22.Predator 2 (I actually like this movie better than the original)
Likewise. Over time it's picked up something of a following & I've read more than one article on "why Predator 2 is better than the first". One such article: http://www.scene-stealers.com/top-10s/top-10-reasons-predator-2-is-the-best-of-the-%E2%80%9Cpredator%E2%80%9D-franchise/
Very good article. Those are most of the same reasons I have. I don't necessarily completely agree with all of #5, I would have liked if they successfully had a badass woman character (Maria Conchita Alonso is a TERRIBLE actress in this). But I totally agree in the disdain for force fed romantic subplots. So the lack of that was a breath of fresh air.
What he didn't mention, though, was the fact that this movie did NOT make the mistake of trying to put the Predator back in the shadows and not seen very much, like it was in the first one. Some people criticize it for this, but I think once you've revealed the Predator in all his glory at the end of the first one, you can't go back. So they wisely showed him, and they gave him more toys, so there is still stuff to surprise you.
However, one of the hardest things to do in filmmaking is world building. And the first movie has the establishment of the Predator and what it takes to fight him down pat. So that can't be taken away from it.
EDIT: And I cannot agree more with how absolutely BADASS Danny Glover is in this. Without the bullshit baggage of "I'm getting too old for this shit" from Lethal Weapon, he is a force of nature here, and far more interesting a character than Arnold in the first one. It will forever be my favorite thing Danny Glover's done
Actually I liked Conchita in this, if largely because before this I only knew her from Vampire's Kiss, where her character Alva is subjected by Nicholas Cage to insane degrees of harassment & sadism. So I thought it was nice to see Alva kick some ass after being yelled at, chased around office bathrooms & basements and ultimately being raped by a deluded fake vampire.
A lot of people criticize the "dated" 1997 setting, but to me it plays more like an insanely ultraviolent parallel-universe Los Angeles. I love that it sets up the most chaotic, violent world possible so we know the Predator's going to have a hell of a hunting time & be treated to some wholesale slaughter of ruthless gangs. I actually prefer that Predator 2 doesn't take place in a "real" world, because one thing about the first Predator that kind of bugs me is its latent 3rd-world racism; and using a real-life violent scenario for the backdrop of fictional violence. I generally don't care for the revisionist trend of action movies to take place where lots of people have died and say "wouldn't it be a hoot if these people were really slaughtered by something supernatural or not of this earth?" (The use of Nazis in the Indiana Jones 1 & 3 don't bother me because the supernatural elements didn't play with their war crimes or genocide, but used their treasure hunting as the backdrop for fantastical events. It would have been a different story if the Holy Grail liberated Auschwitz.) Magneto's X-Men backstories, on the other hand, don't seem so kosher to me because they're actually using the genocidal aspect of WWII for an entertaining backdrop. You shouldn't focus on your cartoonish villains' roles as war criminals. What's next, Mr. Freeze running a Russian gulag? Decepticons in Rwanda?
Topic: LOC- The 50 Most Requested Rifftrax of 2012 (Read 26512 times)
