{"id":611,"date":"2018-09-24T23:41:49","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T06:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/?p=611"},"modified":"2018-09-24T23:41:49","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T06:41:49","slug":"the-predator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/2018\/09\/24\/the-predator\/","title":{"rendered":"The Predator<\/em>: The Real Victims are Anyone Who Paid Money to See This"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Predator<\/em> is probably the stupidest movie I\u2019ve seen since spring, and that\u2019s saying a lot\u00a0(The Meg<\/a><\/em>, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom<\/em><\/a>). Trailers (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>) and the movie poster<\/a> give away what passes for a plot. Sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) runs into a predator on one of his missions, gets locked up, and meets up with a group of random nutcases. The predator kills a bunch of people, and then a bigger predator shows up. Cue vast quantities of ineffective gunfire, multitudes of explosions, and a fair dose of assorted bladed weapons.<\/p>\n

\"Boyd

Boyd Holbrook and Olivia Munn in The Predator. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

Other characters include stock biologist\/scientist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), stock government super-secret program guy Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), and McKenna\u2019s stock super-intelligent son Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who manages to figure out how to use the predator\u2019s alien technology without much difficulty. Nobody turns in a particularly good performance, but that\u2019s not entirely the actors\u2019 faults. They\u2019re not given characters to work with so much as standard archetypes.<\/p>\n

Screenwriters Fred Dekker and Shane Black barely phoned this one in. Shane Black also directed, so that\u2019s a double dose of \u201cjust don\u2019t care\u201d from him. This is yet another one where the story is nothing but a thin excuse to go from one action sequence to the next. There was an insulting number of \u201csaved at the last second\u201d bits, and government agents and soldiers in this universe are apparently trained to wait several seconds before firing whenever their weapons are pointed at someone or something integral to the plot. Weak bits are relentlessly overused. Tourette Guy\u2019s outbursts get old real fast, but he doesn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

Spoiler Alert:<\/strong> Having Predator Space Dog suddenly wander into the scene for no reason besides LITERALLY puking up a weapon just when a protagonist needs it was kind of stupid the first time. It was downright insulting the second time they pulled the exact same lame stunt. End Spoiler<\/strong><\/p>\n

And since no Hollywood movie in 2018 is complete without a sanctimonious lecture, we learn that predator activity on Earth is increasing because global warming is about to make humans extinct. Predators need to get their human hunting in before we\u2019re all gone.<\/p>\n

\"Your

Your weapons are useless against The Predator. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

Okay, no one goes to see The Predator<\/em> in hopes of watching Shakespearean thespians enact a cinematic masterpiece. Sure, it was lame, but was it entertaining? The answer here is, sadly, no. You can only watch so many soldiers fire rifles at point blank range with no effect before it gets boring. You can only watch limbs and heads get cut off so many times before it loses all impact. Add the fact that it\u2019s almost impossible to care about any of the characters, and you have yet another movie that feels like watching your cousin play video games in God Mode. I know, I\u2019ve used that analogy a lot. But guess what? They\u2019ve been making a lot of movies like that the past few years.<\/p>\n

The Predator<\/em> is too much CGI, too little plot, too many pointless firefights, and too few decent characters. And, worst of all, it\u2019s just boring.<\/p>\n

Overall rating: 3\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Predator is probably the stupidest movie I\u2019ve seen since spring, and that\u2019s saying a lot\u00a0(The Meg, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). Trailers (here, here, and here) and the movie poster give away what passes for a plot. Sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) runs into a predator on one of his missions, gets locked up, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[266,271,270,269,272,267,268],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-boyd-holbrook","tag-fred-dekker","tag-jacob-tremblay","tag-olivia-munn","tag-shane-black","tag-sterling-k-brown","tag-the-predator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}