Last movie watched...

[TordelBack]

Bah, edit window expired:

As to the overall setup of the thing: we already have Predator 1 and 2, and we already have The Most Dangerous Game and its many, many iterations, so the new-ish thing is bringing the hunted to an alien planet: that's the fresh bit that has to work. But that bit has to replace the elements that are lost (the background conflicts, missions and motivations of the human cast in P1&2; the perspective/motivations of the hunters in MDG-alikes, and actually even P1&2), which it fails to do because it is completely uninteresting.  Other than matte in some fantasy planets into the sky and some rubbish crashed ships, and talk about different conditions, this planet is functionally and visually exactly like Earth, right down to the properties of rare and specific flora.  There's nothing to replace what has been lost, just disjointed unlikeable characters and one damn implausible thing after another.

Cripes, even The Clone Wars cartoon understood all this when they did their Dangerous Game episode: they started by showing the yanking of the protagonist from an ongoing battle, and her duties there, in one very visually-distinctive jungle world, before dumping her on another equally distinctive jungle world: they spent time showing the unusual flora and fauna of the game preserve world to make it real and relevant, they spent time giving their hunters characters, motivations and internal conflicts, and made the choices the hero made and the relationships between the hunted relevant to the conflict they were plucked from. Oh, and a surprise ending with fan-favourite characters. 

And this was a kids' cartoon with a running time of 44 minutes.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Star Trek: Of Gods and Men.

Well.....you know Tim Russ?  You know how he was a bit of a shite Vulcan in Voyager?  It's mainly cause he's a pretty piss poor actor overall, as he's shown in a few other shit things he's been in.  It seems, this was not enough shitness for him, he's decided to prove just how shit he is as a director too!  And by gosh, he does it in spades.  After watching this......garbage you are left in no doubt the man has not a single 'directing' bone in his body.

So why'd I watch it?  Well, it had Chekov, Uhura, and a fair few other names from the Trek series' in it, and I was curious.  You know what they say curiosity did to the cat?  It bored it to death with cheap CG, bad acting, awful sets, uninspired costumes, nasty make up, talentless camerawork, and capped it all off with the cherry of poison direction. It did you know, it so did.

[SmallBlueThing]

Yep, agreed, it really is pisspoor- but dont let it put you off other trek fanfilms. The James Hawley episodes (phase two/ new vaginas/ season four) is my favourite trek 'thing' in the world other than the original series proper and the best of the novels.


SBT

[Greg M.]

(phase two/ new vaginas/ season four)

To boldly go where no man has gone before....

[SmallBlueThing]

(phase two/ new vaginas/ season four)

To boldly go where no man has gone before....

Blame my phone please. And if I were still on my phone, no doubt that would read "blow my penis please", or somesuch.

SBT

[Hawkmumbler]

(phase two/ new vaginas/ season four)

To boldly go where no man has gone before....

I doubt any Treckie has been any where near a vag in their life.

[Professor Bear]

A Freudian field day.

Even something as simple and unoriginal as that would have injected some sense of cohesion into what amounted to: here's a thing; here's a thing you've seen before; here's another thing; here's a thing you liked last time; here's another thing; have we done 107 minutes yet? No? Okay: here's another thing.

I thought Predators made for a decent enough B-movie, though my opinion took a sharp turn downward after the super-predator shit, which is so abominably stupid I am convinced it came about after a focus group discussion with children.  Slow children.  Even to the end I was hoping for a swerve where it turned out the super-predators were humans who'd reverse-engineered predator technology or something, but no, just face-value, a to b storytelling based on some pretty lame story ideas.

If you imagine you're watching a low-budget knock-off of the Predator series made by shameless mockbuster hucksters like the Asylum, though, it works just fine.

[TordelBack]

Even to the end I was hoping for a swerve where it turned out the super-predators were humans who'd reverse-engineered predator technology or something, but no, just face-value, a to b storytelling based on some pretty lame story ideas.

I was holding out for Doctor Topher to be a disguised alien who was running the whole show, because even as stupid as that would be surely the actual twist was too bloody obvious to be true.

[HdE]

The more time passes, the greater grows my loathing of Predators. It's a lazy, lazy, lazy movie.

I think the real problem with it is, it has an air of 'we made this coz we could!' about it. While it tries to add something new to the franchise, it makes the mistake of going for something big in the introduction of the super-predator.

I genuinely think the franchise is so firmly established now that this is the kind of thing the producers need to steer clear of. If fans don't like it - and lots of them didn't - it'll generate a huge backlash.

Also, the film is just generally a bit poo.

[pictsy]

This is tempting me towards a Predator marathon.  Question is, should I include AvP?

[Hawkmumbler]

This is tempting me towards a Predator marathon.  Question is, should I include AvP?

its better than Predators.

[Spikes]

I kinda dont mind Predators.
By that i mean its a film i dont really care about at all, but it has Predator's in it, and i can mentally filter out the rest of the shit, whilst watching it. (Ive seen it twice, btw)
But you would have thought Robert Rodriguez would have made a better job of this, though....

[Richmond Clements]

But you would have thought Robert Rodriguez would have made a better job of this, though....

Rodriguez is a frustrating director. He has obviously got an incredible talent, but pretty much all of his movies are nearly brilliant, but miss the mark in some way.

[pictsy]

Rodriguez was only a producer on it, wasn't he?  One of six and not even the exec producer.

I've seen Predators once and I thought it was OK.  I liked that it went in a different direction to the other films, because I think I wouldn't have liked a re-hashing.  I don't actually remember it offending me in anyway and afterwards I was kind of hopeful for a new Predators franchise.  I don't even remember this super Predator you are all talking about.

I'm going to have to watch this film again.  I think I saw it the year it came out so my recollection is a bit hazy.

[TordelBack]

I'm going to have to watch this film again.

When you do, try to work out by what tortuous sequence of events the Death Row guy got there.