Post by johnnycage10 on Nov 20, 2005 12:42:36 GMT -5
Despite what the nay-sayers would have you believe, don't take their word for it. Predator 2 is every bit as wonderful as its great predecessor.
I'm very surprised that people think that P1 was better than P2. Why? Because of the dialogue where Arnie goes 'We're not assassins, we're rescuers only' and people believing that BS? Please!
My verdict – Both Predator films are outstanding. It's just too bad that idiot Paul Anderson was the one who was in charge of directing the pathetic attempt at a 3rd movie. But then again, this isn't the place to discuss the trauma that was Alien Vs Predator.
The action in P2 starts fast and furious from the very beginning. The characters are emotionally charged, with Danny Glover, Bill Paxton, Maria Alonso all giving good performances, with smaller characters, such as their captain and the police chief above him, still being decent characters who are played respectfully well by their actors. I suppose audiences nowadays want to see more of the stereotypical politician/idiot of a police captain and chief, and maybe they couldn't handle seeing a police chief who had justifiable gripes with his officer's behavior. At least that's my theory.
******MINOR SPOILER*******
Gary Busey leads the other half of the cast, those being the federal agents who are out to freeze the predator and steal its technology. This is definitely Busey's best performance next to Lethal Weapon 1. His character's a hard@$$ who doesn't have the desire to talk to anyone who isn't within his tight-knit agency, so much so that it's obvious he's going through major pains when he finally cracks and tells Glover's character all he knows. Must've been hard for him. And oddly enough, Busy and Glover make a decent team, even if it was one that resembled two magnets that naturally act against each other. We find out a bit more about the predator's background. His ship was nice, ditto for his array of new weapons, and the ending where we see that predators had been on earth for centuries was cool. So they CAN speak English, hehehe
******END SPOILER*******
And the bit where Glover's character greets Morton Downey Jr's as the latter is bugging him for comments after yet another series of murders? Beautiful :-D
My first minor gripe about this film is that there are a few too many expendables who show up simply to be chopped up by the predator. While the first movie had a small number of characters, so that every death was noticed and counted, the second one has literally dozens of cops, federal agents, drug dealers and civilians who encounter and are killed by the monster. That created some amount of de-sensitivity to the violence, which is bad, although the predator's victims are never forgotten by Glover's character as he relentlessly goes after the monster, which is good.
My second gripe is that the villainous drug dealers are all one-dimensional, as there's nothing more to them than standard run-of-the-mill bad guys who kill with no regard for the sanctity of human life. It would've been nice if we had at least one drug dealer who had a positive side to him, just like the police officers' and federal agents' negative sides that were so superbly put on film. But then again, that's a problem that the first movie suffered from also – showing 'terrorists' who kill for no reason, and who only exist to be exterminated by Arnie and Company's righteous soldiers.
I suppose the reason for that is because the audience wants simplicity and the freedom to place people within Good and Evil labels, and doesn't want complicated social explanations that can turn a good person into a bad one. If only it was easy enough for me to say that it's just a movie and it shouldn't be taken more seriously than that, but it's not, as this is the image of 'evil drug dealers' and 'evil terrorists' that the ignorant masses see that makes it so easy for slimeball politicians to manipulate public opinion. But that's a whole different discussion altogether.
To summarize – we have locals cops on one side who want the predator's head for killing some of their own, and we have federal agents on the other side who want the predator's head so they can steal his technology, and lastly we have drug dealers who want everyone's head simply because those people exist. And the predator is running amok in the middle of it all. That makes this a great film.
Just remember to keep in mind why Danny Glover's character is so outraged at the predator's killing of humans, because human life is supposed to be precious, and it's easy to forget that when so many characters in this film act otherwise. After all, we have enough people in the real world who think that life is cheap. No point in seeing fictitious characters who do the same.
I'm very surprised that people think that P1 was better than P2. Why? Because of the dialogue where Arnie goes 'We're not assassins, we're rescuers only' and people believing that BS? Please!
My verdict – Both Predator films are outstanding. It's just too bad that idiot Paul Anderson was the one who was in charge of directing the pathetic attempt at a 3rd movie. But then again, this isn't the place to discuss the trauma that was Alien Vs Predator.
The action in P2 starts fast and furious from the very beginning. The characters are emotionally charged, with Danny Glover, Bill Paxton, Maria Alonso all giving good performances, with smaller characters, such as their captain and the police chief above him, still being decent characters who are played respectfully well by their actors. I suppose audiences nowadays want to see more of the stereotypical politician/idiot of a police captain and chief, and maybe they couldn't handle seeing a police chief who had justifiable gripes with his officer's behavior. At least that's my theory.
******MINOR SPOILER*******
Gary Busey leads the other half of the cast, those being the federal agents who are out to freeze the predator and steal its technology. This is definitely Busey's best performance next to Lethal Weapon 1. His character's a hard@$$ who doesn't have the desire to talk to anyone who isn't within his tight-knit agency, so much so that it's obvious he's going through major pains when he finally cracks and tells Glover's character all he knows. Must've been hard for him. And oddly enough, Busy and Glover make a decent team, even if it was one that resembled two magnets that naturally act against each other. We find out a bit more about the predator's background. His ship was nice, ditto for his array of new weapons, and the ending where we see that predators had been on earth for centuries was cool. So they CAN speak English, hehehe
******END SPOILER*******
And the bit where Glover's character greets Morton Downey Jr's as the latter is bugging him for comments after yet another series of murders? Beautiful :-D
My first minor gripe about this film is that there are a few too many expendables who show up simply to be chopped up by the predator. While the first movie had a small number of characters, so that every death was noticed and counted, the second one has literally dozens of cops, federal agents, drug dealers and civilians who encounter and are killed by the monster. That created some amount of de-sensitivity to the violence, which is bad, although the predator's victims are never forgotten by Glover's character as he relentlessly goes after the monster, which is good.
My second gripe is that the villainous drug dealers are all one-dimensional, as there's nothing more to them than standard run-of-the-mill bad guys who kill with no regard for the sanctity of human life. It would've been nice if we had at least one drug dealer who had a positive side to him, just like the police officers' and federal agents' negative sides that were so superbly put on film. But then again, that's a problem that the first movie suffered from also – showing 'terrorists' who kill for no reason, and who only exist to be exterminated by Arnie and Company's righteous soldiers.
I suppose the reason for that is because the audience wants simplicity and the freedom to place people within Good and Evil labels, and doesn't want complicated social explanations that can turn a good person into a bad one. If only it was easy enough for me to say that it's just a movie and it shouldn't be taken more seriously than that, but it's not, as this is the image of 'evil drug dealers' and 'evil terrorists' that the ignorant masses see that makes it so easy for slimeball politicians to manipulate public opinion. But that's a whole different discussion altogether.
To summarize – we have locals cops on one side who want the predator's head for killing some of their own, and we have federal agents on the other side who want the predator's head so they can steal his technology, and lastly we have drug dealers who want everyone's head simply because those people exist. And the predator is running amok in the middle of it all. That makes this a great film.
Just remember to keep in mind why Danny Glover's character is so outraged at the predator's killing of humans, because human life is supposed to be precious, and it's easy to forget that when so many characters in this film act otherwise. After all, we have enough people in the real world who think that life is cheap. No point in seeing fictitious characters who do the same.
