THE PREDATOR (2018)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

THE PREDATOR re-united two alumni of 1987's THE MONSTER SQUAD, and in the same basic positions: Black as director and as co-writer of the script with Fred Dekker.

Surprisingly, this thrill-ride of a movie isn't a reboot, but allegedly takes place between two previous sequels in the PREDATOR franchise, as well as loosely setting events for one or more additional "in between" stories. 

Contra Martin Scorsese, I deem it no insult to call a film a "thrill-ride. That's primarily what the original PREDATOR was, not a deep and abiding insight into either an alien culture or into what I termed in my review "male-bonding culture." Indeed, PREDATOR 2.0 works in a fair amount of that culture, as I'll address shortly.

I frankly don't recall what movie introduced the notion that the Predator aliens sometimes raid Earth for human DNA samples. I thought most of the time they just wanted exotic trophies. But it's a very big part of 2.0 that the first of two Predators visits our fair planet for that purpose, so I'm assuming this is not a new trope to the franchise. 

I rather liked the opening, in that there's no attempt to dance around the physical look of the visitor. in marked contrast to the first film, which scored points for leaving the Alien's Big Reveal for last. This particular Predator fails to count coup on his human quarry, though. Army Ranger McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), in the midst of a hostage rescue, knocks out the unruly alien and then atypically mails some of the creature's armor to his home in the States. Maybe McKenna anticipates the treatment he's going to get from his superiors, for although the government sends the Predator to a research institute, the same officials treat McKenna like a madman and send him to a happy farm with five other maladjusted soldiers.

Fortunately, before McKenna and his new PSTD buddies are shipped off the grounds of the institute, the Predator breaks loose from the lab, sparing only one scientist, Bracket (Olivia Munn). McKenna manages to wrangle the crazies and Bracket into allies as he hijacks a bus and speeds back to the house of his estranged wife. McKenna has learned that the armor he sent to his own residence has been re-routed to his former location, and he correctly fears that the freed extraterrestrial may endanger McKenna's wife and son. On the way Bracket reveals that the captive critter apparently had human DNA in his genes, though she doesn't know why.

There's a subplot about McKenna's son being an autistic who possesses a savant-like ability to understand Predator-tech; Shane Black got some blowback from this concept and it could have been dumped. The film's real focus is indeed the "male bonding" that takes place even between soldiers who barely know one another, and how they end up battling not McKenna's original sparring partner, but a second Predator who kills the first and then tries to erase all traces of his people's presence.

The putative motives of the inscrutable ETs never make a lot of sense, but Black and Dekker (heh) provide lots of good action scenes, and in this case I'm glad they didn't feel constrained to work a female soldier into the mix. 2.0 made decent money so the possibility of a sequel to this sequel seems strong.