The Predator

The Predator returns to Earth in a crash-landing in the midst of a military hostage retrieval mission led by Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook). When McKenna manages to incapacitate the Predator, he decides to take the Predator's armor, and mails it home where his autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) receives it. Rory mistakenly calls more Predators to Earth, and these newer, genetically modified Predators are on a mission to find the boy that was smart enough to break into their technology.

I was really excited for this new Predator movie. The original Predator is a classic Sci-Fi that every science fiction nerd should see. To me, predators are extremely smart, hard to catch, and insanely strong creatures. The predators in this new movie, however, are extremely different. We see McKenna catch one in the first ten minutes, and he makes it look easy. Even the genetically modified predators we see later in the movie are easily killed or captured. I was extremely let-down and ashamed to even put this in the same movie series as the originals.

The original Predator was basically a one vs one combat movie. In this new movie, we have a band of military guys fighting these supposedly stronger and smarter Predators. The military guys are all off-duty guys that are either crazy (mentally), or they've been taken into custody for some other incident. These are not strong men that are clever enough to come up with traps to capture a predator, or smart enough to figure out how predator technology works. I even found the main character, Quinn McKenna, somewhat cocky and unlikable. It almost seemed like I was watching a comedy/wannabe Sci-Fi movie. The one-liners were enough for a giggle here and there, but who goes to see Predator for a laugh? I hated it. I was bored and confused the entire time.

Audiences around the world are agreeing with me as well. Rotten Tomatoes has this scored at a 48%. Ouch. IMDb has it at a 6/10, but scrolling through the first 20 reviews or so the majority of ratings are 1/10. I have no idea who would rate this movie over a 5/10. It's not a Predator movie, and it should be ashamed to call itself that. The worst part is that they set it up for sequels. I can't say I have any interest in a sequel. I truly hope that kids today don't watch this movie before seeing the original films because if they do I fear they never will go back to those classics.

The new Predator's have dogs that can track humans. They also turn out to be a huge let-down, and bad addition to this movie series.