Quote from: overthere on Aug 07, 2022, 10:00:26 AMGreat post!
After first viewing I was very pleased with this movie, although I had this sense of "this doesn't feel like predator".
After second viewing my doubts were crystalized. This creature is literally a Jason or Michael Myers character. Actually, even Michael Myers has more depth to him. This is just an unstoppable killing machine.
My opinion has changed drastically. I no longer think this is a good Predator movie.
I will watch the original today to wash this feeling out.
Man, the atmosphere of the original is something else. There's this constant sense of unease and weirdness.
Yes, it has a pervasive atmosphere of evil that surrounds it. Right down to the ominous noise that plays whenever the camera zooms in on the trees it's in, or the way the forest is shot when they first fast rope in (like it's a haunted forest). There's a sense that something very evil is present within this jungle.
This is very deliberate. Predator doesn't have much characterization for its heroes, but what it does have is clear. Dutch is a killer who at least thinks of himself as someone who only kills to save people ("we're a rescue team, not assassins" "Don't do this kind of work."). The Predator is his inverse - it kills for the sake of killing. It's the nightmare of the world he engages in. Is he really, at the bottom of things any different?
Like him, it gets dropped off into a foreign environment and hunts men. They just do it for different reasons. But the outcome - slaughtering people - is the same.
When he asks him what it is... it responds in kind.
I don't think it's any coincidence the film ends on such a downer. Dutch is staring off into the distance, jaded. The man has journeyed into a haunted forest and faced his evil shadow.
The Predator having an all-consuming, pervasive aura of evil is pretty integral to it. It worships death and is literally summoned by violence. You bring it upon yourself by committing evil acts.* Note that in the film it's never referred to as an alien... it's referred to as a Demon. Which is, in essence, what it truly is.**
To its credit, Prey actually kind of does something like this...
Naru and her people hunt to feed and to survive - they don't kill unnecessarily. The Predator hunts for glory/pleasure. The trappers hunt for wealth. Both are evil, but the film doesn't really go anywhere with this or truly create a sense of dread. More just presents the parallel and leaves it at that. The Predator isn't evil so much as another violent selfish asshole who's come to her land to exploit it - he doesn't have that demonic presence.
* Another note, Dutch's men aren't really "good" guys. Blain is a hyper-masculine thug who calls people faggots. Mac is unhinged and threatens to murder people on his own team. Dillon thinks warfare is a game. On some level, they deserve what's coming to them. Naru's tribe however are kind of victims? Some are dicks to her, but nothing too bad other than that. Nothing warranting summoning evil.
**If I remember rightly, McTiernan didn't even want the shot of the spacecraft dropping the Predator off at the start. The film would have had the soldiers chopper in, encounter this evil creature, then the last survivor choppers out.
