen.
Not to mention how absurd it is for characters that died on 2179 to be somehow alive on 2018. But then again I shouldn't expect those that wrote The Predator to realize this on their own.
The deleted scene said 'Rebecca Jorden'. A handful of people would pick that up and the rest of your audience is going to go "What?"
That's the only silver lining.
Sounds like an absolute shit premise
If only there had been some clue.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cheatsheet.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2FBen-Kingsley-in-Iron-Man-3-1.jpg%3Fbe6cc4&hash=29b267157a81f13fa5152092ffc54999a7d91b55
Never mind that the finished product is no better than what their original vision was. Never mind that they de-mystified the Yautja and changed their entire reason for hunting and taking trophies, a move that goes directly against established expanded lore.
Even if for some reason the Predator Homeworld was dying, Black and Dekker seem to have completely forgotten about the Game Preserve planet established in Predator 3, which would easily be able to support them.
Black and Decker just don't seem to have done their research or if they did they didn't care about continuity or skilled writing. They might as well have had D&D do it for them.
"Ok...they're, like, the good Predators, but they're still Predators man, so they're like still super badasses and kill prople and shit. It's, like, all morally GREY and shit, bro! Like Game of Thrones, bro!"
Only instead of calling the guy a moron Fox gave him 88 million dollars to film his fanfic.