The Predator needed some love. What it got was brutal cuts, the removal of Edward James Olmos and a litany of missed opportunities. I’m not one to try and reappraise something that I felt strongly about on initial release, so I’ll leave that to the mainstream sites. For now, my original assessment stands.
Did the film work with this level of change? Yeah, but the lack of linked content produces an opportunity for the worst in modern response. It allowed people to willfully misread its intent and weaponize it.
Noted attention gadfly Olivia Munn was the first to try and make the narrative about herself. After all, who doesn’t work with Bryan Singer and another predator and fails to mention it for months? She worked on a completed scene with the guy and had at least a day of direct contact. If you buy that this barely there cameo was snuck in and off set like a pariah, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Shit edits, forceful pacing and the lack of standard coherence produces a world that allows certain individual to read into a narrative. Some will see a lackluster Predator film that ends weird. Others will see a prompt to right the wrongs of their past. Both are attempts to lack at the magic dot picture presented by FOX and declare themselves new voices determined to slam FOX for a woeful mistake.
Those two viewpoints are just that. Viewpoints based on delightful misreads of a compromised film that might never get a Director’s Cut now. What should be studied is why people choose to read certain things into a narrative? When something has the hint of being a failure, is there a scent of blood in there? Much like in the Animal Kingdom, even the smallest of creatures will seize the opportunity to pick off a much larger rival.
But, that’s survival. You’re not surviving anything by tearing into a fourth installment of a franchise that is becoming generational at this point. All it means is that you’re a loud mouth desperate to stand on anyone’s corpse to make a point.
The Predator is now available!
