New Trailer Friday

Robert Rodriguez's Predators

The Predator license has had a long and sordid past.  It started off strong with the 1987 cult classic, introducing us to the alien techno-phile hunter as he dispatched a crew of hard-ass American commandos, only to find himself in a mano-a-alieno showdown with everyone's favorite Austrian governor of Cah-lee-forn-ee-ah.

Then everything just started to go wrong.  First there was the tepid sequel, Predator 2 that put multiple Predators in L.A., which ended up being more of a weird, psuedo cop drama featuring everyone's favorite, too-old-for-this-shit cop, Danny Glover.

That probably would have been the end of this series, but as a shout out to one of Stan Winston's other works, when a collection of trophy skulls is briefly shown aboard the Predator's ship, an Alien skull from the Alien franchise was humorously added.  That's when the whole series really came off the rails.  First there was fan-fiction about Aliens vs Predators, then there were comic books, then video games, and then what we have been subjected to recently, the awful Alien Vs Predator movies, AVP and AVP Requiem.

So why even give this new film any second thought?  Here's the reason, the Predator license is no longer under the control of the corporate sequel machine, and was instead picked up by Desperado, Sin City, and Grindhouse/Planet Terror director, Robert Rodriguez.  Rodriguez has decided to forget everything that has happened since the original Predator and start from there, obviously referencing the sequel naming of convention of Alien to Aliens in an attempt to label this film as the true follow-up to the beloved 80s classic.  So no aliens, no Mayan temples, and no no-name actors.  Rodriguez has recruited Adrian Brody, Laurence Fishburne, and Topher Grace to star as part of a group of rag tag mercenaries who end up on an alien planet as the most dangerous game for the dreadlocked alien hunters. 

The trailer premiered at Austin's SXSW festival, and Rodriguez spoke a bit about it, and from what he said he seems to at least understand the mistakes made with the franchise.  That said, despite Rodriguez's obvious film talent, and the some fairly solid actors, I'm concerned that both the plot will be too much like the original, sans the awesomeness of Ahnold, and that neither Topher Grace nor Adrian Brody come to mind when I think of "bad ass space mercenaries."  Also, while Rodriguez is intimately involved with the production as producer, the director is Nimrod Antal, whose most recent work Armored did not receive glowing reviews from fans or critics.

But who knows, maybe this film will legitimately earn the vaunted "s" sequel title that it has so boldly staked out, or maybe this will be yet another failure in a long series of attempts by the moving going public to say "we don't need anything else but the original Predator."  Guess we'll find out come this July.