Speaker 1: Weary way.
Speaker 2: We can kill a.
Speaker 1: Shouting out their way? What the hell are you?
Speaker 2: Yahuja Fest? That's right, we got a name. No, thanks
Speaker 2: to you listeners, it's Yaucha Fest because I couldn't bear
Speaker 2: to keep saying predator Fest because it sounds like a
Speaker 2: Mara Lago mixer HP. Hey, how you doing, brother?
Speaker 3: Doing wonderfully? How are you?
Speaker 2: Father alone? I'm in the midst of a yaoucha fest.
Speaker 2: I couldn't be better.
Speaker 3: What's better than youch youcha fest?
Speaker 2: Youchta yaoucha? Come mom? Brother?
Speaker 3: Yeah with j Fest.
Speaker 2: Winky dinky youcha?
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say it was blinking,
Speaker 3: blinking and nod, winking, blinking and nod.
Speaker 2: Winky dinky dog. Say it with me, Winky dinky. Do
Speaker 2: you want the hoe cakes?
Speaker 3: Hoecakes?
Speaker 2: You want the wine ho cake? A little bit of
Speaker 2: Hollywood shuffle for y'all.
Speaker 3: Witherspoon, right, John Witherspoon.
Speaker 2: The Great John Witherspoon. Absolutely, we're not here to talk
Speaker 2: about John Witherspoon or Hollywood shuffle. We are talking Predator.
Speaker 4: To Los Angeles nineteen nine seven. It's the hottest summer
Speaker 4: on record. Pollution is choking the city. The gangs control
Speaker 4: the streets. As bad as things are, they're about to
Speaker 4: get worse, much worse.
Speaker 1: Whoever killed it's gonna be I'm a fish.
Speaker 2: It has almost no weight, but it cuts like steel.
Speaker 1: Incredible. Who did this?
Speaker 2: Took out four men art with machine guns by hand.
Speaker 4: You don't know what you're dealing with. Other world life
Speaker 4: forms drawn by heat and conflict.
Speaker 3: He's on Safari, Lions, Tigers, the bears, oh.
Speaker 5: My, Danny Glover, Gerry Busey, Ruben Blades, Maria Councta, Alonso,
Speaker 5: Bill Paxton.
Speaker 2: Predator two.
Speaker 4: He's in town with a few days to kill this Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: Predator two directed by Stephen Hopkins, written by Jim and
Speaker 2: John Thomas, based on characters by Jim and John Thomas,
Speaker 2: Produced by Joel Silver, who Else and starring Oh geez
Speaker 2: my list shit and starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Rubin Blades,
Speaker 2: Maria Concitta, Alonzo, Bill Paxton. Finishing his trifecta of alien
Speaker 2: murders and things from the future sci fi murders. Let's
Speaker 2: call it the Paxton Trifectair also with Robert Dave, Adam Baldwin,
Speaker 2: Kent McCord man from fucking car fifty four.
Speaker 3: Adam to Merant, Adam twelve. Yeah, I was gonna say emergency,
Speaker 3: but it's Adam twelve.
Speaker 2: Adam twelve. My favorite episode of Adam twelve. Can I
Speaker 2: just say there's an episode where he and his partner
Speaker 2: are discussing how he's decided to start taking a bag
Speaker 2: lunch to work, and the scene goes on for ten
Speaker 2: minutes and it's just this back and forth just makes
Speaker 2: economic sense for me. Adam twelve anyway. Also within also
Speaker 2: with Martin Downey Junior.
Speaker 3: Oh, go ahead, No, I was just about to say
Speaker 3: Adam twelve was my oldest brother's favorite show that in
Speaker 3: chips you can't get enough of them.
Speaker 2: There's a reason I love your oldest brother best. And
Speaker 2: also featuring Kevin Peter Hall returning as a The Predator,
Speaker 2: but not the Predator because this is a different Predator.
Speaker 2: He's very different. Indeed, HP Predator two released November the
Speaker 2: twenty first, nineteen ninety Sir, I guess we were seniors
Speaker 2: in high school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was we were rising. That was early in
Speaker 3: our seniorhood, and I believe we both I don't know
Speaker 3: that if we saw.
Speaker 2: This, Willow, did we not see this together.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, I don't think we saw
Speaker 3: it together, but I did remember. I did see this
Speaker 3: in the movies, though I do that much, I do remember.
Speaker 2: Now this is the second film in the series. Evidently
Speaker 2: twentieth Century Fox immediately wanted a second film once the
Speaker 2: first film was a massive success, so Jim and John
Speaker 2: Thomas were called upon. They provided six different possible scenarios
Speaker 2: and everyone agreed and urban Jungle is the way to go. Now.
Speaker 2: They set this one in Los Angeles, but they needed
Speaker 2: to make some adjustments because Los Angeles doesn't have a
Speaker 2: subway system, and some of our techniques here are going
Speaker 2: to be a little bit more futuristic. So this film
Speaker 2: takes place ten years after the previous one, setting it
Speaker 2: technically in the future, came out in nineteen ninety takes
Speaker 2: place in nineteen ninety seven. HP, What were your thoughts then?
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts now?
Speaker 3: Overall thoughts overall in the movie.
Speaker 2: Overall, we'll get granular in the moment.
Speaker 3: Sure, at the time, I remember enjoying it quite a bit.
Speaker 3: It was a departure from the first one. They I
Speaker 3: liked the substitution of the urban the concrete jungle. If
Speaker 3: you will for the Leafy Jungle. I liked it at
Speaker 3: the time. That's my short review. How about yourself?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really liked it in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: I liked it more than the first film only because
Speaker 2: I enjoyed putting it in an urban setting. The jungle
Speaker 2: setting was great for a one off kind of remote scenario,
Speaker 2: but the thing scenario or alien to aliens more like,
Speaker 2: which this film parallels in more ways than one. So
Speaker 2: I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I remembered it nothing but fun.
Speaker 2: Then it probably sa not a few times since then.
Speaker 2: But what are your thoughts now, friend? You know what?
Speaker 2: Fuck it, we'll get into that HP. What's the story here?
Speaker 3: So the story is as you said, it's nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: There's it's it is. But it's an exaggerated, heightened version
Speaker 3: of la in the future. Not to say it's like
Speaker 3: a Judge Dread type of situation.
Speaker 2: But it's a Demolition Man scenario, certainly.
Speaker 3: That's it. It's as if Demolition Man took place. It
Speaker 3: was a few years before the beginning of Demolition Man,
Speaker 3: where there's still elements that look like the real current world,
Speaker 3: but you have Morton Downey who's playing this sort of
Speaker 3: the video telejournalist, the sort of muck raking. That's a
Speaker 3: terrible word that makes me sound like I live in
Speaker 3: you know, the forties or something. But he's playing Morton Downey.
Speaker 3: Folks who don't remember Morton Downey was Was he the
Speaker 3: original late night, hyper crazy, cheap ass talk show host.
Speaker 2: There was a regional fella in California named Wally George
Speaker 2: and basically, if you were able to tune into a
Speaker 2: Wally George show, you saw the Morton Downey Junior Show.
Speaker 2: In fact, Mortin Downy Junior appear on the Wally George
Speaker 2: Show before he had his own show, so it's safe
Speaker 2: to say that the format and the character he portrayed
Speaker 2: were already in existence, but not nationally. So he basically
Speaker 2: he's Oreos to Wally George's hydros.
Speaker 3: Hydrox, Yeah, which I think we all can agree. Hydrox
Speaker 3: was the superior cookie, but it is not remembered now
Speaker 3: because Oreos had better marketing. But anyway, it's a future.
Speaker 3: There's a gang war going on, and it's the hottest
Speaker 3: summer on record or something. It's a very hot summer
Speaker 3: and there's a gang war going on between the Jamaican
Speaker 3: gang and the Columbian gang and police officers are dying
Speaker 3: left and right. There's a little bit of RoboCop in
Speaker 3: this movie too, not satire to that degree, but definitely
Speaker 3: a heightened reality.
Speaker 2: If you will, you can tell you that Thomas Brothers
Speaker 2: are having a fun time caricaturizing Los Angeles because there
Speaker 2: were gang wars going on, and there were all like
Speaker 2: incredibly heat waves and droughts and such that had been
Speaker 2: going on previously. Not to this level. This is exaggerated,
Speaker 2: This is Judge Dread levels of exaggeration, but again without
Speaker 2: the satire.
Speaker 3: Correct correct. And Danny Glover is leading a team of
Speaker 3: he's a cop and he has other cops. Maria Cancido
Speaker 3: Alonso is on his I don't know is he a sergeant?
Speaker 3: Is he I don't know what his title? Captain, lieutenant Mike,
Speaker 3: that's right, Harrigan. And he has a team that works
Speaker 3: Ruben Blades. Interesting, by the way, Father Malone, I, I
Speaker 3: too was worried that I was going to mispronounce his name,
Speaker 3: because naturally I'd want to say ruben blades or is
Speaker 3: it blades? But I did look up an interview that
Speaker 3: he gave for the walking Dead, and he basically said,
Speaker 3: when I grew up, I called myself Blades, and then
Speaker 3: later people in Panama called me blades, so it's blades,
Speaker 3: it's blattes. I don't care. So I guess we'll continue
Speaker 3: to call him blades out of some form of respect,
Speaker 3: but it could go either way anyway.
Speaker 2: When I saw this movie, I called him Ruben Blades
Speaker 2: and I thought he was shaking too. I thought he
Speaker 2: was the coolest motherfucker on You know. He was a
Speaker 2: musician and I had one of his albums and in
Speaker 2: the liner notes of the album it had his home
Speaker 2: phone number and if you called it, he picked up.
Speaker 2: And I know because I called him, and then I
Speaker 2: panicked and hung up afterwards. But it was Ruben Blades.
Speaker 3: Good for him.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: Also he was the Helado de Coco guy in Do
Speaker 3: the Right Thing. Was the little bit part he was, hey,
Speaker 3: come get you come you want coconut dear? What would
Speaker 3: you want? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That was what I loved him. I miss him.
Speaker 3: Ruben blood is I think he was. I want to
Speaker 3: say he was also in Mobid of Blues. Wasn't he
Speaker 3: the guy that sent the thugs to beat up Spike Lee?
Speaker 2: We can only hope like one of his other noble deeds.
Speaker 3: He's great. He's actually one of the things I really
Speaker 3: liked about this movie. Anyway. There's this gang war going on,
Speaker 3: and in the midst of all of this heat and
Speaker 3: chaos and destruction, the predator A predator, not the Predator
Speaker 3: has as Gary Busey's character says, he's on safari. He
Speaker 3: plunks himself in the middle of all this chaos to
Speaker 3: go hunting. That's true, that's the story on that show.
Speaker 2: I love that he's just hanging out and watching this
Speaker 2: fight going on at the beginning, don't you. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3: It's I will say this, if we're going to start
Speaker 3: to get into this movie.
Speaker 2: You know, let's get into it, because this opening scene
Speaker 2: is fucking ridiculous. I get they're trying to paint this
Speaker 2: as a comic bookie cartoony version of LA, a sci
Speaker 2: fi version of La heightened. The reality version of LA.
Speaker 2: The gunfight that's going on in the streets would be
Speaker 2: talked about to this day had it happened back in
Speaker 2: like nineteen ninety seven, Like there was a heat style
Speaker 2: gun battle you remember in Las on the streets of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. There are a couple of guys with bank robbers,
Speaker 2: and they ended up like shooting their way out. That
Speaker 2: was all anyone could talk about for years and years
Speaker 2: and years and years and years. Can you imagine this
Speaker 2: fight going on? There are lines of cars, There are
Speaker 2: lines of Colombian warlords, including El Scorpio. What was that
Speaker 2: fella's name? I gotta find his name.
Speaker 3: He was good only that This is the kind of
Speaker 3: heightened scene where they're having this gun battle, and in
Speaker 3: the midst of it, some of the gang members are
Speaker 3: thrusting their faces into piles of cocaine to get themselves
Speaker 3: like hyped up for this gun battle. In drives in
Speaker 3: Danny Glover, they try to paint his character as being
Speaker 3: a renegade from the very beginning. There's some officers down
Speaker 3: and they can't get to them because of the fears
Speaker 3: gun battle. So he commandeers a car and he drives
Speaker 3: it in and he puts it's a crazy gun battle
Speaker 3: and I have So there.
Speaker 2: Are a couple officers in the middle of the street
Speaker 2: and caught in the crossfire. He breaks the door off
Speaker 2: of a car, uses it like as a battering ram,
Speaker 2: and then ends up blocking the gun toting fiends from
Speaker 2: the officers and they're able to pull them to safety. Hooray.
Speaker 2: What I love is if you read anything about the
Speaker 2: making of the film. Initially, director Stephen Hopkins wanted Patrick
Speaker 2: Swayze in this role, and he wanted it to be
Speaker 2: a buddy film of Patrick's and Arnold Schwarzenegger are running
Speaker 2: through the streets of Los Angeles fighting the predators. And
Speaker 2: then that didn't pan out and either direction. Schwartzenegger wanted
Speaker 2: too much money and Patrick Swayzy was not available. So
Speaker 2: Joel Silver reaches out to his old lethal weapon pal,
Speaker 2: Danny Glover, and while he was doing that, Stephen Hopkins
Speaker 2: was interviewing Steven Segal for the role of Detective Harrigan,
Speaker 2: who was interested in doing it but wanted to change
Speaker 2: his character so that he was a CIA operative and
Speaker 2: like a martial arts expert, and Stephen Hopkins was like, no,
Speaker 2: I want this to be more of an average Joe.
Speaker 2: So sorry, no, thank you, Steven Singal. And now I
Speaker 2: wonder what Stephen Hopkins' definition of an average Joe is.
Speaker 2: Because Danny Glover shows up here, breaks the door off
Speaker 2: of the car, slams it, and then saves those guys
Speaker 2: and then everything. They all run into the building. They're
Speaker 2: all high on cocaine. They have a fucking arsenal up there.
Speaker 2: He's running up there as well. It's one hundred and
Speaker 2: nine degrees out here. This is not average Joe. This
Speaker 2: is Superhero. This basically would have been Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 3: It would have been And I have to I have
Speaker 3: to say part of my problem with this gun battle
Speaker 3: and the movie a lot of the movie in general,
Speaker 3: is the action I don't think is directed very well.
Speaker 3: It's there's not a great sense of context. I think
Speaker 3: one of the things that's wonderful about the First Predator
Speaker 3: is you always understand where they are in relation to
Speaker 3: the Predator and what's happening. And that's key to a
Speaker 3: good action sequence. Diehard, that is a textbook case and
Speaker 3: how to direct and how to direct action in a
Speaker 3: motion picture. This is just there. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: slow motion. There's just wants and gun battles. Maybe that's
Speaker 3: the point is it's so chaotic, but I kept losing
Speaker 3: my bearing on where things were happening that it just
Speaker 3: became a lot of noise and storm un drying without
Speaker 3: a lot of character to it. What did you think
Speaker 3: of how it was directed. The action.
Speaker 2: I remember really liking the direction for some goddamned reason
Speaker 2: because it it is poorly directed. What you're saying, you
Speaker 2: never get a sense of geography in this movie at all.
Speaker 2: There are fights going on with multiple characters involved in
Speaker 2: multiple situations, and you never know where any of them
Speaker 2: are or where they are in relation to each other.
Speaker 2: It is chaotically edited. Even you know this shit going
Speaker 2: on because stuff is blowing up and people are flying
Speaker 2: through the air and bullets are being spat in every direction,
Speaker 2: but it's not like you ever know. It's not like
Speaker 2: there's a story being told here.
Speaker 3: And it only gets worse when the predator shows up
Speaker 3: because then he's camouflaged. The whole point is you don't
Speaker 3: see him until he wants to see you, and it's
Speaker 3: just now like it's all geography at all. Context is
Speaker 3: lost because now they're shooting at something else. It's edited,
Speaker 3: like you said, very poorly, very choppily edited. I guess
Speaker 3: that's partly the time that this movie was made is
Speaker 3: to blame, because that was the style of action picture
Speaker 3: at the Yeah.
Speaker 2: But but just the moments where Harrigan gets the car
Speaker 2: in between the gunmen and the police the gunman at
Speaker 2: that point all run into the building and then suddenly,
Speaker 2: because they need them there again, they're there again. There's
Speaker 2: like a whole other line of guy shooting so that
Speaker 2: Harrogan can blow them all away. Speaking of which, Harrogan
Speaker 2: gets behind a group of four gunmen who are firing
Speaker 2: on his fellow officers, and he goes hey so that
Speaker 2: they can all turn around, because it would be somehow
Speaker 2: immoral to have shot these guys in the back. What
Speaker 2: the fuck is happening? No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I love Danny Glover. I think he's perfect in the
Speaker 3: lethal Weapon movies as the over the hill cop who's
Speaker 3: too old for this shit. I don't think he was
Speaker 3: right for this movie. As happy as I am that
Speaker 3: an African American got the lead role in an action picture,
Speaker 3: and I know he was psyched because of interviews where
Speaker 3: he said he jumped at the chance for him to
Speaker 3: go toe to toe with the predator and be a badass.
Speaker 3: That's totally awesome, right on the problem is I maybe
Speaker 3: he just wasn't Maybe he was directed a certain way.
Speaker 3: He's often bellowing his lines and it's I don't know,
Speaker 3: he just he's such a good traumatic actor, and he's
Speaker 3: good as the sort of a buddy and a buddy
Speaker 3: cop movie. I just don't think he was right here
Speaker 3: because he just seems to be laboring all the time,
Speaker 3: not laboring, and I'm too old for this shit, because
Speaker 3: at no point is that actually spoken in this movie. Gratefully,
Speaker 3: but I just didn't buy him as the hardened lieutenant
Speaker 3: who's trying to keep it together in the midst of
Speaker 3: this gang war. That what did you think? Father alone?
Speaker 2: I think Schwarzenegger has a presence in action movies where
Speaker 2: you don't need to know anything about the character because
Speaker 2: it's Arnold Schwarzeneger. And in a case like this, where
Speaker 2: we were dropped into a whole new movie with a
Speaker 2: whole new set of characters, we need someone of equal standing.
Speaker 2: I think Danny Glever could have been that had this
Speaker 2: character been written a little bit better, had they given
Speaker 2: us one scene of introspection or his home life or
Speaker 2: anything at all that drives this man. Because I know
Speaker 2: nothing about him, I began the movie the same way
Speaker 2: I ended the movie as far as my knowledge of
Speaker 2: this guy. Look, I'm not mister screenwriter. Screenplay tricks like,
Speaker 2: I don't need a character arc necessarily. I don't have
Speaker 2: a problem with the character beginning and ending the same place,
Speaker 2: but I need to know something about them other than
Speaker 2: he's really good at his job.
Speaker 3: Oh you're going to say something. No, yeah, I remember
Speaker 3: enjoying him when I saw it for the first time.
Speaker 3: I thought it was pretty cool, it was interesting, it
Speaker 3: was an action.
Speaker 2: Let's talk you know before you go there, because you
Speaker 2: brought up Stephen Hopkins. So I just want to double
Speaker 2: back on him for a second, because in my mind
Speaker 2: he was a good director, and rereading the list of
Speaker 2: movies that he made, no, he is not, because he
Speaker 2: made name Fordham Street, Dream Child, which is terrible. He
Speaker 2: made this, which is pretty good, but it's only it's
Speaker 2: good kind of despite him. Then he made the Judgment Night,
Speaker 2: which hilariously HP I found myself watching about two weeks ago. Really,
Speaker 2: it was just on. It was like one of those
Speaker 2: Roku channel has a list of potential movies that are
Speaker 2: playing right now, and he pressed the button and it
Speaker 2: just starts and thuning. Oh, but I haven't seen Judgment Nights,
Speaker 2: and since it was in theaters, I wonder if it
Speaker 2: held up. Oh man, no, not at all. It is uttered.
Speaker 2: Garbage soundtrack is still great.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say the soundtrack is still awesome, but
Speaker 3: I agree with you that it doesn't hold up. Another
Speaker 3: movie that I liked at the time, and then I
Speaker 3: rewatched it later and said, oh, this isn't so good.
Speaker 2: Speaking of terrible movies, he follows that up with Blown Away,
Speaker 2: the most adult one. But let me speak as an
Speaker 2: Irish person here, the most let me speak as a
Speaker 2: Boston Irish person here, the most insulting, IRA fucking knockoff,
Speaker 2: bullshit movie. I've ever seen a movie where Jeff Bridge
Speaker 2: jumps on a motorcycle in back Bay to drive to
Speaker 2: the Esplanade and then somehow goes over the Longfellow Bridge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a lot of geography there either. I actually
Speaker 3: it's funny. I could have sworn that this was the
Speaker 3: same director who did one of the Bill and Ted movies,
Speaker 3: but I had him mixed up with Stephen Herrick.
Speaker 2: Me nuts too, me the same thing. I thought, you
Speaker 2: know what, I don't know much about this guy, but
Speaker 2: I know he directed one of those Bill and Ted movies,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2: As I was watching and going is this guy a
Speaker 2: bad director? Because this is not well directed at all?
Speaker 2: The ghost and the darkness. Remember that, Remember Lost in
Speaker 2: Space with Joey Tribiani. Yeah, in the gleap like merchandising monkey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the funny story. I came out. I
Speaker 3: visited you in Vegas. It was my fortieth birthday. Do
Speaker 3: you remember this? And I was staying. We were staying
Speaker 3: at the Planet Hollywood Hotel, which I don't think is
Speaker 3: even still there.
Speaker 2: Is it Planet Hollywood the hotel?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: What is it now? I think it's still Planet Hollywood.
Speaker 3: I don't know. We were staying in the Lost in
Speaker 3: Space room.
Speaker 2: It had no Planet Hollywood as a restaurant is closed.
Speaker 2: Planet Hollywood as a hotel is still there.
Speaker 3: It's still there, Okay. Like I said, we every room
Speaker 3: I think had a different theme, a different movie. And
Speaker 3: we were in the Lost in Space room that had
Speaker 3: a couple of props that were encased in loose sight
Speaker 3: in a table or something, and it was, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: it's Lost in Space with Gary Oldman.
Speaker 2: All right, did it have Heathers? Did it have a
Speaker 2: display of Heather Gram's will to live?
Speaker 3: No? But yeah, I agree when I looked him up
Speaker 3: and said, oh, this isn't the same guy I thought
Speaker 3: he was. Because I thought this for years, probably until
Speaker 3: fairly recently. I didn't know that it wasn't the same
Speaker 3: guy from the Bill and Ted pictures. But this was.
Speaker 3: It was not it was not directed. Well you know
Speaker 3: he the actors performances are all over the place. The action,
Speaker 3: like we said, is not very interestingly done, and.
Speaker 2: It's just just the costume choices alone in some cases.
Speaker 3: Oh, we haven't even talked about Bill Paxton. So Bill
Speaker 3: Paxton you mentioned him at the top. He's in this.
Speaker 3: The thing is I love that he was in it
Speaker 3: because we all were such fans of his back then
Speaker 3: he was in his prime with aliens and true lies
Speaker 3: and this he in this picture. He looks like he
Speaker 3: should be swing dancing to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy with
Speaker 3: Heather Graham. They put him in these like bowling shirts
Speaker 3: and Fedora's.
Speaker 2: He looks of fire, which he's in pretty much.
Speaker 3: The only thing missing was like a wallet chain. He
Speaker 3: just he looked. It was weird. And he's supposed to be.
Speaker 3: He's a cop who transfers to Danny Glover's Harrigan's unit
Speaker 3: because he wants to be where the action is the
Speaker 3: low ranger. But there's no evidence whatsoever with his performance
Speaker 3: or with the character truth be Told that he is
Speaker 3: this badass. He's he comes off. Think of him in
Speaker 3: True Lies, when he's putting on the charm to Jamie
Speaker 3: Lee Curtis and pretending to be a secret agent. That's
Speaker 3: the guy we get here, the guy with a patter who's,
Speaker 3: you know, always on the make. He's always trying out
Speaker 3: a line on Alonso or some woman in a bar.
Speaker 3: Like I. I was mystified at his character. What the
Speaker 3: point of it was, Father Malone. I guess that's more
Speaker 3: the writing than the directing.
Speaker 2: But still, yeah, it's fifty percent Hudson from Aliens and
Speaker 2: fifty percent that guy from True Eyes, like an uncomfortable
Speaker 2: balance that doesn't ever come off. And yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's the writing or what, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a weird combination of a poor writing and maybe
Speaker 2: poor choices on Bill Packson's part. I think, in an
Speaker 2: attempt to get away from Hudson, he was trying to
Speaker 2: play this like overeager guy like he's it's weird. He's
Speaker 2: trying to give this guy's vulnerability when he needs to
Speaker 2: be just a cocky prick, so he's way so slick.
Speaker 2: He was slick, but like everything he was saying was
Speaker 2: like awkward and socially, you know, inempt. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: So that was disappointing rewatching it all these years later,
Speaker 3: because like I said, I love him in almost everything
Speaker 3: I see him. In this case, it was just a
Speaker 3: lot while. But but there are things. Let's let's turn
Speaker 3: this around. Let's continue talking about the plot of the movie.
Speaker 3: So in the midst of this gang war, the Predator
Speaker 3: crashes in and at this crime scene. Actually no, they
Speaker 3: later there's a the Colombian drug lord is basically like
Speaker 3: a bunch of the Jamaicans break into his his mansion
Speaker 3: or whatever, and they're going to kill him, ritualistically kill him.
Speaker 2: And it's all like Frank Lloyd right as Tech right.
Speaker 2: So it's so which also echoes the kind of blade
Speaker 2: Runner apartments, which is also that sort of Frank Lloyd
Speaker 2: right as Tech tile.
Speaker 3: The funny thing is they're gonna they say that they
Speaker 3: hunt they this drug lord up by his feet and
Speaker 3: they're gonna cut his heart out because they say they
Speaker 3: want to do it ritualistically. They're gonna do voodoo. They're
Speaker 3: gonna they're gonna kill himvoodoo stuff.
Speaker 2: And they they've dipped a chicken leg and blood and
Speaker 2: they're like writing on his chest sigils and stuff, like
Speaker 2: freaking him out with all the voodoo thisss.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. They're Jamaican. Yeah, they're not hate
Speaker 3: and they're Jamaicans. I thought that was I didn't catch
Speaker 3: that when I was a kid, obviously, but now I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. Anyway, as they're killing this drug lord, the
Speaker 3: predator is broken in and kills everybody in the whole room.
Speaker 3: And then as the cops Danny Glover and Ruben Blade,
Speaker 3: so they're investigating incomes in CIA group led by who
Speaker 3: fought him.
Speaker 2: Alone, Uncle red Garabuse. Oh mah, I love Garret Busy.
Speaker 2: He's you know what he's post this is post motorcycle accident,
Speaker 2: but not he hasn't fucking completely lost it this.
Speaker 3: I think think this was his first picture after the accident,
Speaker 3: so he hadn't it hadn't progressed to looney Tunes yet.
Speaker 3: So he's he still has a good he's still helding
Speaker 3: it together pretty well and good than this. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: really good. Because so he Glover Harrigan knows something is
Speaker 3: up because these CIA goons come in and there.
Speaker 2: They basically what if they swapped roles, Actually.
Speaker 3: That would have been interesting because you would have been
Speaker 3: more likely to believe Danny Glover until you realize what
Speaker 3: he's actually up to. Because initially, keys, like the character
Speaker 3: Gary Busey plays, tries to come on, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to step on your toes. I'm just
Speaker 3: trying to do my job too. But it very quickly
Speaker 3: becomes obvious that there's more to this whole situation than
Speaker 3: meets the eye. Because the CIA guys come in and
Speaker 3: they established jurisdiction, they kick everybody out. There's something going
Speaker 3: on in what you find out. Look, this is a
Speaker 3: you know, thirty year old movie. Pretty much spoiler alert
Speaker 3: abound here. They have been tracking the predator for since
Speaker 3: the incident in the jungle actually with Donald Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2: They because one explosion total total three hundred city blocks
Speaker 2: in area, and now they want that goddamned weapon. They
Speaker 2: want the predator.
Speaker 3: They want the predator, and they've even there's mentioned they
Speaker 3: don't followup, but they've actually even interviewed Anna, the woman
Speaker 3: that they took prisoner in the first movie who actually
Speaker 3: helps them escape on the chopper. So they know all
Speaker 3: this stuff about the predator and they what effectively what
Speaker 3: they've done is they've tracked the predator here. They have
Speaker 3: studied his habits. They know where he is living, they
Speaker 3: know where he's feeding, and they know what his effective
Speaker 3: radius of hunting his hunting grounds are. So they've got
Speaker 3: this whole situation at a slaughterhouse where they're going to
Speaker 3: try to finally capture the predator using all this technology.
Speaker 3: They've doused the room and radio accletive dust so they
Speaker 3: can track the predator. They're using special suits that block
Speaker 3: out body heat so that the predator can't see them.
Speaker 2: And you may know, they know that the predator can
Speaker 2: only see in one spectrum of light. How they know
Speaker 2: this good question.
Speaker 3: But and actually they're wrong about that.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's hilarious. It's the best part of the
Speaker 2: movie honestly, where he's like looking around and he kind
Speaker 2: of hears something and he gets a sense that something's
Speaker 2: not right, and then he just goes switch switch, Oh,
Speaker 2: there they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that sequence, although it's the most indebted to
Speaker 3: aliens because what you have is so Adam Baldwin Linderman
Speaker 3: from My Bodyguard and from what I understand it all
Speaker 3: around grumpy guy, not a good guy.
Speaker 2: You know what's funny about him? He's a up until
Speaker 2: this moment, I think I would have just said, oh,
Speaker 2: Adam Baldwin right wing lunatic, right, But now I don't
Speaker 2: know how much of a lunatic he is. Maybe he's
Speaker 2: just a conservative asshole, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 2: maybe he's not that bad anymore comparatively speaking. Maybe he
Speaker 2: is pretty mild, but at one time he was. Maybe
Speaker 2: he just doesn't want to pay taxes as much as
Speaker 2: everybody else, you know what I mean. But he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to overthrow the government. Maybe he's that level.
Speaker 3: It could be maybe I should reap. Maybe it's time
Speaker 3: for a reappraisal given our currency.
Speaker 2: Let's look at Charlton Heston like on a in a
Speaker 2: whole New light man, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: patriot Charlton Heston. Yeah, so he.
Speaker 3: Kind of made for a while, he made a career
Speaker 3: of playing kind of these second bananas in these movies.
Speaker 3: He is effectively Keys's second in command. He's the one
Speaker 3: with with Harrigan in the command center as Keys and
Speaker 3: his team are moving through the slaughterhouse getting ready for
Speaker 3: the final capture of the predator.
Speaker 2: Get your people.
Speaker 3: Right, that's that's because what you have is you even
Speaker 3: have that the view screen with everybody's remote camera footage
Speaker 3: and one yeah, and one by one they're winking out
Speaker 3: as the Predator's killing everybody in this slaughterhouse. Pun intended,
Speaker 3: but all kidding aside that this is my favorite sequence
Speaker 3: of the whole movie because it's what the movie is
Speaker 3: lacking for the most part, in my opinion, is from
Speaker 3: the first movie is suspense. The first movie, there's no
Speaker 3: end to the suspense. They're moving through the jungle, there's
Speaker 3: things cracking, and they're always on edge, and you as
Speaker 3: the viewer on edge as well. This one's they've substituted
Speaker 3: suspense for action and gore in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: This was the only sequence where it's a little more
Speaker 3: suspenseful because, as you said, the predator comes back. They
Speaker 3: know he's going to be back, and they feel like
Speaker 3: they've got him trapped. He's falling into their trap. But
Speaker 3: then as you said, he stops, confusing them. They're like,
Speaker 3: why is he stopping? And then he switches his vision
Speaker 3: to another mode where he can see the UV lights
Speaker 3: and then he's just off to the races. And you
Speaker 3: see all this cool tech. They've added all this cool
Speaker 3: tech to this picture, Father Malone. They have they introduced
Speaker 3: he's got spears that he's throwing around. He has that
Speaker 3: disc saw blade thing that he's throwing around. It's a
Speaker 3: really cool sequence. I thought, probably the best one in
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: I would say, Oh, totally agree with you. Absolutely. It's
Speaker 2: we haven't mentioned that the scene before us, the subway scene, right,
Speaker 2: we haven't mentioned Ruben Blade is getting killed or any
Speaker 2: of that stuff. But anyway, none of that matters because
Speaker 2: here we are. We're in the slaughterhouse. And what I
Speaker 2: liked about the scene isn't so much the tension because there,
Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned, that whole scene takes place
Speaker 2: from the predator's point of view, The whole tension that
Speaker 2: exists in the first film is because we don't know
Speaker 2: what's following. It's fine on the view, yeah exactly. It's
Speaker 2: like we've now seen the shark in Jaws. You can't
Speaker 2: just be hinting at it now. And they a good
Speaker 2: half to three quarters of this movie is really just
Speaker 2: the early CGIFN the Predator being invisible, and that's fine,
Speaker 2: but we know what he looks like and we want
Speaker 2: to see him. Yeah, there are times when it makes
Speaker 2: no sense when he's invisible, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like why would he be cloaking himself all of the time?
Speaker 2: Why would he wear his mask all the time for
Speaker 2: that matter. But anyway, point being, once we get to
Speaker 2: the slaughterhouse and the particles of dust are the radioactive
Speaker 2: particles are lining his skin like the cloaking device no
Speaker 2: longer works. So it's really the first time we get
Speaker 2: to see the Predator in action and not only decimate
Speaker 2: those guys. But the fight between him and Danny Glover
Speaker 2: is great, man, And I hadn't remembered the fight at
Speaker 2: all from seeing it as a kid. So when he's
Speaker 2: chasing Danny Glover likest amidst the hanging halves of beef
Speaker 2: that you know it is a slaughterhouse, and they're just
Speaker 2: shoving the signs of beef back and forth, so it
Speaker 2: becomes kind of pendulum. I was thinking, like, oh man,
Speaker 2: why doesn't the Predator just slice through them with his
Speaker 2: giant wrist blade. Got'd be so awesome, and of course
Speaker 2: he does. Once they introduce the disc, the Boomrang disc
Speaker 2: that he has, it cuts through all of them. It
Speaker 2: was great that the whole sequence is fantastic, including that,
Speaker 2: because all we get is it slicing and slicing through
Speaker 2: all these sides of beef and then we can't see
Speaker 2: but we can see Gary Busey's legs underneath, and the
Speaker 2: legs just fall over. Awesome.
Speaker 3: It's probably my favorite single shot of the whole movie.
Speaker 3: That and there was another sequence that I thought was
Speaker 3: actually interesting. I'd forgotten about it. So at one point
Speaker 3: we're going to backtrack a little bit. Danny Glover, I
Speaker 3: keep saying his name, Harrigan is going to go talk
Speaker 3: to the head of the Jamaican gang. King Willie is seeing.
Speaker 2: Willy played by Calvin Lockhart, the amazing Calvin Lockhart from
Speaker 2: Cotton comes to Harlem and the Baron.
Speaker 3: He's really good in this.
Speaker 2: He's great man. He's so scary, and it's unlike any
Speaker 2: other performance I've seen of the guy.
Speaker 3: He's exaggerated, but in a good way. Like this guy,
Speaker 3: he's exaggerated without losing the danger of this gang lord.
Speaker 3: So he knows sort of preternaturally that he doesn't know
Speaker 3: that the predator is an alien, but he knows he
Speaker 3: looks at it from a supernatural perspective. And after they
Speaker 3: have their quick conversation him and Harrigan, the predator goes
Speaker 3: to kill him. I don't know exactly why or how
Speaker 3: this happens, but they square off. First off, there's a
Speaker 3: great shot of the predator as he's cloaked. He's walking
Speaker 3: towards King Willie walking through water, and it's really cool
Speaker 3: because it's this tracking shot from the perspective of his
Speaker 3: feet and they're cloaked, so you see these cloaked feet
Speaker 3: walking through and it's not cg because this was too
Speaker 3: early for that, or maybe just before it was. You
Speaker 3: could really be done easily, so it was a great shot.
Speaker 3: Then King Willy takes out it takes a sword out
Speaker 3: of his cane. It's one of those sword canes, and
Speaker 3: he's ready to square off against the predator and he
Speaker 3: screams and the screen cuts to a shot of his
Speaker 3: face with mouth agape, and then you realize that it's
Speaker 3: not his head been cut off of his body, and
Speaker 3: the predator walks towards the background holding So what you
Speaker 3: thought was a scream of let's get it on, is
Speaker 3: really the scream of him dying, and it's a really
Speaker 3: interesting juxtaposition, and I thought it was a very cool
Speaker 3: little because it's a nice shorthand for this fight that
Speaker 3: he could never win anyway, So I thought that was
Speaker 3: kind of that was a creative direction there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't need to see that fight, and it
Speaker 2: is a great transition, and that sequence and the slaughterhouse
Speaker 2: sequence are the things that I took away from this movie,
Speaker 2: I guess. So it's why I remembered it being well directed,
Speaker 2: because that shot is great, and maybe the prosthetic is
Speaker 2: really good that they've made of Calvin Lockhart, so you
Speaker 2: buy it that it's just we've cut to a close
Speaker 2: up of him screaming, and then it's just the head
Speaker 2: being dragged away.
Speaker 3: Some of this there's bits in pieces, little fleeting images
Speaker 3: and shots that work that are frustrating because in the
Speaker 3: hands of somebody, I don't want to keep using McTiernan.
Speaker 3: But let's say for a minute that McTiernan could make
Speaker 3: I think by then, I think it would have been
Speaker 3: too expensive to hire McTiernan, because he'd already done Die Hard.
Speaker 3: He was his star Wars on the Rise. He wasn't
Speaker 3: going to do a sequel and at this point in
Speaker 3: his career, so it's hard not to think about what could.
Speaker 2: This have been.
Speaker 3: In a better set of hands Fottom alone, it would
Speaker 3: have been a much more interesting picture, I think.
Speaker 2: I think so. I think the script needed to work
Speaker 2: as well, though, obviously like the Jerry Lambert character, the
Speaker 2: Billy Billy Paxton, the Bill Paxton character. Yeah, and just
Speaker 2: you know, a little more depth, Like they've created this
Speaker 2: big team so that they could pick them off one
Speaker 2: by one. But we're not given any character depth to
Speaker 2: our leads. So what are we supposed to get from
Speaker 2: our peripheral characters. And here's where casting is so important.
Speaker 2: Because Ruben Blade, I don't need to know anyth about him.
Speaker 2: He brought everything to that character. I know that guy.
Speaker 2: He's super cool. I want to hang out with him.
Speaker 2: Maria Conshiela A Lonzo is a terrible fucking actress and
Speaker 2: I don't know what she's doing here at all.
Speaker 3: So to man, they wanted a female actress with edge,
Speaker 3: and not to say that.
Speaker 2: She Latina does not automatically equal edge. They could have
Speaker 2: found a Latina actress who is a fucking badass. Instead
Speaker 2: they got the girl who's not good in a fucking
Speaker 2: romantic comedy.
Speaker 3: It didn't work at all.
Speaker 2: But I think specifically of Touch and Go with Michael Keaton.
Speaker 2: She ruined that movie.
Speaker 3: That's another good call, another good call by you. I
Speaker 3: want to talk. I want to backtrack for one minute.
Speaker 3: I know we're jumping all over the places.
Speaker 2: Is our wants That's okay. We're wearing invisibility cloaks. They
Speaker 2: can't see us doing it.
Speaker 3: You made reference to a sequence that happens just before
Speaker 3: Harrigan goes to the slaughterhouse to see the Predator go
Speaker 3: up against the CIA team. There there's a subway. It's
Speaker 3: a subway sequence where Maria can cheetah Lonzo's character in
Speaker 3: Bill Paxton. They're on the subway and it's actually some
Speaker 3: of it's actually kind of funny because there's a gang
Speaker 3: of punks for a black a better term their textbook.
Speaker 3: They could have come from the movie Breaking. They look
Speaker 3: like punks, basically like TV chips punks.
Speaker 2: Basically all the gangs in this movie could have stepped
Speaker 2: out of the Warriors. Do you remember that the fucking
Speaker 2: Jamaican gang the posse are wearing in that fucking sequence
Speaker 2: in the Mayan theme thing like the flashiest, stupidest, like
Speaker 2: shiniest clothing I've ever They seem Oh, I didn't even
Speaker 2: want to say it just seems awful anyway.
Speaker 3: So this sequence, so the funny part of this, the
Speaker 3: part that I found amusing, was this gang starts to
Speaker 3: hassle this little nebishy guy in the suit, this white
Speaker 3: guy in the suit get Bernie gets and then he
Speaker 3: freaks out and pulls out a gun to say I
Speaker 3: don't want to use this, and the gang just laughs
Speaker 3: at the guy. But then everybody else on the subway car,
Speaker 3: everyone Grandmother's people on the way, everyone pulls a gun,
Speaker 3: which is the one part that I thought the exaggeratedness
Speaker 3: of the whole futuristic angle I thought was pretty funny.
Speaker 3: But what worked conceptually is at that shortly they're after
Speaker 3: the predator breaks into I think sensing all of this,
Speaker 3: all these guns and all this action, the predator breaks
Speaker 3: into the subway cars. It's running and all the lights
Speaker 3: go off and it's very it. They try to be
Speaker 3: stylistic by having it be stroby because the lights are
Speaker 3: flickering and there's guns going off and everything, and that
Speaker 3: it was so disappointing because it could have been a
Speaker 3: great sequence, if artfully directed, but it just it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It was just so again, I couldn't keep track of
Speaker 3: what was happening. It's even worse because it's shrouded in
Speaker 3: darkness the subway car, so you can't see where the
Speaker 3: alien is or the predator is, or what it's doing
Speaker 3: or how it's dispatching these poor people on this subway car.
Speaker 3: It's just it was a big fail. It could have
Speaker 3: been a there's two or three action sequences that could
Speaker 3: have been really cool that are just limp.
Speaker 2: Yeah around this time. No, not around this time. Okay,
Speaker 2: So there was no subway in Los Angele Less at
Speaker 2: the time, so this was they had to film. So
Speaker 2: whenever they're in a tunnel, they seem to have gone
Speaker 2: on location to some tunnel, But whenever they're in the
Speaker 2: train itself, it looks worse than the train from the
Speaker 2: Trial of the Incredible Hulk that we saw recently. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it really looks like a set on a fucking sound stage,
Speaker 2: and it's unacceptable in this movie. And then shots of
Speaker 2: the predator like crawling on the scene crawling on the
Speaker 2: roof of the thing. It just looks like it's on
Speaker 2: us also sitting on a set somewhere, like the chaotic
Speaker 2: moment when the predator gets on board, Like you said that,
Speaker 2: Like the lights go out because I guess they want
Speaker 2: it to be atmospheric. The lights don't go out on trains, no,
Speaker 2: for no reason. When you're in a tunnel. It's just
Speaker 2: everyone would freak the fuck out. It wouldn't be any
Speaker 2: no one would be riding the fucking subway if lights
Speaker 2: went out for that extended period of time. It's not
Speaker 2: like they shot out the lights or anything. And on
Speaker 2: top of that, the predator remains cloaked for the entire sequence,
Speaker 2: and then it keeps because it's strobing. There's really no difference.
Speaker 2: It just seems like a set of lines drawn on
Speaker 2: to the frames no matter what. So it just I
Speaker 2: don't know, it just seems poorly composited. Everything about the
Speaker 2: scene is terrible.
Speaker 3: But it's again hearkening back to Aliens, where there are
Speaker 3: fights that happen in darkness that are only illuminated by
Speaker 3: the machine guns and the weaponry.
Speaker 2: This is the scene in This is the scene in
Speaker 2: the lab when they come up through the ceiling when
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, they're in the room. That's this exactly,
Speaker 2: except it's just it's all chaos. There's it. What's crazy
Speaker 2: about it is there's really just the predator and Bill
Speaker 2: Paxton's character, and that's the whole scene, him making his
Speaker 2: way to Bill Paxton slowly while Maria Cancio Alonso forces
Speaker 2: everyone back to the front of the train. Why they
Speaker 2: haven't stopped the train by the way, anyway, So you
Speaker 2: have less geography, you have less characters to deal with,
Speaker 2: because James Cameron had a whole fucking He's still had
Speaker 2: half the fucking platoon left in the fucking in the
Speaker 2: lab bay when the Aliens came in, and I knew
Speaker 2: where everyone was at every moment. Here it's two guys,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what's going on the entire time? Plus
Speaker 2: we're on a set. Girl.
Speaker 3: It was a bummer. Really. What I kept thinking is
Speaker 3: I'm watching this is man, I'd love to be watching
Speaker 3: Aliens right now because it's so because it's so indebted,
Speaker 3: like I said, to Aliens, indebted to a lot of
Speaker 3: different pictures of that time. But I think most clearly
Speaker 3: in the fact that Bill Paxton is there front and center.
Speaker 3: You can't help but get that vibe that they were
Speaker 3: looking for. They wanted a little bit of that edge,
Speaker 3: that aliens vibe, and they just it's a shame because
Speaker 3: the Predator is a fucking great character, and the idea
Speaker 3: of having him going nuts in an urban center like
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, I thought it was and is still a
Speaker 3: really cool idea. It's just not executed well on any
Speaker 3: number of levels.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was stoked for the futurism, and then it's
Speaker 2: not really futurism at all. It's just that they needed
Speaker 2: the subway there. And the technology that the CIA guys
Speaker 2: have is more advanced than they could possibly have. The
Speaker 2: lab at the police station has apparently like a radio
Speaker 2: radiography you know, a radioactive whatever the fuck that is,
Speaker 2: like a carbon dating machine basically, yeah, yeah, let's put
Speaker 2: it in this spear and find out, Oh, it's not
Speaker 2: from this earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like an electron microscope in the middle of
Speaker 3: some cash strapped police department in LA. They would never
Speaker 3: have that because what happens is Ruben Blades's character has
Speaker 3: gone back to the Dominican mansion because he spotted the
Speaker 3: tip of a spear stuck in an air vent from
Speaker 3: the battle that happened there, so he recovers it in
Speaker 3: the In the process of doing so, the predator kills him,
Speaker 3: but he manages I don't recall exactly how, but Harrigan
Speaker 3: is in possession of this spear tip and he gives
Speaker 3: it to the like the forensic examiner and the police department.
Speaker 3: And another thing that really bugged me, I just remember this.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you notice this, but it really
Speaker 3: fucking bugged me is so much of this movie the
Speaker 3: dialogue is looped after the fact. Did you notice that? Yes,
Speaker 3: very little of it is actually recorded in on the
Speaker 3: day on the set. I don't know if they just
Speaker 3: had maybe they were filming in Los Angeles for some
Speaker 3: of these scenes and that they just couldn't get the
Speaker 3: sound correct. But it just drove me. No matter how
Speaker 3: good the looping is and how much they try to
Speaker 3: make it match, it always bugs me. It's like bad
Speaker 3: lip syncing. That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2: My favorite line in the movie, which is reminiscent of
Speaker 2: my favorite line from Evil Did to the Workshed, is
Speaker 2: when Danny Glover at the beginning of the movie opens
Speaker 2: the chunk of his car to pick which weapon he's
Speaker 2: going to choose. You know, this average Joe. He's got
Speaker 2: like a dozen handguns and machine pistols in there, and
Speaker 2: he takes out this hand cannon and then says to himself,
Speaker 2: not big enough, and then takes out a shotgun.
Speaker 3: It's really, it's bad. It's a bummer. It was really.
Speaker 3: I was bummed out watching this because I had such
Speaker 3: fond memories we both did and the it. But let's
Speaker 3: turn this around a little bit. Father Little we bagged
Speaker 3: on this movie pretty good. But let's turn this around
Speaker 3: a little bit. If I may, what worked for you
Speaker 3: in this movie? Actors, sequences, special effects did what was
Speaker 3: positive for you?
Speaker 2: The redesign of the Predator, I think is really good.
Speaker 2: This new Predator. He's a little more sleek, he's a
Speaker 2: little more tribal, he's a little more fanged. I noticed
Speaker 2: his face is a little meaner. I liked that. I
Speaker 2: liked finding out that it's actually the Predator making those
Speaker 2: vocalizations and not just a recording back at you. This
Speaker 2: I did not like. Okay, I want to keep heeping
Speaker 2: praise where it belongs. But now that I'm thinking of it,
Speaker 2: I have to say it. The movie just seemed the
Speaker 2: dialogue was just a choc a block full of whatever
Speaker 2: was on the latest T shirt. Spencer gifts because shit
Speaker 2: Happens is featured throughout, which was remember that, like the Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a phrase that sort of came about at
Speaker 2: this time. And what was the other one? Oh, the
Speaker 2: I hate in a sequel to a movie where they
Speaker 2: have a callback line where the characters involved would not
Speaker 2: have known that line from the previous film. They did
Speaker 2: it a lot in Alien Rodulus get away from Her,
Speaker 2: You bitch, what that hasn't happened yet? What are you
Speaker 2: even talking anyway? So in this one, Danny Glover takes
Speaker 2: the mask off of the Predator and he says, you
Speaker 2: are one ugly mother, and then the Predator grabs it.
Speaker 2: He goes motherfucker. I was like, what why? Okay, ripley, Jeane, everybody,
Speaker 2: so you say predator and she goes nuts. Really, Jane,
Speaker 2: calm down, what was that? You were one ugly motherfucker?
Speaker 2: Like that? I guess that they were trying to yippy kaye.
Speaker 2: That is that what they're trying to do, Because there.
Speaker 3: Were a few sort of typical art any lines in
Speaker 3: the first Predatory sorry, go ahead, that's okay. This was
Speaker 3: still the time of the Quippi action vehicle. You have
Speaker 3: to put a little humor in there, even like Freddy
Speaker 3: and night Right elm Street like he became a quip machine.
Speaker 3: He was more funny than he was SCARYO after a fashion.
Speaker 3: But because you have Arnold throwing a machete through guy
Speaker 3: and it says stick around things like that or that
Speaker 3: hit the spot from running Man you need, It's almost
Speaker 3: like they feel the need to defuse some of terror
Speaker 3: and like the horror of it by throwing in these
Speaker 3: little catch that I thought was really annoying because it's
Speaker 3: so clearly it's almost like fan service to the original picture.
Speaker 3: Hey do you guys remember how funny it was in
Speaker 3: the first picture. Now it's funny here too, write don't
Speaker 3: you love it? I agree? That totally fell flat for me.
Speaker 3: And there's other bits. I think the efforts at humor
Speaker 3: overall in this movie, Like there's a lot like the
Speaker 3: Morton Downey Junior characters played for laughs and it he's
Speaker 3: the typical smarmy journalist who gets punched in the face
Speaker 3: at the end. I didn't like him at all. I
Speaker 3: didn't think he served any real purpose.
Speaker 2: But other than that, they wanted to make fun of
Speaker 2: journalism at the time they were taking the cue from
Speaker 2: RoboCop there, I think they were trying to sure that
Speaker 2: was their attempt at satire. You know what I hated
Speaker 2: about the Montinny Junior sequence. By then reporters, every reporter
Speaker 2: on any show, when they were holding a microphone, the
Speaker 2: microphone would have a little cube around the right around
Speaker 2: the bottom of the phone thing, right, a little cube
Speaker 2: with the logo on it. In cheap movie productions, they
Speaker 2: always have they've double printed something and then they just
Speaker 2: tape it around the microphone. And he has this little
Speaker 2: fucking taped together piece of shit. And I just kept thinking, like,
Speaker 2: this is supposed to be like a network nationwide show,
Speaker 2: and why is that? Because the fucking prop master was
Speaker 2: too busy trying to find you know, shotgun shells or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but kind of looping at the stuff that I
Speaker 3: liked that I thought was still a sort of yeah,
Speaker 3: we're talking about like right, sorry? Is so the the
Speaker 3: climax of the movie, after the predator wipes out everybody
Speaker 3: in the slaughterhouse, it effectively becomes a fight. But over
Speaker 3: the course of a city block or two between Harrigan
Speaker 3: and the predator. They battle their way through an apartment building,
Speaker 3: ultimately making their way to the predator's ship, which is
Speaker 3: underneath the slaughterhouse. An apartment building near the slaughterhouse. Basically
Speaker 3: it's sitting there and Harrigan has made his way to
Speaker 3: the ship trying to chase the predator. And I thought,
Speaker 3: to me, even going back to a movie like Close Encounters,
Speaker 3: to me, there's something creepy about investigating a flying saucer
Speaker 3: when it's taken seriously. When I'm not talking about just
Speaker 3: flashing lights that are blinking in sequence or out of
Speaker 3: sequence or what have you. This was the the design
Speaker 3: of the alien ship. The pre 's ship was sufficiently
Speaker 3: creepy for me because it's basically cloaked in kind of
Speaker 3: smoke or just the you know, vapor.
Speaker 2: There's a low lying flat fog.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fog, and that's where you see there's
Speaker 3: a famous shot where he's looking around the ship and
Speaker 3: he sees a wall of trophies, and that's where the
Speaker 3: famous shot of the alien skull is there. Because it
Speaker 3: kind of introduced the idea that the predator and the
Speaker 3: alien are in the same universe coexisting. I thought that
Speaker 3: was really cool.
Speaker 2: That is the one thing we can really thank Steven
Speaker 2: Hopkins for who when he was at stan Winston Studios,
Speaker 2: saw one of the skulls and went, oh, we can
Speaker 2: put this in there, and and then he opened up
Speaker 2: a door that has never been closed.
Speaker 3: And then never ever been closed again. But the ship
Speaker 3: is it's giger esque where there's no controls, there's nothing
Speaker 3: that it's all sort of these rolling walls that have
Speaker 3: an odd texture, almost like bone or just I don't know,
Speaker 3: I can't describe the texture of it. And that's where
Speaker 3: the final stand between the predator and Harrigan takes place,
Speaker 3: and in fact he actually he finally kills the predator.
Speaker 3: But maybe the coolest part of this whole thing is
Speaker 3: after he's killed the predator, about five or six other
Speaker 3: predators de cloak themselves all around him. So here we
Speaker 3: are his audience members thinking, yeah, he did it, he
Speaker 3: killed the predator. No, because now there's no way he's
Speaker 3: going to get through these six or seven and they
Speaker 3: all have unique designs, introducing this idea that there's maybe
Speaker 3: there's like a ranking society within the Yauch Race.
Speaker 2: Yaouce yaouche yeaoch.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was not only was that pretty
Speaker 3: pretty satisfying, but the weirdest part of this whole thing,
Speaker 3: and there's no way they would have known that this
Speaker 3: would be called back thirty years later, is they carry
Speaker 3: off this dead predator and knowledgement of yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: we respect you. One of the predators before he leaves
Speaker 3: throws harrigan an antique flintlock pistol that's inscribed to Raphael
Speaker 3: Adelini seventeen fifteen. I think there's the date, which at
Speaker 3: the time, the idea is, oh my god, these predators
Speaker 3: have been coming to this planet for hundreds of years.
Speaker 3: But what I think is great is that fucking mastermind Trachtenberg.
Speaker 3: He brought back that fucking pistol in Prey, which linking
Speaker 3: these movies that have really no business like Predator two,
Speaker 3: is in no way on the level of Prey, which
Speaker 3: I think in near masterpiece.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: You gotta admit, father Malone that somehow now these universes
Speaker 3: are linked and it creates this mythology around this pistol
Speaker 3: and these creatures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes prequels are fucking cool. It's just that sometimes
Speaker 2: we don't need to know every little thing about every
Speaker 2: fucking tree branch. Sometimes you know, a little that was
Speaker 2: just a little, as you said, that was a little
Speaker 2: easter egg, just to let the audience know the predators
Speaker 2: have been here forever, and to open up the possibility
Speaker 2: of telling all these different stories. Not ever I think
Speaker 2: believing we were going to tell that story of that pistol,
Speaker 2: which pray is ultimately it is a prequel to this movie.
Speaker 2: It's kind of you, you know, it's funny. Gary Busey
Speaker 2: when he's debriefing Danny Glever, this is an alien, you idiot,
Speaker 2: stopped coming to the crime scenes. He mentions Ewo Jima
Speaker 2: and Cambodia and be Root as other times that they
Speaker 2: they know that the predators have visited us. What I
Speaker 2: love about that ending. First of all, Lawrence Paul was
Speaker 2: the production designer on this, and I agree with you.
Speaker 2: His design for their ship is fucking great, and it
Speaker 2: in a way mirrors the Frank Lloyd Wright design apartment.
Speaker 2: The Mayan kind of carvings, because all of the there
Speaker 2: seem to be sigils and symbols carved everywhere on this ship.
Speaker 2: The low lying fog is troubling. Why what is that?
Speaker 2: Why you guys are wearing masks or you visit or
Speaker 2: do you take the masks off and you breathe that
Speaker 2: what is happening? I don't know, and I don't need
Speaker 2: to know, but I'd like to know.
Speaker 3: In its obfuscation, the ship becomes all the more believable
Speaker 3: to me, because I have a feeling if any of
Speaker 3: us ever got on an alien ship, it wouldn't like
Speaker 3: I said, it wouldn't look like lost in space to
Speaker 3: call back. It would look mysterious and weird and not
Speaker 3: meant for humans. And that's exactly what you get here.
Speaker 3: And I think that's if you're going to try to
Speaker 3: redeem the movie. It almost redeems the movie put it
Speaker 3: that way to me because it's so the mystery of it.
Speaker 3: I was captivated by all over again.
Speaker 2: I here's the only good thing about it watching it
Speaker 2: again now in that final scene when you realize there's
Speaker 2: seven or eight of them, that this was a hunting party,
Speaker 2: What were they doing? Where were they? Were they just
Speaker 2: in other parts of the city, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: There's this is where their ship was so and these
Speaker 2: guys are on foot. Yeah, what other fucking trouble. I
Speaker 2: you know, you could very easily make another movie that
Speaker 2: takes place at the exact same time that Predator two
Speaker 2: takes place in Los Angeles, in other parts of the
Speaker 2: city with the rest of that gang. The Predators fascinate me, man.
Speaker 2: The Yahoucha fascinate me, man. And there's precious little mythology
Speaker 2: about them that the films have given us. I know,
Speaker 2: the novels and blah blah blah blah blah, but extended
Speaker 2: universes don't matter. What we're given in the films is
Speaker 2: very little. And I know the new one, bad Lands,
Speaker 2: is going to change a lot of that. I'm curious.
Speaker 2: I still haven't watched the trailer. I'm curious if the Predators,
Speaker 2: if the Yaucha themselves will speak to one another and
Speaker 2: we get to hear that language. To spoil it for you,
Speaker 2: do they.
Speaker 3: He speaks a line in the trailer Predator speaks.
Speaker 2: Does he say speak in English or no?
Speaker 3: No, it's subtitled it's his language.
Speaker 2: Oh wonderful, Okay, good.
Speaker 3: I couldn't look. I think I mentioned that Predator two
Speaker 3: was the last Predator movie that I saw in the theater.
Speaker 3: What I didn't say, was that was the last Predator
Speaker 3: movie that I even saw period until Prey popped up
Speaker 3: on my radar and it was impossible to ignore because
Speaker 3: the reviews were so strong, and that made me a
Speaker 3: Predator fan all over again. And now I could not
Speaker 3: be more excited for Predator bad Lands because I have
Speaker 3: such total and utter faith in the filmmakers that they've
Speaker 3: cracked the code on making a good, solid Predator movie
Speaker 3: that doesn't short change you on any of the things
Speaker 3: that you love about the Predators. And as you just said,
Speaker 3: like it's gonna peel back more of the mythos and
Speaker 3: the mythology around the race of yaouches that I think
Speaker 3: is so compelling and so exciting for I. My hat's
Speaker 3: off like they've built a better mouse trap. That's the
Speaker 3: amazing thing.
Speaker 2: Here's another thing I like the bread Predator too, and
Speaker 2: it actually ties into what we're talking about in that
Speaker 2: we don't know very much about the Predator. So anytime
Speaker 2: we get a breadcrumb of anything, I'm excited. Here we
Speaker 2: get a much more extended sequence of the loving attention
Speaker 2: the Yaoucha pays to his trophy. He's buffing that skull
Speaker 2: by the end, he's got a buffing machine polishing it.
Speaker 2: I thought, wow, you know he really cares.
Speaker 3: He does because I think in the first one you
Speaker 3: see him lovingly stroke one of the skulls. But you're right,
Speaker 3: you see more of the process by which he leaning
Speaker 3: that thing. Enf Man.
Speaker 2: We get to see King William all manner of undress
Speaker 2: in this film thanks to our friend the Yauchi. Here.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I like that they show us
Speaker 2: here when Danny Glover and Harrigan to the au are fighting,
Speaker 2: he cuts off the predator's forearm. The predators has armed
Speaker 2: the explosive. I think a little prematurely, a little premature
Speaker 2: on the predator's part there. He should that's a last
Speaker 2: ditch thing. Come on, don't just throw that around will
Speaker 2: I nill I. But he's gonna blow himself up, right,
Speaker 2: So he cuts the arm up and then we get
Speaker 2: to see the predator like deal with the wound. I
Speaker 2: love seeing the predators deal with their wounds. That's fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: They did it in the first film. He has to
Speaker 2: suiture himself up a little bit. And now now this
Speaker 2: one has to deal with a whole fucking limb gun.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, that and that was such a weird sequence
Speaker 3: because what he does is he breaks his way into
Speaker 3: a bathroom in this apartment and he grabs, he smashes
Speaker 3: a bunch of the tile off the wall. I don't
Speaker 3: I have no idea what this has to do with
Speaker 3: anything with the practicality of medical triage. But he gets
Speaker 3: all of this tile, he breaks it up in his hands,
Speaker 3: he lights like a Bunsen burner. He puts it into
Speaker 3: the Bunsen burner with some kind of chemical, this blue chemical.
Speaker 3: It becomes a paste, and then he slathers that paste
Speaker 3: on his stump and on his bullet wounds on his chest.
Speaker 3: But what does a bunch of wall tile have to
Speaker 3: do with I was left to more questions and answers
Speaker 3: there father alone. It was cool, but I didn't quite
Speaker 3: understand what was going on.
Speaker 2: I love that I didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 2: He knew what he was doing. He recognized that tile
Speaker 2: is apparently whatever's the some property in there is going
Speaker 2: to help him couterize his wounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The other thing that is, it's funny, we're we're
Speaker 3: talking a little bit. All I was, I guess talking
Speaker 3: making reference to prey. And one of the things that
Speaker 3: is unavoidable. Which look, Kevin Peter Hall is awesome as
Speaker 3: the Predator. He is, there's menace in every move that
Speaker 3: he makes. But the thing that is is a bummer.
Speaker 3: Now looking back and having all these other newer movies,
Speaker 3: these newer Predator movies coming out, it's a little like
Speaker 3: when you're a kid and you see the light saber
Speaker 3: duel between Darth Vader and ben Kenobi and the Death
Speaker 3: Star the very first movie, and it there's not much happens, right,
Speaker 3: They're not flipping, they're not doing But now when you
Speaker 3: look at a Jedi lightsaber duel now in modern day
Speaker 3: as a you know, modern meaning twenty twenty five, they're
Speaker 3: flipping there. There's karate influences, there's all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: The Predator, like the Predator then, was dealing with the
Speaker 3: limits of the costume. There's a big This costume weighed
Speaker 3: like something on the order of like hundreds of pounds
Speaker 3: on this sky. There's only so much Kevin Peter Hall,
Speaker 3: being as big as he is, he's not going to
Speaker 3: be doing all kinds of crazy action stuff. You can
Speaker 3: do that now because of the benefit of modern effects.
Speaker 3: But it's a little bit of a bummer that we
Speaker 3: don't get to see the predator do his thing like
Speaker 3: we see him do and pray in some of the
Speaker 3: other pictures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a similar experience after the run of
Speaker 2: the recent Planet of the Apes movies and then going
Speaker 2: back and watch the originals and going, oh boy, these
Speaker 2: are really are some people in masks. I know, I've
Speaker 2: been impressed my entire life, but this is a little tough.
Speaker 2: Now I'm going to have to re re immerse myself
Speaker 2: into this.
Speaker 3: It's true. You can say what you want about the
Speaker 3: Tim Burton reboot or reimagining, but those ape costumes were
Speaker 3: pretty fucking cool. That was if that really truly looked
Speaker 3: like an orangutan evolved to human like proportions.
Speaker 2: Well, you're talking about practical makeup. I'm talking about the
Speaker 2: CG fest with Andy serkis all the recent rise of
Speaker 2: the Planet of the Apes, and we've got completely computer
Speaker 2: generated characters and they are talking and emoting and unlike
Speaker 2: anything that the nineteen sixty eight prosthetics could afford.
Speaker 3: It's pretty amazing. But despite that, like I said, there's there.
Speaker 2: Are saying you know, you made the analogy about Star
Speaker 2: Wars going back and watching the Obi Wan and Darth
Speaker 2: Vader fight. Now, it's kind of pathetic. It's they're practicing
Speaker 2: just kendo, so they're just kind of clacking the blades
Speaker 2: against each other. Was just how you fight in kendo.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew that they were going to be fighting a
Speaker 2: la saber via, you know, speed fighting eventually. So but
Speaker 2: do you remember when those lunatics made I think it's
Speaker 2: called like scene eighty six where they refilmed what that
Speaker 2: fight would have looked like between Obi Wan and It's
Speaker 2: on YouTube. It was a very popular video.
Speaker 3: I do remember that. Funny enough, I actually rewatched that recently.
Speaker 3: I saw it when it was when it went viral
Speaker 3: a few years ago, but I did rewatch it recently.
Speaker 2: You know, at the time it came out, I was like,
Speaker 2: come on, you guys, calm down with this shit. Do
Speaker 2: you really need this? And now I agree with you.
Speaker 2: Maybe they ought have just cut that into Star Wars.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a line between this, you know, making
Speaker 3: it better and making the special edition right.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, mister Lucas is very fond of reimagining
Speaker 2: his own works, so maybe he ought to take the
Speaker 2: fans queue there and go back and do Star Wars again.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's maybe that's an experiment Disney ought to auto
Speaker 2: allow him to do redo the three again now any
Speaker 2: way you want.
Speaker 3: I would go see it. I may not like it,
Speaker 3: but I would go seek.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go see it. Man so yeah so.
Speaker 3: But I guess that's maybe that's part of the charm
Speaker 3: thinking about it, of those early Predator movies where they're
Speaker 3: dealing with the constraints of that big, bulky costume and
Speaker 3: there's only so much that this actor can do. So
Speaker 3: I guess it. I don't know. I guess it works
Speaker 3: for the time, but it is pretty impressive to see
Speaker 3: what you can do with modern effects, like in Prey
Speaker 3: and bad Lands. That's going to be awesome.
Speaker 2: That's not what we're watching next, friend, that will be
Speaker 2: Alien versus Predator on the next yaouca fest. Have got
Speaker 2: anything more to say about this?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: One thing I didn't mention, and you didn't mention it either.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised, given our shared night mister Walter's podcasting and
Speaker 3: so forth, you didn't note the fact that in Predator Too,
Speaker 3: we have a full fledged DC CAB reunion. You never
Speaker 3: mentioned it.
Speaker 2: Adam Baldwin, Gary Busey and they working together and Hackenberry. Wow,
Speaker 2: And we also have a Lethal Weapon reunion in Gary
Speaker 2: Busey and Danny Glover.
Speaker 3: That's true. And Steve Kahan.
Speaker 2: Steve Kahan is who Steve Kahan.
Speaker 3: He was a big Richard Donner guy. He was in
Speaker 3: He was in Maverick in the Lethal Weapon movies. He
Speaker 3: was the captain. You know. That was another It's a
Speaker 3: minor thing. He's not in it that much, but he's there.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I was surprised you didn't note the fact
Speaker 3: that Albert Hackenberry was in this with with Gary Busey.
Speaker 2: Hey man, I only noticed the Lethal Weapon reunion this time,
Speaker 2: watching it like my brain was too scrambled. Plus I
Speaker 2: had I was thinking every time I saw Adam Baldwin,
Speaker 2: I kept thinking the thought that I already expressed, which
Speaker 2: is he that bad? Now I'm going to have to
Speaker 2: reassess this guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. And I thought, by the way,
Speaker 3: I thought just then you were going to make a
Speaker 3: joke and say, you know, I'm not going to hunt
Speaker 3: the predator on January eighth, because that's ill. This is birtha.
Speaker 2: I let you say it.
Speaker 3: I don't. I didn't do it justice. But but no,
Speaker 3: My final word on this is, you know, we've said
Speaker 3: it all it was. It's disappointing, but I'm hopeful that
Speaker 3: I know that by the time we get to Pray
Speaker 3: that there's a re rejuvenation in the series. I'm hoping
Speaker 3: some of these middle pictures are going to satisfy me
Speaker 3: a little concern.
Speaker 2: Wait till we get to the Predator.
Speaker 3: Is that the the Shane Black one?
Speaker 2: Yes? All right, oh boy, you're gonna love it.
Speaker 3: I can sense the sarcasm, so a little bit.
Speaker 2: Ah well, anyway, until next time, until the next yahoucha fest?
Speaker 2: Where can people find you when they're looking for you?
Speaker 2: Mister h p all right?
Speaker 3: As I alluded to her or mentioned earlier, I co
Speaker 3: host the night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with Father Malone here.
Speaker 3: I am also an occasional guest on The Culture Cast
Speaker 3: with Chris Dashu. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast.
Speaker 3: And finally, I have a band camp site hpmusicplace dot
Speaker 3: bancamp dot com.
Speaker 2: As for me, you're listening to my show, Hey, people
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas and the Las Vegas area come around October,
Speaker 2: might want to stop by the Nightmare in Vegas Convention
Speaker 2: where you'll find the Midnight Viewing Crew on display. We
Speaker 2: will be We're going to have a full day, full
Speaker 2: two days of presence there at the convention October the
Speaker 2: fourth and the fifth stop by. We're gonna be recording
Speaker 2: all goddamn day long, and they're gonna be have special
Speaker 2: guests and such. It's a long ways off, but you know,
Speaker 2: planting the seed as it were. We'll talk to you
Speaker 2: again on Monday for another Father Malone's weekly round up,
Speaker 2: and next Friday we'll probably be a Tails from the
Speaker 2: dark Side or a Fusco Fest or something. There's too much,
Speaker 2: there's too much content. I don't know what to do
Speaker 2: with at all. Oh my God, take me away Predator
Speaker 2: to I think.
Speaker 1: You know who he is.
Speaker 2: I won't have.
Speaker 1: I don't know who he is, but I know who.
Speaker 4: Is the other aside, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: The spirit world? Man? You see, it's always the same.
Speaker 5: There's no stopping what can be stopped, no killing what
Speaker 5: can't be killed.
Speaker 3: Hey, make sense, man, the same that's killing your people
Speaker 3: and mind it's from the others.
Speaker 2: I can feel him all around.
Speaker 1: You can't see the eyes of the demon until him
Speaker 1: come carling.
Speaker 4: M h.
Speaker 3: H.
Speaker 2: You can killing.
Speaker 4: Time.
Speaker 1: There's something out there writing in the spook. In languish,
Speaker 1: I look about
Speaker 2: What dying hell I