Predator: Badlands is the Pick of the Week

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It is kind of amazing to me that the Predator franchise is still a thing. Not only that, but the last couple of films have been some of the best in the entire series. Predator: Badlands might just be my very favorite of all of them. It was definitely one of my favorite films of last year, and you can read all about that here.

It is getting a variety of releases in different formats and covers (plus it is now streaming on Hulu, but I guess I shouldn’t talk about that in a post covering physical releases). And now it is my pick of the week.

Here’s what else is coming out this week that struck my fancy:

Ben-Hur: William Wyler’s biblical epic took home a whopping 11 Oscars in 1959, and now it is getting the UHD treatment. It has been a long time since I watched this, but now I’m itching to see it again in HD glory.

Song Sung Blue: Loosely based on a true story, this film follows a married couple who form a Neil Diamond cover act and see both success and failures along the way.

Rental Family: Brendan Fraser stars in this drama about an American living in Japan who is hired as a token American for a rental-family company.

All the President’s Men: Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star as the real-life Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters who helped uncover the Watergate Scandal and bring the Nixon presidency down. A great film in every way, and this UHD upgrade is getting good reviews.

Dexter: Resurrection: The Complete First Season: I think I watched the first season of the original Dexter, and I’ve not really paid it much attention after that. But I know it has fans.

Cloud: Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of my favorite modern Japanese directors. His latest features a guy who gets into the resale business, but his carelessness puts him in harm’s way. That’s a terrible description, but the film is great.

The Visitor: This absolutely insane film is about an intergalactic warrior who joins a Christ-like figure to battle a demonic eight-year-old. Arrow has the release.

Eclipse Series 8: Lubitsch Musicals: I’ve only seen a couple of Ernst Lubitsch movies, and none of them have been musicals, but all of them have been enjoyable. He’s one of those directors who is beloved by a lot of people I like, but I’ve never truly dug into him. Maybe now is the time to start. The films include The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, The Smiling Lieutenant, One Hour With You.

Spencer Tracy 4-Film Collection: I’ll have a review of this up soon. The films include Bad Day at Black Rock, Fury, Northwest Passage, and Libeled Lady.

Sci-Fi In July: Alien vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

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I suppose every kid at one point or another has created their own crossover event. You got a big box of toys from a variety of different toy lines, so you mix and match. GI Joe Teams up with Thundercats. Superman and Wolverine battle Megatron and Darth Vader. Etc. Sometimes you wonder who would win in a fight: Spider-Man or a Mutant Turtle, Cobra Commander or Skeletor. Etc., again.

It makes sense that actual comic lines would take up this idea, and television and movies. The Avengers made it into a billion-dollar event.

I suppose, then, that an Alien vs Predator mashup was inevitable. I still think you could make a good movie out of that concept. In my mind, you have the Predators on some isolated, desolate planet, or maybe a big ship without much crew. They’ve got a bunch of Alien eggs on board, and then something goes wrong. The Aliens hatch and start picking off the Predators before they know what’s happening. Basically, you make a really good Alien movie but with Predators instead of humans.

There are bits of that idea inside of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, but they frak it up pretty quickly. The film starts immediately after the event of Alien vs. Predator, so spoilers for that film ahead.

The Predators win, because, of course, they do. The Xenomorphs are much cooler creatures, but they have no personality beyond kill, kill, kill. The last Predator actually dies at the end of the movie, and we see some other Predators fly down in their spaceship and pick his corpse up for a memorial. But just before the credits roll, we see a Chestburster bust out of the dead Predator.

So, the Aliens have a life cycle, part of which has them being hosted by another creature. In the films, that creature is usually a human. Apparently, it partially merges with its host’s DNA, picking up some of its characteristics. When its host is a Predator, what comes out is something called. Predalien (something I just now learned by reading the Wikipedia article).

The Predalien smashes up the Alien ship, causing it to crash back on Earth. It releases a bunch of Facehuggers, and quickly, Earth is being infested with Xenomorphs. Only one Predator survives, and it needs to kill all the Xenomorphs before they kill all the humans. I’m not sure why it cares other than it just really likes killing Aliens.

I’m down with all of that. I can totally get behind a lone Predator facing off against a bunch of Xenomorphs and a Predalien. Unfortunately, this is a Hollywood film, so it has to throw a bunch of dumb humans into the mix.

They are very dumb, completely unmemorable, and an utter waste of time. I watched the film last night and I couldn’t tell you a single human’s name and barely remember what any of them look like. There really isn’t a point in discussing them because, for the most part, they only exist to be killed by the Predalien or a Xenomorph.

Every now and again, the Predator will wipe out a Xenomorph, and once or twice that’s actually kind of cool. But mostly it is dumb humans getting massacred in completely boring ways. If you are waiting for an awesome showdown between the Predator and the Predalien, don’t hold your breath. They do have a fight, but it is not very interesting, and ultimately – spoiler for the ending – the humans drop an Atom bomb on the town, killing everybody but a few of our sort-of heroes.

I’ve now seen every film in both the Alien and Predator franchises. They are both a pretty mixed bag, with both very good and very stupid films existing in both. But I can see myself revisiting all of the films in the franchises except these. I never want to think about these two crossover films ever again.

Sci-Fi In July: Alien Vs. Predator (2004)

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Alien (1979) is one of the greatest science fiction/horror movies ever made. Predator (1987) is, well, it isn’t the greatest anything, but it is a ridiculous bit of 1980s sci-fi action elevated by some fine direction by John McTiernan and some charismatic performances by its stacked cast (including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, and Bill Duke).

Dark Horse Comics obtained the rights to both franchises and began releasing separate stories from them. In 1989, some genius decided to combine them and created the first Alien Versus Predator mashup. There are a lot of comics, and I’ve not read any of them, so I can’t comment intelligently. My understanding is that the Predators, at some point, found some Alien eggs and have been breeding them ever since. With the intent of periodically releasing them so that they can be hunted.

A quick primer if you’ve never seen any of the films. A Predator is a technologically advanced alien species that flies to various planets and hunts the native species for sport. The Aliens are Xenomorphs, incredibly dangerous, but not particularly advanced, creatures with acid for blood.

There are numerous films in both franchises, and two crossover movies. The crossovers got terrible reviews and are generally considered some of the worst films in either franchise, which is why I’ve avoided watching them for so long. I found a cool DVD boxed set at Goodwill the other day that contains the first four Alien films, two Predator movies, and both of the crossovers. And here we are.

For the first thirty minutes, Alien vs Predator creates a promising setup. Wealthy industrialist Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen) (the Weyland-Yutani corporation features heavily in the Alien franchise) discovers a massive pyramid structure buried some 2,000 feet below the surface of a tiny island off the coast of Antarctica.

Weyland gathers a bunch of smart people, and they investigate. I love a good story where a group of specialists investigates something mysterious and discovers monsters, or ghosts, or aliens. I can completely get behind that in a film.

The difficulty of an Alien/Predator mashup is that they are both aliens. Big, scary monsters. The Xenomorphs are basically killer animals that can’t communicate in any real way. The Predators canonically speak a non-human language that is never translated (at least not in the films). Making an interesting story with just these two creatures would be difficult. One likes to be able to relate to at least one character in a story.

I really wish they’d make that film, though. They always add humans into the mix, and humans just muck up your Alien/Predator mash-up. They don’t get developed well, and for the most part, they just become cannon fodder for the monsters. I think you could make a really good AVP film without any humans at all.

Here’s where things get stupid. Our heroes (such as they are) come to the Antarctic island only to discover someone or something has already drilled a hole down to the pyramid. Naturally, it is the Predators who drilled the hole. Apparently, the pyramid is theirs. They keep a bunch of frozen Xenomorphs down there, and every hundred years, they come to Earth, unfreeze them, let them feed on humans to grow big and strong, then hunt them for fun.

We spend a little time watching the humans muck about in the pyramid. Then they unwittingly unleash some Facehuggers, and quick as you like, they burst out of their chests and become full-fledged Xenomorphs.

A few Predators, who have apparently been hanging out in Earth’s orbit waiting for this to happen, fly down for some (finally) Predator on Alien action. Most of the humans are dispatched pretty quickly, though a couple last a while, and there is at least one survivor (because, of course, there is).

It was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who helmed films like Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, and several of the Resident Evil films. And like those films, his direction isn’t terrible, he’s not incompetent, but neither is it particularly memorable. He’s just good enough to keep you watching, but bad enough you wish you hadn’t.

That pretty much sums up my feelings on this film. It is better than I expected to be, but my expectations were incredibly low. I still think you can make a good Alien Vs. Predator movie, but this is definitely not it.