Shane Black and a new Predator movie? That should have been a surefire win. Black’s directorial output isn’t to everyone’s taste, but he had the connection of being part of the original movie Also, have you heard the beautiful dialogue in Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Nice Guys, and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang? That’s his work.
The Predator saw Black coming home, so to speak, by directing the franchise that arguably put him on the map. His film brings the titular beast back to urban areas for the first time since AvP 2: Requiem (so a low bar by anyone’s estimation) as a young boy (Jacob Tremblay) accidentally causes a Predator visit when he gets ahold of their technology. The Yautja have been tinkering a bit in the last few years, though, as they send a Super Predator blended with the DNA of the best hunters in the galaxy. Now a ragtag group of misfit ex-soldiers are the only thing that can get in the way of the bionic beast.
While it narrowly avoided the embarrassing tag of the worst Predator movie (AvP Requiem is a two-franchise gold medallist in that regard), it still possesses the lowest Metascore of the mainline Predator films. It also tanked hard at the box office.
A cynical part of me thinks Black was on a hiding to nothing before The Predator ever got a fair shake. Comic book movie fanboys were in hysterics about his contribution to the MCU with 2013’s Iron Man 3, which seemed to paint a different picture of him. It’s one of the few MCU movies with the director’s signature scribbled all over it, and the reunion with Robert Downey Jr. showed they were still a good match. Folks really didn’t gel with that Mandarin swerve, though, did they?
When The Predator came to be, it faced several obstacles before getting to general audiences. Reshoots for a ”too dark” (literally) third act. rewrites for a leaked script, and tests screenings with much of the CG unfinished, leading to negative feedback.
The Predator Casting Controversy
On top of that, it was mired in controversy when star Olivia Munn revealed one of the film’s actors, Steve Wilder, who had a small role in Black’s previous two films, had been arrested, charged, and registered as a sex offender in 2010 after facing allegations that he attempted to lure a 14-year-old girl into a sexual relationship via the internet. Black received backlash for initially defending his casting but rolled back and took full responsibility for it. Wilder’s scenes were removed from The Predator by 20th Century Fox.
There’s no denying the end result is a mess. Reshoots caused continuity errors, rewrites made things less cohesive, and Black’s risque humor feels very off in places without the correct structure behind it. The aforementioned Wilder incident meant Olivia Munn‘s character lost her introductory scene, and she subsequently gets dropped into the story with no pre-amble, contributing to the messy state of the finished film.
But there is something there that shows what it could have been. The goofy, goopy nature is all on Black, and it’s easy to see how a bit more cohesion and a generally smoother ride through production could have made that shine, just as it did in The Nice Guys or Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.
Lots of factors contributed to the sorry state of The Predator, and sure, maybe even in a perfect world, it wouldn’t have landed much better, but it would have had a better shot.
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