John’s Movie Musings

Have you grasped the cultural significance of the original Predator?  Released way back in 1987, it starred two(!) future governors.  Had Carl Weathers not starred in Action Jackson a few years later, there may have been three.

Predator has also survived some of the crappiest sequels ever imagined. The Alien franchise is still trying to recover from its unfortunate couplings.  But after going back for seconds, I kinda feel like the friend who told my buddy to stay away from that girl the first time around.

So after all this time, Robert Rodriguez  comes along to reboot the franchise.  OK, it’s certainly due.  But he reboots it by keeping the first one intact.  You see, Predators is a direct sequel to the original.  All those other movies?  Pretend they never happened.  But really, I think that’s the only way you could reboot this.  Keep the awesomeness of Arnold’s “Get to the choppah!” and forget everything else.  That’s how everyone remembers Predator anyway.  So, win-win.

For a Predators reboot, we need a new action hero.  Someone who embodies the testosterone of the 80s action star.  So Rodriguez brings us Adrien Brody.  Wilco. Tango. Foxtrot.  OK, not my first choice (nor my twentieth).

Brody plays a mercenary (*laugh) dropped into a dense jungle with a bunch of other military/criminal types.  And Topher Grace.  While they all try and figure out why Topher Grace was selected with the rest of them, you’re trying to figure out why Topher Grace is in a Predator movie.

Obviously Predators has some… interesting casting choices, but they all work.  Adrien Brody even convinced me he could fire a gun without rubbing the “owie” on his shoulder every time.  Better still, the story works.  Now, this is Predators we’re talking about, so you better realize what you’re getting yourself into.  But if you’re looking for a great hunter/hunted flick, this’ll do nicely.

Grade: B+

That’s it.  I’m done with Shyamalan.  The cred he earned from The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable (well I liked it), has been obliterated by Lady in the Water, The Village, The Happening, and now The Last Airbender.  He’s the only director I know that has consistently released a film that’s worse than the one before it.  Even Uwe Boll (a man financed by corporations looking for a tax write-off) manages to show some growth between releases.

I’m late with this review because I really didn’t want to talk about it.  With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 8%, I figured it would die a merciful death and we could all forget it ever happened.  Party conversations would be like, “Hey, remember The Last Airbender?”  “What? … … Wanna see me stick this quarter up my nose again?”  It would be bliss.  But no, the film’s made over $100M so far and looks to make a profit after all is said and done.  That means the sequel will get made.  People, for all that is Good and Right, we cannot let this happen.  Stop paying money to see this.  You’re destroying humanity.

If there’s to be one good thing to come of this aberration, some of you might get introduced to the cartoon.  Called Avatar: The Last Airbender (before James Cameron started filming with two cameras and stole the name), the three-season story arc explored themes of love, death, friendship, vengeance, jealousy, and family wounds.  But ultimately, the story centered around a 12-yr old boy struggling to accept a burden he never asked to carry.  All of these heavy themes were written perfectly and delicately wrapped in a kid’s cartoon.  It had no business being as good as it was.

You’d think with all of that powerful source material, making a movie would be simple.  But M Night made the decision (or lacked the mental faculty) and stripped the emotional weight from every scene.  He changed the character name pronunciations (Aang rhymes with bang, not hung), and his actors couldn’t decide on how to say ‘avatar’ – even in the same scene, by the same character.  And as one final, fecal-shaped exclamation point, M Night changed the ending, proving he had completely missed the point of the story he was telling.

If this blog shows anything, it’s that I’ve seen a lot of bad movies.  The Last Airbender is easily in my top five worst of all time.  It even made me angry.  The cartoon was like a vintage automobile, full of memories.  Shyamalan bought that car, gutted it, replaced the original seats with a La-Z-Boy, and set the whole thing on blocks in the front yard.  Most infuriatingly, he was proud of his work.

Grade: F-