I just watched this movie about 40 odd minutes back.
For first quarter of this movie it done a pretty nice job of getting right what partly made predator good. Not showing the predators and building it up. Then it just falls apart.
There's a slight difference from homage and outright aping it. The funny thing is, it does a terrible job. Couple of things annoyed me. In Predator, when Arnie is about to fight the Predator caveman style, we get a little montage, a sense that he is meticulously planning. When they are battling, and he starts shouting "I'm over here, come on kill me" it feels more like a duel of tactics than simple action sequences. When Adrian Brody jumps out with his near instantaneously concocted plan, shouting the same lines, mimicking the caveman style battle, it just feels like bad fanboy fiction. It feels like it's aimed at stupid fanboys nostalgia like we are suppose to be saying "gee, ain't that cool" and not elicite disappointment when it references the original movie, badly.
Another thing that was quite annoying is the Predators when they actually show up on screen. The original movie (as well as Predator 2) sort of paints them as more three dimensional than typical kill-all-in-path monsters. They don't kill unarmed people. It doesn't kill a pregnant woman because there is no sport. Even when it has Arnie to the point, it can kill him. It throws him against a wall, takes it mask off, and starts punching him up. When Laurence Fishburne encounters one, from what could tell, was a iron-bar of some sort, it just stands there and uses it shoulder cannon at almost point blank range in a narrow corridor to practically blow him up.
In the first movie, they are slowly picked off one by one by a single predator. In this movie the sense of menace is diminished as soon as it's on screen. This wasn't the case with the Predator. The splash in the water, with the reveal of it's cloak messing up, right up towards the end of the movie when it's laughing manically setting off it's wrist bomb has a sense of wonder and mystery about it. It's also similar with Predator 2. For the most part, people who watch Predator 2, have seen Predator, know what it looks like and how it acts. Yet in the opening scene when it's killing off the gang lords, the woman in shock (who it didn't kill) described it as a demon. The evidence left is almost supernatural. At the very end of the movie, we see the ship with all the trophy's from many unknown species from different ages in time, again, show a mysterious quality. In this movie, a Japanese man just picked up a sword and says "this is very old".
Speaking of the Japanese guy, like Adrian Brody mimicking the first movie, he is basically the native indian like the first movie. In the first movie, we simply see him stop in tracks while they are hurrying to save themselfs. Here, while a similar situation, it feels like an obligatory box tick, nobody cares. And when he does take on the predator, we get a ridiculous campy fight. In the original movie we hear quite a horrendous scream, which is far more effective.
The love-hate relationship between the convict guy and the black guy doesn't seem to develop properly. Both the characters simply feel introduced than anything built up properly. It's like the Mac and Blain, but crap. The movie is very annoying, not as bad as Alien Vs Predator but it feels like a bad emulation of the first movie to please fans than something trying to be a proper sequel. It kinda drags on abit as well. Predator had great pacing, very re-watchable. This will feel like work if I re-watch it again.
