Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall
Have I Seen it Before: Heck, you’re talking to the guy who started a Facebook group in support of the idea of Carl Weathers becoming Governor of Oklahoma because, apparently, the cast of this movie is where we need to get Governors.
Did I Like It: There’s a problem that happens when a long-running film series has a complete revelation with a later entry. I’m looking in your direction, Prey (2022). The original film can start to feel a bit stripped down, a bit tame. I have a real hard time really getting into A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) when I know that Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) exists.
Can this film possibly hold up?
Yeah, pretty much. It accomplishes what the series lost to certain degree as time went on (and especially when they were set up on a series of blind dates with xenomorphs for a couple of movies. The Predator films are at there best opportunities for seamless genre mashup, and accomplishing this by simply giving us a well-made example of one genre*, and then injecting the Predator into the mix. Prey did it by giving us a well-crafted epic in the pre-colonial world of indigenous America… and then threw a dreadlocked alien into the mix. Here, this film would work perfectly well as the group of paramilitary soldiers enter the jungle with a mix of motivations and understanding about their mission, only to reach disaster. Come to think of it, what the hell was Schwarzenegger’s name in Commando (1985)? Is this a sequel to that? I’m sure someone would have noted that before I did, but it sure as hell could have been**.
*Probably doesn’t work for every genre, though. And, just as soon as I type that a Kindergarten Cop (1990) riff where one of the students is a Yautja would be watchable as hell.
**I keep lamenting that Rambo: Last Blood (2019) didn’t follow the rumored plot line of Stallone squaring off agains a malevolent alien. I had apparently forgotten that this film is essentially that, and way better than we could have expected if Stallone had gotten control of the works.