I was nine years old when I saw the first Predator movie.  My father thought it would be great fun to rent it from Blockbuster Video (remember those?) while my mother was out of town so we could “bond like men.”  Instead of bonding, I pissed all over him, the living room, and most of the hallway.  I also ended up with a very serious condition for most of my childhood where I would see a blurry figure and instantly sh*t myself.  Thanks dad.

Well, it’s been 22 years since McTiernan’s masterpiece was let lose upon the world and Predator has seen the big screen three times since.  All of them sucked.  It wasn’t always the Predators fault, but more on that later.  Why am I bringing this up?  Well, one of my favorite directors, Robert Rodriguez, is producing the next direct installment in the franchise “Predators.”  He’s got Nimrod Antal directing as of now — he’s the guy who did “Vacancy” with Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale in 2007 and most recently “Armored” with Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno and Skeet Ulrich.  When I heard about the talent, I got right on board, but once they announced the cast, I got nervous:

Now, some of those are bad, but none of them made me as nervous as this one:

One of the reasons the first Predator was great because we got to see The Terminator, Apollo Creed, The Body, and a porn star fight a crazy ass alien with technology, weapons and an awesome outfit that we had never seen before.  Our heroes were bad ass, and it was evident from the get go that our squad of protagonists had no problem killing anyone and were, in fact, very good at it.  But more than that, the movie played with layers of drama most action movies ignored.  We had the relationship between Dutch and Dillon; the bureaucracy and lies fed to troops through their government; and, like any good horror movie, characters who shouldn’t be afraid, sh*tting their pants.  The combination of testosterone, quality VFX, drama, and mystery has been absent in every incarnation since.

Take Predator 2…  First of all, whoever thought Danny Glover was a good choice for a leading man in the Predator series should get shot.  Danny Glover hasn’t been good in anything save the Lethal Weapon series (and that’s debatable) or the time he played that villain who loved naked women in his car.  Match that with Gary Busey, Ana-Lucia’s mom from LOST, The fraidy-cat marine from ALIENS and the Latino guy with the cool hat, and you get one of the worst casts assembled for any movie ever in the history of eyeballs.  Then there was the setting:  Los Angeles — in the future!  Everybody is shooting everybody, there are no white people anywhere (which seemed to attempt implying something), drugs abound, boobs flopping everywhere and gangs rule the street; the whole thing reeked of a studio’s attempt at “hip.”  It was a mess, except for the very, very last scene when one of the Predators gave Roger Murtaugh the pistol from way back when.  Now, the moment itself was lame because those bastards should have shot Danny’s punk ass on the spot — I know they’re hunters but it bugged me that they were so damned eloquent about the whole thing, but what was cool was the implication that these Predators have been using Earth as their own personal hunting grounds for quite some time (it was also neat to see the Alien skull).  Other than that moment, the whole thing was sh*t.  Danny Glover fighting the Predator across rooftops only helped me to realize how out of shape Danny Glover was.  At one point I actually thought, “Hey, if Danny can do it, then I can too!”  That’s a terrible realization to have at a movie you expected to terrify you.

Then we had both of the AVP movies.  First of all, I would like to give a hearty screw you to Paul W.S. Anderson for everything about that 2004 piece of trash.  He may have been able to save something up to the point he turned the Predator into a little b*tch and gave him a partner, fashioning her a shield and spear out of the defeated Alien.  Damn that movie and everything about it.  From the too-quick ingestion and production of face-huggers to aliens, to the waste of Bishop throughout.  That movie should have rocked me so hard my pubes turned gray, instead, I left the theater wondering if Hollywood saw the same Predator and Alien movies I grew up on.  AVP II was better (imho), but the directors should let us see the fight scenes next time instead of shooting everything close up like Batman Begins.

Now, back to PREDATORS:  I have faith in Robert Rodriguez.  I think he’s awesome.  I love El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Planet Terror and I’m looking forward to Red Sonia(?), but the Predator franchise is something should be handled with care and I can only hope that with Rodriguez overseeing everything, that something resembling my piss-happy-inducing days of yore is what he delivers.  I want the Predator to scare me.  I don’t want to feel like I could beat him up.  I want to see people tougher than me get their asses kicked.  And for the love of all things, I want to see the Predator hunt silently, ruthlessly, and with extreme skill.  Looking at the cast we’ve got so far, I’m nervous.  I was nervous for X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and it made me wish I was blind.  I was nervous for SPIDER MAN 3 and Venom gave me Gastro Intestinal Reflux Disease.  Now, I’m nervous once more and I really, really hope Rodriguez stays SIN CITY on this and delivers something close to source material that kicks me in the balls so hard I sneeze sperm.

Until next time,

Mr. Wolff