This is my first one, so I'm still playing with the concept/format a bit. Also it may be a bit long. If you have not seen the new movie "Predators," please don't read this, as I spoil the everloving shit out of it.
GEEK:
The first film professor I ever had was a middle-aged hippie woman who didn’t comment on the films she showed her classes; she just showed the films. Sure, she’d say, this one is French Impressionism, or that one is American Noir, but mostly she let the films speak for themselves. Every film student should have a professor like that, because a constant diet of whatever Blockbuster carries certainly removes a sense of history, and allows what would have been talented filmmakers to turn into people like Michael Bay.
The second film professor I ever had told me, the first day I ever met her, that “Jaws” was a metaphor for the Vietnam War.
I was 22 at the time, and I nodded, said something like “Hm, really?” while simultaneously in my head I was laughing, laughing, unable to wait to tell my friends what this woman had just said to me. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Over the next several years I would remember that often, while at the same time learning more about the world around me, including the world as it was in 1975. And of course I watched the film again on my own, more than once… because, no matter how you look at it, that’s a great movie.
The simple truth is, while yes, you can apply most ANY metaphor like that, to any movie, we can also agree that, were Jaws made today, there would be certain differences in a 2010 Jaws vs. a 1975 Jaws. Most obviously, the shark would be replaced by CGI. But there would certainly be other changes, if not to plot than to casting… three white guys as the main characters? In 2010? That’s not very PC, is it? Better put a woman on that boat. And make one of the men non-white, we’ve got to sell tickets, after all…
In 1975, the shark was communism. I’m certainly not trying to imply (though I’m unsure if Film Professor II was or wasn’t) that Spielberg, or author Peter Benchley, consciously set out to make a movie about Vietnam, that would be ludicrous. But it was the people of the early 1970’s who made that book a best-seller, and the people of 1975 who made that movie one of the top-grossing movies of all time. And it was about an unseen force, slowly creeping up on our borders, infiltrating our territory at the very edges (the beach), where we felt most safe… taking our children one by one.
No one will believe they are at risk. The chief of police (Sheriff Brody) wants to close the beaches; the local government WANTS the families out there. There’s no danger, after all. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s err on the side of our financial livelihood.
And so there are a few more deaths, and who has to go out into the sharks’ own environment—travelling, as it were, “in country” – but the blue collar hero (fisherman and ex-marine, Quint), the white collar hero (well-funded researcher Hooper) and the representative of a government agency, Sheriff Brody.
The blue-collar character dies, then the government kills the shark. Clear symbolism. Though in the book, Hooper gets it, too. Our government will save us, you see. That’s something we can all relate to. In 1975. Here in the 21st Century, our relationship with the government is a little different.
So that’s “Jaws.” That’s what turned me off being a film major forever; I managed my degree in theater and only needed one more film class to graduate. It was years after I graduated that I finally heard a film explained in a far, far more hilarious manner: “Predator” (yes, that one), was a metaphor for the gay man’s struggle against AIDS.
These things manifest themselves in subtle ways, you understand. Predator is another great movie. Sit back, relax, watch the powerful, unexplained alien pick off sweaty, oiled-up beefcakes one by one. I’ve watched this happen many times (in the movie, I mean). Jesse Ventura is a “goddamned sexual tyrannosaurus” and even he gets taken out relatively early in the movie. This is serious business.
It was 1987, and though doctors had already begun diagnosing the disease that would come to be called HIV, the federal government was uninterested in making any such announcement about it. It would take 3 more years—when Magic Johnson announced publicly he had the disease—that anyone outside the gay community seemed to take it seriously, at least at on a national, cultural level. And it had been going on for a DECADE by then. This would be like, say, a terrorist attack taking place on U.S. soil, and the president doing nothing for months, before finally explaining nothing to the people and just attacking the wrong—wait, no, okay, bad example. It would be more like, say, the worst natural disaster in the history of America nearly destroying one of its great cities, and then the President ignoring it and letting the under-funded, overworked bureaucratic government agencies deal with it instead…. Well, okay, another bad example, but that’s just the point. The government doesn’t do its job, and we notice it… because we live in this country. It’s hard to miss.
The Predator is AIDS and picks off the overly-close boys club one at a time. It attacks our heroes directly, right where they are at the time, so unlike the shark in Jaws. Also unlike Jaws, every single death is a main character, except for Arnold, who we see achieve victory in the end, when our soldier covers himself with latex, I mean mud. We all learned a valuable lesson that day. Other than “don’t go to Guatemala.”
Which brings us to “Predators,” the film released this month as not a reboot, but a sequel, altering the title slightly because “Predator 3” would just call unwanted attention toward “Predator 2,” and nobody wants that. The sequel to “Alien” was called “Aliens” anyway, and was a wildly different genre. “Predators” is still an action movie... but it’s 23 years after the original. Cultures change. The monster is neither creeping up on our own territory, nor has it arrived someplace we didn’t expect to find it. It has brought us to the fight, starting the battle before a single shot was even fired. It has kidnapped our heroes, taken them away from their homes, and left them to fend for themselves in an environment that is simultaneously familiar, yet not.
In the newest version, is the Predator terrorism? Certainly not, as our main characters don’t seem particularly afraid. They’re not sure where they are, or how they got there, but when they learn of their alien environment they soldier on, because they are a politically-correct band of multi-ethnic (and multi-gendered) soldier, representing We, the People, in this new politically correct post-1980’s America. Viva le Revolution.
It is halfway through the movie that we realize our Common Men (and Woman) are up against not one brand of Predator, but two (hence the title). We have our classic Predator, all scaly-skin and snapping jaws from the original film… and we have our taller, meaner “Larger Predator,” which has another name in the film , but “Black Predator” certainly isn’t very PC either. So we’ll stick with “LP” and “OP.”
So our common citizens must now unite against a common goal—escaping this situation they find themselves in. Our hero, Adrien Brody, has an idea. The LP’s, in their blood feud with the OP’s, have captured an OP and have tied it up in their camp. Our fearless leader (Brody) is going to free it, and in doing so forge a friendship that will get them home.
Upon doing so, the OP reluctantly seems to agree, but is soon attacked by the remaining LP, which proceeds to fight the OP to the death. LP wins. The “escape” vehicle, the spaceship, takes off, and we think our hero is aboard. LP destroys it. Back to business.
The only two forces, we can reason, that are actively fighting against the common We the People, would of course be our American two-party system, the Democrats and Republicans. Alone and tied to a relic, the Democrat begrudgingly agrees to help our hero. It is not happy to do so, of course, but it is honor-bound. It is then decapitated in short-order by a Larger Predator, which presumably brought everyone to this alien planet in the first place… it has an agenda and it will stop at nothing to achieve it. It is there to kill humans, it has wasted its resources to transport its prey thousands of miles, simply to be killed. It repeatedly ignores its own in quest of its goal. And, not for nothing, it does kill the first minority it sees.
Seriously.
The character identified as Mexican (Danny Trejo) is the first to be killed by a Predator. The African is the second to go. At the end of a glorified cameo, Laurence Fishburne runs into a Larger Predator, armed with little more than a flare, and is instantly gunned down, despite the predators supposedly having honor and not attacking unarmed prey. Twenty minutes later, another one crosses paths with a member of the Japanese Yakuza-- the man armed only with a sword, and the two fight as equals. The Japanese man up until this point has been quiet, a watchful observer, and one of only two members of the humans not wearing battle fatigues. He is only carrying a simple handgun, and is missing three fingers. Certainly a slight disadvantage, but he relies on his culture to carry out his last stand. Because we took their guns away at the end of WWII, so that is a way Americans would accept the fight.
Those two fight to the death (both die), and the earlier NP was also taken out by self-sacrifice—that time by a Russian soldier. Two superpowers, two deaths. The American does not die, however… well, one does, but he turns out to not be a soldier, but a psychopath. Predators among us. The American soldier, his Israeli female companion (who grew up in Guatemala) survive, but do not get off the planet. They’re stuck in the same shit they always were.. . it is they, themselves, who must find a way out of their situation, as no one is going to help them.
NOT GEEK:
The opening shot is of Adrien Brody falling through the air. Though not as horrifically bloody as the first movie, there are a handful of memorable deaths, and the Predators stay true to the two previous films which featured them and only them as they bad guys.
Where any other actor would stand around and look buff, or dispatch bad guys with witty repartee, Adrien Brody is a skilled actor, and makes the most of motivating his characters meager dialogue. While the stereotypical action fans won’t appreciate the subtlety, it’s still new and refreshing to hear your leading man quote Hemingway to another soldier. Just as it’s refreshing to hear a character say, “If we survive this, I am going to do SO much fucking cocaine.”
The original Predator is an action classic. Directed by John McTiernan one year before he directed “Die Hard,” it continued the great Schwarzenegger tradition. Predator 2 was directed by a glorified TV director (whose only previous hit had been “A Nightmare on Elm 5”), and starred Danny Glover as the cop on the edge, Gary Busey as the bad guy, and Maria Conchita Alonso as the requisite “Latina who is not killed by the Predator” character (one of those shows up in all three movies. Seriously).
“Predators” is not as good as the first (not enough memorable lines, not enough memorable kills), but light years better than the second. In fact, it’s the second-best movie ever made that contains the word “Predator” in the title. Definitely something worth picking up on DVD… and while it’s rated R, I couldn’t help but remember wishing, as the credits rolled, it has been rated -MORE- R. Oh well. Times they are a-changin’.
GEEK:
The first film professor I ever had was a middle-aged hippie woman who didn’t comment on the films she showed her classes; she just showed the films. Sure, she’d say, this one is French Impressionism, or that one is American Noir, but mostly she let the films speak for themselves. Every film student should have a professor like that, because a constant diet of whatever Blockbuster carries certainly removes a sense of history, and allows what would have been talented filmmakers to turn into people like Michael Bay.
The second film professor I ever had told me, the first day I ever met her, that “Jaws” was a metaphor for the Vietnam War.
I was 22 at the time, and I nodded, said something like “Hm, really?” while simultaneously in my head I was laughing, laughing, unable to wait to tell my friends what this woman had just said to me. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Over the next several years I would remember that often, while at the same time learning more about the world around me, including the world as it was in 1975. And of course I watched the film again on my own, more than once… because, no matter how you look at it, that’s a great movie.
The simple truth is, while yes, you can apply most ANY metaphor like that, to any movie, we can also agree that, were Jaws made today, there would be certain differences in a 2010 Jaws vs. a 1975 Jaws. Most obviously, the shark would be replaced by CGI. But there would certainly be other changes, if not to plot than to casting… three white guys as the main characters? In 2010? That’s not very PC, is it? Better put a woman on that boat. And make one of the men non-white, we’ve got to sell tickets, after all…
In 1975, the shark was communism. I’m certainly not trying to imply (though I’m unsure if Film Professor II was or wasn’t) that Spielberg, or author Peter Benchley, consciously set out to make a movie about Vietnam, that would be ludicrous. But it was the people of the early 1970’s who made that book a best-seller, and the people of 1975 who made that movie one of the top-grossing movies of all time. And it was about an unseen force, slowly creeping up on our borders, infiltrating our territory at the very edges (the beach), where we felt most safe… taking our children one by one.
No one will believe they are at risk. The chief of police (Sheriff Brody) wants to close the beaches; the local government WANTS the families out there. There’s no danger, after all. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s err on the side of our financial livelihood.
And so there are a few more deaths, and who has to go out into the sharks’ own environment—travelling, as it were, “in country” – but the blue collar hero (fisherman and ex-marine, Quint), the white collar hero (well-funded researcher Hooper) and the representative of a government agency, Sheriff Brody.
The blue-collar character dies, then the government kills the shark. Clear symbolism. Though in the book, Hooper gets it, too. Our government will save us, you see. That’s something we can all relate to. In 1975. Here in the 21st Century, our relationship with the government is a little different.
So that’s “Jaws.” That’s what turned me off being a film major forever; I managed my degree in theater and only needed one more film class to graduate. It was years after I graduated that I finally heard a film explained in a far, far more hilarious manner: “Predator” (yes, that one), was a metaphor for the gay man’s struggle against AIDS.
These things manifest themselves in subtle ways, you understand. Predator is another great movie. Sit back, relax, watch the powerful, unexplained alien pick off sweaty, oiled-up beefcakes one by one. I’ve watched this happen many times (in the movie, I mean). Jesse Ventura is a “goddamned sexual tyrannosaurus” and even he gets taken out relatively early in the movie. This is serious business.
It was 1987, and though doctors had already begun diagnosing the disease that would come to be called HIV, the federal government was uninterested in making any such announcement about it. It would take 3 more years—when Magic Johnson announced publicly he had the disease—that anyone outside the gay community seemed to take it seriously, at least at on a national, cultural level. And it had been going on for a DECADE by then. This would be like, say, a terrorist attack taking place on U.S. soil, and the president doing nothing for months, before finally explaining nothing to the people and just attacking the wrong—wait, no, okay, bad example. It would be more like, say, the worst natural disaster in the history of America nearly destroying one of its great cities, and then the President ignoring it and letting the under-funded, overworked bureaucratic government agencies deal with it instead…. Well, okay, another bad example, but that’s just the point. The government doesn’t do its job, and we notice it… because we live in this country. It’s hard to miss.
The Predator is AIDS and picks off the overly-close boys club one at a time. It attacks our heroes directly, right where they are at the time, so unlike the shark in Jaws. Also unlike Jaws, every single death is a main character, except for Arnold, who we see achieve victory in the end, when our soldier covers himself with latex, I mean mud. We all learned a valuable lesson that day. Other than “don’t go to Guatemala.”
Which brings us to “Predators,” the film released this month as not a reboot, but a sequel, altering the title slightly because “Predator 3” would just call unwanted attention toward “Predator 2,” and nobody wants that. The sequel to “Alien” was called “Aliens” anyway, and was a wildly different genre. “Predators” is still an action movie... but it’s 23 years after the original. Cultures change. The monster is neither creeping up on our own territory, nor has it arrived someplace we didn’t expect to find it. It has brought us to the fight, starting the battle before a single shot was even fired. It has kidnapped our heroes, taken them away from their homes, and left them to fend for themselves in an environment that is simultaneously familiar, yet not.
In the newest version, is the Predator terrorism? Certainly not, as our main characters don’t seem particularly afraid. They’re not sure where they are, or how they got there, but when they learn of their alien environment they soldier on, because they are a politically-correct band of multi-ethnic (and multi-gendered) soldier, representing We, the People, in this new politically correct post-1980’s America. Viva le Revolution.
It is halfway through the movie that we realize our Common Men (and Woman) are up against not one brand of Predator, but two (hence the title). We have our classic Predator, all scaly-skin and snapping jaws from the original film… and we have our taller, meaner “Larger Predator,” which has another name in the film , but “Black Predator” certainly isn’t very PC either. So we’ll stick with “LP” and “OP.”
So our common citizens must now unite against a common goal—escaping this situation they find themselves in. Our hero, Adrien Brody, has an idea. The LP’s, in their blood feud with the OP’s, have captured an OP and have tied it up in their camp. Our fearless leader (Brody) is going to free it, and in doing so forge a friendship that will get them home.
Upon doing so, the OP reluctantly seems to agree, but is soon attacked by the remaining LP, which proceeds to fight the OP to the death. LP wins. The “escape” vehicle, the spaceship, takes off, and we think our hero is aboard. LP destroys it. Back to business.
The only two forces, we can reason, that are actively fighting against the common We the People, would of course be our American two-party system, the Democrats and Republicans. Alone and tied to a relic, the Democrat begrudgingly agrees to help our hero. It is not happy to do so, of course, but it is honor-bound. It is then decapitated in short-order by a Larger Predator, which presumably brought everyone to this alien planet in the first place… it has an agenda and it will stop at nothing to achieve it. It is there to kill humans, it has wasted its resources to transport its prey thousands of miles, simply to be killed. It repeatedly ignores its own in quest of its goal. And, not for nothing, it does kill the first minority it sees.
Seriously.
The character identified as Mexican (Danny Trejo) is the first to be killed by a Predator. The African is the second to go. At the end of a glorified cameo, Laurence Fishburne runs into a Larger Predator, armed with little more than a flare, and is instantly gunned down, despite the predators supposedly having honor and not attacking unarmed prey. Twenty minutes later, another one crosses paths with a member of the Japanese Yakuza-- the man armed only with a sword, and the two fight as equals. The Japanese man up until this point has been quiet, a watchful observer, and one of only two members of the humans not wearing battle fatigues. He is only carrying a simple handgun, and is missing three fingers. Certainly a slight disadvantage, but he relies on his culture to carry out his last stand. Because we took their guns away at the end of WWII, so that is a way Americans would accept the fight.
Those two fight to the death (both die), and the earlier NP was also taken out by self-sacrifice—that time by a Russian soldier. Two superpowers, two deaths. The American does not die, however… well, one does, but he turns out to not be a soldier, but a psychopath. Predators among us. The American soldier, his Israeli female companion (who grew up in Guatemala) survive, but do not get off the planet. They’re stuck in the same shit they always were.. . it is they, themselves, who must find a way out of their situation, as no one is going to help them.
NOT GEEK:
The opening shot is of Adrien Brody falling through the air. Though not as horrifically bloody as the first movie, there are a handful of memorable deaths, and the Predators stay true to the two previous films which featured them and only them as they bad guys.
Where any other actor would stand around and look buff, or dispatch bad guys with witty repartee, Adrien Brody is a skilled actor, and makes the most of motivating his characters meager dialogue. While the stereotypical action fans won’t appreciate the subtlety, it’s still new and refreshing to hear your leading man quote Hemingway to another soldier. Just as it’s refreshing to hear a character say, “If we survive this, I am going to do SO much fucking cocaine.”
The original Predator is an action classic. Directed by John McTiernan one year before he directed “Die Hard,” it continued the great Schwarzenegger tradition. Predator 2 was directed by a glorified TV director (whose only previous hit had been “A Nightmare on Elm 5”), and starred Danny Glover as the cop on the edge, Gary Busey as the bad guy, and Maria Conchita Alonso as the requisite “Latina who is not killed by the Predator” character (one of those shows up in all three movies. Seriously).
“Predators” is not as good as the first (not enough memorable lines, not enough memorable kills), but light years better than the second. In fact, it’s the second-best movie ever made that contains the word “Predator” in the title. Definitely something worth picking up on DVD… and while it’s rated R, I couldn’t help but remember wishing, as the credits rolled, it has been rated -MORE- R. Oh well. Times they are a-changin’.
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