Shaun Munro ranks the Predator franchise from worst to best…
The Predator franchise has certainly endured its fair share of ups and downs over the last three decades. From the sequels and kinda-reboots that have attempted to take the series in ambitious new directions – with wildly varying results – to those shameless spin-off fans routinely pretend don’t exist, Predator continues to receive a staggeringly inconsistent treatment on-screen.
With the original Predator celebrating the 35th anniversary of its release today, and the new instalment Prey incoming this August from director Dan Trachtenberg, join us as we rank the six movies in the Predator series to date…
6. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Directed by The Brothers Strause.
Starring Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis and Ariel Gade.
AvP: Requiem was touted as the more violent, to-the-point R-rated follow-up to Paul W.S. Anderson’s predecessor, so fans were naturally distressed when this sequel turned out even more dissatisfying and ham-handedly executed than the first film.
It certainly gets mild credit for its ruthless brutality; a young boy is chest-bursted in the opening of the film and a pregnant woman is later graphically killed in full, grisly detail.
Elsewhere, characters who would conventionally be spared in a movie like this – the cute female love interest (Kristen Hager) for one – are randomly killed off, yet it ultimately ends up feeling more self-consciously edgy than giddily subversive. Part of the problem, inherently, is that we don’t care about any of the film’s characters, leaving the poor, talented likes of Reiko Aylesworth and John Ortiz deserving much better.
Despite the nothing characters, it is nevertheless a film front-loaded with ghastly “character development”, switching between a tedious family dynamic and obnoxious teenagers who look and talk like they stumbled off the set of a straight-to-video American Pie spin-off.
Though there’s plenty of the head-exploding mayhem fans demanded, AvP2 might be one of the worst-lit major Hollywood movies of the 21st century.
Suffering D.P. Daniel Pearl was forced to shoot Requiem in dark shadow to the point of lunacy, not merely confining the much-hyped Predalien to the shadows, but rendering most of the night-time scenes nigh-on incomprehensible. By the time the finale rolls around, you’re just watching two black blobs fighting in shadow and it’s utterly infuriating.
Ruthlessly violent as fans requested, but like the first AvP, Requiem pines too much for the human element in a monster-on-monster affair.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
5. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Starring Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen and Ewen Bremner.
It’s still not really clear why Fox felt that Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil) was qualified to direct a wish-fulfilment film starring two of the most beloved movie monsters of all time, with a PG-13 rating no less (though the Unrated Edition adds splashes of CGI gore).
This was a neat idea to 15-year-old boys everywhere – this past one included – and to give it some mild praise, AvP leans into the shameless fan-service with charming abandon; the Predator’s razor-wire net is neat as hell, and slicing a Facehugger in half with a shuriken has a sure gonzo appeal.
Honestly, there’s more here that isn’t bad than you might expect; the VFX have aged relatively well for a movie released in the early 2000s, there’s some appropriately eerie production design and location work, and the animatronic effects look pretty fantastic. Anderson’s direction even passes for basically restrained at points, and his coverage is silky smooth for the most part while convincingly blending practical and CGI elements.
AvP does a not-bad job of expanding the monsters’ lore without dumping exposition, at least until act three. However, the long-winded set-up is a major issue, with audiences having to wait 35 minutes for the first Predator-human encounter. As for the actual titular showdown you paid money for? An hour.
As is so often a problem in creature features, the film places too much of a focus on human survival at the expense of the loony titular attraction. There are also some wildly controversial tamperings with Alien and Predator mythology – the sped-up Xeno gestation cycle and a daft, over-explained flashback detailing a centuries-old feud between the species – but nothing tops the unintentionally comical team-up between Lex (Sanna Lathan) and the surviving Predator.
Speaking of which, Sanna Lathan does a fine, stand-up job in this movie and clearly deserved a much better film, namely one where she’s not paired with a Predator for the mostly wordless back-end of the third act.
Lance Henriksen is also fun and the likes of Ewen Bremner and Colin Salmon fill out the supporting cast nicely, while the peripheral meat puppets are offed with an agreeable nastiness that belies the family-friendly rating. For instance, two characters are violently dispatched mere moments after trading stories about their kids. Charming.
Though surprisingly well-made, AvP takes far too long to arrive at the shlock-filled showdown everyone came to see.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
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