cyguration

Dan Trachtenberg is the worst thing to happen to this franchise.

Apparently ALL Predators no longer know how to use any of their equipment, and it always results in them destroying themselves.

It's completely ridiculous and laughable.

What made the original Predator so good was that the Predators were hunting the best of the best, and even then Dutch only managed to barely get out alive BY LUCK. A contingency trap for a contingency trap is what saved him.

Yet here in all these stories the Predators have NO CLUE how any of their weapons work. It was the same problem in Prey, where the Predator was clueless how his own equipment worked.

It basically turned into a tale of Looney Tunes, especially the third story, which was basically MCU-tier when it came to the dialogue and story. I mean, this untrained kid is on the wing of his plane trying to repair it in mid-air? It was the sort of thing you would expect a 14-year-old to cook up while reading Marvel comics.

The physics and logic also don't track. In the first story the Predator is able to blow things to pieces with his repulsor emitter, yet he can't blast through a wooden shield?!?!?! Really!??!

I was just rolling my eyes the entire time.

Also, the Predator is one-shotting everyone until he gets to Ursa, identical to what we saw when the Predator in Prey was one-shotting everyone and everything until he fought Naru, and then he decides he's not going to hit her at all.

The only almost decent one was the middle story, wherein at least the two brothers were actually skilled warriors, but even then the Predator decided to do a lot of goofy stuff instead of killing them. And once again, he somehow didn't understand how his own technology worked.

I couldn't tell which was worse between the Predator in the Shield or the Predator in The Bullet in terms of not understanding their own tech.

Also, the pilot kid figuring out the Predator tech by goofing around with it was just nauseatingly bad. So apparently humans who have never used the tech before are better at using it than trained space killers who trained their whole lives to use it? Really?!

The problem is that this series just keeps defying its own logic, and it's asking us to go along with it because... well... movies these days can't be written to be sincere, and most audiences will just default to "Well, it's fiction, so it doesn't matter".

Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it can't be grounded within the sensibilities of its own storytelling. In fact, that's what made the first Predator and the original Alien trilogy so special: they treated the material seriously and kept the actions and logic grounded within their own world-building. Dan Trachtenberg's Predator content does not do that at all.

The Predators are these big, dopey, goofs who get thwarted by humans in the most illogical ways, and then always have their tech turned on them in Looney Tunes fashion. It's not cool, it's just embarrassing.

In many ways, the original Predator was basically a perfect film, so the only way it could go was down, and that's exactly where the series has fallen.

Now, Killer of Killers isn't all bad. Despite the ridiculousness of the first, third and last segments, the art-style is at least visually enticing, but I am not a fan of the stop-motion animation. It's jarring and it's even worse when it comes to action sequences because it makes it hard to follow the action and see what's going on.

Some of the Predator designs looked cool, especially the Elder Predator and the NInja Predator, but since they were treated like cartoon goofballs, it was hard to take any of it seriously.

I know I had some big gripes with Terminator Zero, but at least they respected the Terminator WAAAAY more in that depiction than what Dan has done to the Predators here. Treating them like idiotic fodder just completely detracts from what made the franchise so popular in the first place.

But I imagine most of the younger audiences who did not grow up with the original two Predator films won't really understand what made them good, and just seeing pointlessly gory violence in non-sensical ways with uneven combat logic will make them fall in love with Predator Killer of Killers.

I will say this, if you enjoyed Prey, then you will like this. If you saw the actual major problems that Prey had, you will see ALL of the exact same problems in this film, and it will detract from your experience greatly.

Reading the reviews after having rewatched this film almost 30 years later, and it's funny how similar many of our thoughts are that align with what this managed to accomplish back in 1994: it's a brilliant masterpiece.

The thing is, back in the 1990s, I never seemed to be able to see this film all the way through. I always missed bits and bobs, pieces and parcels here and there -- but this film always fascinated me. I always loved the intro, and I thought it had one of the best climaxes in any film to date.

I finally decided to rewatch the whole thing from start to finish -- uninterrupted. And what stood out to me the most was the original screenplay by the Coen brothers and Sam Raimi.

Wow... what an absolutely masterful script.

I had to go reading about this one because the screenplay for this is one of the most original modern day films ever made. Heck, it's one of the most original films made in the history of films.

It has speedball dialogue delivered with panache and plenty of alliteration, mimicking inflections from the 1930s and 1940s, but with a unique flair all its own. It's both smart and whimsical, and in many ways you can see the influence in TV shows that came later like Pushing Daisies.

But as almost every other review has pointed out, while the dialogue is smart and the story is both unpredictable and unique, it's the production design that is the real winner here.

This film looks gorgeous!

One of the thing that typically annoys me with a lot of period piece films is that oftentimes the cars are too clean, but here that's not the case. The sets look like they come out of 1958, but the cars also look authentic to the area -- some of them are dirty, spotted, a little worn. It adds to the authenticity of the piece, and in many films set back during those eras oftentimes the cars look like they've come from a vintage restoration lot. It's jarring, dare I say, a journey across the uncanny valley.

Even still, it's not just the outdoor shots that look great, giving the movie this larger-than-life visual aesthetic, the indoor shots are absolutely stunning. Large hallways, art deco garnishing, and that enterprise-era veneer really highlights the stylistic indulgence of this film's commitment to the era.

There's also a bit of a larger-than-life approach to a lot of the indoor set pieces, especially those set inside the Hudsucker building. Large walls, imposing hallways, and gigantic rooms make the whole movie feel like some kind of cartoon recreation from Acme industries.

There's a bit of that Looney Tunes flair with the over-wrought gear room of the clock tower, and comically convoluted mail room, which must have been a nightmare to film.

But the movie moves at a brisk pace, despite its lengthy runtime, and it has a very endearing score, along with great performances from every single person involved (especially Newman, who hunkers down the airy presence from Robbins, and juxtaposes himself as a foil for the Lois Lane-expy in Leigh's character).

I can't say enough good things about this film. It's really well done, and such a joy to watch. It's always seemed bizarre to me that the more pulpy and garish Pulp Fiction was the original screenplay that stole the spotlight a year later, even though this film had a much message, very witty dialogue, and a feel good vibe that should make it part of anyone's movie collection. Even still, at least, 30 years on, I was able to find myself entranced with its quality today just as I did back when I first saw it.

I'll admit the middle act feels a bit wayward and the third act seems a bit muddied trying to tie up loose ends, but the first half of this film is absolutely brilliant.

It's an odd cross-genre of mystery, sci-fi comedy wrapped up in a crime-thriller. How Chevy's character becomes invisible is inventive -- and I didn't see that coming (pun intended). From there, a large portion of the film is a cat and mouse game between Chevy's character, and the wetworks specialist played by Sam Neill, who turns in an absolutely grade-A performance here. He's sly and menacing as a CIA operative, consistently pushing the needle as a villain without heading into mustache-twirling territory.

In many ways, Neill grounds the movie in the thriller aspects very competently. His henchmen could have turned this into a Looney Tunes affair being thwarted and outmatched if this had been in the hands of a poorer director, but John Carpenter manages to keep the film moving and action paced during the first half.

I was close to giving this movie an 8 out of 10, but the middle parts at the beach house just slowed down waaaaay too much. I understood what they were going for and to rope other characters back into the film's plot, it makes sense why it was a pivotal set-piece, but at the same time it was also just a bit long in the tooth.

However, nearly every sequence was an opportunity for the special effects team to showcase what a powerhouse they were back in 1992, and by all accounts the special effects in this film outshine many of today's films. That's not even an exaggeration, some of the shots don't just hold up, they look outright insane, and they will leave some viewers questioning how they pulled off a few of those effects back in the early 1990s. Anyone saying the effects rivaled the likes of Terminator 2, really aren't exaggerating. The scenes where you can see him attempting to eat food, or the rain effect on his silhouette, or the parts where he is jogging -- really cool stuff.

I think one of the most impressive shots is the aftermath of the building, looking like something out of a liminal space horror sequence. It's extremely impressive, and I was left stunned and trying to figure out how they captured some of those shots. The fact they didn't have CGI or Unreal Engine or StageCraft set technology back then -- and a lot of this was done with practical effects -- is what makes it stand out.

But even beyond all the special effects, the story itself is really inventive here. It's way more dark than what a lot of people might have been expecting. Having Chevy Chase in the lead was a bit of an odd choice, but in some ways he brings levity to what otherwise could have been a bit of a nihilistic sci-fi thriller, similar to Scanners or Dead Zone.

While I could have easily seen Liam Neeson or Jeff Bridges leading up this film, the tone would have been far different, even more somber, and even more depressing. This is because the film deals with not just the loneliness of being invisible, but also the logistics of being invisible, things you wouldn't even think about. For instance, not being able to see your hands, making it difficult to know where and how to pick some things up without having exact vision for orientation -- or seeing yourself digest food that results in instant vomiting, or the fact that while you could practically sleep anywhere, eating and acquiring food becomes difficult if you want to stay inconspicuous.

I loved that the film tackled these kind of topics and how troublesome and difficult it would be to stay invisible and out of the way of authorities. It gives you a bit of food for thought that most other films dealing with invisibility never even broach, and for that I think the film is brilliant.

I just wish the middle parts weren't such a slog, but all of the chasing and survival aspects of being invisible I thought were handled perfectly. I feel stupid once again for having avoided this film since its original release because of all the negative reviews from critics back in the day. I was always a fan of Chevy Chase, and I should have seen this film much sooner.

Even still, after finally having watched it, I wasn't disappointed, and the good parts were much better than the bad, so it's an easy recommendation for someone looking for an unorthodox sci-fi film about invisibility with a dash of comedy and romance tucked into the picture.