Movie Review: Predators

Hunters dressed like plants surprise this bird and grab his feet. How is that fun?

Q: How on Earth do you stop hunters from hunting?

A: Another planet, that’s how!

If you’re like me, you are a strict vegetarian eater who loves animals and only eats meat on holidays (Thanksgiving, Halloween, etc.) and even then only meat from stores because hunting causes a lot of suffering to animals. If you’re not a vegetarian, however, then the new movie Predators gives you a big reason to become one and not hunt: the plot of the movie.

Not all hunting is bad. Many vegetarians enjoy hunting for food, also.

Aidan Brody stars as a hunter who finds himself on a planet that is in outer space. He meets a bunch of other people (one of which is a girl–yay!) who don’t know each other and are basically strangers. These strangers are from all different races, countries and time zones. There’s a Mexican cowboy, a Japanese sword fighter, even a guy in a jumpsuit, so there is at least one person that people in the audience can identify with, but is also sad because most of them get killed. Eventually, they quickly realize that they are not alone on the planet because there are a bunch of animal people who, well, let’s just say they have a bone to pick with Mr. Brody and his new friends.

"I look scary with two mouths, but I can't chew bubble gum."

It’s hard to say that there are good guys and bad guys in this movie. Other movies like Dark Knight or Mama Mia are pretty clear about who is good and bad. Predators blurries the line between good and bad. On this hand, the audience likes Aidan Brody and his friends because they are people like us, but then we don’t like them because they are the type of people that use machine guns to hunt. On the other hand, there are the animal people who built a spaceship, got the heck off of Earth because of crazy hunters *SPOILER * and now, because they learned to make masks and gloves with computers in them, have kidnapped the very people that used to hunt them in order to have a fair fight. I liked this idea because it takes away the power of the hunter shooting a defenseless animal and, instead, gives the defenseless animal a helmet and laser guns to blow up stuff.

This monster shows the man where he found the sword.

While I wanted to support this movie because it has a good message about animals, I was mostly a little disappointed (sorry, Mr. Brody…) It’s not because the acting was bad or anything and I really liked that there was a girl character who could hold a gun just like the guys, but the animal people were, I dunno, kind of silly-looking. It was hard to tell what kind of animals they used to be. One of them was a walrus, but I couldn’t really tell what the others were supposed to be. They all just sort of looked like lizard people with weird fish mouths.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat "Love you!" Bang! Bang! "Love you, too!" Pow! Pow! "Do something different with your hair?! Looks nice!" Kapow-w-w-w! "Thanks! You're sweet to notice!"

I would liked to have seen the hunters and the animal people find a tree that had magic fruit on it and when they ate it, they would go, “Wow, I am so full from this fruit and it gives me all of the nutrition I need on a daily basis” or something like that and then maybe show a list of local stores that sell fruit near each movie theater showing the movie. My other suggestion is that I wanted to see more of a love story between Aidan Brody and the girl. They’re obviously really in love, but we don’t get to see them kissing or even holding hands while they’re walking. I think more girls would have gone to see this movie if there had been more of a love story, but they probably went to go see Twilight again because there wasn’t.

So, while I really like the message of not hunting, the movie was not what I was hoping for.

I give Predators 2 out of 5 winks!