iTunes Exclusive Episode The Predator
Rob and Don Ford review Shane Black's The Predator, a sci-fi action film starring Boyd Holbrook as Quinn McKenna, a soldier who discovers alien technology and becomes hunted by both a predator and the government. While praising the first 30 minutes and serviceable CGI, they critique the film for shifting focus from the predator to the protagonist as a "super soldier," inappropriate comedy including jokes about Tourette syndrome, and a plot that doesn't capture the tension of the original Schwarzenegger film.
About this episode
Key takeaways
- The film's $88 million budget produced serviceable but not mind-blowing CGI that fit the predator franchise
- The first 30 minutes effectively build the story, but the plot becomes unfocused once the group escapes the lab
- Quinn McKenna is portrayed as an overpowered super soldier who survives unrealistic damage, unlike the strategic hero of the original film
- Inappropriate sexual humor and jokes about a character with Tourette syndrome detract from the film's tone
- True predator fans will likely be disappointed; the film ranks poorly compared to the original
Q&A
Who directed The Predator?
Shane Black, known for Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3
Who plays Quinn McKenna?
Boyd Holbrook, an Army Ranger who discovers the alien ship
Would Don Ford see this film again?
Yes, but only through Redbox rental or Netflix, not in theaters unless you're a huge predator fan
What is the main plot issue critics identified?
The film shifts from being about the predator to focusing on Quinn and his group, losing the tension of the original
Read Transcript
Greetings Empire member and or members, if you're hearing the sound of my voice, I appreciate you, because it means you subscribe to the Clubhouse podcast and your favorite podcast app. We hope that you have liked this, we hope that you have rated us, we hope that you would review us and we hope you tell all your friends about us, because that's how we roll, because it's time for another. I don't accept.
Number 421 for those of you playing the home game. Welcome, my name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast, you're a one-stop shop for all things pop culture. And I've been a fan of this franchise for many, many years that we're about to talk about, and it holds a very special place in my heart, but I'm not alone joining me across the desk is the official fact checker of this show, and a man who for a living hunts predators.
You may know him as fond on go, but his mom and name him Don Ford, I'm going to call him Don Ford, welcome sir. I love to fish, but I only went hunting once in Montana, and that was when I was 12 and I'm never did again. You know speaking of Montana.
Yeah, I don't know if you saw a email that came to us earlier this week. The first annual billy film festival coming up. Yeah, it's so time.
Do we want to go? If you're going to fly us down, let's go. Oh, we could drive.
Yeah, whatever we do one of these things it is to write to review something. Shane Black, this is a guy that helped bring the first lethal weapon to the screen, and Iron Man 3, but now he gets to try to bring back the life to the predator. For start tilting, yes sir.
We got to take Josh and our best friends. Oh, wrong one. All right, integrated marketing.
Remix. We love our vendors. They take care of us.
It's been a long week man. They're going to see movies for early so that we can check them out and tell you guys about them. So let's talk about the predator.
Now, back in the day, why is this so special? The original predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger was the very first radar movie I ever saw on a theater. Oh, really?
Just sneaky? Like, like my mom took me to a couple of movies when I was a kid, but I didn't sneak in. Okay.
I paid my ticket. Was I 17? I won't either confirm or deny that.
Did you say I want to see this movie and sneak into the other one? No, no, I was with somebody who was of age and so they were accompanying me. So I could go.
Okay. And I loved the first film. And when I worked at the movie theater was when the second one came out.
And if you remember back in the day where you go to the movies and they had those little mylar signs that were all the pretty colors to tell you what movie was playing, I actually have the one for predator two on my bedroom window. Oh, really? Okay.
And then Alien versus Predator happened. Which... Yeah, yeah.
And then Alien versus Predator wrecked me. But see, I like that because it was based on the original script, which the first one should have been about, but they just watered it down. So now it's time to get to this one.
And here's what you need to know. So predator, if you don't know about the predator, just go look at it. I'm trying to take ship lands predators in it.
There's a guy by the name of Quinn McKenna. He is a, if I remember correctly, he's a like an Army, Army Ranger Special Ranger, played by the great Boyd Holbrook. Is he related to how, by chance?
I don't know. I would say, I would venture to say he is. He looks a lot like him.
So... Oh, the boys are already talking. He finds this ship and he's able to get to it.
I mean, a crash is right by him. Oh, right by, yeah. And so, yeah.
It doesn't say if he's related to how, how, how, now I have to look at that. Okay. So he takes some of the tech and sends it home.
Yeah. Because he wants to check this out. So his kid gets a hold of it.
And his kid starts messing with it, which, you know, that's always a good way. By Jacob Trimbley. Right.
The great Jacob Trimbley. He's kind of like a room, autistic, one of those salon autistic kind of things. Yeah.
And in doing so, and we're going to jump around a little bit. Yeah. In doing so, he ignites a homing beacon.
Now, the government finds the ship with the predator in it. They capture it. But, and they give it to their top biologist.
Well, no, they call the biologist in the... KC bracket. Because when I think biologist, I think Olivia Munn.
Yeah. Well, they wake the predator. A predator goes nuts, predator breaks that.
Now, in the meantime, they've brought Quinn in to figure out what he knows. Find out he knows a little more than he should. So they have him locked away in a mental facility to push him up.
Right. So he works with some of the other people in there to break out. So he ends up teaming up with KC bracket, because his predator is going after his kid, because his kid's got the tech.
Uh-huh. Did I, did I pretty much nail it? Yeah, you can say that.
In plus the government's chasing after him too. Right. And all that stuff trying to get the tech also.
Keegan Michael Key is in this Sterling K Brown. Does Sterling K Brown cry? Uh, no.
He doesn't win. No, he's crazy. Uh, Thomas Jane, who was in the Punisher.
He's in this as well. Uh, Yvonne Strahopski. How you doing?
She was from Chuck. She's in this Jake Busy, a Jake Busy sighting. He's only in for about five minutes.
But it's still a Jake Busy sighting, and I'm counting that. Alfie Allen from Game of Thrones. All right.
Uh, Chad was with you. He was feeling under the weather. Can't be here tonight.
But his written review is located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com. That's our website. So let's get into it.
What do you think? There's one thing where they have the underground lab that they have it in it. We want to be of the X-Men where they have that lab at the dam.
They did the exact same thing here. Oh, man. Kind of like.
Oh, it is Fox. Yeah. So yeah.
The sci-fi is good. Now, is that the $300 million budget CGI? No.
Uh, I'm going to verify that for you and say, no, budget on this was $88 million. Yeah, but for 88. I got that on me.
But for CGI of today, and we're getting spoiled on CGI. Let's be honest here. This CGI was par for the course.
Okay. It was not not the blind mind-blowing thing that just, oh, my gosh, it was incredible. It had give CGI for the college serviceable.
Yes. Okay. Yeah.
It was good. Yeah. But not mind-blowing.
But for a predator film, it fit good. All right. Um, the acting.
Let's get into this. It's a, it's a sci-fi. You're not going to get.
And the Oscar goes to. Yes. So we just need actors that can play the part.
Maybe run a little bit. He's not that same realm as Logan. He can play that kind of military guy.
So I thought he was a good fit. Um, so the acting, I don't, I see no nominations. I didn't see anything that blew me away.
But you don't expect. Yeah. Just let them know.
The, the, the, the Empire, though, this is going to be an action horror film. I want to be basis covered on this. Okay.
I'm not judging you out. Okay. I want them to be informed.
Okay. I'm not judging you outwardly. Now, here's where it gets interesting.
The plot. When the first, what seems like there's a lot going on here, even from the trailers I saw the first 30 minutes. I'd really liked where the ship crashes.
He gets the predator part, ships it off. Um, then he ends up in the lab and then all the hero happens in the lab. It's kind of a good building of the story.
Once he escapes with the compadres that help him escape. Uh-huh. That sort of gets kind of weird.
It gets too much of about Quinn and the group than it is about the predator. I, so did you feel that there were maybe two different movies going on here? Yeah.
And they should put more into the predator. And it was just more about this group. And they got hated.
That stereotypical Hollywood where Quinn is a super soldier who doesn't get injured and can fall off 50 feet of off the building and then gets jabbed in the side and still stands up and starts running. You know why? Why?
Marca. Marca. Okay.
But it's that super soldier thing. And, and I put him again in my written review of www.clubhouseplacast.com. That is our website.
How in the original Schwarzenegger played that guy who was able to give the chopper. He was able to survive smartly on this. And it was, you know, it wasn't too out of like mind or too suspension disbelief on how he's able to survive and beat the predator.
He did it realistically on his own. This one, Quinn plays the super soldier who's almost put a Superman cape on him in camouflage and call him super America soldier. Okay.
Or like the Captain. To avoid copyrights. Is that what we're doing here?
You know, almost like to a Captain America thing is just like that they they put too much of he's Mr. Powerful and could just do too much. Here's my biggest gripe of the film though.
Okay. There was comedy throughout the film, which was kind of good, but there are a couple scenes where the comedy got too sexual in nature that did not need to be put into the film. Okay.
Personally, there's one person in the group who has Tourette syndrome. Well, they run that to the thing to the heel. What I thought was very jokes that were very inappropriate.
I thought that were not too much adult humor. That wasn't too much adult humor. That's fair enough.
This is a famous show and I will not go into it. I appreciate that. A lot of people are like really.
Did he say that? Yeah, haha funny, but it wasn't needed in my part there. This film, they tried to bring this story of mine back, bring the predator back and in this one, I don't think they did it good.
It was just really. Yeah, it's a story of a group and Mr. Super Soldier taking on some kind of alien and the government's coming after him.
That's that's the plot. It wasn't the original had something special about it. It had a guy, yeah, these soldiers come in, they're navy seals or whatever and still they get taken off, but once her vibe is playing it smartly.
It's almost as bad as predator too, I think. I can't say that predator too is a bad film. It just wasn't a good film.
Well, you know how Danny Glover and him can survive everything and take on eight predators and all that and does get hurt. Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to say. This is Quinn and he's Quinn and he can survive.
I just think the first 30 minutes were good, but just goes in the direction that didn't need not to go through. Okay. So that was a CG okay, the action fine for what it is.
Yeah, if you're a predator fan, you're going to want to see this. It's just like me watching the alien versus predator. Yeah, especially the requiem.
It's alien. I got to see it, but it's kind of like disappointment. The true fans, I think, will have a kind of a bad taste or a mouth who will not be real, extremely happy with this film.
Yeah. And Chad kind of said a lot of the same things that you said as well. Yeah.
He was really had really high hopes going into this, but they didn't really. Yeah, we kept witnessing it and we looked at each other kind of going well. Okay.
Yeah. It was very bump. It was a lot like this.
So shall we get to the file analysis? Yeah, let's do it. The way we do the file analysis, we're not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs down, mark, did you love it?
Letters, you know, numbers, laser beams, anything like that. I'm going to ask Don up the two questions. Question number one is, would he see this film again?
If the answers know, then we're done here. But if the answer is yes, then the next thing I'm going to ask Don is how far he's willing to go to see it. From the best of the best of the worst of the best, here's how it works.
Full price of the theater down to a Twilight showing, down to a Nat and a showing, down to early morning on a weekend, down to second run of the dollar theater, down to him actually leaving the house and getting it from red box, down the streaming, down Netflix, down to watching it on the cable. Done. Yes.
Would you see the predator again? Yes. You would.
How far you willing to go to do so? I would say red box rental or maybe Netflix. Don't go running out to the Twilight none the theater to see this thing unless you're a huge predator fan.
Okay. It is Shane Black in the predator. All right, for his old name?
Yes, sir. We got to think Josh and our best friends. All right, great market.
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So until next time, for Don and the Empire, I'm Rob. Clubhouse is closed, Brittany Palmer. Could you might have been able to kick this up a couple of notches.
I'm just saying.