The Predator franchise has had it pretty rough for the past, oh, 25 years. The original Predator is a testosterone-soaked classic and had an at least decent sequel, but the series hasn’t come close to reaching those heights again. At this point, the Predator may as well hang up the ol’ plasma rifle and go vegan. But wait! Shane Black, who appeared in the original movie, and just hit a career high note with The Nice Guys, is directing The Predator, and he’s drawing inspiration from some smart places.
Black likes to deflate action movie tropes, let’s not forget what he did with The Mandarin in Iron Man 3, but it sounds like he’s more interested in building the Predator back up. Specifically, he wants to capture the same vibe as Ridley Scott’s Alien movies…
“The idea is to take what has been a series of kind of modest knock-off type movies, [and take them to] the level of what Ridley Scott was doing with Alien and then Prometheus and now this very much lauded prequel/sequel coming up. How can I follow in the footsteps of someone who re-invents and brings that much event-ised quality to a pulp franchise? How do you get people to know about the Predator and buy their tickets a month before it comes out? Hopefully [we can] re-infuse it with a sense of mystery. The worst thing you could hope for in one of these is a shot in bright sunlit field and the Predator just kind of walks on and ‘hello.’ I keep going back to Ridley Scott, the way he captured the alien in that first movie. The sense of mystery and portent. If we could just cut into a little piece of that – that sort of vibe.”
Sounds good to me. Of course, not everybody loved Prometheus, but it did a lot of things well, and it was certainly better than Alien vs. Predator or the one where the Predator fought Adrien Brody and Topher Grace.
Oh, and while we’re at it, Black has talked a lot about wanting to work with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Rocky even confirmed he’s part of Black’s Doc Savage project, but what about The Predator? Well…
“Um, well look, I’m meeting with [The Rock] in a couple of weeks. Who knows? Anything can happen in this crazy genre world.”
Put Rock vs. Predator in a cage and I’ll pay whatever you want to watch it on pay-per-view. The Predator is expected to arrive March 8, 2018.
(via IGN)
