Rating: C-
Dir: Dan Trachtenberg
Star: Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Elle Fanning, Reuben de Jong
I am philosophically opposed to the concept here. I do not want a kinder, gentler Predator. I do not want to see things from his point of view. I do not want humanity to be the bad guys. I want this to be about people going up against an unstoppable killing machine. No pity, no remorse and no mercy. I also do not want the protagonist to be weak, which seems to be Trachtenberg’s modus operandi, because this devalues the resulting contest. In Prey, the heroine was an Indian girl incapable of passing Hunting 1.0.1., yet somehow able to beat down and defeat a Predator. I am unimpressed. Here, it’s a Predator runt Dek (Schuster-Koloamatangi), who narrowly escapes being culled. I am unimpressed. Yautja Prime simply aren’t sending their best.
This is okay, I guess, if you’re fine with the “two stranded enemies help each other survive, and band together to fight a common enemy” trope. Might have been better, if it had been something other than a Predator, which was teaming up with a badly-damaged synthetic Thia (Fanning). It takes place on Genna, a planet which resembles Australia, because everything there is trying to kill you. They’re both after the planet’s top predator, the Kalisk. Dek, to prove he’s fit to join his clan, while Thia was part of a Weyland-Yutani corporation mission to capture it, for the usual Weyland-Yutani corporate reasons. When the rest of her team show up, Dek becomes a bonus acquisition.
Naturally, Thia isn’t standing for that, and helps Dek escape. He then returns the favour, though it’s all in strictly PG-13 fashion, for the usual Disney corporate reasons. This likely explains the almost inevitable cute, large-eyed alien critter, soon to be available in plush, from a Disney store near you. I was somewhat amused by the way the film works around the awkward notion of wanting us to cheer for a Predator killing people, by making every last one of the W-Y employees an android. In 50 years or so, this unsubtle synthophobia will probably get the movie blacklisted by film scholars for exhibiting blatant humanism, in the same way Birth of a Nation is seen now.
What you have here is very much the “Is Diet Pepsi all right?” of Predator movies. It just about passed muster on a Sunday afternoon: I was amused by things like Thia’s legs opting to operate independently of her torso. I hope they get their own spin-off movie, since the limbs arguably exhibited a greater degree of personality, than both Thia and her evil android sister Tessa. [Weyland-Yutani really need to beef up their quality control procedures] Otherwise, I think I enjoyed the sections where Dek was simply trying to survive, rather than the malfeasance of a giant corporation. The irony of Disney producing a film about the latter topic, is apparently lost on everyone involved in this. I’m betting Trachtenberg’s next film will be Xenomorphs: Are They All Bad?