Speaker 1: Preach, we can kill it up. What hella.
Speaker 2: It's my understanding that the Yaucha are friends and none,
Speaker 2: but they are creditor to all at least that's what
Speaker 2: my Yaucha codec says. That's for twenty two, twenty five,
Speaker 2: in case you're wondering, if you want to look it up,
Speaker 2: the page numbers jack for twenty two is my birthday.
Speaker 3: So oh that's handy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm hoping that they celebrate my birthday over
Speaker 2: there on Youcher Prime. Welcome back, midnight viewers to Yaucha Fest,
Speaker 2: the Ultimate Yaucher Fest, the finale of Yaoucha Fest for now,
Speaker 2: in that we're here to talk about Predator bad Lands.
Speaker 2: We've reached the top of the Predator Mountain. HP. Hey,
Speaker 2: don't buddy, I'm great.
Speaker 3: We made it father alone. Can you believe it? How
Speaker 3: many movies? Seven movies? It almost forty years.
Speaker 2: You know, forty years. No, that's funny, it is forty years.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I thought you were saying like it took
Speaker 2: us forty years to get here.
Speaker 3: No, it was very pleasurable getting here. But I just
Speaker 3: can't believe we reached the as you said, the finale
Speaker 3: for now, it's just it's gone by so fast.
Speaker 2: The feeling is bittersweet because I've had a really good
Speaker 2: time to spending time with the Yaucha Loath these twenty weeks.
Speaker 2: I hope you've all enjoyed it as well. And oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's a day of review. This movie just
Speaker 2: came out today and we're on the air. That's because
Speaker 2: we're VIPs. Now, that's right. We had early access screenings.
Speaker 3: HB and I velvet rope everything.
Speaker 2: And what we are here to talk about Predator bad Lands.
Speaker 2: Here's the motherfucking trailer.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the most dangerous planet in the universe, where
Speaker 4: everything is trying to kill you.
Speaker 5: I need a hand. You're here to prove yourself hunting
Speaker 5: something that can't be killed. We might not be alone
Speaker 5: in this hunt.
Speaker 1: Your swan, so bitch digit youlightish.
Speaker 2: Predator bad Lands was released today, directed by Dan Tracktenberg,
Speaker 2: screenplay by Patrick Ason from a story by Dan Tractenberg
Speaker 2: and Patrick Ayson. They are the team behind Prey, based
Speaker 2: on characters by who HP.
Speaker 3: I don't have that written down. You'll have to pick
Speaker 3: that up for.
Speaker 2: Me, Jim and John Thomas.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say, Glennon Les Charles Hey.
Speaker 2: I remember Okay starring El Fanning, Demetrius Schuster, Kalohamatangi, and
Speaker 2: El Fanning. It's a dual role.
Speaker 3: HP.
Speaker 2: Can you believe we're here?
Speaker 3: I can't believe it. I'm so excited. This is thrilling.
Speaker 2: Did I already say the feeling is bittersweet because I
Speaker 2: don't want this world to end.
Speaker 3: Well, but you know what, I think not to get
Speaker 3: ahead of ourselves, but I think we can agree, and
Speaker 3: we've made reference to this in the past couple episodes.
Speaker 3: The series is in has never been in better hands
Speaker 3: than in Dan Tractenberg's hands. So it is bittersweet, but
Speaker 3: there's plenty to look forward to going forward.
Speaker 2: Not only is the series in good hands, they're actually
Speaker 2: feels like there's a Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really, I let's just let's get into it. There's
Speaker 3: so much I want to say about this movie, and
Speaker 3: there's so much I want to get into, but I
Speaker 3: don't want to bury the lead. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Okay, go for it.
Speaker 3: So do you want me to go into the plot
Speaker 3: a little bit?
Speaker 2: You want to talk about that long a look? I
Speaker 2: think we should say. I think we're going to spoil
Speaker 2: this movie. But oh yeah, it's not going to be
Speaker 2: till the end of the review. They'll be in the
Speaker 2: show notes. They'll probably be a spoiler warning if you
Speaker 2: want to jump to that. Because I don't want to
Speaker 2: spoil this movie for anyone, I'll bury the lead. I
Speaker 2: loved the movie. I did too, Okay, Okay, we'll just
Speaker 2: leave it at that, and then we'll just go through
Speaker 2: the movie and talk about it. I could not. I
Speaker 2: haven't had that good a time in a theater in
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a wonderful experience. I going into it. I
Speaker 3: was reading a lot of articles about it. I know you.
Speaker 3: I think you tried to keep yourself isolated from all
Speaker 3: of that because you wanted to go and fresh, but confess.
Speaker 3: I looked up a lot of information and there was
Speaker 3: a lot. There seemed to be not really a backlash,
Speaker 3: but there's a lot of people, I think, who got
Speaker 3: hung up on this idea that Predator is a Disney property.
Speaker 3: And there have been comparisons made for this movie comparing
Speaker 3: it to The Mandalorian, which I don't think is entirely
Speaker 3: unwarranted when you really think about it, because you have
Speaker 3: this main character, this stoic tough main character who has
Speaker 3: a sidekicker, in this case, sidekicks that are in some
Speaker 3: ways cut the tension a little bit. They're a little cutesy,
Speaker 3: they're a little funny. So I don't While I don't
Speaker 3: necessarily think that's intentional, I do think that in this case,
Speaker 3: it just underscores for me the risk taking of Dan Trachtenberg,
Speaker 3: because it would have been easy to give us another
Speaker 3: movie where the Predator is on yet another safari, and
Speaker 3: we've seen that many times now for the past again
Speaker 3: forty years. This is so refreshing. This is the he
Speaker 3: jettison the horror elements, which are great, and that's one
Speaker 3: of the things I loved about the series up to
Speaker 3: this point. But it's really it was so much fun
Speaker 3: to go into it and really have him embrace this
Speaker 3: sci fi action adventure ethos. That's what I got excited.
Speaker 3: Just for that reason.
Speaker 2: I would say to people who are unfavorably comparing this
Speaker 2: to the Mandalorian, this is a better than the Mandoloren
Speaker 2: and b I suggest you go watch a film series
Speaker 2: from the sixties called Lone Wolf and cub Oh. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so everyone just shunt the fuck up. If it is
Speaker 2: if people have a problem with this movie echoing another movie,
Speaker 2: then they're probably not fans of Terminator two, because that's
Speaker 2: what this movie felt like to me, Terminator two. If
Speaker 2: you watch Terminator and Terminator two back to back, you
Speaker 2: will realize very quickly Terminator two is just a remake
Speaker 2: of Terminator, almost beat for beat, just with a bigger
Speaker 2: budget and higher stakes. That's what this is here, folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I didn't walk out of Terminator two thinking to myself, Oh,
Speaker 3: it was just it was this gambit to make Arnold
Speaker 3: because now Arnold's a big star and he can't be
Speaker 3: the villain anymore. I walked out of it saying, damn it,
Speaker 3: James Cameron, he totally subverted what I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to get with a Terminator movie. And that's exactly
Speaker 3: I mean. Subverted. Maybe isn't the right word in this case,
Speaker 3: but it again for a movie that's a PG. The
Speaker 3: first I believe it's the first PG thirteen in the series.
Speaker 2: Was it PG for something?
Speaker 3: It was PG thirteen for Something engrossed.
Speaker 2: Me out in places. There's no shortage of action, Although
Speaker 2: they did they did something extremely clever. I say this
Speaker 2: every review of Attracted Berg movie. They did something extremely clever.
Speaker 2: There are no humans in this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's why they could make PG thirteen because
Speaker 3: all of the violence, most of the violence is directed
Speaker 3: towards either of these synthetic humans, and they don't have
Speaker 3: the same milky blood that we've seen in like the
Speaker 3: alien pictures.
Speaker 2: They just these aren't androids. This is not Ash or Bishop.
Speaker 2: These are Sins, which is a whole sani.
Speaker 3: So when it's not when it's not those synthetic creatures
Speaker 3: being destroyed, it's just a bunch of crazy creatures on
Speaker 3: this planet Jena. So that's why he can get away
Speaker 3: with making this a PG thirteen movie, even though there's
Speaker 3: no shortage of violence and real and gore. But it's again,
Speaker 3: it's tempered by the fact that none of it is
Speaker 3: directed towards any actual humans.
Speaker 2: HB takes the Yaucher prime. Look, this is the first
Speaker 2: I guess in Killer of Killers they put the word
Speaker 2: yaoucha on screen, which is really the first time we
Speaker 2: see it, but to have it very stamped onto the
Speaker 2: screen yaoucha prime. Here we are, this is their home world.
Speaker 2: There's no two ways about it. Like even when we
Speaker 2: saw what we might have been the Yaucher Prime home
Speaker 2: world on in Alien Versus Predator Requiem, it wasn't clear.
Speaker 2: It was just here's a planet, here's a predator picking
Speaker 2: up a call, and off he goes. That might have
Speaker 2: been a colony somewhere.
Speaker 3: We saw a little bit of it at the end
Speaker 3: of Killer of Killers too, in the gladiatorial arena. That's
Speaker 3: I would presume that's also a part of Yaoucher Prime.
Speaker 2: But see I also did not want to presume at
Speaker 2: that point that was Youcher Prime, because they hop around
Speaker 2: to so many planets for so many different activities, that
Speaker 2: might just be arena planet for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is our really you're right, this is
Speaker 3: our first real look labeled as such as the I
Speaker 3: presume it's the Yaoucha homeworld Youcher Prime.
Speaker 2: Can I just say one thing about the sub title? Yeah,
Speaker 2: the subtitle was very neatly displayed in the lower right
Speaker 2: portion of the screen instead of gigantic and across the
Speaker 2: entire screen, which every fucking movie does. Now, please everyone
Speaker 2: stop doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's have.
Speaker 2: You noticed that like that started like in The Avengers,
Speaker 2: Like I noticed that was like it would say, like
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and it fills in the and like and
Speaker 2: now every TV show does it, every movie like we
Speaker 2: can just put it in the low. You don't even
Speaker 2: need to put it, honestly, if you're showing us a
Speaker 2: shot in New York.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of that, some of the subtitling, and some
Speaker 3: of those title cards for they reminded me actually of
Speaker 3: because I've been watching a lot of Star Trek movies
Speaker 3: because of Star Trek Fest, a lot of that, Buddy,
Speaker 3: A lot of that reminded me a little bit of
Speaker 3: that too, And that to me, that underscored the sci
Speaker 3: fi thrust of this movie, I guess more than anything.
Speaker 2: So what happens, man, come on? So in the more
Speaker 2: general impressions, because I got a lot, you know, let's.
Speaker 3: Get into this because it's all gonna all of our
Speaker 3: impressions are going to come out. And due course, I
Speaker 3: think as we talked about this movie, but and I
Speaker 3: ges forgive if there's any spoilers, well hopefully those will
Speaker 3: be left to the end here. But I don't think
Speaker 3: we're spoiling anything at this point that wasn't in the trailer.
Speaker 3: What we're dealing with here, it's a family of yaouchcha
Speaker 3: and the main character that we're going to follow in
Speaker 3: this movie is a Yaoucha named Deck. And by the way,
Speaker 3: the actor I'm not going to butcher his name, his.
Speaker 2: First name is Demetrius. Let's call him Demetrius Demetrius.
Speaker 3: He is the first actor to play the predator who
Speaker 3: is shorter than seven feet tall. And that's important because Deck,
Speaker 3: the main character of this movie, is basically the runt
Speaker 3: of his family of Yaucha. He has a brother named Quay,
Speaker 3: and he has this father, this stern patriarch of the
Speaker 3: klan or the family and horns.
Speaker 2: So he's important.
Speaker 3: And supposedly the same actor played both roles, played Deck
Speaker 3: and played the father, or I think he was the
Speaker 3: most capture. So Deck is the runts of his family.
Speaker 3: And what we see happen is the father has ordered
Speaker 3: him to be killed by his brother Quay, because that's
Speaker 3: the Youcher way, weakness cannot be tolerated in the family.
Speaker 3: He actually he basically says, because by the way, another
Speaker 3: big thing is we have seen or heard Yaoucha speak,
Speaker 3: but we haven't seen it to this degree. There's actual
Speaker 3: conversations between Yaucha throughout this movie, and it's so the
Speaker 3: father is talking about how he actually wanted the brother
Speaker 3: to kill the son in his sleep because he can't
Speaker 3: tolerate this runt being in the family and leave.
Speaker 2: To the family he's so worthless as a predator shame.
Speaker 3: Prior to the father showing up, the Deck has announced
Speaker 3: his intention to his brother that he wants to go
Speaker 3: to this planet of Jenna, which is the most hostile
Speaker 3: planet apparently that the youcher know of, and his intent
Speaker 3: is to kill this creature called the Callusk, which is
Speaker 3: supposed to be the apex predator of all apex predators.
Speaker 2: He every predator fears, every youch of fears.
Speaker 3: Even their father is afraid of the Callusk. So that's
Speaker 3: what Deck wants to do it. And by the way,
Speaker 3: Deck is almost immediately a sympathetic character. Now the thing is,
Speaker 3: I believe he's one of the first predators where he
Speaker 3: wasn't actually wearing a mask. It's all done with CG.
Speaker 3: It's remarkable the performance that this actor gives through this
Speaker 3: CG makeup, if you will, is astounding because the sequence
Speaker 3: where he's basically at the father's mercy and he's a
Speaker 3: heart beat away from getting killed by his brother, who
Speaker 3: eventually turns on the father, and it becomes this battle
Speaker 3: where the brother essentially sacrifices himself. But through this whole sequence,
Speaker 3: it's almost heartbreaking to watch Deck screaming for his brother,
Speaker 3: for mercy, for his brother.
Speaker 2: You see, starting at the very beginning, where he's trapped
Speaker 2: and the brother is going to sacrifice him. You see
Speaker 2: every emotion playing on this CG character's face. He's wounded,
Speaker 2: he can't believe it, he's terrified, he's filled with rage.
Speaker 2: And I thought this was going to be the most
Speaker 2: awkward part of the movie, watching Yaucha speak, and I
Speaker 2: was used to it so fucking quickly. And to your
Speaker 2: point about this subtitling. In The Predators, the first time
Speaker 2: we got to see a predator actually speak, and what
Speaker 2: we got was the predator language, and it would decode
Speaker 2: in into English, and they carried that into Killer of Killers,
Speaker 2: Like even though we were seeing it in English, the
Speaker 2: edges of it were still the Yaucha language that sort
Speaker 2: of many lines, the kind that they have on their
Speaker 2: detonators on their arms. This one it's just straight, here's
Speaker 2: their language. And I admired that so much. I admired
Speaker 2: the fact that they spoke in Yaucha and it is
Speaker 2: some title as much as it is, and we'll eventually
Speaker 2: get some English and a very clever reason for it.
Speaker 2: But I just thought it was amazing how quickly I
Speaker 2: got used to Yaucha speaking, and and as you said,
Speaker 2: the visual effects going on here for his face are
Speaker 2: fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 3: They're incredible. He's I thought it was.
Speaker 2: I thought it was practical for a lot of the movie,
Speaker 2: and then to find out none of it was.
Speaker 3: You just forget to even think about that. Because as
Speaker 3: he's speaking, they have these of course, they have these
Speaker 3: famous mandibles. They kind of expand as he's speaking you
Speaker 3: can see the skin of the mandibles vibrating with his breath,
Speaker 3: and it's so compelling and it looks so real that
Speaker 3: again I thought that maybe it was CG aided practical effects,
Speaker 3: but it's my understanding it was all CG. I haven't
Speaker 3: seen any behind the scenes footage, but I assume he's
Speaker 3: just wearing some kind of green thing on his head
Speaker 3: and they just mapped it all in after the fact.
Speaker 3: But it's very realistic.
Speaker 2: And the process of the voice, by the way, because
Speaker 2: first of all, the language is great, it's jump it's
Speaker 2: right up there with Klingon Baby, But the thing is
Speaker 2: they've they seem to have made accommodations for the fact
Speaker 2: that there are there's a mouth and then mostly a guttural.
Speaker 2: We've always heard them speaking from deep in their throat
Speaker 2: to begin with, and there is these mandible flaps outside it.
Speaker 2: So you're getting not just this alien language, but how
Speaker 2: an alien would speak in their alien language, which was
Speaker 2: remarkable for this ninety minute action movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of care went into a the language
Speaker 3: and b as you said, how they speak and how
Speaker 3: that all, how their anatomy works as they're speaking. I
Speaker 3: thought it was fantastic. So in his last dying breath,
Speaker 3: essentially the brother who's going to be killed by the father,
Speaker 3: he's turned on the father effectively, and the father just
Speaker 3: wastes him almost immediately. But in his last move as
Speaker 3: he's dying, he sends deck, he sets a course for
Speaker 3: the planet, this planet Jenna, and he takes off before
Speaker 3: the father can kill him too. And as you said,
Speaker 3: just the emotions that play across this CG character's face
Speaker 3: it you already you were saying, how quickly you got
Speaker 3: used to the language and all that. It's amazing how
Speaker 3: quickly you already feel sympathy and you feel for this
Speaker 3: character and you're rooting for him. How could you not,
Speaker 3: because he's everyone loves an underdog. Now, obviously the predators
Speaker 3: over the course of the film's history are pretty brutal,
Speaker 3: and it would be I'd be hard pressed to express
Speaker 3: sympathy for any of them. You almost immediately you can't
Speaker 3: help but be rooting for this guy. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: We imagine we've sided with some predators before, we liked them.
Speaker 2: During the first Alien Versus Predator that one dude, what
Speaker 2: was his name.
Speaker 3: Wolfe, the one who communicates with.
Speaker 2: A Lathan man and then he gets killed by the
Speaker 2: Alien queen and then all those other cool predators get out.
Speaker 2: We were cool with them. I know they look if
Speaker 2: there had been no Xeno morphs in that temple, they
Speaker 2: would have been full on villains.
Speaker 3: But sure, but this it, I guess said. Rooting for
Speaker 3: them is one thing, but they have sympathy for them.
Speaker 3: I don't think even in that sequence with Sona Latham,
Speaker 3: you ever have sympathy. You have a respect for the
Speaker 3: predator because he recognizes that she's a warrior.
Speaker 2: In that movie, I agree, this is unlike anything we've
Speaker 2: seen before. We're not only taking him as our protagonist,
Speaker 2: but we're taking him now as a very sympathetic protagonist
Speaker 2: because he's got family trouble and we've all been there.
Speaker 3: And he's there's a the fact that he's basically bullied
Speaker 3: and he's rejected by the father, and he has a
Speaker 3: lot to prove and and he's not only I mean,
Speaker 3: he's picked the worst of the worst as his goal
Speaker 3: to prove his honor. And by the way, the whole
Speaker 3: thing of it is he has once he proves that
Speaker 3: he's worthy of the Klan, that's when he is presented
Speaker 3: with the cloak, with the invisibility bit that we've all
Speaker 3: gotten used to. So by the way through this whole movie,
Speaker 3: he doesn't have the ability to become invisible. He hasn't
Speaker 3: earned that yet, which I thought was also an interesting
Speaker 3: because because it was about I don't know. Shortly after
Speaker 3: he landed on this planet, I went, why isn't he
Speaker 3: just oh, because he hasn't earned his armor. He hasn't
Speaker 3: earned the ability to become an actual Yaucha. There are
Speaker 3: many times in the movie where we'll talk about el Fanning,
Speaker 3: but she says deck of the Yaucha, and he says, no,
Speaker 3: not yet. I haven't proven myself yet, so he's got
Speaker 3: that code too. But it's almost comical. The ship takes
Speaker 3: off automatically and arrives on this planet, and almost immediately
Speaker 3: he is under attack, and it really doesn't stop for
Speaker 3: the whole movie.
Speaker 2: Hey, remember when we reviewed Predators, and the thing that
Speaker 2: we really liked about Predators was we pulled all our
Speaker 2: human characters off of Earth and got them into an
Speaker 2: alien world because the Predators are aliens and we want
Speaker 2: to go to alien worlds. And then it seems like
Speaker 2: they were running around Hawaii.
Speaker 3: Right, This isn't Hawaii.
Speaker 2: This is not Hawaii. This is an alien world and
Speaker 2: it's not just a pink sky with a couple of
Speaker 2: planets floating in the atmosphere. This is a strange universe
Speaker 2: to be to find oneself in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it becomes obvious almost immediately. Excuse me that
Speaker 3: he's really overmatched, because I think the first thing that
Speaker 3: he runs into are these sort of like tree creatures.
Speaker 3: It looks like how Groot can like elongate his body.
Speaker 3: It's these tree roots that encircle and attack him, and
Speaker 3: he goes through a thing with them, and then he
Speaker 3: comes across these pods.
Speaker 2: That This is my favorite part. Well, or at least
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say that a lot. This is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite parts because when I'm saying that this is
Speaker 2: an alien world, not only is this look, here's a
Speaker 2: bunch of weird stuff that you would find in an
Speaker 2: alien world, but there's some thought behind it. The avatar
Speaker 2: ain't got nothing on Genna, because he finds himself in
Speaker 2: this field with these like cat of nine tails looking things,
Speaker 2: like oversized cata nine tails looking, and if you get
Speaker 2: close to them, they start to swell up and they
Speaker 2: have like little darts and spikes. Yeah, so clearly you
Speaker 2: can get through them if you take your time and
Speaker 2: do it, but obviously don't go near that field. But
Speaker 2: he finds himself in the middle of it, and then
Speaker 2: a flying predator circles overhead and then drops something into
Speaker 2: the field, which sets off a bunch.
Speaker 3: Of them a bowler.
Speaker 2: So not only are we given this alien world, but
Speaker 2: we're given like like an ecosystem at play, Like this
Speaker 2: animal has figured out if it sees something down in
Speaker 2: that field, if it drops something, that plant will attack
Speaker 2: that thing, knock it out, and then it's easy pickens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in the midst of that sequence where he's
Speaker 3: trying to edge his way, because you can if you
Speaker 3: edge back from these pods, they will shrink back. But
Speaker 3: if you get too close to them, it's like they
Speaker 3: know the proximity. But in the midst of this, he
Speaker 3: this synth Fea is in like the vulture's nest. She's
Speaker 3: been entangled there. She's been there for we don't know
Speaker 3: at that point how long. And she starts to communicate
Speaker 3: with Deck and everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's like, hey, yaucha, you're fucked down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She's a synth that has basically been created to
Speaker 3: observe and record all the plant life and the fauna
Speaker 3: and the flora. And the character is very curious, and
Speaker 3: it's a nice foil for Deck, who is very taciturn
Speaker 3: and stoic, as you would expect a youcher.
Speaker 2: To be a synth programmed with empathy.
Speaker 3: And oh also, if you've seen the trailers, you know
Speaker 3: that at this point in the movie, she has no legs.
Speaker 3: There's only half of her. She's trapped there because she
Speaker 3: has been part of a team that we learn has
Speaker 3: tried to make contact with this callusk, and her legs
Speaker 3: were separated from her body. And she ended up in
Speaker 3: this vulture's nest with only half her So she effectively
Speaker 3: makes a deal with Deck she will help him navigate
Speaker 3: the dangers of this planet if he will take her
Speaker 3: to reunite her with her legs effectively and fix her.
Speaker 2: So, oh my god, that's the plot of our movie.
Speaker 3: It is. And so he makes it through this. Actually
Speaker 3: it's actually interesting because you think he's going to get
Speaker 3: through this, but in fact he does get stung by
Speaker 3: one of these darts and he's paralyzed. But as this creature,
Speaker 3: this vulture thing, comes down, she has gotten off from
Speaker 3: her perch and she kills this thing. She dispatches it
Speaker 3: in this really brutal way, but just off screen, all
Speaker 3: you see is her hand with a blade like stabbing
Speaker 3: this thing over and over again. And then she comes
Speaker 3: back into view like first person view, like oh hey,
Speaker 3: I you okay, everything all right, And that's their introduction.
Speaker 3: So he doesn't know what to make of her, and
Speaker 3: in fact, he has no interest in helping her, but
Speaker 3: then she basically convinces him that she's basically like a tool,
Speaker 3: this tool that can help him to navigate this dangerous planet.
Speaker 3: And at first that's what he calls her his tool
Speaker 3: and he slings her on his back and they It's
Speaker 3: a little bit like I don't know, Luke and Yoda
Speaker 3: going through Daegoba with this stage on his back HP.
Speaker 2: But is sci fi greatness. It is every animated movie
Speaker 2: from the nineteen seventies wanted to be this. Everybody Ralph
Speaker 2: Boxhey fumbling attempt at wizards and whatever. This is the
Speaker 2: landscape I always wanted to see. It is so incredibly
Speaker 2: frank for Zeta I nearly lost my mind.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: We also an alien warrior with half of an android
Speaker 2: on his back, trekking through the most dangerous planet in
Speaker 2: the universe. What could be better than that? If I
Speaker 2: was nine years old, I would never stop watching this movie.
Speaker 3: So it's like Predator meets a Buddy movie kind of
Speaker 3: And she, as you said, she is nothing but empathy
Speaker 3: and he is the exact opposite of empathy. But they
Speaker 3: have these kind of fireside conversations for lack of a
Speaker 3: better term, and slowly but surely she starts to get
Speaker 3: through to him because he's been indoctrinated with this Yaucha code,
Speaker 3: and she basically convinces him, like she tells him this
Speaker 3: story about wolves and how wolves hunt in packs, and
Speaker 3: then there's the alpha wolf and his reaction is all
Speaker 3: the alpha must be the one that kills the most,
Speaker 3: and she says no, the alpha is the one who
Speaker 3: actually protects the rest of the pack, and they work
Speaker 3: together as a team to get through this stuff, and
Speaker 3: slowly but surely, through the course of the movie, he
Speaker 3: essentially learns the value of that and in fact he's
Speaker 3: forming this ragtag for lack of a better term, it's
Speaker 3: ragtag family that he builds around himself, and they all
Speaker 3: play a part in helping him get through this. What
Speaker 3: I wanted to mention if people aren't aware, is thea
Speaker 3: in the other since we see come courtesy of Whylan
Speaker 3: Utani Corporation. So this is another movie that takes place
Speaker 3: in the shared Alien Predator universe, the one I would
Speaker 3: love it if this was the first of because obviously
Speaker 3: we talked about Alien Versus Predator the very the original
Speaker 3: third movie in the series. This feels like a better
Speaker 3: beginning to that shared universe. I just I love it
Speaker 3: because it's not overly beholden to aliens. In fact, you
Speaker 3: never even see or hear of any of the alien xenomorphs.
Speaker 2: But one they're there. One little crossover from Alien Romulus
Speaker 2: that I loved is that when a synth shuts down
Speaker 2: or is shut down, their eyes roll in the way
Speaker 2: that Utani logo pops up in their pupils.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 2: It is such a it is, Yeah, that will happen
Speaker 2: with the corporatization of everything, wherever they can jam a logo.
Speaker 2: Oh eyeballs perfect, put a logo there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So parallel to this, so Fia has counterpart sister
Speaker 3: if you will, called Tessa that they are. They work
Speaker 3: together and it's Thea's goal to get back to Tessa.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile Tessa in her corterie of her battalion of
Speaker 3: other sins. By the way, this is very cool. I
Speaker 3: picked up on this with the course of the movie.
Speaker 3: So it's all the rest of the Sins are men males,
Speaker 3: and they're all played by the same guy. So they
Speaker 3: but it never calls attention to itself. It's they do
Speaker 3: it so well. So they were so used.
Speaker 2: To seeing where we're so used to seeing like a
Speaker 2: team of faceless thugs that for a little while, that's
Speaker 2: all you think it is until you start looking at
Speaker 2: them really and it's the same guy, it's the same model. Basically,
Speaker 2: WiLAN Utani has sent out their drones.
Speaker 3: It's it works gangbusters. It just it felt so genuine
Speaker 3: and what Whale and Utani, like you said, would actually do.
Speaker 3: So they her, Tessa and her team are still out
Speaker 3: to They effectively they want to trap the callusk. That's
Speaker 3: what their whole scheme is. Whaling New Towani wants to
Speaker 3: capture the callusk so that they can basically dissect it,
Speaker 3: an experiment on it, and figure out.
Speaker 2: What they want to fucking weaponize whatever they can get
Speaker 2: their heads on exactly.
Speaker 3: This is another in the long line of things that
Speaker 3: they do that a corporation would do at this point.
Speaker 3: But so, so they meet up this creature what do
Speaker 3: they call it, Bud, this little looking thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, here's where the sort of Mandalorian grogu diysification
Speaker 2: argument can be made, because what you have is a
Speaker 2: creature native to the planet who is humanoid enough that
Speaker 2: it's like a monkey basically, and it interacts with them
Speaker 2: and provides comic relief, but also is very lethal. Let's say,
Speaker 2: like we don't meet him in a nice manner. It's
Speaker 2: quite a harrowing sequel. So look, I get the you
Speaker 2: can accuse this lord they want to sell dolls or whatever,
Speaker 2: but let's face it, I don't think Dan Trachtenberg wants
Speaker 2: to sell one fucking doll unless it's like a McFarland
Speaker 2: toy's version of a Predator.
Speaker 3: To me, the fact that the one two punch of
Speaker 3: Prey and Killer of Killers, I have the utmost faith
Speaker 3: in Dan Tracktenberg, and I have no doubt that he wrote.
Speaker 3: He and his team of writers wrote the movie that
Speaker 3: they wanted to write. I don't believe that they were
Speaker 3: under any sort of pressure by Disney or anybody else
Speaker 3: to put some to shoehorn in some character like an
Speaker 3: Ewok just to sell plushies or something. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's the case.
Speaker 2: I know the Hunchback of Notre Dame should have little
Speaker 2: gargoyle friends. It was another weirdo touch to this movie,
Speaker 2: like Okay, here's the warrior alien, here's the half android,
Speaker 2: and now here's this little creature running around with them,
Speaker 2: Like what could be better? It's so fucking science fiction.
Speaker 3: Dek has been forming his own personal clan. He has
Speaker 3: thea who is helping him to navigate this world and
Speaker 3: essentially get him to his goal, which is the Callous.
Speaker 3: And along the way he picks up this creature, this
Speaker 3: Bud monkey creature with who's actually surprisingly capable in this environment.
Speaker 3: And what I also like about this is that it
Speaker 3: initially Dek still doesn't care, like THEA tries, he leaves
Speaker 3: the camp and effectively abandons this little cute monkey creature,
Speaker 3: and THEA tries her best to break it through to
Speaker 3: him and say, this creature risks its life for you
Speaker 3: and you can't just abandon it. But he's still single
Speaker 3: minded a purpose and he wants to get to the Callous.
Speaker 3: And eventually they do make it to this the Callous nest.
Speaker 3: I guess you would call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But before then him and Bud have a scene
Speaker 2: straight out of Jaws, Remember when oh yeah, he is
Speaker 2: sitting there with the young Michael, young Michael's copying all
Speaker 2: of his moves. We get that right here with the
Speaker 2: Yuca and a little beastie who is just mimicking everything
Speaker 2: he's doing and like slowly melting his heart because it's
Speaker 2: fucking adorable.
Speaker 3: It is adorable, and you're right, it is one of
Speaker 3: those things where he they're eating they so they've had
Speaker 3: this sequence where this creature called like something Bison, this
Speaker 3: giant kind of rhino, meets a wooly mammoth creature. They've
Speaker 3: killed it by working together. And then the next sequence
Speaker 3: is at night, the Deck is eating this creature by
Speaker 3: the campfire, and he gives a piece to Bud, and
Speaker 3: that's when Bud mimics what he's doing. Where're trying to
Speaker 3: act all tough and how can you not? I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm not jaded enough to go, oh,
Speaker 3: this is just a gambit to make the add something
Speaker 3: cute see that doesn't really belong. I thought it was cute,
Speaker 3: and I thought, again, every other Predator movie, as good
Speaker 3: as some of them are, as great as some of
Speaker 3: them are, they didn't have any of this sort of
Speaker 3: comic relief, this sort of sweetness that we're seeing here.
Speaker 3: And again I couldn't help thinking, this is really like
Speaker 3: Dan Tracktingberg kind of flexing his muscles and saying, all right,
Speaker 3: you thought you were gonna see just another old Predator
Speaker 3: movie where he lays ways to another team of Special
Speaker 3: Forces guys or what have you. Now, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to give you that. I'm going to give you, this
Speaker 3: kind of buddy movie trek across this hostile landscape with
Speaker 3: this ragtag band of misfits including a predator, seems both.
Speaker 2: He seems to constantly be asking the question, what can
Speaker 2: I only do in this kind of movie? Let's do that?
Speaker 2: And then they do it.
Speaker 3: Look, he could his next movie could be a Western
Speaker 3: featuring a yaucha, and I would gladly pay my ten
Speaker 3: bucks or whatever to go see it, because I have I.
Speaker 2: He is, you know what, he could do it without
Speaker 2: a yauchin. My point is if his next movie was
Speaker 2: a Western, and it was an actual Western and he
Speaker 2: had a train sequence, then this guy would go, Okay,
Speaker 2: what makes train sequences great? What hasn't been done? What
Speaker 2: can we innovate here? And then he would work to
Speaker 2: do it, and he would do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I just think it's it's bold. That's the word
Speaker 3: that I keep coming back to. It's it's like he's
Speaker 3: feeling himself, and he's like, all right, now that I've
Speaker 3: been handed the keys to the kingdom, I've proven myself
Speaker 3: over the last couple of movies, how can I innovate
Speaker 3: in this series?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I got it. I'm going to make the protagonist the
Speaker 3: Yaucha instead of being this nameless, faceless for that killer
Speaker 3: who just lays waste to a bunch of humans. It's
Speaker 3: just it's incredible to me that he would go in
Speaker 3: that direction. It would never have occurred to me, fatherm alone,
Speaker 3: to take the movie in that direction.
Speaker 2: Shout out to George Lucas for putting subtitles for Gredo
Speaker 2: in the canteen of sequence in Star Wars, because the
Speaker 2: executives fought him on that and they said, what if
Speaker 2: a kid can't read it? And he said, the parent
Speaker 2: will read it to them, because he thought they would
Speaker 2: speak alien languages, and let's start having them speak an
Speaker 2: alien languages. And that really pays off here. That's I
Speaker 2: think you can draw a direct line from Gredo to Deck.
Speaker 3: Here we should mention you made reference to this earlier.
Speaker 3: Is that initially Thea is speaking yaoucha back to him
Speaker 3: when they first meet. But then she does a little
Speaker 3: in her head and it's a cheap gambit, but it works.
Speaker 3: She essentially says, all right, now i've i've my programming.
Speaker 3: Now I will you will hear me speaking You'll hear
Speaker 3: me speaking yaoucha. But you know it's a universal translator
Speaker 3: effectively is what she's done. So for the rest of you.
Speaker 2: She says, you're universal translator. You're hearing me speak yaoucha,
Speaker 2: but everyone else will hear what their language, which which
Speaker 2: immediately made me flash to write Rockney and so Bannon
Speaker 2: he's a writer on the Twilight Zone. He created SEQUESTDSB
Speaker 2: and Farscape, and when we were talking about Twilight Zone episodes,
Speaker 2: he says the one that he was most interested in
Speaker 2: writing were ones that removed the glass from your television.
Speaker 2: It allowed an interaction with the audience that was delicate
Speaker 2: and not over hitting you over the head with it.
Speaker 2: And that's what this felt like to me, because that's
Speaker 2: breaking the fourth wall. That's talking to the audience and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you out there, you're hearing English. Because I'm sure if
Speaker 2: you see this in Spain, you would get that joke
Speaker 2: in Spanish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it worked. It's one line and you forget
Speaker 3: about it and for the rest of the movie he
Speaker 3: is still subtitled and he's still speaking yaoucha, but she's
Speaker 3: speaking English and you never give it a second thought.
Speaker 3: The showing that you saw fa them alone was it
Speaker 3: loud as fuck? I saw this movie in imax, So yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't see it in imax, but it was loud,
Speaker 3: and that's exactly what you want because this is a
Speaker 3: brutal alien death planet and everything needs to be loud
Speaker 3: and big. And my point that I'm leading up to
Speaker 3: is that extends to the soundtrack, which I thought was wonderful.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, so he So far, Dan Tracksenberg has made
Speaker 2: two Predator movies, and each one has had its own composer.
Speaker 2: So for Prey he had Sarah Shackner, and for Killer
Speaker 2: of Killers he had Benjamin Waalfish. For bad Lands, it's
Speaker 2: Sarah Shackner and Benjamin Wallfish together and it is seamless.
Speaker 2: And I was knocked out by it. Because if ever
Speaker 2: there was an appropriate use of throat singing for a
Speaker 2: race of characters in a filmed entertainment, then it's for
Speaker 2: the Yaucha. And their theme music was fucking awesome.
Speaker 3: Very propulsive soundtrack. It worked perfectly. I'd like to cut
Speaker 3: I'd like to.
Speaker 2: Cut some in here so you can listen at home,
Speaker 2: But so far the soundtrack is completely unavailable.
Speaker 3: Really, that's surprising.
Speaker 2: I spend all fucking day looking for it.
Speaker 3: Not even wow, I've got on Spotify. That's incredible. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: It works beautifully with the visuals. I'd be curious to
Speaker 3: hear it outside of the movie, but in the context
Speaker 3: of it just it seamlessly blends in with the action,
Speaker 3: with all the loud, all the explosions, everything that's happening.
Speaker 3: It's a very loud Like I said, propulsive, for that's
Speaker 3: the word I can think of, propulsive. It moves everything along.
Speaker 3: It's tribal at times. The throat singing with the Yaucha's fantastic.
Speaker 3: I thought it worked really well. This isn't the kind
Speaker 3: of movie that begs for a traditional symphonic score. I
Speaker 3: think they needed something more alien sounding.
Speaker 2: In lieu of listening to the soundtrack to this movie today,
Speaker 2: I instead listened to Benjamin Walfish's soundtrack to Alien Romulust, which,
Speaker 2: like this, tends to quote from its source material, there
Speaker 2: quoting from the original Jerry Goldsmith's score from the first
Speaker 2: Alien movie. God damn, what a gorgeous score. I'm so
Speaker 2: excited that there are there are such talented composers coming up.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I'm saying they're coming up as if
Speaker 2: they haven't been working for decades already, But like, I'm
Speaker 2: glad there are replacements for the ones that we've had
Speaker 2: to deal with all this time.
Speaker 3: Ye I mean, look, John Williams is not going to
Speaker 3: be doing scores forever. Hans Zimmer is not going to
Speaker 3: be around forever either.
Speaker 2: So Dany Elsen is caught in a loop of performing
Speaker 2: a nightmare before Christmas at the Hollywood Bowl every day
Speaker 2: for the rest of his life pretty much.
Speaker 3: But at one time he was the innovator. Remember the
Speaker 3: Back One soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, man, we were fucking Boingo fans and
Speaker 2: suddenly he's making soundtracks. Holy shit, we're all in.
Speaker 3: Good ones and not even I mean Midnight Run is
Speaker 3: a fantastic It sounds nothing like anything else he's done.
Speaker 3: But to your point, these guys, these soundtrack composers, men
Speaker 3: and women, can't do it forever. So there's some interesting
Speaker 3: work being done and this is really at the forefront.
Speaker 2: Please put this soundtrack out. I'm going to go buy it,
Speaker 2: like I've really thoroughly enjoyed it. It's been a while
Speaker 2: too since I've listened to a soundtrack while the film
Speaker 2: is playing. I thought I need to pick this one up.
Speaker 3: It just felt like it worked so beautifully with the images.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a good because that's what you're
Speaker 3: really the I think the worst trap you can fall
Speaker 3: into as a composer is if your soundtrack calls too
Speaker 3: much attention to itself, it takes away from what's happening
Speaker 3: on screen. That was not the case here. It's loud
Speaker 3: and brash, just like the movie itself, and it's very
Speaker 3: organic to the movie.
Speaker 2: I thought, HP, let's just say this barrels toward a
Speaker 2: fantastic conclusion for the movie. Overall, I'm going to say
Speaker 2: this is a great movie and everyone should go see it.
Speaker 2: But I think at this point we're going to just
Speaker 2: delve into the climax of the film. Yep, this is
Speaker 2: spoiler more you should have generally to talk about without
Speaker 2: talking about the ending of the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyone who doesn't want the ending spoiled just
Speaker 3: skin up to the end. But we're getting into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you're going by, we'll see you on
Speaker 2: Monday with another episode of The Tales from the Dark Side,
Speaker 2: and next Friday, make sure you tune in because that's
Speaker 2: the snort of our newest Star Trek Fest. Everybody Star Trek.
Speaker 2: The motion Pictures should tune in then everyone else. Here
Speaker 2: we go a climax of Predator bad land yep.
Speaker 3: So leading up to this, we discover that this character, Bud,
Speaker 3: this little cute sea monkey looking thing, is actually a
Speaker 3: baby callusk, and during this sweet scene at the campfire,
Speaker 3: after Deck gives him a piece of food to an appreciation,
Speaker 3: this little monkey spits on him.
Speaker 2: It marks him.
Speaker 3: Dek takes it as an insult at first, but then
Speaker 3: thea says he's marked you.
Speaker 2: Now this, I will say, had this been an R
Speaker 2: rated movie, the Bud would have pissed on it. Probably, Okay,
Speaker 2: so critics have it there. I'll give him that he
Speaker 2: didn't get pissed on, but his spinning and a face
Speaker 2: was pretty gross.
Speaker 3: It's like this blue you see it as a sheen
Speaker 3: on the predator. So what happens is eventually they make
Speaker 3: it to the nest of the callusk and the callusk
Speaker 3: comes back and Deck.
Speaker 2: The callusk fit is fucking incredible.
Speaker 3: It's incredible because it's this It's essentially like a cross
Speaker 3: between King Kong and a porcupine. It's a spiky, giant
Speaker 3: ape like creature that Deck finds out pretty quickly. Has
Speaker 3: this power to regenerate itself, because he eventually decapitates this
Speaker 3: creature and you think, oh, that's it.
Speaker 2: It's such a great end to the scene. And I thought, look,
Speaker 2: we've seen it regenerate. But I thought, oh, he's cut
Speaker 2: its head off. Certainly it's dead.
Speaker 3: Now that's gonna be it. But no, Rubid, it comes
Speaker 3: back together and it's about to basically kill Deck. He's
Speaker 3: got Deck at its mercy and he sniffs, and that's
Speaker 3: when you realize. I at least I realized at that
Speaker 3: point without them calling it out, that creature Bud is
Speaker 3: a baby callusk, and because he's marked Deck, this callous,
Speaker 3: this mama callisk, decides how to kill him basically, and
Speaker 3: this all works to start swaying. Once Deck realizes that
Speaker 3: the baby callusk that's his mother, his focus ultimately shifts
Speaker 3: from I'm going to kill the callusk and prove my
Speaker 3: worth to I need to protect this mother callous because
Speaker 3: Bud is part of my clan and we all look
Speaker 3: out for each other. It's an amazing I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: leaving out a lot of stuff that happens from that
Speaker 3: point to from A to B.
Speaker 2: That's essentially what fucking matters which is what the whole
Speaker 2: movie is about, which is finding your fucking clan and
Speaker 2: then fucking standing by them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But in the midst of all this, what ends
Speaker 3: up happening is.
Speaker 2: The French trappers arrive, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh and by the way, the other thing that, if
Speaker 3: it hasn't already been made clear, and the thing that
Speaker 3: I loved about this, I just have to say this
Speaker 3: before I forget about it again, is in Prey we
Speaker 3: had Nadu who was anxious to prove her worth and
Speaker 3: her metal to her tribe. That's what we have here,
Speaker 3: only it's from the Yaoucher perspective. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: I did mention Terminator too, right, This is just herke.
Speaker 2: This is the same story it is, yeah, including the
Speaker 2: French trappers arriving and fucking shit up here they come
Speaker 2: now in the future. It's just Waylan new Tani it is.
Speaker 2: And it's the same exact motivation. Let's just pillage this
Speaker 2: native land and make fucking money off of it and
Speaker 2: destroy everything in our path.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. And we learn that Tessa, this counterpart
Speaker 3: to thea, is everything that she is not. She has
Speaker 3: no empathy, she has really no emotion. Her whole goal
Speaker 3: is to trap the callusk and bring it back for Mother.
Speaker 3: We have Mother, but in the meantime that she traps
Speaker 3: the predator Deck and now so now she has the
Speaker 3: callousk and she has Deck on this shuttle that's taking
Speaker 3: them to the depot where it's going to be sent
Speaker 3: off world or what have you, and she starts to
Speaker 3: experiment on Deck against his will. Obviously, as THEA is
Speaker 3: observing all of this from her vantage point.
Speaker 2: Is shocking his brain. It's awful, It really is awful,
Speaker 2: and his skull blights up like a fucking translucent Christmas tree.
Speaker 3: It's it's a again. If you didn't already have empathy
Speaker 3: for Deck, you surely have empathy for him now, because
Speaker 3: again it is the French trapper sequence from Prey, where
Speaker 3: now our protagonist is in the hands of the bad
Speaker 3: guys who are basically having their way with him, and
Speaker 3: there's this it's an interesting resolution to this and it's
Speaker 3: one of those yeah moments where at the beginning when
Speaker 3: Dek is talking to his brother, there's this little cylindrical
Speaker 3: thing on the ship and Deck says, oh, you still
Speaker 3: have that thing, and you forget about it, toy. It's
Speaker 3: a child's toy, And what effectively happens is Tessa leaves
Speaker 3: the train car and one of the sort of nameless
Speaker 3: faceless synths come in comes in, and thea convinces him
Speaker 3: that she starts to translate for Deck, but slanting it
Speaker 3: so that they can get the upper hand against this synth,
Speaker 3: and she asks Deck, what is this thing? Oh, it's
Speaker 3: a child's toy. But tell him that it's a map.
Speaker 3: So she tells him that it's a map, and he
Speaker 3: opens it and the thing explodes in his face. What
Speaker 3: kind of child's toy is this? And so he he
Speaker 3: she helps free him and this is whole. Now he's
Speaker 3: finally to the corner, and he's he sees the value.
Speaker 2: In having Okay, hell, let me tell you, let me
Speaker 2: tell you pal. Yeah, okay. So not only is the
Speaker 2: child's toy the check off Siaucha child's toy from the
Speaker 2: opening pays off at the end, and everything pays off,
Speaker 2: it really does, including when Denk is first stumbling around
Speaker 2: Genna for the first time. He keeps encountering strange flora
Speaker 2: and fauna, some of which are like explosive, and during
Speaker 2: the course of the film he gets stripped of all
Speaker 2: of his yaucha weapons. He it starts off and he's
Speaker 2: got like a laser sword and a laser bow and
Speaker 2: his the shoulder mounted canon. All of that's gone. So
Speaker 2: by the end he has to just use all of
Speaker 2: his wits and everything he's come along with. So he
Speaker 2: goes back and collects all of those things that we've
Speaker 2: seen that have damaged him in order to infiltrate and
Speaker 2: fuck up all of the Wayland Utani forces. It's amazing,
Speaker 2: it is, and.
Speaker 3: It's his Dutch moment from the very first movie because
Speaker 3: we had that sequence where Schwarzenegger is laying these traps
Speaker 3: for the Predator. He's gotten rid of all the guns
Speaker 3: everything else. He's gone primal. That's what we have, even
Speaker 3: down to the fact that he forges armor from the
Speaker 3: carcass of this space bison that he has killed for food.
Speaker 3: And at one point thea even says like, what are
Speaker 3: you wearing and he says, I'm wearing bison. He has
Speaker 3: this mask that's all like a bone and everything. It
Speaker 3: is great, and he's figured out a way to trap
Speaker 3: these pod things that shoot spikes to put like essentially
Speaker 3: like a blinder over the top of it. So that
Speaker 3: it won't shoot until he wants it to. And he's
Speaker 3: got like fangs that he's fashioned into spikes that he
Speaker 3: can use to whatever.
Speaker 2: And he it would be a fucking bloodbath if it
Speaker 2: wasn't a bunch of sense. So that's why it's age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they go through he between he and THEA.
Speaker 3: And by the way, Fia never she got her legs,
Speaker 3: but they were interrupted before it could.
Speaker 2: Since we're talking about spoilers, let's talk about this sequence
Speaker 2: and talk about asking a question, what can we do
Speaker 2: in this movie that we could never do in any
Speaker 2: other movie?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I know, Let's have Thea's legs, which she has not
Speaker 3: been able to reattach to her Torso the legs have
Speaker 3: some sort of homing beacon to where she's being held
Speaker 3: at this depot. So the legs just walk blindly to
Speaker 3: where she is. But along the way, the legs have
Speaker 3: this ability to kick ass. The legs can actually like
Speaker 3: kill these other synths that are wandering around. And it's
Speaker 3: this assault that the legs and Deck and this monkey
Speaker 3: creature they're just dispatching since left and right. But the
Speaker 3: legs just I could not believe the spectacle, right, did
Speaker 3: I say?
Speaker 2: That this is the most science fiction movie of all time.
Speaker 2: It's just so ridiculous. At every moment of this movie
Speaker 2: made me happy. It just kept piling on and I
Speaker 2: just thought like, by the end, I thought like, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. If this just comes down to two people
Speaker 2: punching each other in the last few minutes of the movie,
Speaker 2: I'll be fine with it. And then the Legs started
Speaker 2: brawling with other synths, and I was like, what am
Speaker 2: I even watching right now?
Speaker 3: It just it all works, and so they're leading this
Speaker 3: assault against Wailan Utani to free At this point, it's
Speaker 3: not about him killing the Callus, it's about him freeing
Speaker 3: the Callous because now he knows that this member of
Speaker 3: his clan, it's Creature's mother. So this is really his
Speaker 3: redemptive moment, Deck's redemptive moment. And it all culminates with Tessa,
Speaker 3: this evil synth piloting what's essentially a giant version of
Speaker 3: the powerloader from Aliens the Mother Alien battle at the end.
Speaker 3: Get away from her, you bitch. But it's giant. It
Speaker 3: can pick up like huge storage containers.
Speaker 2: And that's why it's branded Whylan Utah. But it makes
Speaker 2: me think bank to aliens and that one was branded Caterpillar,
Speaker 2: and that always made me happy.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, because that's to me, that's more realistic
Speaker 3: because of course Caterpillar is going to be producing that, yeah.
Speaker 2: Is going to outsource to other companies, let's face it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's effectively Tessa against against Deck, and it's
Speaker 3: so again we're in spoiler territory. It looks as if
Speaker 3: so the Callusk is freed and the cask helps defeat
Speaker 3: this giant powerloader Tessa, and there's a very sweet moment
Speaker 3: where the mother Callusk is reunited with the bud or
Speaker 3: her child, and then in fact there's even a moment
Speaker 3: where Deck signifies his own attachment to this clan that
Speaker 3: he's now a part of. And then in the midst
Speaker 3: of all of that, Tessa has been basically swallowed by
Speaker 3: the Callusk, but she has retrieved a shoulder gun from
Speaker 3: the Yaucha's ship that can basically shoot like cold like beams.
Speaker 3: It's not just a laser. It shoots like freeze, like
Speaker 3: a freeze ray. I don't know what you'd call it.
Speaker 3: That's effectively what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know how we mentioned that Tracktonberg is always innovating
Speaker 2: in every fucking movie. Here we're seeing in the far funk,
Speaker 2: far flung future. Remember this takes place in the future,
Speaker 2: so these are what predators have evolved into now, so
Speaker 2: they're even the shoulder cannon has been updated. It's not
Speaker 2: just an energy weapon. This one can freeze shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah like and sadly for the callusk like she she
Speaker 3: shoots this cannon from within the belly of the beast
Speaker 3: and kills it. I was hoping the thing would still
Speaker 3: reform itself after being blown to bits.
Speaker 2: Essentially, Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3: But no such luck. And ultimately they it's all for
Speaker 3: not because kill.
Speaker 2: It is a sad Why you had to bring that
Speaker 2: back up?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 3: Sorry? Man, A little wipe a tear away. But at
Speaker 3: that point, the action cuts back to yaucherr Prime, where
Speaker 3: now Deck has returned to we think, claim his place
Speaker 3: with the clan. But that's not actually why he came back.
Speaker 3: He comes back, he does.
Speaker 2: He's coming to claim his place with his clan.
Speaker 3: But he brings his It's almost like he doesn't need
Speaker 3: them because he has his clan, because he's brought Fie up.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. He's coming just showing his trophy
Speaker 2: off and say I don't need you motherfuckers anymore. And
Speaker 2: I love his trophy.
Speaker 3: By the way, his trophy is Tessa's head. He's brought
Speaker 3: that back to his father and so he's trained it.
Speaker 3: It's not just l Fanning's head, that's it. It's a
Speaker 3: it's an android skull, just completely clean, just like a
Speaker 3: predator would do. That's a great point, and I.
Speaker 2: Out this like all the best predator movies includes a
Speaker 2: predator fixing himself up but performing triage after he's you.
Speaker 3: Have that here, Yeah, it's so wonderful, and he does
Speaker 3: that thing at one point. He we talked about this
Speaker 3: and Predator too, where he crushes up like tile. He
Speaker 3: does that with a plant, but even.
Speaker 2: Better HP We get a bit of explanation here because
Speaker 2: he takes a plant and then he scans it to
Speaker 2: figure out what its properties are and then goes ah
Speaker 2: and then crushes it up and adds it to his womb.
Speaker 2: So there you go. They can recognize properties and things
Speaker 2: we can't.
Speaker 3: He does fix himself up, which is to say that
Speaker 3: he goes through a lot deck doesn't. He's full of
Speaker 3: wounds by the end of this movie, but he confronts
Speaker 3: his father and they have their faded battle, and it's
Speaker 3: actually interesting how it resolves. I mean, he does kill
Speaker 3: his father, but not before. So what happens is they
Speaker 3: when he was going to be killed, when Deck was
Speaker 3: going to be killed by his brother, there's this like
Speaker 3: device that the brother threw on the ground that basically
Speaker 3: like shackles the predator Deck to the ground idea, it's
Speaker 3: like laser restraints. So he uses the same gambit on
Speaker 3: his father and he picks up a spear and it
Speaker 3: looks like he spears the father in the face, but
Speaker 3: he only goes so far as to take the father's
Speaker 3: mask off. That's when we see the reveal of the
Speaker 3: father under the mask.
Speaker 2: This old predator, the yaucher of an elderly predator man.
Speaker 2: This is our second one. We didn't even get to
Speaker 2: see the face of the first one, but we knew
Speaker 2: he was old and predator too. At the end or
Speaker 2: even more so at the end of Aliens Versus Predator
Speaker 2: when and he gives it the lance instead of being
Speaker 2: a good dude and taking her off of the stinking
Speaker 2: world of ours. But here we get senior predator. We
Speaker 2: get Predator ready for the daycare center.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's successful in battle. And it's interesting because
Speaker 3: at some point in the movie this occurred to me.
Speaker 3: It's just as a fleeting thought, which is all of
Speaker 3: the Predator are men. We've never ever seen a female Predator.
Speaker 3: And I don't know the context of why I even
Speaker 3: thought of that. It just occurred to me that they've
Speaker 3: all been male.
Speaker 2: Right, and the Predator series has been a sausage fest.
Speaker 3: It has. So he's triumphant over his father, and then
Speaker 3: all the other Predators who have been watching this crazy,
Speaker 3: what's that we have?
Speaker 2: We don't have a yaucha fest. We've got a sausage fest.
Speaker 3: Good call, good punch up signaling this ship that comes
Speaker 3: down that everybody's freaking out about, and THEA says, what's that?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: Who is that?
Speaker 2: And do you know him? Do you know them?
Speaker 1: No? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are they friends of yours?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: It's my mother, it's and that is the that's the
Speaker 3: cut that there's no I will say this like people
Speaker 3: who are It essentially functions as a post credit scene
Speaker 3: without making you wait for the post credit scene, because
Speaker 3: what happens is after he's triumphant over his father, we
Speaker 3: get the title card Predator bad Lands blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: and then it goes immediately to this what amounts to
Speaker 3: a post credit scene where the Mother's ship touches down,
Speaker 3: and then we have a hard cut to the credits,
Speaker 3: and the credits roll.
Speaker 2: But no past credit scenes. Don't waste your time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wasted my time. I waited for a while before.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then and because this was an early screening, there
Speaker 3: wasn't a lot of info on like I'm searching, does
Speaker 3: Predator Badlands have a post credit scene, and everything I
Speaker 3: could find basically said no, it happens pretty immediately, so
Speaker 3: don't waste your time. And that's effectively what happened. But
Speaker 3: that's the cliffhanger is apparently, if he continues with this storyline,
Speaker 3: we're gonna continue with the adventures of Deck and Fia,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna meet and Bud, and we're gonna meet
Speaker 3: the first female predator, which seems like, based on the
Speaker 3: reaction of the other yow, the females are probably way
Speaker 3: more deadly than the males in this case. They seemed
Speaker 3: very scared of this female predator come out.
Speaker 2: That's right. All the other Yauta fucking started freaking out
Speaker 2: when that ship came over the horizon. Oh boy, that's
Speaker 2: very tantalizing. And I'd like to point out a couple
Speaker 2: of other things. It's Bud who kills the dad, bites
Speaker 2: his fucking head off. He gets revenge for his mom.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 3: The other things he said, Bud has grown since they
Speaker 3: left Jenna. He's now it's like again, it's a little
Speaker 3: like a groot. He's now probably the size of a gorilla,
Speaker 3: like a large gorilla. He hasn't hit full puberty yet
Speaker 3: or full maturity.
Speaker 2: But he's big enough to easily fit a youch's head
Speaker 2: in his mouth.
Speaker 3: And so I I really I hope that he sticks.
Speaker 3: I mean, as much as I love seeing where Dan
Speaker 3: Tracktenberg's imagination and creativity take us, I want to spend
Speaker 3: more time with these characters. I really enjoyed my time
Speaker 3: with the and Deck and Bud. I want to see
Speaker 3: more of that.
Speaker 2: What about alone? I think what I want is the
Speaker 2: Mother's ship to open, the mother ship literally and literal mothership,
Speaker 2: and her assistant to come out to harold her arrival.
Speaker 2: And that's Dutch, old Dutch.
Speaker 3: No, that's going to be the next animated picture. I'm
Speaker 3: convinced that's the way they're going to bring Dutch back
Speaker 3: to the series. It's got to be animated.
Speaker 2: I want Nahue, I want Schwarzenegger. I want Demetrius and
Speaker 2: el Fanning here. I want a monster mash here, a
Speaker 2: monster rally.
Speaker 3: So are we meant to believe that Sonaw Latham's character
Speaker 3: wasn't cryogenically frozen because she didn't actually kill a predator?
Speaker 2: I guess it depends on who owns that actual movie
Speaker 2: and whether or not they really want to canonize it
Speaker 2: because we haven't. I mean, I guess we've seen it.
Speaker 2: Have we seen anything really from those movies pop up
Speaker 2: as canon and the rest of the Tracktenburg not at all? Yes,
Speaker 2: I will say bets there.
Speaker 3: Speaking of one of the little easter eggs is when
Speaker 3: they're on when they're poking around own Deck's ship, obviously
Speaker 3: there's god was going to be a row of skulls
Speaker 3: on a door, and that's going to prompt people like
Speaker 3: me to go, what am I seeing anything? First of all,
Speaker 3: there was a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull, which makes you think
Speaker 3: they've been doing this for millions of years.
Speaker 2: Secondly, makes me think we're going to get a total
Speaker 2: frank Ze movie at some point, baby with a predator,
Speaker 2: right cold spear stabbing dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: I will say. One of the skulls on the wall
Speaker 3: and I looked this up looks suspiciously like the alien
Speaker 3: from Independence Day.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, trailer.
Speaker 3: I saw it.
Speaker 2: It was a reflash of it. I went, oh, the
Speaker 2: Independence Day, so hopefully over we're air.
Speaker 3: Please not unless you're going to bring back the president
Speaker 3: there and have it be something triumphant.
Speaker 2: Not unless you're going to have a time travel movie
Speaker 2: where they pick up a dinosaur and then go forward
Speaker 2: in time where they meet Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park
Speaker 2: and Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day.
Speaker 3: There you go, Dan Tracktenberg. If you're listening, there's your pitch.
Speaker 2: Don't even need to need they don't even need sense.
Speaker 2: I can't recommend this movie enough. I guess to wrap
Speaker 2: it up, this was fucking great. I had a great
Speaker 2: time watching this movie.
Speaker 3: It was fun. And the thing of it is I
Speaker 3: the Predator. The Predator series, I think, especially some of
Speaker 3: the best ones, like like the first one in Prey
Speaker 3: and even The Predator has an element of this. They
Speaker 3: have the best ones have something for everybody, I think,
Speaker 3: but I can I can see if some of these
Speaker 3: not doesn't have an affinity for the more horror based aspects,
Speaker 3: because some of these movies do play like horror movies
Speaker 3: at times. This there's really no horror in this. This
Speaker 3: is basically a sci fi adventure buddy movie and I
Speaker 3: can't recommend it enough. Even if you don't think you're
Speaker 3: a fan of the Predator movies, you don't necessarily need
Speaker 3: to know all of the what's canon and every little
Speaker 3: bit of an usher from every single movie. If you
Speaker 3: just want to see a kick ass science fiction epic
Speaker 3: with great action, surprising amount of emotion, and just fun,
Speaker 3: you cannot go wrong with this movie. I can't recommend
Speaker 3: it highly enough. As well.
Speaker 2: It's a culmination of forty years and two separate franchises,
Speaker 2: and I think it works completely as a standalone film.
Speaker 2: As you said, I think you could come in and
Speaker 2: watch this movie cold and just get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just get it. It's better if you understand what's
Speaker 3: come before and you know how this really diverges from
Speaker 3: what we've seen before. Again, I was thinking it would
Speaker 3: have been so easy for him to just knock off
Speaker 3: another predator meets group of mercenaries, group of whatever. But
Speaker 3: this isn't it, And I applaud that. Again. I think
Speaker 3: he's playing with house money at this point. I think
Speaker 3: he's proven himself as a real He's like not to
Speaker 3: make a direct compare somebody's like Dave Filoni when they
Speaker 3: handed him the keys to the Star Wars TV shows,
Speaker 3: right like I hate him. He did forge an interesting,
Speaker 3: new creative direction for the series and that has to
Speaker 3: be applauded to some degree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, that's that's an app comparison. If Dave
Speaker 2: Filoni was talented and did anything, you'd say that anything
Speaker 2: interesting with those instead of just another fetch quest. That's
Speaker 2: all Dave Filoni knows, fetch quests. We got to go
Speaker 2: get the mystical thing of blah blah blah. Let's go
Speaker 2: team okay, and now we got to go get the
Speaker 2: mystical thing of blah blah blah. Let's go get that.
Speaker 2: Oh no, the sith again. Anyway. Two things I'll say
Speaker 2: about this movie insummation. I think for all the kick
Speaker 2: ass action directors working today, Tracktenberg is my favorite. He's
Speaker 2: working in a visual language that is right up my
Speaker 2: Alley and I think yours too. He seems to have
Speaker 2: worshiped that the twin school of John wu and Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2: His action is always innovative while never skimping on visceral impact,
Speaker 2: and he is the best action filmmaker for geography. You
Speaker 2: always know where everything is every single time, no matter
Speaker 2: how quick or languid the cutting is. For any of
Speaker 2: his action sequences, you it's never confusing, and I can't
Speaker 2: say that about any of the other Predator movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the action. It's really wall to wall action.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of bonding and scenes with
Speaker 3: the character is getting to know each other, but there's
Speaker 3: a ton of action. We've left out several big action
Speaker 3: sequences that I if you're gonna look, if you're gonna
Speaker 3: see this movie, I would encourage you. I wish I
Speaker 3: saw in Imax. But if you're gonna see it, if
Speaker 3: you have any wish, to see it in the theater
Speaker 3: because this is a big action extravaganza that deserves to
Speaker 3: be seen on the big screen, no matter if it's
Speaker 3: regular theater or Imax.
Speaker 2: There we are. That's the end. Until next time, Where
Speaker 2: can people find you? To looking for? You HP all right.
Speaker 3: I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with
Speaker 3: Father Malone. Here I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast.
Speaker 3: And if that weren't enough, I have a band campsite, hpmusicplace,
Speaker 3: dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 2: Go to all those places immediately. As for me, usually
Speaker 2: on Mondays I do find them malone S weekly round Up,
Speaker 2: but I'm on hiatus right now, So this Monday will
Speaker 2: be a Tesma dark Side, and then the week after
Speaker 2: I'll be back with talk of I don't know, Frankenstein
Speaker 2: and shit. I have actually seen a ton of movies recently.
Speaker 2: I just they've just been bad. I've been watching a
Speaker 2: lot of TV anyway. As I, as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: turn in next Friday for our latest fest. It's not
Speaker 2: just for patrons anymore. It is our Star Trek Fest,
Speaker 2: starting with Star Trek the motion picture. That's gonna be fantastic.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan Trachtenberg, Thank you Yaoucha. Everywhere we love you.
Speaker 1: We can kill it, shut it out there?
Speaker 2: What time hell are you