The prey, or when you overturn the omelette but in the end you are always: the predator

I had to see twice victim before writing this review. I had to do it because, the first time, I saw it through the eyes of someone who read a lot of very positive reviews, which portrayed him as the second coming of a cinematic messiah we didn’t think we wanted. “Better predator from a period predatorThe reaction was from the American and international press. “Thanks to the rooster” can be, to paraphrase, the reaction of a viewer who is accustomed to a story predator. “Let’s stay calm,” instead, our inner Fonzie tells us. Song!

The elusive first movie, as we know it well, was released in an exciting decade for American action cinema. A decade full of ideas, arrogance, muscle and division. A decade he did everything but look to the past. On the contrary, he formulated a new imaginative conception, and I do not mean only action cinema or cinema in general. The ’80s with all their flaws and beyond the fast food that makes them like the things today Weird things, it was a unique decade in many ways, from music to fashion. An era when the Western world suddenly realized that the future was really upon us and that it was necessary to sever ties with the past in every possible way. What do I do with an old watch with hard-to-read hands when I can get a digital watch? Why would I want to run anything other than a wearable keyboard? Why leave the house without a jacket with padded shoulder pads? The ’80s looked to the future and, ironically, today is synonymous with looking back, the golden age of nostalgia and regret.

Today, the amazing trends of American cinema are well or badly designed like this saudade: There are the reruns, the “reimaginings”, there are the “real” sequels that bring the old heroes back onto the scene thirty years later. Then there’s the flash of genius, the hundred million dollar idea: i re, that is, sequences that are actually remade. It’s the smartest way to lure old butts into movies with the promise of rebirth of their favorite franchise, while avoiding the risks involved with new ideas. Star Wars: The Force Awakens It is the perfect example: There are old heroes who are back and there are new heroes who don’t hurt and do everything the old heroes did, in a movie that roughly follows the original scene after scene. Criticism erupted and the audience admired him. The challenge was won and everyone in Hollywood noticed: If you want to save the face of a fallen franchise, you have to move like a tightrope walker in the uncanny valley between remakes and sequences, hitting the perfect middle ground (“Not too much, not too little” is the phrase frequent in victim, perhaps not by chance). Because backward They don’t want a pure remake, which rapes their childhood, but if the new version itself makes it right, and presents it as a sequel, then the same remake backward They drink it like a glass of fresh water and buy Funko Pops. Just to repeat that The Simpsons always expected everything: It’s like this scene where Boe draws two dots on the ‘u’ from ‘Duff’ and offers Barney the same beer. And it works.

And so we finally came to victim. Since I’m going to make it long, I’ll shorten it first, so you can stop reading if you’re tired, if you have to have breakfast or go on a lunch break with mates, or if you just want to enjoy the movie before reading a more detailed opinion and with some little spoiler. I said: victim It’s a beautiful movie. It doesn’t move world cinema one iota, but it’s cute, has decent action scenes, and a perfectly fit hero who will surely make his way (and has the most beautiful name in the history of names: amber midthunder), a good escalation in contrast to the hasty conclusion of predator And the beautiful idea of ​​’graphically’ distancing the predator from its predecessors. As our conceptual aunt says, “She leaves herself in check.” And that’s probably the problem too, the reason why it’s designed for Hulu rather than cinema (someone said it’s worth the hall, maybe it’s good, but only because the landscape is breathtaking). Have you been well? Have you had an idea for the movie without spoiling the surprise? I am happy. Let’s do this: From the next paragraph the actual review begins and the spoilers begin. So if you haven’t already, go and see victim And then we bounce here.

At first I was talking about predator Written by John McTiernan describing it as “far-fetched”. I wouldn’t say it’s trivial, but as a pure fact: no other film in the saga has ever been able to hope to equal it, partly because the effect of surprise is lost, partly because, let’s face it, it just isn’t enough knowledge To justify a whole story about an alien stalking people. It’s a nice idea, don’t get me wrong, but just to win a good movie, a maximum of two. In the third, you start repeating yourself and have to do the job to relive what was previously seen, in the fourth, you’re already in the semi-reboot with misplaced saga re-release ambitions (but, it must be said, it wasn’t all our Shannon’s fault). What do you do next? Dear i400Calci.com reader, if you ask me it means you haven’t been careful: take the step”force awakening‘, a sequel/prequel that is actually a remake of the original. Back to Basics: A Predator One (Monstrology) remind me It is called Yautja. Anyone fooled?), a group of humans/slaughter foragers are being hunted in a jungle/forest, violence is unleashed. There’s even the same trick to defeating the monster, Chechov’s pistol which I won’t divulge, but it has the same benefit as Schwarzenegger’s beauty treatment.

But it’s only hearts.

The idea here is clearly to move the place from Val Verde, 1987, to the unspoiled Great Plains of America, in 1719. We are in the pre-Western era, when the first Europeans came to break the millennia-old balances, inflicting irreparable damage to the pattern Indigenous life. It’s a good idea, but even here, it’s not exactly about reinventing the wheel: the setting grid, the recipe is the same as the original. We’ve already seen it, and it did better. victim It’s the cinematic equivalent of those who fancy dress like Lady Deadpool or Batman Samurai: you appreciate the effort, but they’re still Deadpool and Batman.

I refer to what I said at the beginning: I had to watch this movie twice to write this piece. Partly because I needed an excuse to see the Comanche version – it was dropped within minutes when I realized it was a blatant dubbing and not the alternate version of the movie I was hoping to get – and partly because after the first viewing there was nothing stuck. . The second insight gave me the confirmation I was looking for: victim It’s well made, professional, has all the little things in place but lacks something that made the original a classic. There is no action scene that particularly stands out, a truly memorable description or a truly tense moment. All are medium to high, but still average. especially, victim It’s a movie that loves the past: can be seen from the fact that the script skips hoops to include the line (“If he bleeds, we can kill him”) as finisher Whatever, and from the Easter egg he puts at the end – an example of virtuous fan service which, however, creates inconsistency regarding predator 2 Which can be solved in a potential sequel (advertised credits). But do we really want to see a sequel to this stuff here? In the past of the epic predator There has never been a direct sequel to a previous movie, nor a return to the same characters. Why are you doing it now with these characters here? What is there to say in this scenario?

Oh God, you’re holding me unprepared.

That said, cute Dan Trachtenbergthat after 10 Cloverfield LaneOnce again, he has shown that he knows how to operate within pre-defined franchise networks, and is still able to get a good thing out of it despite the potential for cocaine addicts with a habit of “leaving their mark” on projects. Bravo, Dan, now give him something original and let him go very prey Someone else directs it, like, What do I know, Jordan Vogt Roberts or Gabrielle Mainetti on his US debut.

Disney+ possibilities:

‘If that’s the case, we can milk it’
George Romer, i400Calci.com

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