More than 30 years ago, The Predator arrived at a time when the Vietnam war movie was arguably at its peak.
In dealing with heavy themes like the anti-war movement and those soldiers crippled by nightmarish visions and PTSD, films in the vein of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now earned critical acclaim in what proved to be a heyday for one of cinema’s most brutal subgenres.
But in 1987, John McTiernan’s cult classic flipped the tables and thrust its core cast – a cast headed up by action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger – into Central America’s Northern Triangle, where the hunters soon became the hunted. The end result was one of the most quotable and action-packed movies of the ’80s, and one that served as perhaps the perfect tonic to Vietnam war films and their potent subtext.
Fast forward to now, and with Shane Black cooking up a bold new rendition of The Predator, lead star Boyd Holbrook (Logan) believes the September tentpole will still contain some throwbacks to the first movie.
I’ve seen something, and maybe there is a familiarity. I wouldn’t want to say that he’s a UFO conspiracy theorist, but he’s heard of things and seen things, and that may be a reference to the original. So that’s the reference to the original, which we are of keeping in lineage.
Those comments come to us by way of Cinema Blend and prove that, yes, Shane Black hasn’t forgotten his time starring alongside Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. Remember, Black was part of the ensemble cast who ventured into the Northern Triangle in search of the Predator, only to be picked off one by one by an extraterrestrial force not of this world.
The 2018 reinvention is somewhat different in that it features multiple alien hunts set loose in suburbia, but after Thursday’s trailer reveal, we’re quietly optimistic that The Predator can deliver the goods on September 14th.
