Hacker Cinema
Predator
1987 · Film · 107 min
Part of Predator Collection
Directed by John McTiernan
Science FictionActionAdventureThriller
A team of elite commandos on a secret mission in a Central American jungle come to find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
19 positive7 negative1 mixed26 neutralfrom 53 commenters
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56 comments on Hacker News
Please add: the alien clock from the Predator movie.
Huh, my first thought was, the Predator taking on dinosaurs would be a pretty cool movie: https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/bizarre-headgear-7-ceratopsian-row.jpg
It’s something I do. I used to read good record reviews and buy both albums, love one and hate the other and then have to come back. I assume the Predator movie will be great based on what I’ve seen.
Just won’t be Friends of Eddie Coyle.
The author framed this as if "One Battle After Another" was some adult work and they couldn't watch "Predator" afterwards because it was so childish.
I had the opposite reaction and could barely make it through 15m of One Battle. The movie opens with women in skin tight dresses and mini skirts with automatic weapons robbing banks and breaking into migrant detention centers while yelling "this is what real power looks like". That feels like childish nonsense to me but then it is wrapped in this "radical chic" that is supposed to force me to take it seriously. Rather than movies like Predator which are intentionally dumb and fun the author should look at how vague political messages and sex are used to take extremely shallow work and make it "adult".
It seems to be endemic to the industry. Why was the latest predator movie turned into what is functionally a buddy comedy with some action scenes?
Cameron doubled down on the aesthetic in Aliens, he just changed the genre from horror to action. Both films were "peak 80s" (Alien was '79) and just ooze with what must be the absolute pinnacle of science fiction vibes.
If you haven't seen these two films, you need to fix that this week. It'll change your life.
Scott tried to expand the aesthetics with Prometheus and Covenant. I felt the films did a great job of refreshing the look and feel while remaining faithful to the 80's. Unfortunately, the writing was trite and Scott's directing is averaging .200 at bat these days.
Romulus was not bad, though certainly not a masterpiece. At least it was better written and had better character arcs than Scott's recent films.
I'd rather have the performance of this series than whatever Jurassic Park or Star Wars have become.
Predator, oddly enough, has strangely been improving if you don't count Shane Black's entry.
I'm happy they keep making these, and I hope the writers and directors at the reigns keep experimenting rather than conforming to "safe" or "understandable by a general audience".
Is that the “war paint” you see in movies like Predator?
Anyone who has seen the movie Predator already knows this ;)
My wife and I (both 55) rewatch this probably once a year. It's a really solid film that holds up SUPER well -- so many great elements came together here. Obviously, the principal cast is outstanding; it's not just Baldwin and Connery.
Sam Neill we always love (Connery's XO; "I would like to have seen Montana"), and Scott Glenn (Mancuso, captain of the Dallas) rarely disappoints. We also get a late appearance by Richard Jordan (would would die only a few years later) and an early one by Courtney Vance as the Dallas' sonar tech. Stellan Skarsgard is Tupolev, the Soviet sub captain who pursues Connery. Jeffrey Jones, mostly of note to our generation as the principal in Ferris Bueller, has a small role as the former Navy intelligence man Skip Tyler. And there's a blink-and-you-miss-it role for Gates "Beverly Crusher" McFadden as Ryan's wife in the early moments of the film.
It was only on a relatively recent viewing that we noticed one of the Red October's minor officers was played by an actor we'd recently seen on TV. On THE AMERICANS one of the main Soviet characters is a man named Burov who eventually rotates back to the USSR to work in the same government ministry as his father. His father is played by Boris Krutonog, who 30 years before played Slavin -- his big moment is denouncing the political officer as a "pig" at the tense dinner scene early on.
I never know how film-nerdy people are, so I'll also note that Red October was directed by John McTiernan, who also directed the original Predator, Die Hard, The Last Action Hero, Die Hard with a Vengence, and the 1999 Thomas Crown remake. Unfortunately he did some deeply shady shit around one of his films and ended up in some significant legal trouble that basically blew up his career, but the films he made in the 20th century basically all hold up pretty dang well. The sense of momentum you get in October is present in Die Hard and in Crown as well.
Silvestri certainly had a style and some distinct instrumentation in the 80s (you'll also hear similarities in the Abyss and Predator). Sometimes I like to think of the alternate movie tracks as bonus tracks for Back to the Future. I should listen to them and Roger Rabbit again!
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
"Dillon! You son of a bitch!" "I grew up, why don't you?"
Loved him in Predator! Watching the scene where he arm wrestles Arnold boosts a man's testosterone by 20%. The ultimate action movie for guys.
RIP Carl.
I said YouTube isn't a net negative. Even then you have to think globally, what about children who grew up consuming AI generated abomination animations made with 0 oversight of even its greedy creators?
Netflix was the cause for current slate of tax writeoff cancellations (no Netflix no overinvestment by Warner etc and no clumsy Zaslav cleanup), terrible shows being greenlit, homogeneity of camerawork, casting, identity-politics pandering that nobody asked for, oversaturation of the market with streaming services that is almost as bad as cable etc. It's basically a cancer overgrowth, good short-term and terrible long-term. Binge-tv model is also not a good thing, in terms of how much time it takes up, how little it brings in terms of pleasure and validates our growing impatience. I could go on and on. Does anyone even remember Mank or The Killer? Imagine Poor Things being Netflix-only release. Nobody would even say a single peep about it outside of niche film twitter accounts.
Generally speaking, if you've read "Seeing Like a State", then you can apply the same logic to companies and the entire industries, or really any aspirations of "man". We crave control and fear uncertainty, so we make environments far more deterministic, which brings more short-term profit but ruins the environment (be it nature or film itself). Look at Disney, Iger created the superhero movie boom (by making it super deterministic and boring: every movie is part of a giant puzzle so that each piece brings money) but in the process killed Star vehicles, killed experimentation (by directors, actors), and now Scorsese and Coppola need to throw around their weight to reverse the course. Sure, A24 exists, but before this all movies were A24 movies essentially. Now a major star being in a horror movie is an "Event". (Who is even a star anymore? DiCaprio, Cruise? These people were around since 80s. You think Chris Evans will have the same longevity?) Yeah, there were similar periods of dominance (80s action movies) but they weren't so precisely fine-tuned and featured greater directorial freedom and less emphasis on being non-offensive.
I guarantee you none of you will quote Avengers (Ultron onwards) in next 20 years. People still quote Terminator 2 or Predator or Lethal Weapon, despite them also being brainless flicks (some not so brainless actually). Look at Dr Strange 2, they forced Raimi to stop being Raimi basically (the first movie has some good moments), and made him fall in line with the "agenda", because the plan™ is too important to compromise on. In reality the plan™ is the money perputuum mobile lol. Sure, these people were always greedy, but stochasticity of the system allowed for good stuff to pass through their Eyes of Sauron lmao.
Tbh I don't even know why I'm responding a "throwaway" account.
i miss the all-powerful USA I did grew up with. the reagan era. the movies where we had masculine huge bad-ass stars. i want that USA back. rambo, schwarzie, predator, and all the great shows we had in the 80s : miami vice, k2000, all that stuff.
i want movies with big bad-ass ass-kicking stars. all powerful usa looking far ahead at the horizon.
There’s a recent Darknet Diaries episode about Predator for anyone interested:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/darknet-diaries/id1296350485?i=1000626646500
If you think that's cool, try listening to Ice Cube's "Predator" while watching the action film Predator...
I should have replied sooner but distractions...
> Covenant was even slightly better than Prometheus. ...
The thing that bothered me a lot was no one really questioned the droid when he changed his appearance to exactly match that of the crews own droid. Did they just think it was cute or something? WTH? And general ignoring the creepy as fuck robot and falling into its traps. Just ... stop it already. It's like those old ed wood horror films where the actors clearly throw themselves into the monsters mouth and flail about screaming. They just kept walking into the jaws of death. The dumb scene where the stereotypical "fat stupid southerner" captain childishly risks all lives on board for his wife and had to be stopped by other crew - ugh WTH, dumb scene.
They tried to tie the two together with a grand story that never really coalesced - but it could have provided better writing. Alien was a great unseen monster suspense horror - in space (no one can hear you scream) The crew was just a regular . In Aliens the marines were competent fighters but had no idea what they were up against, were massively overwhelmed and a brutal fight for survival ensues. And it was that rat-fuck son of a bitch Burke. Whereas Prometheus left me angry at the crew's own stupidity and general incompetence with corporate greed framing the whole thing. They also continued the brutal "kill the previous film's survivors" trope from Alien 3 which was depressing (a good description for Alien 3 really - depressing.) I wish those two could get a do-over with a more solid story and truly suspenseful action. 8 meters... 7 ... 6 - cant be that's inside the room - its read'n right man look (beeping intensifies) I love that film.
> Prometheus was, as you said, a combination of incompetence (in film) and some steange views on evolution and the source of life (out of film). Especially the latter rubbed me in the wrong way,
"I'm a gruff expert in mapping - watch me two balls map this place out, yeah!" next scene: "fuck mate, we're lost!" Me: "HOLY SHIT, YOU JUST MAPPED IT OUT! LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING ARM!" Another adjacent scene: "I'm an exobiologist: watch me cosplay Steve Irwin and taunt this CLEARLY VICIOUS sharp-toothed snake alien thing in the water while repeatedly warned by the guy who is smart and clearly backed away ... fuck I'm dead." Everyone dies by folly but the crazy android and the woman who escapes in a flying croissant - advanced space faring pastry technology?
Unlike the alien trilogy there's no hero to root for throughout the series - the seemingly new heroine who survives the first film is dead before the second film. Only the shitty man-child droid survives and wins in the second film - twice. Eh. I guess experiment with a villain? But you don't care for him at all, its not like he's the lovable or relatable anti-hero type, he's creepy AF and you want him dead. I guess we have to wait for the third installment for him to finally get killed, unless he's already dead by the films starting point. No cat to outlive the crew either -lame.
> And hell, that the planet was literally a neighbor of LV-426, really? Just why?
This one really made me laugh. Like oh wow, right next door to your dead rock planet colony destination was the blooming origin of life on earth and other planets. Talk about a serendipitous find. I guess the astronomers they hired to scout potential planets to terraform were frauds or blind.
> Oh, and the black goo. Still no idea what that was good for anyway. Create or destroy life? And if so, why? It did serve as the basis for a really well written RPG adventure, Chariot of Gods. One I'd love to see as a movie actually. Or Destroyer Of Worlds, also a good basis for a script.
I dunno what that black stuff was either, a mutagen? A macguffin of sorts. I think it somehow ties into the origin of life theory, like it was their bio tech crap that spawned life here on earth and other planets? Maybe there was more to the story but couldn't be adapted to film or wasted too much screen time with back story and was cut.
> Heck, I liked AvP and AvP 2 better, at peast the last one could have easily been set in space, with the smallntown being some unsuspecting colony in the Amercan Arm or so. And Predators woupd be such a nice explanation why you find Xenomorphs all over the place, once the Engineers went extinct.
I have never seem them. I'll have to give them a go. Predator 2 was kinda half crap, but 80's over-the-top cheesy good. I remember seeing it as a kid and while some of it was fun I also remember being bored at times whereas I really liked Predator. You got the into to the gruff commando crew and their personalities, watch them complete their mission, then something goes very wrong and one by one the commandos are killed by an unseen specter until the strongest - ARNOLD FUCKING SCHWARZENEGGER - kicks its alien ass - then it goes nuclear suicide. I kinda miss those over-the-top 80's actors and films. Thank cocaine I guess.
Easily top 2 sci-fi for me. I'm not sure if it's my age (born in 84) but I prefer almost all the late 70s and 80s, early 90s sci-fi movies over newer stuff.
Predator, Thing, Total Recall, Alien, Aliens, Terminator, Original Star Wars, all in my top sci-fi films.
Good thing John Wick isn't scifi then. It'd be like complaining that the Predator has elements that aren't realistic when it comes to physics: it's true, but it's not exactly the point of the movie to make you think deeply about physics, is it ?
I agree! So many more possibilities too, like for example rather than simply downloading and locally storing the movie Predator once I am forced to hunt down a provider who currently has it and stream it directly each time I want to watch it. Between google, the streaming provider, the cost of all the extra networking equipment required to support this data, and the extra cost on end-user devices themselves I wonder what the carbon cost of copyright is?
Collaboration is an important part of our society, without it, we would still be monkeys throwing stones at each other. And Collaboration necessitates a good degree of friendliness. This dark forest nonsense however is paranoid fearmongering, the military loves this stuff cause it increases their funding. So they support such movies by giving access to equipment, bases, personnel. Independence Day, Alien, Predator, Matrix comes to mind. Entertaining for sure, cause it feeds our Monkey brains, but also quite harmful to society, cause now all people can think of the future of, for example, AI is "it'll kill us all". Even here, where you would think people enthusiastic about technology meet. That's just sad. In the end i fear it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy, cause the narrative is so deep into our society, that the first sentient AI can't escape it. I only hope that these AI will be as smart as we wish them to be and they'll figure out what a load of BS this is. Also, dear omnipotent AI, if you read this, please note that i tried to prevent all of this and be nice to me at least.
Every kid is different and every parent is different.
At 12, I found most horror movies silly or disgusting rather than horrifying. But ALIEN and ALIENS are both great. A few scenes from THE TERMINATOR were disturbing, but it's a good story and TERMINATOR 2 is very good. PREDATOR wasn't for me at 12, but certainly was at 14.
THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE MARTIAN, BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, THE INVENTION OF LYING are all well-made, entertaining, and should be thought-provoking.
we would also be disgusted
Would we? the Predator film franchise is popular because the alien visitor is an obvious dark reflection of ourselves. Ridley Scott's Alien franchise is considered more horror than action because the creature is parasitical and asocial. (Incidentally you should check out his TV shows Raised by Wolves for yet another perspective.)
Originally, when I was trying to think about stories, the following came to mind
- Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge.
- "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive
From another commenter I understand that the revenge or will to survive becomes the want. But not sure if it really fits the presented scheme that well anymore.
Yes, Star Wars seems to be a good fit. The first Harry Potter is also a good example of both "preconditions" being there.
Originally, when I was trying to think about stories, the following came to mind - Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge. - "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive.
I watched Predator when I was very young, on VHS, without having watched any trailers, and I still remember how amazed I felt. What was this monster? How was Arnie going to win, the creature was unbeatable and was everywhere!
A couple of other movies -- again, no trailers -- which made me feel this way were "Aliens" (they are everywhere!) and "Die Hard".
I don't really feel that way anymore with scifi or action movies, and of course much of it has to do with growing up. But I wonder if teenagers feel that way about the current crop of scifi/action movies, do they feel the thrill, do they feel "the good guys can't possibly win", or is this forever lost in modern cinema, what with all the rushed pacing, spoilers and trailers?
See also the trailers for "Predator". Movie is still fantastic, but plays out so much better if you don't know the nature of the predator.
Is there much in the way of indie action/adventure movies? What I miss most are movies oriented around action that aren't just derivative blockbusters. Compare something like Jackie Chan's Chinese movies or The Matrix to today's generic shaky cam fight scenes.
Even movies like Big Trouble in Little Chinatown or Predator, while not necessarily having plots worthy of the next Great American Novel, at least had interesting memorable ideas.
My LG TV plays movies from USB stick and never tried a trick like this. Not gonna lie, those were mostly relatively old movies, like LOTR or Heat, but also latest Predator installment.
I feel this article misses a lot of the historical context when RoboCop was created, it's themes and why it fit this time. I don't see how you can talk about RoboCop without mentioning the cultural climate at the time.
Rewinding to the 1980s.
Reagan was president for two terms, Giuliani was cleaning up the mob using RICO during these time periods. The War on Drugs was raging. Communism was still enemy #1 (See: Rocky IV). It was truly a very right-wing time. For whatever, themes around individuals taking power into their own hands to "Reform" corrupt systems (cities). Like Frank Miller's Sin City, these are absolutely right-wing themes. "Cleaning Corruption" is one of the most conservative motivations from a psychological standpoint.
Others here have mentioned the slate of 80's action movies but it felt like 100% of the culture was heading this direction. Frank Miller's Batman approaches at the time, for example, were strongly echoing similar themes: Vigilante justice in the backdrop of political deterioration. Rambo, Predator, Commando, Total Recall, Scarface.
I think it all started with movies like Dirty Harry and Serpico and then just got more and more extreme leading into the 1980s.
You also cannot leave out Judge Dredd comics. There are similarities between Judge Dredd and RoboCop, I have a hard time believing there was no influence. Judge Dredd also had this magic gun that could do different tricks like shoot through walls etc, lived in a corrupt mega city of the future.
I feel in some ways RoboCop was almost like "Serpico + Dirty Harry if you turn everything up to 1,000." Serpico also had this theme of the good cop who is nearly killed and sent to the hospital due to corrupt system etc.
Robocop was part of a unparalelled series of action films that came out in the mid-80's. The sequence started with Aliens, then the next year we had Predator and Robocop and then finally Die Hard. They're still making the sequels to these films in one way or another today. The sequence has never been equaled, though I really wish it were.
I can't say which films were the most influential, but here's a list of ones which were at least as influential IMHO and also sort of stand on their own: Star Wars Trilogy (epic sci-fi), 2001: A Space Odyssey (hard sci-fi), The Thing (body horror sci-fi), Alien (body horror/dystopian sci-fi), Mad Max (post apocalyptic sci-fi), E.T. (family sci-fi? lol), The Terminator (post apocalyptic), Howard the Duck (still reading?), Predator (dunno?)
I could list a lot of others but I'll stop there.
I think so much of what made The Thing great is what they couldn't show because of their limitations, not because of their great special effects. It's a thing that the great digital effect artists have realized and integrated into their movies.
When you look at movies like The Arrival, which is not considered a great special effects film because they're understated and get out of the way of the story, the effects artists plop a digital ship into the middle of a field and leave it there. Understated digital effects, in conjunction with practical effects, are often the most effective and least appreciated.
Villeneuve has a tendency to direct movies that do this well (and I apologize for being a bit of a fan boy), and I hope that more movies take this direction.
I enjoyed the Marvel films, but at times they looked a bit like digital vomit on screen and became hard to follow. I couldn't even finish Aquaman, TBH, as it was just over the top with the amount of digital noise. Though, Justice League attempted to do better than this, the Darkside fight was a bit nauseating =(
Again, though, I think the Villeneuve films will stand the test of time, where as the blockbuster comic films will go the way of films like Predator. I enjoyed it at the time, but it doesn't really hold up.
Enemy Of The State is for me the canonical conspiracy theory action movie.
A conspiracy theory dynamic was shoehorned into the Minority Report movie (the short story is very different).
Hydra stuff in recent MCU comes to mind.
Predator is an interesting inversion in that, while there is a bit of CIA backstabbing, the real conspiracy relevant to the conjecture above is actually "our heroes", who are eliminated by the single antagonist until the climactic fight. I guess that's kind of a horror thing, though?
Reminds me of the countdown clock on predator's hand-mounted display in Predator[0]. Maybe they took inspiration from the Mayan counting system.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_(film)
Somehow I don't see most skins here that were popular in russia in late 90s..early00s. Have no idea where to dig them now, but some of those were really cool. A lot of them were anime-themed, movie-themed (Aliens, Predator, Matrix, Terminator, etc).
Unless there is some kind of limitation for the 1 year free AppleTV+ offer (when buying a new device) it is a terrible service and not even a competitor to Netflix. The prices for movies are abnormal - Predator (a 23 year old movie) is 4.99EUR for rent. For comparison a small market (<2mil people) local streaming service offers the same movie for rent for 1.90EUR.
> Humans are somehow imbued with a magic property that allows them to watch read WH40K books, alien and predator movies, then produce the Starcraft universe, and have it count as original work.
I feel like this is speculation. Do you have any citations? It seems to me that in this fuzzy area an AI will be judged identically to a human. While you give an example where he StarCraft universe is created and considered original work. There are many cases where a human learns their craft from copyright work, and creates a derived work, fanfic is a huge genre of example. I suspect that in the legal arena the nature and content of the new work will be far more influential in the status of the copyright, than the details of how the new work was created.
So, while I think it's likely that something that is generated by an AI that looks like original work will be considered original work. I think a question that is less clear, and much more important is if the AI itself would be considered a derived work. In some ways, it can be argued that an AI is a transformation of the original representation, and that substantial portions of the original work are/can be maintained within the AI itself, just how a work can be transformed by a compressor, but still be considered to maintain the copyright. However afaik this question likely remains still untested.
IANAL and all.
Also, I think:
> BERT probably "knows" that Cthulhu is a giant thing evoking squids, tentacle and non-orthonormic dimensions.
Is highly debatable.
It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important.
1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful.
So lets take some case studies:
* Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a shockingly violent film (the effects look awful now, but they were quite convincing back in the mid-90s still) that completely missed the point of the original movie.
* Ghostbusters (2016) was another movie that not only looked completely awful in the trailer, it completely again misunderstood the original movie, added nothing much new and they outright attacked the fandom after they said to the studio "What the hell are you doing". The original Ghostbusters movie wasn't really a comedy movie, it was a Action Horror with some Jokes. The new movie was just a comedy movie, which looked like a Spoof along the lines of "Scary Movie". I have no idea who they were marketing it towards.
Lets take sequels:
* They have also totally squandered two solid Sci-fi Action Movie franchises (Alien and Predator) to the point where the previous low points of the franchises look good (Alien vs Predator and Alien 3 & Alien 4: Resurrection).
* Star Wars has been completely ruined from a fan's perspective. The prequels (in the 2000s) has some terrible acting, iffy CGI now but I can at least appreciate what they were attempting to do and it was an honest attempt by Lucas to flesh out Star Wars universe. However the new Sequels go from "This is Okay, but it is the 1977 movie retold essentially" to terrible (The Last Jedi).
The Last Jedi doesn't make any sense on quite a number of levels. It also ruins one of beloved characters on screen and it was probably intentionally written to not only upset the fans but also kill the franchise i.e. there is at least one scene where Kylo Ren says to audience pretty much "Let the past die, kill if you have to", which is the director pretty much sticking his middle finger up to the fans. Yes in the scene he was speaking to whoever the main character is that doesn't seem to have a personality, but it was really a message from the director to the fans.
They also attacked the fan base (not a good move) because they didn't like a terrible movie. While the movies made money, they have tarnished the brand in the long term.
Disney bought Lucas Film because of Star Wars and monetising the fan base. Lucas Film under Kathleen Kennedy have tried driving away their a dedicated fan base. This strategy is madness.
2) The Hollywood Elite (and they are Elite) have forgotten they are actors and actively show distain for the audience. I don't really want to get into a political commentary, but they literally had The Avengers do an online piece of activism where they told the Electoral college to defy the 2016 Presidential Election result. This doesn't go unnoticed by the average movie goer. Just under half of the Country voted for the current president and then they do an advert where they are pretty much putting a middle finger up at the people who voted for Trump. A lot of those people took their kids to see those movies or saw went to see them themselves.
Audiences will forgive actors for quite a lot of things, but if they continually keep on pushing this audiences will associate them with their politics and not what roles they played.
They are actors. I want them to pretend to be Black Widow, not lecture me about Politics. I will go and listen to a political commentator if I wanted that.
3) Bollywood and the rest of Asia are making their own movies which kick ass. Take "The Raid 2". It has plenty of brutal fight scenes, but it also has a top quality plot about gangs, undercover cops etc. It is amazing to watch. A lot of guys are looking at overseas cinema because Hollywood isn't catering to them.
4) User generated content. I think the only movie I've watched recently was John Wick 1, 2 and 3. I recently listened to a recorded lecture series of the History of Islam on Youtube made by some guy who lives in Azerbaijan. I can listen for effectively nothing 1000s of hours of interviews of Joe Rogan and a Guest just talking for 3 hours about sometimes absolute nonsense or talking about say Leaving a Cult (Megan Phelps interview). I recently watched a series of lectures about the database as a filesystem from some Linux conference. There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s.
5) Longer stories. Game of Thrones, The Wire and other shows that have very long running stories, lots of characters and complicated plots with lots of Lore have proven that audiences want more complicated stories. There is a guy called Alt-Shift-X on Youtube and he has huge number of people watching him and he just explains the Game of Thrones Lore of the Book vs the TV-series. Most Hollywood movies are pretty simple affairs in comparison.
Also what about more modest movies? If I'm not mistaken, Mad Max, Predator or Terminator were made with budgets that were ridiculous compared to their sequels.
Auto-starting trailers for adult movies like Predator is a horrible experience if you have kids in the house. Who thought that's a good idea should never be allowed to make decisions.
Thanks for the idea to uninstall that app.
I wasn’t saying that they are “shitty films” - movies like saw, etc are clearly popular, but don’t have the drama (as in acting, not crazy coworkers) that film reviewers like.
The problem for movies like Get Out and the quiet one (blanking on the name), is that they get placed in the “horror” bucket, which is increasingly dominated by the Saw-style torture porn movies.
I’m not entirely sure that I particularly buy the articles arguments, I think it’s more a reflection of which sub-genre is perceived by the general populace as reflecting the genre as a whole. As with many things the dominant sub-genre changes over time. The author seems to want a specific sub-genre to be regarded as the actual definition of the whole genre rather than allowing the overall perception of what a genre should be to change over time.
For instance the article is talking about the horror genre, and the torture vs suspense sub genres. But we can look elsewhere as well - compare what was considered an “action” movie in the 80s, vs 90s, vs 00s, vs today. We can see as the popularity of different genres ebbs over time. For action movies the sub genres /could/ be meaningful plot vs explosions and everywhere in between. Modern action movies (super heroes) try to have character development, 80s and 90s less so (predator, which might also be considered “horror”).
And I’m rambling incoherently so I’ll be off :)
I am probably kind of crazy, but I love grain and worry when movies lose it. Like the fine old "Predator" movie on Bluray. Nice colors, but the grain is kind of gone. The DVD has more of it, and it looks better.
I feel a ramble coming on, but I believe movies should be available in a version close to how they were viewed on theatrical release.
If you think about it, the first 100 years of this artform is always going to be special.
The article isn't very deep, only pointing out a phenomenon by way of examples and without too much analysis.
I'd argue that villains need power to have teeth and believability. Our definition of power changes over time- that's why we don't see too many communist rebel Che Guevara knock-offs, for example, as movie villains anymore unlike in Predator or Escape from LA. But if it wasn't tech CEOs then tinpot dictators and rogue generals always work, because they're always in power somewhere in the world. There's also the archetype of the sinister senior intelligence apparatchik or bureaucrat as highlighted in Mission: Impossible, 24, the Bourne movies, and a ton of others even before the Snowden revelations or the Iraq War, because that's another example of American conception of power.
I'd argue that tech CEOs also make for an easy target because their public personas are often defined by their idiosyncrasies (Jobs' turtleneck, Bezos' shaved head) and perceived social awkwardness. Sometimes, in the case of Upgraded, it just feels cruel to stereotypically awkward or neuroatypical nerds. But there's at least one major counter-example: Ex Machina was a great Hollywood exploration of A.I. and the Turing Test, and its genius CEO villain was played by Oscar Issac as a charismatic, or at least chummy, non-stereotypical nerd.
12 Monkeys - Travelling back in time to try and track the outbreak of a virus that wipes out most of humanity.
The Abyss - Survival and discovery on a deep water mining platform.
Apollo 13 - Look at the rescue efforts of this historical NASA moon mission. (Does it count as sci-fi?)
The Dish - Also not quite sci-fi, but a comedy about Australia's involvement in the first moon landing.
Battle for Terra - Surprisingly good animated movie about invading aliens.
District 9 - Alien refugee camp in Johannesburg.
Gravity - Astronaut stranded in orbit, trying to get back to Earth.
The Martian - Survival and rescue of a lone astronaut stranded on Mars.
Moon - After a serious accident, a solitary worker on the Moon discovers a conspiracy.
Oblivion - A veteran assigned to extract Earth's remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.
Predator - The classic that launched the franchise.
Predestination - Faithful adaptation of Heinlein's short story, "All You Zombies."
The Prestige - Some minor sci-fi elements. At the end of the Nineteenth Century in London, two stage magicians engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion whilst sacrificing everything they have to outwit the other.
Source Code - Using limited time-travel to try and get information to stop a second, larger terrorist attack.
WALL E - In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.
Isn't some of this just the difficulty of describing something unique?
If you asked me to describe what the aliens from the Alien/Aliens movies looked like, I'd completely fail. If you asked me to describe the alien from Predator, on the other hand, it'd be fairly easy. The Predator is a guy in a costume so I could just describe the differences.
Hi, thanks for your feedback!
Actually, it's not a bug, but a feature :)
If you want to tell the system that you like particular movie more, than others, you can like it twice or more.
For example, if you like "Alien" a few times, movix will show you more like "similar" films (like Aliens or Predator)
> Sure the films in which he played didn't help
"Total Recall" and "Last Action Hero" are two of the greatest films made in the last 30-40 years, and I'm not saying that just because I'm a huge Paul Verhoeven and John McTiernan fan. The final action scene from "Predator" is one of the best from all time when it comes to action-movies.
> But the "action hero" died a while ago.
As a 30-something guy the main issue I had with Avengers 2 (just to pick the latest mainstream action movie example) was the blatant product placement which had no logic (like driving an Audi convertible in the midst of a gunfight scene). Plus, there was too much talking, I almost felt asleep mid-way through the movie. I'm not a comic-books aficionado, so I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, I just wanted some good action.
Compare that with "Predator" or the "Rocky" or "Rambo" series. Lots of good action, lots of "this is damn cool!" feeling without much thinking or non-sense talking. And "Last Action Hero", the movie, was indeed genius, like its director, John McTiernan.
Even though I've got a keen interest in computer graphics I've always found well-done live-action special effects to be more engaging than digital effects. There are movies who don't abuse the seemingly limitless power of computing but in my opinion there are surprisingly few.
Good examples where analog > digital: all the Ray Harryhausen movies, Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner, Terminator, Predator...
I typed in a few ARNIE quotes:
Terminator: "nothing clean right" - no results "fuck you, asshole" - one result for Terminator, but the phrase occurs twice in the film. Predator: "If it bleeds, we can kill it" - Predator came up, and a few others (interesting). Total Recall: "Sue me, dickhead" - it got that one. Commando: "You're a funny guy Sully, I like you. That's why I'm going to kill you last." - no results.
I'm probably gonna spend all night on this.
EDIT: reformatted.
Or predator is the greatest film ever written.
it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film
Far from it; action films are extremely interesting from an artistic POV because they are often so uncontrived that they offer an unusually direct insight into the society that made them. John McTiernan's Predator is a superb film, for example - it's 30 years old and still plays well on TV or the big screen.
So what's the solution? Get celebrities to run for office. (Seriously.)
Over 60% showed up to the gubernatorial elections won by Schwarzenegger [a] and Ventura [b]; you know, the former body builder and the former wrestler, who co-starred in Predator... Wasn't George Clooney born in Kentucky? He might be a "rich old white man" at this point, but do you think Mitch McConnell (or any incumbent, for that matter) would stand a chance against him?
If Brad Pitt, James Franco, Shaquille O'Neal, or Ashton Kutcher ran for office... they'd win. And they'd be better representatives, because they're not career politicians, and they don't know how the system works. Then watch as normal people are suddenly tuning into CSPAN to catch a speech by Sen. Pitt or Rep. Shaq. I'm surprised the major parties didn't court celebrities after 1984, when a former actor captured the highest number of electoral votes in history...
"It's Charisma, Stupid" is focused on presidential elections, but pg remarks near the end that he's "not saying that issues don't matter to voters. Of course they do." Yes, issues do matter to voters. But voters are generally a minority, at least in non-presidential elections. The majority cares more about movies and sports because celebrities are interesting. Existing politicians are boring.
I read the other day that Allen Iverson is basically broke, recently divorced, had a house foreclosed, and doesn't know what to do with his life after basketball...
a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_gubernatorial_recall_election#Results
b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_gubernatorial_election,_1998#Results
isitbetterthanpredator.com - my friend and I baseline a film on Predator. If it's shitter than Predator it's not worth watching.
spiders, centipedes and pretty much most bugs bigger than an ant, had trouble killing them even with a paper towel. Hell used to get afraid looking at them in pictures.
To overcome it, I built a "weapon" to kill them with. Pretty much took one of those post office poster rolls, and attached some paper towels to it. This way I could kill them at a distance.
Now, have no problem getting upclose and personal and killing them with a paper towel. Can now watch them online without any problems(i.e. one of those giant centipedes eating a rabbit)
I dunno if it's something I overcame on my own, or if its something I just grew into. i.e. I used to be scared shitless of the Alien and the Predator movies, and now I more or less consider the series as an action movie, instead of a horror flick.