Yautja Fest - Predators (2010)

Mhm, weird way.

We can kill a.

Good time. Shut up?

What the hell are you?

Welcome back to YOCHI fist. This is my bad as Father Malone voice, So for the rest of the evening you're gonna think, Oh man, Father Malone, he's a real betass. Welcome back to Yeah that hurts.

Let's gonna get old real quick.

Oh got real old in the throat real quick.

Well, welcome back to Yahoo Ja Fest, where we are

I'm fantastic. I'm so pumped to get into this. After the debacle that was Alien Versus Predator requiem, I was ready for a palate cleanser and this was the perfect palate cleanser, Father Malone.

And what are we talking about? Predators? Here's the trailer.

What's the last thing you remembered? All of a sudden, there was a lightn and then I was pauling, who are here?

I was supposed to be executed two days ago.

And I was in combat. So was that Black ops.

Will do this us.

We were chosen just a for what.

I brought it for the same purpose.

Being hunted.

This planet is a game.

Preserve where the game.

Yeah, how don't we kill them?

However you can.

Predators released on July ninth, twenty ten, directed by Nimrod Antal, written by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, based on characters by Jim and John Thomas.

Darring Adrian Brody.

I just want to say, Christopher Grace Toafer Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Olig oh Man, this one Oleg Taktarov, Okay, I'm gonna do it again now, Olig Taktaroff, Lawrence Fishburne, Danny Freyhill, Mike got It goes on and on, mar Herschela Ali, Louis Zaala.

I'm naming everybody in the fucking cast. You know what.

Here are the Predators Carrie Jones, Brian Steele and Derek Meers. That's pretty much everybody, isn't it.

Yeah, it's a sprawling cast, but a little look ahead. It didn't like we've had sprawling casts in the past. Couple of movies we reviewed, Father blahlone, but this one didn't feel sprawling because everyone, all the characters were delineated really well. You didn't spend too much time in any one character. It was It's a lot of characters to keep track of, but somehow it was easier than the past two movies put together.

You think the characters in this particular plot made more sense.

One hundred percent. So the plot for this movie is,

They're from all different military backgrounds.

Fair point, fair point, they're all. The thing that links them, it seems, is they're all murder killers. They're murderers. Adrian Brodie's characterism is a mercenary.

Some might say they're all predator.

That's true. That's the double meaning of the title. So they're all dropped onto this planet, literally dropped on this planet, and they have to figure out why they're there. And through the course of the movie, they obviously figure out that they're there because they're being hunted by our favorite youches. In this case, three of them are out to kill them. It is essentially a game preserve, as Adrian Brodie's character says at one point, it's a game preserve and they're

Okay, that is the plot for this movie. Now.

Legendarily, this was produced by Robert Rodriguez, and the lore was, and what we had heard about for a decade or two before this film, or decade and a half anyway, was that at one point Robert Rodriguez had been hired to make a direct sequel to Predator and Predator two, and that was Predators. He was hired to write a screenplay in nineteen ninety six thereabouts.

It was when he was doing Desperado, so.

He wrote the script, and what we've heard is that they didn't move on it. Then they ended up going with other properties, and then after AVP Requiem eight shit, they wanted to reinvigorate it, so they recontacted Robert Rodriguez. He had that script rewritten, and that's the movie we got.

Have you read Robert Rodriguez's draft of the screen?

No, if not, I have, And let me tell you other than the fact that there's a game preserve and at one point there is a predator who is tied up as a prisoner that becomes an ally. Very little remains. For instance, it takes place on a distant planet. Okay,

Well, I'm glad that you cleared that up because a couple of things. One, all of the making of stuff that I saw, Robert Rodriguez is all over it, but he was not credited as a writer on this, which I found a little I know he produced it.

But it was all I did too, And I thought, if he had written the screenplay that this is based off of, he's not going to take at least a story by credit. And then I thought, Wow, he's really magnanimous that he did that.

I don't I What he said in interviews that I saw him in was that the movie that he wrote was going to be far too expensive for the time, and it sounds.

Like it's far too expensive for right now.

Clearly they took that the scenario as inspiration, but they don't have an unlimited budget. But they made it work. Like I said, the thing that hearkens back, there's so much that hearkens back to the first movie. But the biggest thing is that for the most part, this movie takes place in a lush jungle, just like the first Predator because I think they, like I said, I think

Let me answer in a couple different ways.

First of all, I have to address the trailer that we played earlier, because if you saw that trailer before this movie, and then we're intrigued enough by that trailer to go see that movie, you're probably going to be at least a little bit pissed that they manipulated the trailer and has a fake scene in it where I

Okay.

So I saw this movie at Man's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, and anytime I see a movie there, I tend to like the movie just a little bit more because it's Man's Chinese Cool. And I will say at the time I did not like it all that I thought.

I felt it was too derivative.

Ultimately, I after Predator two, where we got to an urban setting, I thought going to a jungle was a step back. I don't care if we're on another planet, just felt like a jungle, and ultimately.

I did not I was.

I felt really iffy about our elite and then I think that is the last time I saw the film. So I watched it a couple of times obviously leading up to this, and turns out I liked the movie a whole lot more than I thought I did, And that might be by comparison, again from just having watched the entire run of films up until now that the law of diminishing returns has been hitting us so fucking hard that anything competent was going to be better than that.

But I do a lot of this movie. I like more of this movie than I dislike.

How about that it's you know what, it's the best Predator sequel, but it's still not great.

And it goes without saying, by the way, that this was the first time that I've seen this movie. Pretty much every movie from now I guess there's only one more movie after this until Pray. I didn't see them first run or even on cable or what have you. So this was my first time seeing it. And I may be recency bias after having slogged through Alien Versus Predator and Requiem, but I knew of this movie. I

I agree.

Here's the thing, though, The thing that was the problem for me then remains the problem now. Every time a filmmaker comes along, rather anytime a film comes along, and it's advertised to be like the worst of the worst, and that this is the crew of the dregs of society, the most lethal, morally free human beings, and they're just not ever like, most of these characters are really decent. The only one who seems outwardly fucked up is Walton Goggins, and even he is played for laughs almost.

There's a moment where he's when I get home, I'm gonna do so much cocaine.

Right, and it's a huge laugh line, followed by and then I'm gonna rape a bunch of women and it was like whoa, And like that moment where it was like laughter and then a slap, I felt the movie needed a lot more.

Of Yeah, it was. There was actual humor in this, which I think was certainly missing from Requiem, But I can't think of any laughs in Alien versus Predator either, So that alone is there are there is humor in the very first Predator if you remember people astute listeners of the podcast will remember, Jesse Ventura had some great lines. Bill Duke is funny and weird, and it's it's a more well rounded movie. But this had a little more of that.

What about Shane Black's hilarious pussy jokes.

I didn't mind them so much because he's so good at selling how bad they are. I don't know. I just thought that I thought was funny, but in this one it But by the way, let me I want to mention one thing you talked about the director Nimrod until I have to say I didn't. I couldn't think of what he had actually done. But it turns out he's actually directed one of my top five favorite concert movies of all time. I don't know if you were

I'm sucked into this. Wariotis Dystopia.

Put all that aside, just the actual concert movie part of it was. I saw that it was a limited engagement in Imax for a week, and I went after work one night and went to see it, and it was in three D. It was maybe the second movie I'd seen in three D and imax. And the actual concert portions were as good as any live show that I've ever actually seen any live concert performance. At the end of some of those songs, I'm in the middle of a theater all by myself. I wanted to sit

He did a movie called Vacancy, which was part of that sort of Platinum Dunes wave of films. I don't know that was necessarily a Platinum Douns film, but in that era when they were remaking like the Hitcher and the early two thousands.

Oh Texas chainsaw massacre and all.

That, Yes, where suddenly white trash people can't be trusted again, and so Vacancy is like a couple. I think it's Kate Beckhamsale and Owen not Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson. I think, stop at the CD motel in the middle of nowhere and they discover that there are cameras in their room.

And Frank Wally is in there like being a creep.

And the main thing I remember about the movie is that I was I was working at a movie theater at the time, and we got a standy, a cardboard standy for vacancy, which was shaped like the motel, and it had an array of lights inside so that the neon signed the vacancy sign would be blinking on and off but really atmospherically. And I took that whole fucking thing home with me.

You just set up the standy at all?

Yeah, I just put it in my living room.

I had this oh no, actually put it outside on the other side of the yard, so it looked like there was a motel in the backyard.

It was really fun. Nice thanks name Rod.

That's but he was the man has some talent. I have to admit. Like I said, it was shot well and directed pretty well.

I agree.

I think some of it is not directed so well. I think maybe it's just hard to fight a sword fight. But I found this one to be really lacking. In fact, a lot of the action I found to be really lacking. Particularly the final act of the film I found to be just sad.

You mean, when he's facing off against the predator, he set a trap. I can see where you're coming there. It was a little bit herky jerky editing. I could see that in the battle. I think you're referring to the Yakuza sword fight battle, like they face off the duel that I thought was cool. The overhead stuff I thought.

Rights for that.

The overhead stuff is beautiful because they're standing in knee high grass and it's all undulating underneath them. So it's gorgeous because nimrod Amtal makes gorgeous pictures. But I'm saying the actual action was lacking. There's a fight between two predators at one point in the film, which we've never seen before.

By the way, have we ever seen predators fight each other?

Never?

And it's just it felt like watching a Gounzilla movie just two rubber suited idiots hitting each other, and that was you just.

Hit upon another one of the excuse me, the innovations in this movie. They he they introduced the concept of like warring factions of Yaoucha. There's like a higher I don't think you call him casts, but there's a group of a bigger, fiercer Yaucha's that have taken a fourth Yaoucha prisoner and they have him crucified or tied to this totem in their camp. And he I think he's supposed to be a throwback to the first Predator in the first movie. He looks like the original Predator.

But that is that's the character's name, Original.

Predator, original Predator, original formula. So that was cool. They have it's adding some shading to the Predator society. I thought that was neat. Should we talk about I don't think we've talked about each of the characters and what they their backstory, which I thought was cool.

No, but we will, but I want to keep talking about these Predators for a second because okay, speaking of innovation, now, look,

Yeah, this all K and B came in and did all of this work. I think they did it in a remarkably short amount of time from the making of stuff I saw. I think they only had something like ten weeks from original concept to first day of shooting to get these predators. This was all done. This is all part of Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios, since he produced it.

That's played by wife what that's played by Will Forte, Not the Will Forte, the Will Forte, the falconer.

Okay, the snl Okay, Sorry took me a second, I'm a little slow on the uptake tonight. And he has this drone, this falcon like metal drone that can scout. There's one who commands a pack of like predator dogs, I don't know what you call them, but hunting dogs basically that he sends out to flush out these this prey, these people getting hunted. And then there's the last one.

That's exactly it. He's taken like a native tribe.

He has taken the jawbone of a fierce creature and fastened that to his own face plate.

Yeah, they look great, It doesn't read to me like very latexy. There's interest, there's detail in all the costumes, and they really, like I said, they have personality. So you're not just seeing some predator like shape kicking ass. You can tell who they are and what their speciality is.

Let's keep talking these designs here, because those dogs you mentioned, the Predator dogs, they're wolf pack there. Like you said, they're like a fox in the hound, like a fox hunt. Send out the hounds and out these creatures come. Now, I kept reading about how the directive when they were making this film was ignore everything but Predator. Ignore everything but the first Predator movie. It's our only guide except

It's one of the skulls in the case.

Now, having now having said that, they're great, they're really well realized. These not ever there on the set dogs. I'm sure they had rubber ones to have on the set. In fact, I know they do because I follow Robert Rodriguez's daughter on Instagram and she's constantly showing shit around their studio like, oh look a Predator dog.

Imagine growing up in that that would be something.

I can only imagine.

Man it's like the biggest playground in the world, but we have the predator, the predator dogs. It's a cool innovation. The Jerome thing is cooled. Even the predator heat vision. The infrared vision is tweaked now like in the first few movies, it's just a lot of amorphous blobs you can make out, but there's a little more fidelity to them now. Where there's a scene, for example, where Maherschel Ali's character is doing what what's his name, Billy in

Up a little bit, as they should. Predator vision is based on a film from nineteen eighty seven. Everybody at this point was thirty years later. Of course, they should be updating that what their vision looks. And I like that they can cycle through their different visions now, like we're getting more of At one point they're checking like footprints.

Yeah yeah. And at one point they're searching for other people and or the creatures, and you can see them like zeroing in on something and focusing in and switching the vision. It's worth there's no words, but you can tell what's going through the predator's mind as he's searching for their prey. It was really cool.

All right, last creature and then we'll get to the cast. Yeah, okay, these people are find themselves parachute. They're basically awake in the air, falling to what they think is Earth, but it's this other planet and they've got parachutes on that are automatically set to go off and lower them, and that doesn't always work out for all of them.

But yeah, that's hard, by the way. That's horrifying, by the way, because after the main characters start to land, another guy who wasn't so lucky parachute doesn't open. He dies right in front of them. But that's a that's nightmare material. Like we've all had dreams like this where you're falling and you don't know what's imagine waking up from and you're thirty thirty thousand feet up in the air and you don't know how to deploy a parachute.

Like involved in combat and then suddenly there was a light and now I'm falling through the sky. But they're not the only things falling through the sky because what they discover are crates. Now, initially I had thought that those crates, not really remembering the film as it were, I thought the crates held the dogs. But that's not the case because at one point Walton Goggin's character is being chased by what we think is a predator and it turns out to be the initial design.

For the predator from the original Predator movie, The.

Original character that Jean Claude van Dam was supposed to play, has a cameo in this film. It's one of the beasts from the cages, which mean though all of those cages held other creatures. And here's my main problem with the movie. Where are the other creatures? We're on an alien world, not only alien creatures. Where's the bizarre flora and fauna. We see one plant that acts a bit odd. Everything else feels like they're in I don't know, Hawaii.

I'm with you on that. That was one of the cooler parts because it gives you this glimpse of a larger thing at work here where they're not just plucking people from Earth to hunt. They're plucking people from god knows how many planets, the weird creatures that we've never seen before. So yeah, I would agree with you there that this planet should have been much more put it

I mentioned that the original Predator who is when we meet him here in the film, he's basically just chained up in the middle of their camp. In the original Robert Rodriguez screenplay, they find him chained up, but he's not chained up, he's crucified. In fact, he's crucified on an X, which means Robert Rodriguez was channeling Frank Frazetta because he has a painting of an alien crew. It's called alien crucifixion, where an alien with four arms is

The Russian, I cared about a few more than you did. The I hate to say it because.

He liked Alice Brago as well.

She's very good.

All of the acting.

Let me just say that all of the acting is really good across the board.

No one turns into bad performance here.

It's good. But if I was going to lose any members of the team and it, like I said, it hurts me to say this, I probably would have gotten rid of Danny Treo just because, get it, he's a Robert Rodriguez mainstay. And when Danny Danny Treo says he's going to be in your movie, you put Danny Treyo in your fucking movie. But at the same time, he to me he didn't add a whole lot. So I guess we'll talk a little bit more about each character and their backstory. But he, for I don't know, he

Desperado era, Danny trey Hoe, I think would have is what they probably had in mind, because that would be a cartel in Forrester.

Had they said it's the head of a.

Cartel, Danny trey Hooe, that I would have said, oh, yeah, of course that makes sense.

It just didn't add up for me, like the notion of having this guy who is a cartel enforcer, all these different like you said, these predators essentially, but he you could have lost him and it wouldn't have been a big loss for me. But I did. I love the Russian he I don't. I think he's actually like an MMA fighter turned actor. I thought he was really good.

It was great. All right, let's just talk characters.

Are lead Royce played by Adrian Brody. Everyone's favorite Adrian Brody, particularly if you're Halle Berry or Jamaican or Lauren Michaels.

Yeah, John Michaels loves Adrian Brady.

Look, I think Adrian Brody is a phenomenally talent an actor, and he seems like a fucking nightmare to deal with.

Yeah, but having said that, I knew. I remember all the criticism when this movie came out. Adrian Brody is a predator movie. His action guy I thought he was

I think at the time it seemed like a savvy casting choice. I think he just won an Academy Award for the Pianist, And it was a time when nobody believed that Johnny Depp was going to be a pirate captain, and suddenly he was, and suddenly, like higher end actors were stretching there themselves in other areas. So it's not without the realm of possibility. It's just that he chose to play it like he was a badass, and he doesn't come off that way.

I never believed him. I didn't believe he's never real problem. I didn't believe, HB. I don't believe.

And I hear you, and I understand. I hear your criticism, and I'm not disputing how you feel. It's subjective after all, but I look, the voice was a little over the top at.

Times, but he under the top.

I bought him. And then like at the end, when he finally faces off against the predator, it's like an R and E versus predator moment and he finally takes off his fatigues or whatever. Guy got jacked. I think he put on like like a twenty five pounds of muscle for this, and it showed. And I think it got to the idea that real soldiers aren't going to be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. They're going to be a little more lean and a little more wiry. Maybe I

I love to play this game.

What if he had been played instead by Walton Gagin almost immediately more likable as a lead character.

People would be talking about Royce like they're talking about Harrigan.

Now, not a.

Bad choice, and I guess there's any number of people who could have done what Walter Goggins does. He's very good in this, and I was, look, it's only in the last what five years that Walton Goggins has become Walton Goggins with Fallout and the White Lotus and all these things. Good for him. This was two thousand. I was, I didn't realize that his career stretched back that far. The guy's been slogging it out in Hollywood and he's

Yeah.

I mean, it's crazy to say because he's the most vile character, but he's the most likable character. And that's because Walton Goggins is so fucking likable. Okay, here's the cast. Everybody, we already named it. But okay, so we've got our American. That's Adrian Brodie. He's Special Forces, except now he's a mercenaron bit. The lead female character is at the Alice Braga character. She's from some South American No.

She's idf she's Israeli.

Oh, she's Israeli Alice Brock.

Which was a stretch because she's clearly she's not Israeli. She's Brazilian.

That's why I thought she was South American.

That's a little weird, but it's very quick where they're introducing themselves and he goes, oh, you're guess you're idf right. Yeah, she's supposed to be a sniper with the Israeli defense full.

And then we've got mahersh Ala Ali who is in part of a death squad from South Africa or Africa Sierra Leone, from Sierra Leone.

Yeah, yeah, who else?

Walton Goggins is on death row, so he's a murderer and rapist and was going to be executed in two days when the predators grabbed him.

Yeah.

And there's Danny Trejoe cartel guy. They grabbed him when he was in Baja.

Daves and Baja. There's there's the Japanese fellow who's a he's yakuza, who's a young yakuza who doesn't speak. I think he only has two lines in the whole movie, but he's basically very quiet and intense. Who's do you have the actor's name there, I don't. I regret that I don't have it.

I did, I said it at the top. Okay, then listened back to mister Ozawa.

He's very he's in like a sharp suit. He's the only one who has just like a I think he has a pistol. He doesn't have a rifle like the rest of them.

Do, but he'll eventually have a katana.

He eventually has a katana. So there's the yak, there's the IDF sniper.

One left.

Are you talking about Larry Fishburne.

No, I'm talking about one of these things. Is not like the other one.

Oh, he just doesn't for grace to for grace, and I don't mean performance wise or actor wise, because I love to for grace.

I'm gone record. He's good.

I always enjoy his performances, and his editing is par excellence.

He's very good. In fact, he we talked about this offline at some point. He's in Heretic, and he's really good in Heretic. But he's great in everything that he's in. Just but he's very good in that, and he's good here. I did have a problem we'll get to with his character, but we can save that for a little while from now. But yeah, but he's the wild card because he he says he's a doctor. So there's no explanation initially why he would be in the midst of all of these

Because you're a super predator.

I apparently I don't know when they got that impression. But he's he's I work in it.

I'm telling you, I don't what is this weapon? I don't. I can't even lift this.

What do you? What am I doing here? But here, he's got no weapons, he's got no skills of any kind. He basically he's the one that gets saved by all these other badasses time and time again.

If he had a medical bag on him, then I would have been less suspicious. I would have thought, Oh, would be the predators give him a medic.

That's what my assumption was, like, maybe they assume that it's a medic to patch these guys up if they get injured. But he's got nothing on him.

Which, yeah, exactly, because it would make sense because when they send their fucking dogs, if they hadn't all been firing wildly at those dogs, they'd all be dead, and then the predators would be like, oh man.

Yeah, it's less about flushing them.

Yet, wolf Master Predator again, because these things are it takes a lot.

That scene where the dogs are trying to flush them out is basically the Bill Duke in Predator shooting the railgun into the forest for three minutes, because it's just an endless scene where these dogs are advancing, they're shooting. They've shot so much that some of these guys have to go to their secondary weapon because they're out of AMMO on their primary rifle. It's a great sequence, but it does go on for a long time.

A little too long.

I will say that initially it's just the one dog, and when they finally kill it, another one appears right behind it, and that first one took so long to kill and then it cuts to like a scene in a forest where a pack of them are just racing forward.

I think Walton Goggins kills one with a knife.

Yeah, that's his weapon. By the way, all of them are.

It's it's a riot shotgun.

Is that what that is?

Yeah, it a big drum filled with shotgun shells. You notice it on.

His He's got the bandolier.

Yeah, he has bandoliers with shotgun shells on both both straps.

The yakuza has really fancy pistol. The cartel guy has double oozies. I think that he's wielding.

I don't think.

I don't think they're oozzies, but they are hand machine pistols.

Are they like mac Ten's I don't know. I don't know anything about it.

They're not that either, but I don't know the name of them, but they're not the standard ones that, yeah, you've seen in an eighties movie.

Sure. And then Walton Goggins, who's this death row prisoner, has a knife. But at least he has a knife, because the doctor Tofer Grays has nothing. I think he has a pocket knife.

He has a scalpel.

Oh is that what that is? I thought it was like a little pocket knife.

Oh no, it's a scalpel. Definitely, Okay, I got it because he uses it later he does. So here's our heroes. They've all been dropped on this planet. They don't know it's a planet. They don't know where they are. They can't quite figure it out because something seems a bit off because the sun shouldn't be where it is, and it's too hot for where they are, and blah blah blah, follow me, don't follow me. I don't care. I'm a badass. Let's follow him. Hey, wait a minute, should there be two moons.

In the sky.

This is like a cliff version.

No, no, no, no.

It must be said by the way that we don't really see our first view of a predator until about forty five minutes into the movie.

Basically I liked that actually because I like getting to know these characters.

Like I said, ultimately, I didn't care.

I didn't care about any of them because they didn't actually make any connections or anything.

But that isn't because I didn't like the structure of this.

Like I really enjoyed the fact that they got attacked by those dogs first, and then at the last second there's a whistle going.

Off and you're like, oh man, the predator's coming.

It's It was such a nice intro to them without having to reveal them at all.

That's fair. Yeah, you feel their presence without actually seeing them, that the big reveal is coming.

So our heroes are now they have a mission, right, what mission?

Here's the thing.

As soon as they come over that ridge and look up and see a different suns in the sky and there are different planets in their atmosphere, all hope is lost. That's all I could. That's it, guys, You're going to die here. No matter what you do, because they don't have a plan to begin with, right, they just keep marching.

They're hoping to get to the edge of the preserve to get away from whatever's hunting them before they know what it is. And then you're right. It's like the ending of like Planet of the Apes, where you realize that's the big shock ending when they look up in the sky and there's Jupiter and all these planets. Me as a viewer, I'm thinking to myself, just like you said, that's even if I can survive and kill whatever it is that's hunting us, I'm going to die on this planet.

It's impossible.

Okay, but you know what they do have a mission at hand, which is stay alive and don't be killed by these things that are clearly hunting them. Okay, great, Now we meet a new character.

Yep, Larry Fishburn.

Okay, your face all right, listen. I like the idea of his character a whole lot. When he approaches the group, he's dressed as a predator. We think it's a predator, and then he takes the mask off and it's Lawrence Fishburne. And I wish he's credit hadn't been in the opening titles because it would be such a fucking cool reveal. So he has survived for ten seasons, ten hunting seasons, which according to the filmmakers is about two and a half. You,

But what the cool and this is fan service, I get it. But the one of the coolest parts of it was they're in this at this quiet moment and they hear something say to them over here, this whisper over here, turn around, which is what we heard in the first Predator. It's Bill Duke when he was sampled essentially by the predator. That's those are the lines that

He did look very healthy. I did notice that while I was watching. I thought, wow, he looked great, but I didn't think of it in terms of he looks a little too good to have been living on the run from predators and killing strange beasts and hoping he doesn't die from poison when he eats them.

Because he can't be like what kind of We don't see many of the creatures that are native to this location, but he can't be he's living off of the equivalent of like rats, probably like he's scavenging. He's not. He's not gonna call attention to himself, so he must he should have been much more gaunt and just worn out.

See two missed opportunities in the original. In that original Robert Rodriguez script, Dutchess character ends up partnered with the like the leader of this army that initially was taking him to prison.

And what we what you discover is.

That that character, which by the way, was written for Jean Claude van dam So the idea was going to be Schwarzenegger and Jean Claude van dam as like teammates going against the predators. But then the twist at the end of the movie was the reason that the the soldiers are outfitted in predator gear is that the government on Earth has made a pact with the predators and that we keep supplying them with fresh game and they

Yeah, so he double crosses them. Basically, he invites them to his home for lack of a better word. When they're distracted and he says he's going to sleep, he basically walls them into their chamber and tries to basically suffocate them with smoke. He lights a fire in the hopes that they'll asphyxiate and he'll steal their gear. Doesn't quite work out that way for him, unfortunately for him, but it is. It was a bit of a letdown because it's a really interesting idea that this guy's it's

And then the predators show up and vaporize him completely.

Yeah, we're gone.

We meet him, he tries to fuck them over, and then he gets blasted into oblivion.

Fairness. I think Fishburn was only on set for about two days, so it's part wasn't that big. But he's it's Lawrence Fishburn. The guy is awesome, And there's even a little callback because he's talking about his days in the air calve.

Oh, it's clearly supposed to be cool, right. Character is named Clue and it was named cool in Apocalypse Now. Yeah, he's talking about air cab and then he starts doing fucking up the right of the Valkyries.

Right of the Valkyries. He starts to hummer the Valkyries, thinking to himself about the old days. So I thought that was neat. It's fan service again, but I'm not.

I'm not opposing some fucking subtles fan service there.

That it is. Maybe the average person going to see this movie wouldn't be a huge Apocalypse Now fan, but I was happy that it was there. And it again, there's these moments that kind of elevate the movie and make it a little more special, and that's one of them.

Okay, But what his character does do for the plot is he lets them know that where they were at that camp, just feet away, twenty feet away, there's a ship. The predators have a ship. It's cloaked, it's right there. They can get off of this planet. So now they have a mission. Now the plot is, let's get to the ship. And I'm still like, you're all gonna die on this planet. What are you gonna do when you get on that ship?

Done?

Yes, there's no on switch. It's not like getting into your Chevy, into your car and turning the ignition. They don't know. Maybe there's a fingerprint scanner that only responds to yaucha fingers.

Knowing the reputation of the yaoucha, you could push a button and self destruct.

Exactly, but it is. It's a neat thing with the Roy's character where Laurence Fishburn's character basically says to him, it's ridiculous, just go and get into this who's gonna fly it? And Roy says, I'll give it a shot. And I'm like, Okay, that's the kind of guy that you want to be stuck on an alien planet with. I'd follow that guy, because look, either we stay and die and become trophies for some weird alien race, or we at least try to get off of this god forsaken planet.

Why not you couldn't either we stay and forge a life here because that's really our only option, or we could definitely die in a flaming wreck while you try and get.

Us off this planet. And once we're in the once we're in orbit, what are we doing? Where are we going? You're going to navigate us home?

That is ridiculous, you're right, But again, you're making it sound like we're going to forge a life on this planet. This isn't the room.

It's the only option. They're not knowing anywhere.

It's a hopeless existence. They're going to be like living in fear twenty four hours a day.

Like Robinson Carusseau not a.

But then, but the that's where the prisoner predator comes into play because.

Figures he can fly the ship.

Yeah, he can fly the ship. That guy wants to be released if I can spring him from this this totem that he's chained to. He will do this for me. He will do me this solid which is again it's a wing and a prayer. There's no this predator might just kill the guy at the first opportunity if he releases him, because he may just be feral, who knows. But that's the mission. Now, the mission pivots to we've got to get to the back to the predator camp and see what we can work out with this.

Oh yeah, sure, look you know what that is a solid plan. Yeah, And I gotta say the script thinks it's being edgy and subversive by constantly pulling the rug out from under us. Right, we're we're on this planet.

We're not going to go it. Wait, there's a ship. Maybe we can get to this ship.

Okay, and now now we're gonna be saved by this predator. And then the other predator, fucking the berserker predator shows up and just fucking cuts his head off.

Yep, there goes that plan.

Whoops. Oh my god. Okay, so look, everybody's dead.

There's only three of them left now, and they get separated. It's Alice Braga and Toafer Craze in one one corner and.

Adrian Brody in the other.

And Adrian Brody is gonna he's gonna get on the ship and come back for them.

No, I don't. I didn't get that impression. He They

If you do whatever you want to mat it's not a badass by But I don't care for nobody.

I don't get a character in this.

Movie, so I didn't anyway. I didn't get the sense that he was gonna circle back once he got on the ship. He's just like, this is my mission. I have to get off this planet. Which is unusual because a lot of these guys, the Russian guy has he has a picture of his kids and that's his motivation. He's I got to get back to my kids. They don't deserve this, blah blah blah. They all have something that they're trying to work towards some redemption. But Royce is he has nothing. He's not really.

Over and over again, the redemption seems to be saving tofer Grace.

Is they all save him at one time or another, right at different points in the movie.

And the Russian dies doing it, she almost dies doing it.

Yeah, and then the Russian sacrifices himself.

He sure does for this piece of shit, because obviously tofer Grace is a serial killer. If anyone didn't figure that out in the first five minutes of the movie, I'm so sorry.

That might have been one of my biggest problems with this. I don't have a great I'm not a screenwriter, so I don't have a great notion of what they could have done with the Tofer Grace character. But it's such a silly heel turn at the moment that it is that he's We've seen him at the beginning of the movie.

Serial Killers select their victims very carefully.

It isn't just a spree killing, because that's what is so just pathologically that doesn't make Second of all, this is the time and place.

You're in a fucking trap. Still.

Yeah, they're in a pit.

Yeah, get out of the pit first, Get out of the pit, go somewhere safe. You're gonna she's your fucking pray now, right, Like it's just a matter of time. The timing is so stupid not to mention this idea. I can understand the predators being drawn to places of conflict where they can disappear and observe and go, oh, look that one in particular, he's really good.

Grab him.

I can understand them even maybe potentially monitoring the news and finding out that there is a particularly deranged psychopath who's about to be executed. But when the FBI and the internet mobs can't find a serial killer and they do, I have to wonder what the fuck anyone was thinking while writing this.

What did the predators do? Were they following his case in the papers?

And when, and they made some fucking decision that it had to be this doctor.

It the predator. The predators pick their prey because they are can physically do battle with them. These are the These are people that give them a fair fight. We've seen them in movies that they want to attack somebody if they don't have a weapon, So we know that they have some sort of code of honor, and they are very particular about the kinds of creatures that they will go after. If him being a there's nothing mant that's

It's such clever screen. I guess that's ultimately it.

Right.

Somebody thought, oh, the ultimate predator for humans is a serial killer, so we'll put it in a serial killer. Then no one will expect that. But who gives a shit because he doesn't have anything. The predators are looking for. The predators, from what we understand from this movie is that they're trying to become better and better, and so they pick opponents who present a possible threat to them.

Yeah. Fishburne's character lays it out in his conversation before he turns heel where he says, look, every season there's another three predators that land, and once in a while somebody will kill a predator. But he says, the amazing thing is they learn quick. That's what he says. He says, they learn quick. They change tactics, they change weaponry, they change armor, they change everything. He's admiring the fact that they can adapt to these different types of quarry that

You know what.

I think, we really need to fight something that ingratiates our himself into our lives, and then we would never expect that he would kill it.

It's just this moment where he's menacing the sniper, but then it turns out it comes back. We thought that the ship had been blown up with him on board, but it turns out he wasn't on board, so he's able to come in and save that's his moment of redemption. He comes back and saves the sniper from a fate worse than death, and then uses to for Grace's. He essentially hits him with the same neurotoxin that to for Grace gave the sniper, and then he leaves him as bait.

They shouldn't have made it a young guy. They should have made it an old guy who just looked like a civilian. And then at the end you find out he's like some general and he used to be the biggest badass ever and that's why they grabbed him. But then Royce finds out that he initiated some operation where his entire team was wiped out, and now he hooks him up to a bunch of grenades and leaves him as bait for the predator.

All Right, maybe I'm fan fictioning.

But the point that we're making here is that there's at least two dozen different ways they could have gone with this. I would be in favor of wrong place, wrong time. Let's see, he then becomes the audience proxy. So you're in the midst of all of these badasses who have these preternatural abilities to fight and survive, and then you have this nebbish who did nothing wrong. He's not an evil person, he's not somebody who's atoning for

Yeah, they could have just made him a young soldier who seems like the nicest one there and turns out to be the most vile.

Like the ultimate pred I belong here, Yes you do.

But like the idea that he's suddenly setting up a kill room like Dexter at the bottom of a fucking tiger pit is absolutely ridiculous.

I'm silly, silly, But hats off to them also, where if we're talking about things that they did, right as far as this confrontation between Royce and the Predator and the trap that he lays, they do fight, and it's it shouldn't come to any surprise that Royce bests this last Predator of the three he was the only remaining.

Is it's He takes all the gunpowder and lines, puts a line around the camp so that it'll burn out the vision of the predator. He then lightly wipes on a little mud because he doesn't want to cover up that physique, and then while the predator is distracted, he runs through the frame with an axe, hitting the predator over and over against so the predator is confused, and Royce appears smack and runs out of the frame. And then the predator's confused and then disappeared as Smack and

It's a little cartoonish. I won't dispute that.

It's a little comic bookie, and that's ultimately what I came away with. This feels a little more like Dark Horse comics than anything else.

That's fair, that's fair, But the bottom line is he eventually essentially decapitates him. He kills the predators done, and that's one of those audience moments like, yeah, we're cheering, but at the same time, this is a movie. As you said, that's fond of pulling the rug out from

Who's scheduling the seasons because clearly somebody stacked up and they they overbooked.

It's very short season, I think, because they've only been there for it looks to me like real time, it's probably two days if maybe if that's very that's a very quick season. But they can see that there's more people, there's more creatures coming, which surely means there's more predator creatures coming, so there's no escape. That the ship that he tried to escape on was destroyed by one of the other predators. So it wasn't a happy ending, which

Let's get the hell off of this planet.

You hated that voice so much.

Yeah, the planet HP.

Let me ask you a question. This is a little

Excellent question.

Maybe they're ignoring predators like predators ignored alien versus predator. Or maybe Adrian Brody said no, you cannot use my likeness. Or they hated this movie and are trying to ignore it. I don't know, man, do you have a theory.

I don't have a theory. I was more curious about what your theory was, because you think you have a better mind for what the actual Hollywood logistics might be in this, and you might be right. Maybe he didn't sign off on giving his likeness to this picture, or I don't know. I thought I thought it was a little bit of a disservice to the character, because I liked him a whole lot more than you did in Predators.

Maybe he's dead, maybe he didn't last too many seasons. Maybe he lasted only two more seasons and then the predators got him because they learned quick.

Yeah, that's the only thing that I could think of that made any sense was maybe, you know, if you extend this out, maybe in another week or so, he just was killed. He couldn't make it. He was overwhelmed, and that was it. That's the only thing that made

I'd be okay with I'd be okay with Isabelle.

Well, she didn't actually kill a predator.

Who cares. She was there. She was there, but she shot one.

No, but she didn't kill it.

So so that's what you have to do.

All the people in the mausoleum that we see have killed at least one predator.

I don't have to do anything. All I have to do.

Is promise people that on the next show, we're gonna be talking about the Predator, not Predator, not Predators, not Predator two, but the Predator, the Predator.

Definitive article, definite article. HP. Do you recommend this movie?

I do. I do recommend this movie. I think as a direct sequel to Predator one and two, I think it's fabulous. I think if you could, if you had thrown out AVP and AVP Requiem, this would have fit in nicely, and and this series's franchise would be a little more highly regarded than it was prior to Pray.

I agree with that.

I do think it's much better than both of those movies, and I was happy to see a return to or at least in action. But uh, I don't know. I don't know about this one. I kind of I kind of recommend it. I recommend this over Alien versus Predator or Requiem, but that's.

A very low bar. I recommend The Room over either of those movies. So that movie is objectively terrible, but it's at least it's entertaining at times.

Okay, not, you know, is it better than Predator?

Is the Room? No?

What we're talking about the Room for?

Is this?

Is this better than Predator?

Too.

Yes, well, okay, then that's a Sterling recommendation, a Sterling K. Brown recommendation featured in The Predator. On the next episode of Yauca Fest HP. Until then, where can people find you?

All Right? I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside my man father Malone. Over here. I'm an occasional guest on The Culture Cast with Christashu. I host another podcast, music podcast called The Noise Junkies. And if that weren't enough, I have a band camp site Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.

That all sounds great as for me, you're listening to my show. We're here on the Mondays with Fa Malone's weekly roundup, and every Friday or Thursday or whatever the hell I get to it, we put out a fest. We've got Yahoucha Fest going on. We're wrapping up the Fusco Fest. We're looking at Moranusfest. I don't know if that's just going to be Patreon or not, but that's coming. Also I'm going to be doing I'm looking at the Clive Barker's Books of Blood, the film adaptations of that.

You know, man, if we ever make it home, I'm gonna do so much fucking cocaine.

I'm gonna rape so many fine bitches.

Be like, what time is it?

Five o'clock? Damn, I'm gonna go rape me some fun bitches. You know what I'm saying. Oh yeah, totally like five o'clock bitch raping time. M hmm. Yeah, you shall stay away from me.

Yeah, you can kill it. There's something out there writing in the school language job.

What doing the hell are you? No, h