Originally published at: The first trailer for the Predator prequel is here | Boing Boing
…
1 Like
I have a feeling we’ll discover who the real predators are in a twist ending that involves sails on the horizon.
30 Likes
The original was so good because it took the slasher film idea - unstoppable creature preying on relatively innocent lives - and juxtapositioned that by giving us prey who were the ultimate in violent American machismo worship. Our bulging heroes were quickly turned into fleshless skulls, and even a “win” wasn’t so much a win as a lucky draw when the creature blew itself up and Dutch had to fly home with his tail between his legs, the rest of his team destroyed. Dutch is literally the “last girl” in the story. Muscle-bound hero emasculated.
It’ll be impossible to capture that in this new version. But maybe they’ll do something interesting and unique with the premise they’ve provided in the trailer. Fingers crossed.
27 Likes
Predator is one of very few movies where I’m curious about backstory. I’m usually firmly in the “let it be mysterious” camp *cough* midichlorians *cough* but I’d love to see how the predator fits into his society, how he came to earth.
Extra points if he turns out to be a big-game hunting dentist, and all the other folks from his home planet think he’s a toxic douche in a midlife crisis.
31 Likes
Kind of a “Predator meets Apocalypto” movie then. I could see that working.
The “sails on the horizon” bit would be hard to work in if the protagonists are Comanche though; they lived in the southern plains rather than the coast.
10 Likes
That’s not a trailer. That’s a teaser. We cannot allow studios to release 10 seconds of footage and label it a trailer.
5 Likes
OK, I can’t say I’m hugely up on the Predator mythology (so to speak) but based on what’s made clear in the original film, I have trouble buying into this premise, at least as it’s depicted in the brief teaser. Part of the Predator’s whole deal is that it wants its hunts to be challenging and dangerous. That’s why tracking down an elite unit armed with grenade launchers and miniguns is exciting. At the end of the film, when Dutch directly challenges it, it throws away its shoulder gun to have a fairer fight. And throughout the film the Predator spares Anna because she’s not a combatant.
I think it would be a stretch for such a character to deploy its high-power laser-sighted gun against a single opponent facing it down with as (relatively) modest a weapon as a bow and arrow. Now maybe if there’s some macguffin about the Predator arming itself with different weapons for a “fairer fight”, but I guess we don’t have a lot of information to go on here. [Edit: two combatants, looks like the first character has a hatchet. Still…]
It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, the writers do to create an engagement is not completely lopsided.
11 Likes
Covered wagons on the horizon might work well in that case. The protagonists being Comanche would really spice things up. Neal Stephenson was riffing about their uniquely fierce aspects in his latest book (see the following from the bibliography for a general idea)
Native American tribes, their relations with one another and with settlers
Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory by David LaVere
By “Removed Indians” he means the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes,” nowadays more diplomatically referred to as the “Five Tribes,” which ended up in the eastern part of what is now Oklahoma. The book is about their generally unfriendly relationship with tribes such as the Comanches, living a very different lifestyle to the west.
Everything you Know about Indians is Wrong by Paul Chaat Smith
Highly recommended book of essays by a contemporary Comanche.
Like a Hurricane: the Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen WarriorMore from the always readable Paul Chaat Smith, focusing on the more recent history of the American Indian Movement.
Civil War in the Indian Territory by Steve Cottrell
A treatment of the little-known story of how the American Civil War played out in what is now Oklahoma, pitting Confederate-friendly, slave-owning tribes against others allied with the North.
1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann
Esssential context-setting material, based on relatively recent research, for helping understand anything to do with the Americas and their indigenous peoples.
Our Comanche Dictionary , compiled by the Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee (http://www.comanchelanguage.org). Definitely not a book you would just pick up and read cover to cover, but good for browsing and getting a sense of the day-to-day preoccupations of ordinary people.
The following books all recount the same historical events with different points of view and emphases. The history of Texas is in large part the story of white settlers’ conflicts, with the indomitable Comanches, which played out in a series of battles and other dramatic events that have been told and retold many times. Reading all of these books is a good way to learn about different points of view and on how our understanding of these events has evolved over time as more research has come to light and old myths have fallen by the wayside.
10 Likes
It could be worse… Predator/Pocahontas/Avatar…
8 Likes
I loved Predator and Predator 2. I collected all of the Predator comics I could in the 90s. I used to draw Predators a lot and even had an idea for a comic.
Unfortunately, none of the films have captured the same excitement as the first two. Maybe it because I was a teenager seeing those. 
At any rate:
Even though I have a feeling this movie will be underwhelming, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least intrigued by the premise.
Ditto!
2 Likes
Same. Huge fan of the first couple of films, especially the first one. I collected the novelizations as a teen to help me get my fix during that dry spell in the 90s when they weren’t making any more movies.
I also kind of feel the same about the later films. They were okay, but nothing could come close to that first film.
I will definitely see this one, though.
3 Likes
This is one of my favorite comics covers of all time. It was the 4th and final issue to Aliens vs Predator (Superior in every way to any movie attempt). It was one of the first Dave Dorman covers I have seen and owned (I think Super Cops from NOW Comics was my first).
Everything just hits. Chefs kiss.
3 Likes
Yeah that’s why I think Carpenter’s The Thing works as well. You had all these men having to deal with the paranoia and uncertainty that many other groups deal with as an everyday thing.
8 Likes
If the story is set 300 years ago then the Comanche’s main adversaries would have been colonists from Spanish New Mexico and other North American tribes, not the settlers of the Westward Expansion.
So some good news is that this movie will have an opportunity to expose viewers to a period of North American history that falls at least a little outside the two contexts we usually see First Peoples depicted in film: the “noble savages” who welcomed the Pilgrims to New England and the guys who shot arrows at 19th-century cowboys.
6 Likes
Weird fact: Predators was one of two films with the unlikely pairing of actors Walton Goggins and Topher Grace.
6 Likes
The base concept of dropping monster/slasher movie dynamics in a particular type of action film. In the originals case a VERY BULKY classic 80’s action take. Is still a good one.
Thing is Predator 2 is the only one that attempted to do that again, by running with a more late 80’s Die Hardish setup. It just borked the execution.
Nothing else in the series or associated works even attempted that. They’ve either been straight action films in the Aliens mold, or dumb ass Aliens vs Predator monsters fight each other cross overs. That’s why none of it has worked.
I don’t think the base setup for this new one really looks to fit that mold. But if it sticks to a “Jaws with Lasers” kinda setup. People being picked off, the creature rarely being seen. The sense of pursuit, with the 3rd act reversal of that pursuit. Then it should work, and it’ll cut a fuck ton closer to what made the original work than anything else we’ve seen recently.
I’ll just point out that human beings appear to have repeatedly hunted very large, dangerous species to extinction before we even invented metal.
Otherwise I don’t know that there’s a super compelling reason, narratively, to stick with the “fairer fight” aspect as carried out with final fight in the original. That’s as much a convention of the type and era of action cinema it was a part of as anything else. And it’s definitely a series that’s pretty stagnant at this point.
What I remember of the lore aspect. They hunt “dangerous game” but that isn’t limited to sentient creatures or technological cultures. And Predator 2 shows the interior of their ship, complete with trophies. Which include both animal remains, like an Alien husk. And weapons from earth’s past, like a pretty prominently featured flint lock pistol. Written by the same people as the first film, so that particular ship has kinda sailed.
It’s also worth noting the film has a larger cast than just the 2 people featured in the teaser, and apparently larger than listed at Wikipedia and IMDB currently.
6 Likes
Then Coronado’s expedition or de Soto’s expedition would fit perfectly. Coronado was the first Western contact for many of the plains Indian tribes, and de Soto the same for the Southeastern tribes. At the farthest extent of their explorations they were only a few hundred miles separated from each other at the same time, and they never knew it.
Coronado’s expedition is also often credited with introducing the plains Indian tribes to the horse, which the adopted and adapted to very well.
6 Likes
Sigh- It will sound soundier, it will look lookier (and at the risk of sounding like an old fart) but I dont have high hopes for squeezing blood out a 20 yr premise. What happened to new?
3 Likes
an opportunity maybe. however, based on the track record of american cinema and its racist depictions of the people and nations who were already here… i have to admit im not particularly hopeful
4 Likes
