Yautja Fest - Predators (2010)

Father Malone and HP return to discuss Predators (2010) the first direct sequel to the Predator films in 20 years. The film was based on an original screenplay by Robert Rodriguez and directed by Nimrod Antal and starring Adrien Brody's "badass" voice, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins and many other Predators.

00:00 Introduction and Opening Remarks
01:16 Predators Movie Overview
04:44 Plot Summary and Key Characters
06:57 Comparing the Original Script to the Final Movie
12:38 Character Analysis and Performances
18:58 Predator Designs and Innovations
38:20 Unique Weapons of the Characters
51:28 Topher Grace's Character Twist
01:04:44 Extended Ending and Theories

HP
HP.musicplace.bandcamp.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mhm, weird way.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
We can kill a.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Good time. Shut up?

Speaker 4 (00:48):
What the hell are you?

Speaker 5 (00:55):
Welcome back to YOCHI fist. This is my bad as
Father Malone voice, So for the rest of the evening
you're gonna think, Oh man, Father Malone, he's a real betass.
Welcome back to Yeah that hurts.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Let's gonna get old real quick.

Speaker 5 (01:13):
Oh got real old in the throat real quick.

Speaker 6 (01:15):
Well, welcome back to Yahoo Ja Fest, where we are
discussing the Predator films in order chronologically speaking, and as
always with me to discuss it as mister HP, host
of Noise Junkies and Night, mister Walters, How are you HP?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I'm fantastic. I'm so pumped to get into this. After
the debacle that was Alien Versus Predator requiem, I was
ready for a palate cleanser and this was the perfect
palate cleanser, Father Malone.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
And what are we talking about? Predators? Here's the trailer.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
What's the last thing you remembered? All of a sudden,
there was a lightn and then I was pauling, who
are here?

Speaker 1 (02:08):
I was supposed to be executed two days ago.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
And I was in combat. So was that Black ops.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Will do this us.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
We were chosen just a for what.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
I brought it for the same purpose.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Being hunted.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
This planet is a game.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Preserve where the game.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, how don't we kill them?

Speaker 4 (03:20):
However you can.

Speaker 6 (03:31):
Predators released on July ninth, twenty ten, directed by Nimrod Antal,
written by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, based on characters
by Jim and John Thomas.

Speaker 5 (03:43):
Darring Adrian Brody.

Speaker 6 (03:45):
I just want to say, Christopher Grace Toafer Grace, Alice Braga,
Walton Goggins, Olig oh Man, this one Oleg Taktarov, Okay,
I'm gonna do it again now, Olig Taktaroff, Lawrence Fishburne,
Danny Freyhill, Mike got It goes on and on, mar
Herschela Ali, Louis Zaala.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
I'm naming everybody in the fucking cast. You know what.

Speaker 6 (04:06):
Here are the Predators Carrie Jones, Brian Steele and Derek Meers.
That's pretty much everybody, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, it's a sprawling cast, but a little look ahead.
It didn't like we've had sprawling casts in the past.
Couple of movies we reviewed, Father blahlone, but this one
didn't feel sprawling because everyone, all the characters were delineated
really well. You didn't spend too much time in any
one character. It was It's a lot of characters to

(04:34):
keep track of, but somehow it was easier than the
past two movies put together.

Speaker 6 (04:39):
You think the characters in this particular plot made more sense.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
One hundred percent. So the plot for this movie is,
basically is it seven seven disparate characters end up on
a mysterious planet. Let's say it's not Earth spoiler alert.
They don't know how they got there. They just literally
dropped from the sky in parachutes. They're all from all

(05:03):
different walks of life.

Speaker 6 (05:05):
They're from all different military backgrounds.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Fair point, fair point, they're all. The thing that links them,
it seems, is they're all murder killers. They're murderers. Adrian
Brodie's characterism is a mercenary.

Speaker 5 (05:20):
Some might say they're all predator.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
That's true. That's the double meaning of the title. So
they're all dropped onto this planet, literally dropped on this planet,
and they have to figure out why they're there. And
through the course of the movie, they obviously figure out
that they're there because they're being hunted by our favorite youches.
In this case, three of them are out to kill them.

(05:42):
It is essentially a game preserve, as Adrian Brodie's character
says at one point, it's a game preserve and they're
the game. So the movie becomes a They're very indebted.
They make no bones about the fact that they're indebted
to the first Predator movie. I think after AVP and
AVP Requiem, they realized that they needed to reboot and

(06:05):
readjust where the series was going. So they took that
as they're in spree.

Speaker 5 (06:09):
Okay, that is the plot for this movie. Now.

Speaker 6 (06:14):
Legendarily, this was produced by Robert Rodriguez, and the lore was,
and what we had heard about for a decade or
two before this film, or decade and a half anyway,
was that at one point Robert Rodriguez had been hired
to make a direct sequel to Predator and Predator two,
and that was Predators. He was hired to write a
screenplay in nineteen ninety six thereabouts.

Speaker 5 (06:35):
It was when he was doing Desperado, so.

Speaker 6 (06:37):
He wrote the script, and what we've heard is that
they didn't move on it. Then they ended up going
with other properties, and then after AVP Requiem eight shit,
they wanted to reinvigorate it, so they recontacted Robert Rodriguez.
He had that script rewritten, and that's the movie we got.

Speaker 5 (06:57):
Have you read Robert Rodriguez's draft of the screen?

Speaker 6 (07:00):
No, if not, I have, And let me tell you
other than the fact that there's a game preserve and
at one point there is a predator who is tied
up as a prisoner that becomes an ally. Very little remains.
For instance, it takes place on a distant planet. Okay,
that's similar. It takes place in the future, and the
lead character is Dutch Oh Schwarzenegger on another planet on

(07:26):
a Spanish Gallean pirate ship because he has deserted the
regular army, at which point the regular army shows up
and boards their pirate ship and they're all dressed like predators,
these humans, because what we come to find out, it's
a prison movie. First of all, it's the shipping Dutch
off to prison, and then they end up getting overrun

(07:49):
by predators, and then it's a series of them escaping
the predators over and over again, and finally at the
end they encounter the King predator, not a queen alien,
but a king creditor. Oh very clever, Robert, and they
do it out to the end, so basically not at
all the movie we ended up seeing.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Well, I'm glad that you cleared that up because a
couple of things. One, all of the making of stuff
that I saw, Robert Rodriguez is all over it, but
he was not credited as a writer on this, which
I found a little I know he produced it.

Speaker 6 (08:22):
But it was all I did too, And I thought,
if he had written the screenplay that this is based
off of, he's not going to take at least a
story by credit. And then I thought, Wow, he's really
magnanimous that he did that.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
I don't I What he said in interviews that I
saw him in was that the movie that he wrote
was going to be far too expensive for the time,
and it sounds.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
Like it's far too expensive for right now.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Clearly they took that the scenario as inspiration, but they
don't have an unlimited budget. But they made it work.
Like I said, the thing that hearkens back, there's so
much that hearkens back to the first movie. But the
biggest thing is that for the most part, this movie
takes place in a lush jungle, just like the first
Predator because I think they, like I said, I think

(09:09):
they watched the first Predator. They took all that they
could what worked from it, the direction, the setting, all
of this stuff, and they put it into this and
I have to say I was very happy to see that.
I understand a more jaundiced view could be its derivative.
It's maybe not the most original concept, but I really

(09:32):
liked it. What did you think of back to basics
for this particular movie you fought them alone?

Speaker 5 (09:36):
Let me answer in a couple different ways.

Speaker 6 (09:37):
First of all, I have to address the trailer that
we played earlier, because if you saw that trailer before
this movie, and then we're intrigued enough by that trailer
to go see that movie, you're probably going to be
at least a little bit pissed that they manipulated the
trailer and has a fake scene in it where I
saw that too. Adrian Brody gets the three dot laser
targeting on his head and then suddenly there are dozens

(09:59):
of them, as if there are going to be hundreds
of predators in store in this movie called Predators, just
like an Alien's which is this it's clearly aping it's
trying to make that connection for us that we're going
to get that sort of a thing.

Speaker 5 (10:12):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (10:13):
So I saw this movie at Man's Chinese Theater in
Los Angeles, and anytime I see a movie there, I
tend to like the movie just a little bit more
because it's Man's Chinese Cool. And I will say at
the time I did not like it all that I thought.

Speaker 5 (10:32):
I felt it was too derivative.

Speaker 6 (10:34):
Ultimately, I after Predator two, where we got to an
urban setting, I thought going to a jungle was a
step back. I don't care if we're on another planet,
just felt like a jungle, and ultimately.

Speaker 5 (10:46):
I did not I was.

Speaker 6 (10:47):
I felt really iffy about our elite and then I
think that is the last time I saw the film.
So I watched it a couple of times obviously leading
up to this, and turns out I liked the movie
a whole lot more than I thought I did, And
that might be by comparison, again from just having watched
the entire run of films up until now that the

(11:07):
law of diminishing returns has been hitting us so fucking
hard that anything competent was going to be better than that.

Speaker 5 (11:15):
But I do a lot of this movie. I like
more of this movie than I dislike.

Speaker 6 (11:19):
How about that it's you know what, it's the best
Predator sequel, but it's still not great.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
And it goes without saying, by the way, that this
was the first time that I've seen this movie. Pretty
much every movie from now I guess there's only one
more movie after this until Pray. I didn't see them
first run or even on cable or what have you.
So this was my first time seeing it. And I
may be recency bias after having slogged through Alien Versus

(11:48):
Predator and Requiem, but I knew of this movie. I
remember when it came out. I read the reviews, and
I didn't have a strong feeling about seeing it because
it was Agri Brody, who bugs me. I think he
bugs a lot of people. It just nothing about it
excited me to go to see it. Thought that the
franchise was still on the downswing, But again I was

(12:13):
pleasantly surprised by how much I really enjoyed this, and
not just in comparison Direcquiem. I think this is very
well crafted. It's solids, It brings back a lot of
what I loved about the Predator series and tries a
few things I'm not gonna It's not perfect, and I
think there's there are things they swing and miss, but overall,

(12:34):
I thought it was a big step in the right direction.

Speaker 5 (12:37):
I agree.

Speaker 6 (12:38):
Here's the thing, though, The thing that was the problem
for me then remains the problem now. Every time a
filmmaker comes along, rather anytime a film comes along, and
it's advertised to be like the worst of the worst,
and that this is the crew of the dregs of society,

(12:58):
the most lethal, morally free human beings, and they're just
not ever like, most of these characters are really decent.
The only one who seems outwardly fucked up is Walton Goggins,
and even he is played for laughs almost.

Speaker 5 (13:14):
There's a moment where he's when I get home, I'm
gonna do so much cocaine.

Speaker 6 (13:19):
Right, and it's a huge laugh line, followed by and
then I'm gonna rape a bunch of women and it
was like whoa, And like that moment where it was
like laughter and then a slap, I felt the movie
needed a lot more.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Of Yeah, it was. There was actual humor in this,
which I think was certainly missing from Requiem, But I
can't think of any laughs in Alien versus Predator either,
So that alone is there are there is humor in
the very first Predator if you remember people astute listeners
of the podcast will remember, Jesse Ventura had some great lines.

(13:55):
Bill Duke is funny and weird, and it's it's a
more well rounded movie. But this had a little more
of that.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
What about Shane Black's hilarious pussy jokes.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
I didn't mind them so much because he's so good
at selling how bad they are. I don't know. I
just thought that I thought was funny, but in this
one it But by the way, let me I want
to mention one thing you talked about the director Nimrod
until I have to say I didn't. I couldn't think
of what he had actually done. But it turns out
he's actually directed one of my top five favorite concert

(14:27):
movies of all time. I don't know if you were
aware of this, father alone, but he directed that. Yes,
it's Metallica through the Never I know you're gonna You're
not getting me help me.

Speaker 6 (14:39):
I'm sucked into this. Wariotis Dystopia.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Put all that aside, just the actual concert movie part
of it was. I saw that it was a limited
engagement in Imax for a week, and I went after
work one night and went to see it, and it
was in three D. It was maybe the second movie
I'd seen in three D and imax. And the actual
concert portions were as good as any live show that

(15:06):
I've ever actually seen any live concert performance. At the
end of some of those songs, I'm in the middle
of a theater all by myself. I wanted to sit
there and cheer. It was so well directed. The concert stuff,
which is not easy to do. You can't just anyone
can point out a camera out a bunch of people
performing on stage, but it's very creatively performed. The three
D was well integrated. That got me excited actually to

(15:29):
see this because I figured this guy actually has an eye. Unfortunately,
I'm not familiar with any of his other work. I
might decide to look it up based on this, because
I thought it was very well shot.

Speaker 6 (15:40):
He did a movie called Vacancy, which was part of
that sort of Platinum Dunes wave of films. I don't
know that was necessarily a Platinum Douns film, but in
that era when they were remaking like the Hitcher and
the early two thousands.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh Texas chainsaw massacre and all.

Speaker 6 (15:54):
That, Yes, where suddenly white trash people can't be trusted again,
and so Vacancy is like a couple. I think it's
Kate Beckhamsale and Owen not Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson. I think,
stop at the CD motel in the middle of nowhere
and they discover that there are cameras in their room.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
And Frank Wally is in there like being a creep.

Speaker 6 (16:13):
And the main thing I remember about the movie is
that I was I was working at a movie theater
at the time, and we got a standy, a cardboard
standy for vacancy, which was shaped like the motel, and
it had an array of lights inside so that the
neon signed the vacancy sign would be blinking on and
off but really atmospherically. And I took that whole fucking

(16:35):
thing home with me.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
You just set up the standy at all?

Speaker 5 (16:38):
Yeah, I just put it in my living room.

Speaker 6 (16:39):
I had this oh no, actually put it outside on
the other side of the yard, so it looked like
there was a motel in the backyard.

Speaker 5 (16:44):
It was really fun. Nice thanks name Rod.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
That's but he was the man has some talent. I
have to admit. Like I said, it was shot well
and directed pretty well.

Speaker 5 (16:55):
I agree.

Speaker 6 (16:56):
I think some of it is not directed so well.
I think maybe it's just hard to fight a sword fight.
But I found this one to be really lacking. In fact,
a lot of the action I found to be really lacking.
Particularly the final act of the film I found to
be just sad.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
You mean, when he's facing off against the predator, he
set a trap. I can see where you're coming there.
It was a little bit herky jerky editing. I could
see that in the battle. I think you're referring to
the Yakuza sword fight battle, like they face off the
duel that I thought was cool. The overhead stuff I thought.

Speaker 5 (17:31):
Rights for that.

Speaker 6 (17:32):
The overhead stuff is beautiful because they're standing in knee
high grass and it's all undulating underneath them. So it's
gorgeous because nimrod Amtal makes gorgeous pictures. But I'm saying
the actual action was lacking. There's a fight between two
predators at one point in the film, which we've never
seen before.

Speaker 5 (17:49):
By the way, have we ever seen predators fight each other?

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Never?

Speaker 6 (17:53):
And it's just it felt like watching a Gounzilla movie
just two rubber suited idiots hitting each other, and that
was you just.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Hit upon another one of the excuse me, the innovations
in this movie. They he they introduced the concept of
like warring factions of Yaoucha. There's like a higher I
don't think you call him casts, but there's a group
of a bigger, fiercer Yaucha's that have taken a fourth

(18:21):
Yaoucha prisoner and they have him crucified or tied to
this totem in their camp. And he I think he's
supposed to be a throwback to the first Predator in
the first movie. He looks like the original Predator.

Speaker 5 (18:35):
But that is that's the character's name, Original.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Predator, original Predator, original formula. So that was cool. They
have it's adding some shading to the Predator society. I
thought that was neat. Should we talk about I don't
think we've talked about each of the characters and what
they their backstory, which I thought was cool.

Speaker 6 (18:54):
No, but we will, but I want to keep talking
about these Predators for a second because okay, speaking of innovation, now, look,
God bless Tom Woodriffe and Alec Gillis, the guys who
were Stan Winston's crew went off and made their own company,
and they basically did all of the They worked on
Aliens and the original Predator and Predator Too, and Aliens
Versus Predator both movies, and yes, they've done fantastic work

(19:18):
all the time. These Predators are better. These are the
best Predators since the original Predator movie. I agree, even
the second Predator movie seems stiff compared to these guys.
They are live and sporty and functional. I never doubted
that these were agile creatures.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, this all K and B came in and did
all of this work. I think they did it in
a remarkably short amount of time from the making of
stuff I saw. I think they only had something like
ten weeks from original concept to first day of shooting
to get these predators. This was all done. This is
all part of Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios, since he produced it.

(19:55):
A lot of it was shot on location in Hawaii,
some of it was shot on location in all but
a lot of it, including the Predator camp, was all
shot at his local Austin studio, and the costuming and
all the effects work was done. Like I said by
K and B, and it's really well done. These predators
have personality, which is something that was really lacking from

(20:17):
the last few movies. There's one who is a falconer
and he has this.

Speaker 6 (20:22):
That's played by wife what that's played by Will Forte,
Not the Will Forte, the Will Forte, the falconer.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Okay, the snl Okay, Sorry took me a second, I'm
a little slow on the uptake tonight. And he has
this drone, this falcon like metal drone that can scout.
There's one who commands a pack of like predator dogs,
I don't know what you call them, but hunting dogs
basically that he sends out to flush out these this prey,

(20:51):
these people getting hunted. And then there's the last one.
I think he's called the Berserker, and his defining feature
not only the fact that he's big and he's scary looking,
but he has is it supposed to be an alien
mandible like fastened to the bottom part of his mask.

Speaker 5 (21:08):
That's exactly it. He's taken like a native tribe.

Speaker 6 (21:11):
He has taken the jawbone of a fierce creature and
fastened that to his own face plate.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, they look great, It doesn't read to me like
very latexy. There's interest, there's detail in all the costumes,
and they really, like I said, they have personality. So
you're not just seeing some predator like shape kicking ass.
You can tell who they are and what their speciality is.

Speaker 6 (21:37):
Let's keep talking these designs here, because those dogs you mentioned,
the Predator dogs, they're wolf pack there. Like you said,
they're like a fox in the hound, like a fox hunt.
Send out the hounds and out these creatures come. Now,
I kept reading about how the directive when they were
making this film was ignore everything but Predator. Ignore everything

(21:58):
but the first Predator movie. It's our only guide except
of course. The dog design is based on a skull
from the Predatorship from Part two.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
It's one of the skulls in the case.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
Now, having now having said that, they're great, they're really
well realized. These not ever there on the set dogs.
I'm sure they had rubber ones to have on the set.
In fact, I know they do because I follow Robert
Rodriguez's daughter on Instagram and she's constantly showing shit around
their studio like, oh look a Predator dog.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Imagine growing up in that that would be something.

Speaker 5 (22:32):
I can only imagine.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Man it's like the biggest playground in the world, but
we have the predator, the predator dogs. It's a cool innovation.
The Jerome thing is cooled. Even the predator heat vision.
The infrared vision is tweaked now like in the first
few movies, it's just a lot of amorphous blobs you
can make out, but there's a little more fidelity to

(22:54):
them now. Where there's a scene, for example, where Maherschel
Ali's character is doing what what's his name, Billy in
the first that's his name from forty Hours. I'm mixing
it up Sonny Latham's character in the first movie where
he can tell the predators out there anyway, Marsha la
Ali can detect them, and you cut to the infrared vision,

(23:16):
you can actually see detail in his face which they
didn't have before. I thought it was like a It
bumped up the fidelity in a lot of ways. The
detail of the predators, their weapons, their abilities, everything seemed damped.

Speaker 6 (23:31):
Up a little bit, as they should. Predator vision is
based on a film from nineteen eighty seven. Everybody at
this point was thirty years later. Of course, they should
be updating that what their vision looks. And I like
that they can cycle through their different visions now, like
we're getting more of At one point they're checking like footprints.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah yeah. And at one point they're searching for other
people and or the creatures, and you can see them
like zeroing in on something and focusing in and switching
the vision. It's worth there's no words, but you can
tell what's going through the predator's mind as he's searching
for their prey. It was really cool.

Speaker 6 (24:09):
All right, last creature and then we'll get to the cast. Yeah, okay,
these people are find themselves parachute. They're basically awake in
the air, falling to what they think is Earth, but
it's this other planet and they've got parachutes on that
are automatically set to go off and lower them, and
that doesn't always work out for all of them.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
But yeah, that's hard, by the way. That's horrifying, by
the way, because after the main characters start to land,
another guy who wasn't so lucky parachute doesn't open. He
dies right in front of them. But that's a that's
nightmare material. Like we've all had dreams like this where
you're falling and you don't know what's imagine waking up
from and you're thirty thirty thousand feet up in the

(24:48):
air and you don't know how to deploy a parachute.
The fact that they can't make this process of deploying
the parachute foolproof the predators, you're just playthings for them.
They Oh, if somebody dies in transit or whatever, I
guess there's seven other guys we can hunt that I found. Like,
when you think about it, that's horrifying. Sorry, go ahead, No,

(25:09):
you're absolutely right. It's yeah, what a way to wake
Just falling through the clouds. And most of these characters
tell their stories that they were.

Speaker 6 (25:16):
Like involved in combat and then suddenly there was a
light and now I'm falling through the sky. But they're
not the only things falling through the sky because what
they discover are crates. Now, initially I had thought that
those crates, not really remembering the film as it were,
I thought the crates held the dogs. But that's not
the case because at one point Walton Goggin's character is

(25:39):
being chased by what we think is a predator and
it turns out to be the initial design.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
For the predator from the original Predator movie, The.

Speaker 6 (25:47):
Original character that Jean Claude van Dam was supposed to play,
has a cameo in this film. It's one of the
beasts from the cages, which mean though all of those
cages held other creatures. And here's my main problem with
the movie. Where are the other creatures? We're on an
alien world, not only alien creatures. Where's the bizarre flora

(26:10):
and fauna. We see one plant that acts a bit odd.
Everything else feels like they're in I don't know, Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
I'm with you on that. That was one of the
cooler parts because it gives you this glimpse of a
larger thing at work here where they're not just plucking
people from Earth to hunt. They're plucking people from god
knows how many planets, the weird creatures that we've never
seen before. So yeah, I would agree with you there
that this planet should have been much more put it

(26:40):
this way. It should have been better stocked with game
than we see, because there's stretches of this movie where
they're doing nothing but walking and marching and talking, which
it's good from a character development perspective, but from an
action perspective, it does leave a little bit to be desired.

Speaker 6 (26:58):
I mentioned that the original Predator who is when we
meet him here in the film, he's basically just chained
up in the middle of their camp. In the original
Robert Rodriguez screenplay, they find him chained up, but he's
not chained up, he's crucified. In fact, he's crucified on
an X, which means Robert Rodriguez was channeling Frank Frazetta

(27:21):
because he has a painting of an alien crew. It's
called alien crucifixion, where an alien with four arms is
crucified to an ex wooden cross. So that got me thinking,
if they had made this more of this Frank Frazetta
type bizarre world, we could have had predators hunting humans
while being hunted themselves by giant beasts. I know that

(27:44):
I'm starting to make the budget really big, but maybe
lose a couple of characters that we don't give a
shit about anyway, because honestly, hb as much as I
enjoyed this movie, I didn't care about one human being here.
When we watch the original Predator, you and I said
it that I loved every single member of that team. Here,
I don't care. Actually that's not true. There's only one

(28:06):
I care about.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
The Russian, I cared about a few more than you did.
The I hate to say it because.

Speaker 5 (28:12):
He liked Alice Brago as well.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
She's very good.

Speaker 5 (28:15):
All of the acting.

Speaker 6 (28:16):
Let me just say that all of the acting is
really good across the board.

Speaker 5 (28:19):
No one turns into bad performance here.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's good. But if I was going to lose any
members of the team and it, like I said, it
hurts me to say this, I probably would have gotten
rid of Danny Treo just because, get it, he's a
Robert Rodriguez mainstay. And when Danny Danny Treo says he's
going to be in your movie, you put Danny Treyo
in your fucking movie. But at the same time, he

(28:42):
to me he didn't add a whole lot. So I
guess we'll talk a little bit more about each character
and their backstory. But he, for I don't know, he
just didn't really do it. For me. He seemed old,
a little too old to be someone who's plucked in
the prime of their predatory life and put on a
planet a little long in the tooth. For that, I

(29:05):
had a similar reaction. But Larry Fishburn, we'll talk about him.

Speaker 6 (29:08):
Desperado era, Danny trey Hoe, I think would have is
what they probably had in mind, because that would be
a cartel in Forrester.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
Had they said it's the head of a.

Speaker 6 (29:16):
Cartel, Danny trey Hooe, that I would have said, oh, yeah,
of course that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
It just didn't add up for me, like the notion
of having this guy who is a cartel enforcer, all
these different like you said, these predators essentially, but he
you could have lost him and it wouldn't have been
a big loss for me. But I did. I love
the Russian he I don't. I think he's actually like
an MMA fighter turned actor. I thought he was really good.

Speaker 5 (29:42):
It was great. All right, let's just talk characters.

Speaker 6 (29:44):
Are lead Royce played by Adrian Brody. Everyone's favorite Adrian Brody,
particularly if you're Halle Berry or Jamaican or Lauren Michaels.

Speaker 5 (29:55):
Yeah, John Michaels loves Adrian Brady.

Speaker 6 (29:57):
Look, I think Adrian Brody is a phenomenally talent an actor,
and he seems like a fucking nightmare to deal with.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, but having said that, I knew. I remember all
the criticism when this movie came out. Adrian Brody is
a predator movie. His action guy I thought he was
really good. I'm sorry I liked I like the fact
that they hired an actor and not just like a big,

(30:23):
buff action star, like not to say Arnold, that's all
there is to Arnold, but because you have somebody who
is an intense actor, first, you get invested in his
plight and his backstory and his journey a little more
than you would if it's just a faceless, muscly guy
with a gun. That I think was really shrewd on

(30:45):
their part to bring him in. I think history will
prove that was actually a really savvy casting choice, my opinion.

Speaker 6 (30:51):
I think at the time it seemed like a savvy
casting choice. I think he just won an Academy Award
for the Pianist, And it was a time when nobody
believed that Johnny Depp was going to be a pirate captain,
and suddenly he was, and suddenly, like higher end actors
were stretching there themselves in other areas. So it's not

(31:12):
without the realm of possibility. It's just that he chose
to play it like he was a badass, and he
doesn't come off that way.

Speaker 5 (31:21):
I never believed him. I didn't believe he's never real problem.
I didn't believe, HB. I don't believe.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
And I hear you, and I understand. I hear your criticism,
and I'm not disputing how you feel. It's subjective after all,
but I look, the voice was a little over the
top at.

Speaker 5 (31:40):
Times, but he under the top.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
I bought him. And then like at the end, when
he finally faces off against the predator, it's like an
R and E versus predator moment and he finally takes
off his fatigues or whatever. Guy got jacked. I think
he put on like like a twenty five pounds of
muscle for this, and it showed. And I think it
got to the idea that real soldiers aren't going to

(32:06):
be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. They're going to be a
little more lean and a little more wiry. Maybe I
didn't have a problem with him. I thought I thought
he was fine. I didn't really have a problem with
anybody's performance necessarily, but him. He's the lead, obviously, and
I thought he was good.

Speaker 5 (32:24):
I love to play this game.

Speaker 6 (32:25):
What if he had been played instead by Walton Gagin
almost immediately more likable as a lead character.

Speaker 5 (32:34):
People would be talking about Royce like they're talking about Harrigan.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Now, not a.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Bad choice, and I guess there's any number of people
who could have done what Walter Goggins does. He's very
good in this, and I was, look, it's only in
the last what five years that Walton Goggins has become
Walton Goggins with Fallout and the White Lotus and all
these things. Good for him. This was two thousand. I was,

(33:01):
I didn't realize that his career stretched back that far.
The guy's been slogging it out in Hollywood and he's
finally reached the notoriety he deserves. But he's really good
in this, and he would have been good as Royce,
I give you that.

Speaker 5 (33:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (33:14):
I mean, it's crazy to say because he's the most
vile character, but he's the most likable character. And that's
because Walton Goggins is so fucking likable. Okay, here's the cast. Everybody,
we already named it. But okay, so we've got our American.
That's Adrian Brodie. He's Special Forces, except now he's a
mercenaron bit. The lead female character is at the Alice
Braga character. She's from some South American No.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
She's idf she's Israeli.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
Oh, she's Israeli Alice Brock.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Which was a stretch because she's clearly she's not Israeli.
She's Brazilian.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
That's why I thought she was South American.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
That's a little weird, but it's very quick where they're
introducing themselves and he goes, oh, you're guess you're idf right. Yeah,
she's supposed to be a sniper with the Israeli defense full.

Speaker 6 (33:59):
And then we've got mahersh Ala Ali who is in
part of a death squad from South Africa or Africa
Sierra Leone, from Sierra Leone.

Speaker 5 (34:08):
Yeah, yeah, who else?

Speaker 6 (34:10):
Walton Goggins is on death row, so he's a murderer
and rapist and was going to be executed in two
days when the predators grabbed him.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (34:18):
And there's Danny Trejoe cartel guy. They grabbed him when
he was in Baja.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Daves and Baja. There's there's the Japanese fellow who's a
he's yakuza, who's a young yakuza who doesn't speak. I
think he only has two lines in the whole movie,
but he's basically very quiet and intense. Who's do you
have the actor's name there, I don't. I regret that
I don't have it.

Speaker 6 (34:42):
I did, I said it at the top. Okay, then
listened back to mister Ozawa.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
He's very he's in like a sharp suit. He's the
only one who has just like a I think he
has a pistol. He doesn't have a rifle like the
rest of them.

Speaker 5 (34:55):
Do, but he'll eventually have a katana.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
He eventually has a katana. So there's the yak, there's
the IDF sniper.

Speaker 5 (35:02):
One left.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Are you talking about Larry Fishburne.

Speaker 5 (35:06):
No, I'm talking about one of these things. Is not
like the other one.

Speaker 6 (35:09):
Oh, he just doesn't for grace to for grace, and
I don't mean performance wise or actor wise, because I
love to for grace.

Speaker 5 (35:15):
I'm gone record. He's good.

Speaker 6 (35:17):
I always enjoy his performances, and his editing is par excellence.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
He's very good. In fact, he we talked about this
offline at some point. He's in Heretic, and he's really
good in Heretic. But he's great in everything that he's in.
Just but he's very good in that, and he's good here.
I did have a problem we'll get to with his character,
but we can save that for a little while from now.
But yeah, but he's the wild card because he he

(35:44):
says he's a doctor. So there's no explanation initially why
he would be in the midst of all of these
killers and bad people. Why this guy just driving in
his car, this physician has been pulled to this planet.
Which again, it's one of those horrifying things. What if
they make a mistake, you think? I thought to myself, like,
what if the Yaucha just picked somebody that they for

(36:05):
whatever reason, they've mistaken for somebody else. Like I'm sitting
here drinking coffee at work, and all of a sudden,
I'm sucked off to an alien planet.

Speaker 5 (36:13):
Because you're a super predator.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
I apparently I don't know when they got that impression.
But he's he's I work in it.

Speaker 5 (36:21):
I'm telling you, I don't what is this weapon? I don't.
I can't even lift this.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
What do you? What am I doing here? But here,
he's got no weapons, he's got no skills of any kind.
He basically he's the one that gets saved by all
these other badasses time and time again.

Speaker 6 (36:39):
If he had a medical bag on him, then I
would have been less suspicious. I would have thought, Oh,
would be the predators give him a medic.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
That's what my assumption was, like, maybe they assume that
it's a medic to patch these guys up if they
get injured. But he's got nothing on him.

Speaker 6 (36:54):
Which, yeah, exactly, because it would make sense because when
they send their fucking dogs, if they hadn't all been
firing wildly at those dogs, they'd all be dead, and
then the predators would be like, oh man.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, it's less about flushing them.

Speaker 6 (37:09):
Yet, wolf Master Predator again, because these things are it
takes a lot.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
That scene where the dogs are trying to flush them
out is basically the Bill Duke in Predator shooting the
railgun into the forest for three minutes, because it's just
an endless scene where these dogs are advancing, they're shooting.
They've shot so much that some of these guys have
to go to their secondary weapon because they're out of

(37:37):
AMMO on their primary rifle. It's a great sequence, but
it does go on for a long time.

Speaker 5 (37:43):
A little too long.

Speaker 6 (37:44):
I will say that initially it's just the one dog,
and when they finally kill it, another one appears right
behind it, and that first one took so long to
kill and then it cuts to like a scene in
a forest where a pack of them are just racing forward.
I thought, oh, this is rate, but yeah, it ends
up going on too long, and then it ends up
like fucking with its own logic because it seems like

(38:07):
every single one of them was necessary, every single lead
character firing was necessary to take down one of them,
and then they were all just taking him down singly.

Speaker 5 (38:16):
I think Walton Goggins kills one with a knife.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, that's his weapon. By the way, all of them are.
They stand up because they have a unique weapon that
they carry. The Russian carries a giant rail gun like
Jesse Ventura in the first one. The IDF sniper has
this huge, badass sniper rifle. Royce has a giant rifle

(38:39):
of some kind with a camouflage on it.

Speaker 5 (38:42):
It's it's a riot shotgun.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Is that what that is?

Speaker 6 (38:45):
Yeah, it a big drum filled with shotgun shells. You
notice it on.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
His He's got the bandolier.

Speaker 6 (38:50):
Yeah, he has bandoliers with shotgun shells on both both straps.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
The yakuza has really fancy pistol. The cartel guy has
double oozies. I think that he's wielding.

Speaker 5 (39:03):
I don't think.

Speaker 6 (39:03):
I don't think they're oozzies, but they are hand machine pistols.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Are they like mac Ten's I don't know. I don't
know anything about it.

Speaker 6 (39:08):
They're not that either, but I don't know the name
of them, but they're not the standard ones that, yeah,
you've seen in an eighties movie.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Sure. And then Walton Goggins, who's this death row prisoner,
has a knife. But at least he has a knife,
because the doctor Tofer Grays has nothing. I think he
has a pocket knife.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
He has a scalpel.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Oh is that what that is? I thought it was
like a little pocket knife.

Speaker 6 (39:30):
Oh no, it's a scalpel. Definitely, Okay, I got it
because he uses it later he does. So here's our heroes.
They've all been dropped on this planet. They don't know
it's a planet. They don't know where they are. They
can't quite figure it out because something seems a bit
off because the sun shouldn't be where it is, and
it's too hot for where they are, and blah blah blah,
follow me, don't follow me. I don't care. I'm a badass.

(39:51):
Let's follow him. Hey, wait a minute, should there be
two moons.

Speaker 5 (39:55):
In the sky.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
This is like a cliff version.

Speaker 5 (39:57):
No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
It must be said by the way that we don't
really see our first view of a predator until about
forty five minutes into the movie.

Speaker 6 (40:10):
Basically I liked that actually because I like getting to
know these characters.

Speaker 5 (40:13):
Like I said, ultimately, I didn't care.

Speaker 6 (40:15):
I didn't care about any of them because they didn't
actually make any connections or anything.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
But that isn't because I didn't like the structure of this.

Speaker 6 (40:24):
Like I really enjoyed the fact that they got attacked
by those dogs first, and then at the last second
there's a whistle going.

Speaker 5 (40:30):
Off and you're like, oh man, the predator's coming.

Speaker 6 (40:33):
It's It was such a nice intro to them without
having to reveal them at all.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
That's fair. Yeah, you feel their presence without actually seeing them,
that the big reveal is coming.

Speaker 6 (40:44):
So our heroes are now they have a mission, right,
what mission?

Speaker 5 (40:48):
Here's the thing.

Speaker 6 (40:49):
As soon as they come over that ridge and look
up and see a different suns in the sky and
there are different planets in their atmosphere, all hope is lost.
That's all I could. That's it, guys, You're going to
die here. No matter what you do, because they don't
have a plan to begin with, right, they just keep marching.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
They're hoping to get to the edge of the preserve
to get away from whatever's hunting them before they know
what it is. And then you're right. It's like the
ending of like Planet of the Apes, where you realize
that's the big shock ending when they look up in
the sky and there's Jupiter and all these planets. Me
as a viewer, I'm thinking to myself, just like you said,

(41:28):
that's even if I can survive and kill whatever it
is that's hunting us, I'm going to die on this planet.
There's no way. I don't even where am I. How
do I possibly get off of this planet. It's impossible.

Speaker 5 (41:40):
It's impossible.

Speaker 6 (41:41):
Okay, but you know what they do have a mission
at hand, which is stay alive and don't be killed
by these things that are clearly hunting them. Okay, great,
Now we meet a new character.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yep, Larry Fishburn.

Speaker 6 (41:55):
Okay, your face all right, listen. I like the idea
of his character a whole lot. When he approaches the group,
he's dressed as a predator. We think it's a predator,
and then he takes the mask off and it's Lawrence Fishburne.
And I wish he's credit hadn't been in the opening
titles because it would be such a fucking cool reveal.
So he has survived for ten seasons, ten hunting seasons,

(42:17):
which according to the filmmakers is about two and a half. You,
so he's been on the planet surviving somehow. And he's like,
I loved his performance, by the way, because he's obviously cuckoo,
but I loved how quiet he was. You never see
Lawrence fishburn this quiet. But basically, it's come with me
if you want to live.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
But what the cool and this is fan service, I
get it. But the one of the coolest parts of
it was they're in this at this quiet moment and
they hear something say to them over here, this whisper
over here, turn around, which is what we heard in
the first Predator. It's Bill Duke when he was sampled

(42:56):
essentially by the predator. That's those are the lines that
he spoke that were parroted back by the predator. So
me as a viewer, I'm like, oh, so they must
have it's a predator somehow they know what the other
one's experience, and they're a nice callback to the first movie.
But then the big reveal is that it's this guy.
He was air calve. He was dropped there, like you said,

(43:18):
a couple of years prior, and he's this badass, but
he's gone crazy over the last couple of years. He's
mostly there, but he has a habit of talking to himself,
and he takes them to there's a like a mining
ship or some kind of drill that is no longer operational,
but it has a power supply. This is where he's

(43:38):
been hiding out, scavenging from the other predators for two
plus years or however long it's been. He's got food.
Here's my problem with Larry Fishburne in this, and it's
gonna sound so petty. I apologize in advance. But so
he's been living by the skin of his teeth for
two years, scavenging food and whatever else he needs to survive.

(44:02):
To me, he didn't look like he was missing too
many meals. He he's an older guy. I get that.
We all the metabolism doesn't do any favors as you
get older. He didn't look like somebody who's been living
by the skin of his teeth for two years. He
just looked too plump. To me, to be brutally honest.

Speaker 6 (44:23):
He did look very healthy. I did notice that while
I was watching. I thought, wow, he looked great, but
I didn't think of it in terms of he looks
a little too good to have been living on the
run from predators and killing strange beasts and hoping he
doesn't die from poison when he eats them.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Because he can't be like what kind of We don't
see many of the creatures that are native to this location,
but he can't be he's living off of the equivalent
of like rats, probably like he's scavenging. He's not. He's
not gonna call attention to himself, so he must he
should have been much more gaunt and just worn out.

Speaker 6 (45:00):
See two missed opportunities in the original. In that original
Robert Rodriguez script, Dutchess character ends up partnered with the
like the leader of this army that initially was taking
him to prison.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
And what we what you discover is.

Speaker 6 (45:15):
That that character, which by the way, was written for
Jean Claude van dam So the idea was going to
be Schwarzenegger and Jean Claude van dam as like teammates
going against the predators. But then the twist at the
end of the movie was the reason that the the
soldiers are outfitted in predator gear is that the government

(45:36):
on Earth has made a pact with the predators and
that we keep supplying them with fresh game and they
share their technology with us. Oh yeah, so that could
have been similar here, where maybe he's in league with
the predators, like they're giving him food and supplies and stuff,
and he's aiding them when people are eluding them. Somehow

(45:59):
could have been something could have answered that question. Unfortunately,
what we get is just a looney who wants their stuff.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, so he double crosses them. Basically, he invites them
to his home for lack of a better word. When
they're distracted and he says he's going to sleep, he
basically walls them into their chamber and tries to basically
suffocate them with smoke. He lights a fire in the
hopes that they'll asphyxiate and he'll steal their gear. Doesn't

(46:28):
quite work out that way for him, unfortunately for him,
but it is. It was a bit of a letdown
because it's a really interesting idea that this guy's it's
like it's like newt in Aliens. How has this girl
possibly been like surviving when these xenomorphs are infesting this base? Right?
How is this guy living on this alien planet for

(46:48):
two years without a losing hope and b just not
succumbing to the elements exposure the other critters that are
abounding interesting idea?

Speaker 6 (47:01):
And then the predators show up and vaporize him completely.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, we're gone.

Speaker 6 (47:07):
We meet him, he tries to fuck them over, and
then he gets blasted into oblivion.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Fairness. I think Fishburn was only on set for about
two days, so it's part wasn't that big. But he's
it's Lawrence Fishburn. The guy is awesome, And there's even
a little callback because he's talking about his days in
the air calve.

Speaker 6 (47:26):
Oh, it's clearly supposed to be cool, right. Character is
named Clue and it was named cool in Apocalypse Now. Yeah,
he's talking about air cab and then he starts doing
fucking up the right of the Valkyries.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Right of the Valkyries. He starts to hummer the Valkyries,
thinking to himself about the old days. So I thought
that was neat. It's fan service again, but I'm not.

Speaker 6 (47:45):
I'm not opposing some fucking subtles fan service there.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
That it is. Maybe the average person going to see
this movie wouldn't be a huge Apocalypse Now fan, but
I was happy that it was there. And it again,
there's these moments that kind of elevate the movie and
make it a little more special, and that's one of them.

Speaker 6 (48:04):
Okay, But what his character does do for the plot
is he lets them know that where they were at
that camp, just feet away, twenty feet away, there's a ship.
The predators have a ship. It's cloaked, it's right there.
They can get off of this planet. So now they
have a mission. Now the plot is, let's get to
the ship. And I'm still like, you're all gonna die

(48:24):
on this planet. What are you gonna do when you
get on that ship?

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Done?

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Yes, there's no on switch. It's not like getting into
your Chevy, into your car and turning the ignition. They
don't know. Maybe there's a fingerprint scanner that only responds
to yaucha fingers.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
Knowing the reputation of the yaoucha, you could push a
button and self destruct.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Exactly, but it is. It's a neat thing with the
Roy's character where Laurence Fishburn's character basically says to him,
it's ridiculous, just go and get into this who's gonna
fly it? And Roy says, I'll give it a shot.
And I'm like, Okay, that's the kind of guy that
you want to be stuck on an alien planet with.

(49:06):
I'd follow that guy, because look, either we stay and
die and become trophies for some weird alien race, or
we at least try to get off of this god
forsaken planet.

Speaker 6 (49:17):
Why not you couldn't either we stay and forge a
life here because that's really our only option, or we
could definitely die in a flaming wreck while you try
and get.

Speaker 5 (49:29):
Us off this planet. And once we're in the once
we're in orbit, what are we doing? Where are we going?
You're going to navigate us home?

Speaker 2 (49:36):
That is ridiculous, you're right, But again, you're making it
sound like we're going to forge a life on this planet.
This isn't the room.

Speaker 5 (49:43):
It's the only option. They're not knowing anywhere.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
It's a hopeless existence. They're going to be like living
in fear twenty four hours a day.

Speaker 6 (49:54):
Like Robinson Carusseau not a.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
But then, but the that's where the prisoner predator comes
into play because.

Speaker 5 (50:06):
Figures he can fly the ship.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, he can fly the ship. That guy wants to
be released if I can spring him from this this
totem that he's chained to. He will do this for me.
He will do me this solid which is again it's
a wing and a prayer. There's no this predator might
just kill the guy at the first opportunity if he
releases him, because he may just be feral, who knows.
But that's the mission. Now, the mission pivots to we've

(50:31):
got to get to the back to the predator camp
and see what we can work out with this.

Speaker 6 (50:36):
Oh yeah, sure, look you know what that is a
solid plan. Yeah, And I gotta say the script thinks
it's being edgy and subversive by constantly pulling the rug
out from under us. Right, we're we're on this planet.

Speaker 5 (50:56):
We're not going to go it. Wait, there's a ship.
Maybe we can get to this ship.

Speaker 6 (50:58):
Okay, and now now we're gonna be saved by this predator.
And then the other predator, fucking the berserker predator shows
up and just fucking cuts his head off.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yep, there goes that plan.

Speaker 5 (51:09):
Whoops. Oh my god. Okay, so look, everybody's dead.

Speaker 6 (51:12):
There's only three of them left now, and they get separated.
It's Alice Braga and Toafer Craze in one one corner and.

Speaker 5 (51:20):
Adrian Brody in the other.

Speaker 6 (51:22):
And Adrian Brody is gonna he's gonna get on the
ship and come back for them.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
No, I don't. I didn't get that impression. He They
basically have this confrontation where so what's happened is Taufer
Grace's character the doctor and quotes he has a trap
has ensnared his leg, and Alice Braga Isabelle's her named
the Sniper, releases him. But Royce's look, that trap wasn't

(51:49):
meant to kill you. It's just meant to maim you.
You're dead. There's nothing more I can do for you.
Let's see if we can get the hell out of
here while we still can us survivors. And Isabelle her
redemption moment is no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna deal with
this guy because she has She said her regret is
her spotter at some military exercise was killed. She could

(52:14):
have saved him, but she didn't, and that haunts her.
So this is her redemption for not saving her spotter.
So Royce is, fine, you do what the hell you want.
I'm out of here half an age.

Speaker 6 (52:27):
If you do whatever you want to mat it's not
a badass by But I don't care for nobody.

Speaker 5 (52:33):
I don't get a character in this.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Movie, so I didn't anyway. I didn't get the sense
that he was gonna circle back once he got on
the ship. He's just like, this is my mission. I
have to get off this planet. Which is unusual because
a lot of these guys, the Russian guy has he
has a picture of his kids and that's his motivation.
He's I got to get back to my kids. They
don't deserve this, blah blah blah. They all have something

(52:56):
that they're trying to work towards some redemption. But Royce
is he has nothing. He's not really.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
Over and over again, the redemption seems to be saving
tofer Grace.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Is they all save him at one time or another,
right at different points in the movie.

Speaker 5 (53:11):
And the Russian dies doing it, she almost dies doing it.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah, and then the Russian sacrifices himself.

Speaker 6 (53:18):
He sure does for this piece of shit, because obviously
tofer Grace is a serial killer. If anyone didn't figure
that out in the first five minutes of the movie,
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
That might have been one of my biggest problems with this.
I don't have a great I'm not a screenwriter, so
I don't have a great notion of what they could
have done with the Tofer Grace character. But it's such
a silly heel turn at the moment that it is
that he's We've seen him at the beginning of the movie.
They're walking around and a character almost touches this plant

(53:51):
that has this neurotoxin that tofer Grace is, oh no,
this is whatever trump tophilia, and this neurotoxin is bad,
and he puts it on his scalpel to say, here's
the goo, and you forget about it. And then he
when he makes his heel turn and you discover that
he's a serial killer. He nicks Alice Braga's character with

(54:13):
the neurotoxin, so she's paralyzed temporarily, and he talks about
all these bad things he's gonna do to her and
how he actually feels like he's home. He wants to
stay on the planet because he identifies with the predators.
It just seems so half baked. He's just this generic
serial killer. I didn't get it. I don't know, I

(54:36):
just didn't buy it.

Speaker 5 (54:37):
Serial Killers select their victims very carefully.

Speaker 6 (54:40):
It isn't just a spree killing, because that's what is
so just pathologically that doesn't make Second of all, this
is the time and place.

Speaker 5 (54:48):
You're in a fucking trap. Still.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Yeah, they're in a pit.

Speaker 6 (54:52):
Yeah, get out of the pit first, Get out of
the pit, go somewhere safe. You're gonna she's your fucking
pray now, right, Like it's just a matter of time.
The timing is so stupid not to mention this idea.
I can understand the predators being drawn to places of

(55:13):
conflict where they can disappear and observe and go, oh,
look that one in particular, he's really good.

Speaker 5 (55:19):
Grab him.

Speaker 6 (55:21):
I can understand them even maybe potentially monitoring the news
and finding out that there is a particularly deranged psychopath
who's about to be executed. But when the FBI and
the internet mobs can't find a serial killer and they do,
I have to wonder what the fuck anyone was thinking
while writing this.

Speaker 5 (55:39):
What did the predators do? Were they following his case
in the papers?

Speaker 6 (55:42):
And when, and they made some fucking decision that it
had to be this doctor.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
It the predator. The predators pick their prey because they
are can physically do battle with them. These are the
These are people that give them a fair fight. We've
seen them in movies that they want to attack somebody if
they don't have a weapon, So we know that they

(56:07):
have some sort of code of honor, and they are
very particular about the kinds of creatures that they will
go after. If him being a there's nothing mant that's
not the right word. There's nothing physically imposing about tof
for grace, there's nothing that there's no physical matchup with
this wiry serial killer who does his deeds in secret.

(56:31):
I don't see where that's something a predator would consider
a fair fight. It just seems like a mismatch of
the highest order. So I don't understand it would have
been more interesting, frankly, Father Malone if they didn't have
this twist that he's literally just somebody who was the
wrong place, wrong time. He was picked for no reason.

(56:53):
But maybe through the course of the movie, he finds
it within himself to stand up to these predators, to
become a bit of a badass that he never could
be just by happenstance, by bad luck, he was picked
to put be put on this planet. It would have
been a great through line. It would have been you
would have been really sorry to see him die because

(57:14):
you would have been attached to him. This is a
situation that everybody watching the movie could identify with. We
already talked about how horrifying it is to find yourself
falling onto this alien planet through no no, through no
fault of your own. But imagine on top of that,
you're just some ordinary guy going to drinking Starbucks in
your car, going to work, and then boom. Now you're

(57:36):
putting this untenable situation that you will probably never get
away from. I think they should have just gone and
made it just continued on that thread. That making him
a serial killer just seemed I don't know, like I said,
half baked, and I don't know, illogical to me on
so many levels.

Speaker 6 (57:57):
It's such clever screen. I guess that's ultimately it.

Speaker 5 (58:01):
Right.

Speaker 6 (58:02):
Somebody thought, oh, the ultimate predator for humans is a
serial killer, so we'll put it in a serial killer.
Then no one will expect that. But who gives a
shit because he doesn't have anything. The predators are looking for.
The predators, from what we understand from this movie is
that they're trying to become better and better, and so
they pick opponents who present a possible threat to them.

(58:24):
This isn't a fucking fish in the barrel situation. Like
the predators are supposed to be potentially able to be
killed by their quarry.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Yeah. Fishburne's character lays it out in his conversation before
he turns heel where he says, look, every season there's
another three predators that land, and once in a while
somebody will kill a predator. But he says, the amazing
thing is they learn quick. That's what he says. He says,
they learn quick. They change tactics, they change weaponry, they

(58:55):
change armor, they change everything. He's admiring the fact that
they can adapt to these different types of quarry that
they've stocked the planet with. So, yeah, they're gonna want
people that they're going to test their ability to hunt,
and there's nothing about to for grace outwardly that would
present a challenge to a seven foot tall yaucha with

(59:19):
blades for arms and a laser on his shoulder.

Speaker 5 (59:23):
You know what.

Speaker 6 (59:23):
I think, we really need to fight something that ingratiates
our himself into our lives, and then we would never
expect that he would kill it.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
It's just this moment where he's menacing the sniper, but
then it turns out it comes back. We thought that
the ship had been blown up with him on board,
but it turns out he wasn't on board, so he's
able to come in and save that's his moment of redemption.
He comes back and saves the sniper from a fate
worse than death, and then uses to for Grace's. He

(59:55):
essentially hits him with the same neurotoxin that to for
Grace gave the sniper, and then he leaves him as bait.
He puts all these hand grenades all over him and
leaves him as bait for the final surviving Berserker predator.
And that's what I like. I like that a lot. Yeah, Yeah,
it made sense because that's what a military. That's a

(01:00:17):
tactic that this military, this MRK would come up with.
I thought it was really cool. So that's how he
meets his end. He's blown up and it incapacitates the predator,
but it doesn't kill him. It just weakens him enough
to where it's now it's a fair fight between him
and Roycen.

Speaker 6 (01:00:35):
They shouldn't have made it a young guy. They should
have made it an old guy who just looked like
a civilian. And then at the end you find out
he's like some general and he used to be the
biggest badass ever and that's why they grabbed him. But
then Royce finds out that he initiated some operation where
his entire team was wiped out, and now he hooks
him up to a bunch of grenades and leaves him
as bait for the predator.

Speaker 5 (01:00:53):
All Right, maybe I'm fan fictioning.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
But the point that we're making here is that there's
at least two dozen different ways they could have gone
with this. I would be in favor of wrong place,
wrong time. Let's see, he then becomes the audience proxy.
So you're in the midst of all of these badasses
who have these preternatural abilities to fight and survive, and
then you have this nebbish who did nothing wrong. He's

(01:01:17):
not an evil person, he's not somebody who's atoning for
his crimes. Because at one point they're walking there, they
still haven't figured out where they are and what their
purpose is, and they one of the wonders allowed maybe
we're dead. Maybe this is where this is hell and
where this is where we're all doomed to spend eternity
because of what we've done in life, which I thought

(01:01:38):
was an interesting little moment. But be putting that aside,
there's all sorts of ways you could have made that
tof for grace character more interesting and not even recast them.
He could have done so much more with a different
a different arc to his character.

Speaker 6 (01:01:53):
Yeah, they could have just made him a young soldier
who seems like the nicest one there and turns out
to be the most vile.

Speaker 5 (01:01:59):
Like the ultimate pred I belong here, Yes you do.

Speaker 6 (01:02:02):
But like the idea that he's suddenly setting up a
kill room like Dexter at the bottom of a fucking
tiger pit is absolutely ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
I'm silly, silly, But hats off to them also, where
if we're talking about things that they did, right as
far as this confrontation between Royce and the Predator and
the trap that he lays, they do fight, and it's
it shouldn't come to any surprise that Royce bests this
last Predator of the three he was the only remaining.

Speaker 6 (01:02:30):
Is it's He takes all the gunpowder and lines, puts
a line around the camp so that it'll burn out
the vision of the predator. He then lightly wipes on
a little mud because he doesn't want to cover up
that physique, and then while the predator is distracted, he
runs through the frame with an axe, hitting the predator

(01:02:53):
over and over against so the predator is confused, and
Royce appears smack and runs out of the frame. And
then the predator's confused and then disappeared as Smack and
runs out of the frame. And all I kept thinking
is why didn't you save one fucking shotgunshll and as
you're running past, put it to his face and shoot him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
It's a little cartoonish. I won't dispute that.

Speaker 6 (01:03:11):
It's a little comic bookie, and that's ultimately what I
came away with. This feels a little more like Dark
Horse comics than anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
That's fair, that's fair, But the bottom line is he
eventually essentially decapitates him. He kills the predators done, and
that's one of those audience moments like, yeah, we're cheering,
but at the same time, this is a movie. As
you said, that's fond of pulling the rug out from
under you at every turn. They're still trapped. Him and

(01:03:40):
this sniper are still trapped on an inhospitable world where
any moment there's gonna be another Like they look up
in the sky and there's already parachutes coming down, so
they know the next season is ready to begin, the
next hunting season.

Speaker 6 (01:03:55):
Who's scheduling the seasons because clearly somebody stacked up and
they they overbooked.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
It's very short season, I think, because they've only been
there for it looks to me like real time, it's
probably two days if maybe if that's very that's a
very quick season. But they can see that there's more people,
there's more creatures coming, which surely means there's more predator
creatures coming, so there's no escape. That the ship that

(01:04:22):
he tried to escape on was destroyed by one of
the other predators. So it wasn't a happy ending, which
I guess I can appreciate that. There's nothing happy about it.
It's just they're going to continue to survive.

Speaker 5 (01:04:35):
Let's get the hell off of this planet.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
You hated that voice so much.

Speaker 5 (01:04:39):
Yeah, the planet HP.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Let me ask you a question. This is a little
off topic, but only a little bit. Now, Actually you
can cut this out if you want. Are we going
to talk about killer of Killers? Also? As part We're
going to talk about Killer of Killers in a while.
It's going to be the last thing we talk about
before Badland. Now, for those who maybe have have already

(01:05:04):
seen it, be aware that they added an extended ending
to it after it had already been broadcast on Hulu.
I believe the extended ending is you see this giant
basically a warehouse of people cryogenically in these these capsules,
and they're they're they're moving the Viking into her little spot.

(01:05:28):
She's she's killed one of the predators or now she's
you know, that's what they do when you kill a predator.
You have a place of honor in this mausoleum. Essentially,
Then the extended ending we see they've also brought into
this warehouse Harrigan from Predator to Anauru from Prey, and

(01:05:49):
Dutch from the very first Predator. So this is the
first time we've seen any of Dutch since the first movie.
Now here's my question, here's what I'm leading up to,
Father alone. Why is there An Royce in the warehouse.
Why don't we see Adrian Brodie's character since he killed
a predator and lived to tell the tale.

Speaker 5 (01:06:07):
Excellent question.

Speaker 6 (01:06:08):
Maybe they're ignoring predators like predators ignored alien versus predator.
Or maybe Adrian Brody said no, you cannot use my likeness.
Or they hated this movie and are trying to ignore it.
I don't know, man, do you have a theory.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
I don't have a theory. I was more curious about
what your theory was, because you think you have a
better mind for what the actual Hollywood logistics might be
in this, and you might be right. Maybe he didn't
sign off on giving his likeness to this picture, or
I don't know. I thought I thought it was a

(01:06:46):
little bit of a disservice to the character, because I
liked him a whole lot more than you did in Predators.
But there's no disputing that he killed the predator. And
the way the culture apparently works is when you do that,
you are you receive a place of honor in their
mausoleum of killers. He wasn't there. I think it was

(01:07:08):
a real missed opportunity.

Speaker 6 (01:07:10):
Maybe he's dead, maybe he didn't last too many seasons.
Maybe he lasted only two more seasons and then the
predators got him because they learned quick.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah, that's the only thing that I could think of
that made any sense was maybe, you know, if you
extend this out, maybe in another week or so, he
just was killed. He couldn't make it. He was overwhelmed,
and that was it. That's the only thing that made
any sense to me. But again, I think if it
just would have been very intriguing from a fan perspective
to see all of these you know, anti heroes or

(01:07:42):
not anti heroes, but all these stars, these these characters
that that you know, completed the ultimate objective of killing
a predator. I just thought it was kind of it
was a missed opportunity.

Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
I'd be okay with I'd be okay with Isabelle.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Well, she didn't actually kill a predator.

Speaker 5 (01:07:58):
Who cares. She was there. She was there, but she
shot one.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
No, but she didn't kill it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:03):
So so that's what you have to do.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
All the people in the mausoleum that we see have
killed at least one predator.

Speaker 5 (01:08:10):
I don't have to do anything. All I have to do.

Speaker 6 (01:08:15):
Is promise people that on the next show, we're gonna
be talking about the Predator, not Predator, not Predators, not
Predator two, but the Predator, the Predator.

Speaker 5 (01:08:25):
Definitive article, definite article. HP. Do you recommend this movie?

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
I do. I do recommend this movie. I think as
a direct sequel to Predator one and two, I think
it's fabulous. I think if you could, if you had
thrown out AVP and AVP Requiem, this would have fit
in nicely, and and this series's franchise would be a
little more highly regarded than it was prior to Pray.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
I agree with that.

Speaker 6 (01:08:53):
I do think it's much better than both of those movies,
and I was happy to see a return to or
at least in action. But uh, I don't know. I
don't know about this one. I kind of I kind
of recommend it. I recommend this over Alien versus Predator
or Requiem, but that's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
A very low bar. I recommend The Room over either
of those movies. So that movie is objectively terrible, but
it's at least it's entertaining at times.

Speaker 5 (01:09:24):
Okay, not, you know, is it better than Predator?

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Is the Room? No?

Speaker 5 (01:09:30):
What we're talking about the Room for?

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Is this?

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Is this better than Predator?

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
Too.

Speaker 6 (01:09:34):
Yes, well, okay, then that's a Sterling recommendation, a Sterling K.
Brown recommendation featured in The Predator. On the next episode
of Yauca Fest HP. Until then, where can people find you?

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
All Right? I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi
podcast alongside my man father Malone. Over here. I'm an
occasional guest on The Culture Cast with Christashu. I host
another podcast, music podcast called The Noise Junkies. And if
that weren't enough, I have a band camp site Hpmusicplace

(01:10:08):
dot bandcamp dot com.

Speaker 6 (01:10:10):
That all sounds great as for me, you're listening to
my show. We're here on the Mondays with Fa Malone's
weekly roundup, and every Friday or Thursday or whatever the
hell I get to it, we put out a fest.
We've got Yahoucha Fest going on. We're wrapping up the
Fusco Fest. We're looking at Moranusfest. I don't know if
that's just going to be Patreon or not, but that's coming.

(01:10:30):
Also I'm going to be doing I'm looking at the
Clive Barker's Books of Blood, the film adaptations of that.
That's a Books of Blood Fest that'll probably be in
October and uh geez, what else? I did want to say?
Thank you to everyone the ratings and the show. The
download's been absolutely fucking crazy lately, so thank you everyone
for watching or listening. Thank you everyone for listening, and

(01:10:53):
you know, check us out at Patreon dot com, slash
fatheram Alone or Midnight Underscore viewing on Instagram and threads
and all the other bullshit and if you want to
talk to me directly, Father Malone seven one at gmail
dot com. Until then, here's a little bit from the Predators,
or rather just just Predators. We're gonna save We're gonna
save our articles for our next show.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
You know, man, if we ever make it home, I'm
gonna do so much fucking cocaine.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
I'm gonna rape so many fine bitches.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
Be like, what time is it?

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Five o'clock? Damn, I'm gonna go rape me some fun bitches.
You know what I'm saying. Oh yeah, totally like five
o'clock bitch raping time. M hmm. Yeah, you shall stay

(01:11:54):
away from me.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
Yeah, you can kill it. There's something out there writing
in the school language job.

Speaker 4 (01:12:25):
What doing the hell are you? No, h