Why the PREDATOR sequels get the face WRONG [Opinion Piece]

[OmegaZilla]

brb Imma have sex with fugitive

him and his... sultry... luscious... pecs...

[BigDaddyJohn]

 

To be fair, I do like wolf and fugitive's body and armour. I f**king love Wolf's mask, Fugitive's a meh for me.

[Voodoo Magic]

Yeah, I'm of the same mindset. ADI didn't handle Fugitive's armor, but they did handle Wolf soup to nuts if my recollection is correct, and with his mask on, I too think Wolf's looking pretty darn good.

But dare I say it, I think I prefer Fugitive's bio-mask to Wolf's?

The real question is: when are we getting a demand better Aliens banner Voodoo??

We already got them.

Yeah I think most were pretty satisfied with what we got in Covenant.

Reading the responses, I believe I may have..... misjudged. 

[BlueMarsalis79]

I personally hate the stick bug we got in that movie

[Voodoo Magic]

Me thinks she likes it!

And that stick bug gif made me lol 

[SiL]

But dare I say it, I think I prefer Fugitive's bio-mask to Wolf's?

Fugitive's is the first biomask that I disliked from the outset. I get individualisation, but it felt too small for the head, and the detailing felt, arbitrary, unnecessarily complex, and completely out of line with what was established earlier.

Wolf's mask felt very in keeping with the aesthetic established by SWS in the second film.

[Eighty-Five]

It is very different from the aesthetic we've gotten used to. But given how different some of the background Predators have been, particularly in the Lost Tribe it didn't bother me too much.

Maybe Fugitive is just the Predator equivalent of a hypebeast.

[Voodoo Magic]

But dare I say it, I think I prefer Fugitive's bio-mask to Wolf's?

Fugitive's is the first biomask that I disliked from the outset. I get individualisation, but it felt too small for the head, and the detailing felt, arbitrary, unnecessarily complex, and completely out of line with what was established earlier.

Wolf's mask felt very in keeping with the aesthetic established by SWS in the second film.

I can't argue with Wolf's bio-mask fitting with the established aesthetic, that's for sure.



And normally I prefer my Predators to have advanced, yet ancient looking technology, but I imagined the Fugitive's bio-mask seems more designed for deep space travel and less for a ceremonial hunt. Of course it's all head canon. 



And full disclosure, sometimes starkly different looking bio-masks just really appeal to me. Like in this Brian Thies art below. I just love it.

[[cancerblack]]

I miss biomechanical aliens.

Bingo.

I do find it kinda funny that this Predator issue gets so much discussion nowadays when Aliens have changed far more drastically in design since their first appearance.

Mostly coz the Alien debate has been done to death, above and beyond this one.

[PAS Spinelli]

I appreciate Fugitives armor design for resembling the Killer Yautja from Three World War

I'm on mobile en so excuse the badly cropped Discord print 😅

[David]

Nice video

[BlueMarsalis79]

I miss biomechanical Aliens also but, I'm not as starving for them, because of Alien Isolation and the way it caused a huge explosion of the use of H.R Giger's original design in everything but film.

[Yautja888]

Not gonna reply to any one specific person here. Just to say there's a lot of mixing up of aesthetic preference and practical implications going on.

Aesthetically, I think P1+2 have the best Predator designs. While there are aspects of the later films that I like, the overall execution of their faces particularly has always felt off to me. And you can see a clear change as the years have gone by. But you can't really make arguments about the jaw structure of a fictional creature from any kind of scientific standpoint as has been demonstrated already by SiL's point on dog breeds. Truth is often stranger than fiction.

The video linked in the OP actually showed up on my YouTube feed a few days ago and I watched it then. I found myself agreeing with the sentiment behind the video, but like a lot of YouTube critics/video essay guys I think he falls into the trap of conflating his subjective opinion with some sort of objective truth he can actually argue about successfully. And he can't, relying on his own assumptions and false information at various points to underpin his argument.

I think it would be a lot more beneficial if people gave up on talking about 'why xyz is objectively the best/worst thing to ever happen to the fandom' and instead exploring their own interpretations of those things. Why do you feel a certain way about Predator face designs? What are your thoughts? Share your opinions as what they are: Opinion. Don't try to dress it up in some pseudo-factual disguise and force your views on others. It will never produce the desired result and you will just end up irritating one-another.

So ultimately, while I feel like the creator of the video is probably on my wavelength from an aesthetic sensibility standpoint, I can't agree at all with the way he decided to go about expressing that idea.

If I were to boil my views down to a relatively snappy summary of Predator designs it would be this:

The original Predator designs in the first two movies had a slim, athletic look that helped make them convincing in their role as fast and powerful killers from an aggressive, ritualistic culture. The texture and the design of their bodies helped sell them to me as genuine extraterrestrials with functional anatomy.

In more recent portrayals, the designs have changed somewhat. They're still immediately identifiable as the same species, but proportions and facial details have drifted away from the original concept. The proportional changes have detracted from the sleek, athletic silhouette the creature is associated with in my mind. Meanwhile the changes to the structure of their faces gives me less a sense of strange alien anatomy, and more a sense of looking at a costume, designed by human hands. The way the designs have been done more recently just doesn't feel as convincing or 'alive' to me.

Very good post. I like the idea of the predator being a hunter who hunts for sport and kill for pleasure, is a sore loser, and always takes calculated risks so he's supposed to win eventually, in the first two movies the main predators are not fair, but in the same time they're not just psychos, and their design reflect that.I wanna see this kind back on screen. That concept made the franchise popular ,I believe  the majority want it when, you check out the polls and various websites discussions.

[Eighty-Five]

A lot of Predator superfans are really into the 'Yautja' concept with strict codes of honor and such. More like samurai than big game hunters. I don't think that really jives with the original movies tho.

The Predators in 1&2 don't fight fair. They hide out of sight, invisible to their prey, killing them from afar with advanced weaponry that doesn't even require aiming. In the first movie the Predator only goes hand-to-hand when he isolates a victim and they can't really threaten him. The hunter in P2 is a little more bold but he still favours cloaking for his attacks and still greatly outclasses his victims. They're also sore losers, turning to self-destruct when they think they're about to lose, trying to take their foes down with them rather than take the L.

The honor code idea only really relates to not killing unarmed/pregnant/sick enemies and awarding Harrigan the pistol. This isn't necessarily because it would be un-chivalrous imo though. It's because there's no challenge in the kills. If you're at max level in an rpg, do you go back to the starter zone and kill level 1 rats that can't even chip at your HP bar, let alone maybe get lucky and actually wound/kill you? I don't, because it's boring. No risk at all. Risk is what makes the hunt exciting.

As for the pistol, yeah they show a kind of begrudging respect but it seems kinda like it's specific to that one elder, because no other pred to this point had any qualms about turning their death into a murder-suicide when they thought their foes might actually defeat them. Also worth pointing out they don't exactly give Harrigan a chance to get clear before they launch their ship and very nearly crush/incinerate him.

The Yautja concept makes me roll my eyes tbh. The original Predators were trophy-taking slasher villains who saw us as little better than animals, equipped to pose some threat but not equal or worthy of respect as more than wall decorations.

[BlueMarsalis79]

Gosh you just absolutely got it.