Thereās no way this movie isnāt a comedy.
Random thought while Iām lying here with covid. This is the funniest scene in film history:
Real or Onion
A haunted Magic 8 Ball sounds like a fairly standard B horror movie plot to me.
Iām thinking of giving Predator a rewatch after seeing Prey. Wonder if it holds up still.
It does. There is some lol bad misogyny at the beginning (LOCKER ROOM TALK) but after that its basically a perfectly paced wild ride.
āIf it bleeds, we can kill it.ā
Undisputed greatest handshake of all time in Predator too.
Rewatching Predator: man, Iād forgotten how great this movie is visually. Itās full of these lush jungle scenes and well-composed shots where the actors blend in with the forest. The actual shoot-em-up scenes are hopelessly dated but still fun in a campy kind of way.
There is some lol bad misogyny at the beginning (LOCKER ROOM TALK)
Iām okay with that because it seems pretty clear youāre not supposed to like the Jesse Ventura character. More problematic is the badly stereotyped Native American mystical tracker bullshit. I was actually relieved that Prey avoids these kind of tropes because you still see it all the time in movies even today.
So I realized this was kinda silly, so I watched all of them over the last week and a half or so.
They hold up quite well. I enjoyed them a lot.
That being said, on no planet are these 3 of the 15 best movies of all time. Thatās just absurd. And honestly, the third movie is a pretty average best picture winner and very weak winner for adapted screenplay. Obviously deserved all of the technical awards it got.
I think in the 80s you were supposed to like characters like Ventura. They donāt give lines like āI aināt got time to bleedā to characters you arenāt supposed to like.
Did you pick up on the Mac and Ventura underlying romance tones? They clearly have some gay history IMO.
I think heās a little extreme even by the standards of the day; he comes right out the gate dropping an f-bomb. My read is that heās supposed to be unpleasant but also tough and really good at killing things so you need him on the squad.
I have an idea for a Predator sequel where dudes are hunting a Predator in an abandoned Mall of America and one of the guys is a white Minnesotan who uses his spiritual connection to the land to track the Predator down. Like he sees a display thatās tipped over and heās like āIt went this way.ā Itās in the near future when malls are all abandoned. I donāt know what the Predator is doing there, maybe itās lost.
He wins by covering his entire body in Dippin Dots so the Predator canāt see him.
I agree with you. But in these 1980s Morality Tales For Insecure Males (MTFIMs) this kind of character (an asshole but He Gets The Job Done) is supposed to be sympathetic. The insecure male watching the movie is supposed to be comforted that even though everyone is always calling him an asshole because of his behavior, theyāre the assholes ACTUALLY, because they donāt realize how critical it is that the asshole is tough enough and mean enough to speak truth to power and do the hard work that lesser men will not do.
In MTFIMs the characters weāre supposed to dislike are usually the tie wearing, paper pushing bosses that Donāt Get Their Hands Dirty and do their jobs Behind A Desk. Not like our hero, who is out there doing the REAL work.
My favorite 1980s Morality Tales For Insecure Males villain is definitely Bennett from Commando. Heās violent and dangerous and capable, so just to be sure that the audience of insecure males didnāt mistake him for a good guy they made sure to give him a moustache and leather pants and several affectations so that the audience might associate him with homosexuality. Then we know werenāt not supposed to perceive him as a maverick who doesnāt play by the rules and gets the job done (which would make him a sympathetic), weāre supposed to perceive him as a creepy weirdo.
How was the Predator able to kill a rattlesnake? That doesnāt make sense now that I think about it.
So chilling out in COVID isolation, I watched a bunch of the Star Wars sequels over the weekend. Not every minute, but a bunch (I saw them all in the theater - this wasnāt a first watch). Screw the haters. I enjoyed them.
9 is objectively a steaming pile of Bantha dung
Nah, it was cool. The big thing I didnāt like about 8 and 9 was that Finn didnāt get to do jack shit, and I know that hurt John Boyega. He was so key to 7 and a fun, interesting character (he was a Stormtrooper defector!) and then got relegated to like the C-story in the other movies.
killing a rattlesnake is a rookie move anyway, you should just knock them out with a well-placed punch
