- This is toxic masculinity.
- All of it, every part of the movie from the making of to the images on the screen to the deeper themes, every itty-bitty part.
- This movie is why some parents are raising genderless babies.
- Cuz it’s just about measuring dicks.
- Hour-and-forty minutes of tailor’s tape and rulers and arguments about whether to start from the base or the balls.
- And yet there is not even a speck of homoeroticism.
- Which is impressive, given that the film is about sweaty men in the woods.
- You gotta try to make that completely straight, but Arnold and director John McTiernan succeed.
- I mean, look at this bullshit:
- THAT’S NOT ALL OF IT.
- The scene goes on for almost 30 seconds, Arnold and Apollo being enormous at one another and smiling muscularly while the camera cuts back to their engorged biceps at least twice.
- (I guarantee you that Arnold demanded Apollo keep his sleeve down.)
- Anyway, a MacGuffin has taken place in a Central American jungle, which would make it a Magufinito, and Arnold and his team are summoned to shoot it.
- And then shoot it again.
- Arnold is called “Dutch” and Apollo is called “Dillon” and those are damn manly names.
- Those names could chew through doors with their dicks.
- That’s how manly they are: they have dickteeth.
- Stop this immediately.
- You might be right; that was pointless.
- Oh, yeah.
- Fuck off while I go into a parenthetical remark.
- (Arnold’s character being named Dutch is one in a short and dopey line of Reasons for Arnold’s Accent. In the Terminator movies, his vocal hooky-dooky was copied from an Austrian soldier’ hucky-poo and in Kindergarten Cop he mentions immigrating, but mostly he just played Army colonels and cops and audiences went, “Yeah, sure, whatever, it’s Arnold.)
- Hostages?
- Drugs?
- International skulldiggery?
- (Skulldiggery is the precursor to skullduggery, and it’s best to cut it off at the root. Must be proactive with skulldiggers.)
- I must admit, Enthusiasts, to half-attention to the part when they talked.
- Predator is one of those kind of movies.
- There’s the part when they talk.
- And then the rest.
- Escape From New York had the same structure, and so did Rambo.
- (I mean First Blood Part Two or whatever Sylvester Stallone’s lawyers want to call the one where he goes back to Vietnam and this time, they let him win. It is a far superior film to the first one where he wanders around the woods getting his ass kicked by cops. In Rambo, Rambo has arrows with tips made of high explosive. Does he have these in First Blood? No? To use a metaphor from another of Stallone’s popular franchises, that’s a knockout in the first round. Furthermore, in Rambo, Rambo has a rocket launcher. There are no rocket launchers at all in First Blood. To continue the metaphor, Rambo is now beating First Blood’s lifeless body into a mashy lump, the referee clinging to his mad back and helpless and crying “My God!” The audience looks on, tho they’ll hate themselves for it when they next meet bedsheets.)
- The crew ventures forth into the wood.
- Storms a castle.
- Rescues a princess.
- And faces off with a monster.
- Predator is not exactly telling a new story, but it is as I have told you time and again, Enthusiast: singer, not the song.
- No other version of this tale has, for example, the future governor of the state of Minnesota with a weapon designed to be mounted on helicopters vaporizing both humans and jungle thickets.
- We must never forget that the cast of Predator featured two men, one of whom a bodybuilder and actor, the other a professional wrestler, both of them doped to the gills on steroids, who would go on to become governors
- That’s Jesse Ventura, and most if not all of his performance emanates from deep within the Problem Attic.
- If that guy had lived, he would have voted for Trump nine or ten times.
- But Predator exploded his chest and yanked his skull (still attached to the spinal column) from his body and made art with it.
- The crew responds to this by mourning in the only way they know: opening fire into the jungle for a full minute of screen time.
- Including the should-be-on-a-helicopter gun.
- (The ludicrous appendage Governor Ventura was BRRRRRRTing at bad guys and aliens is called a mini-gun. The Army used to stick ’em on Hueys called gunships. Human beings do not hump them–and the ammo!–through Central American jungles. This fact scandalized a young TotD: I honestly thought military units had a mini-gun guy. I was not a bright kid.)
- His death was a shame, because he was the other interesting guy in the movie.
- There was Billy.
- Who was a Magick Indian.
- Points for casting an actual Native, though.
- Although all we have on that is Sonny Landham’s word on that, and wasn’t the most reliable of sources.
- And Mac.
- The black guy with the razor.
- And the two white guys, one of whom is screenwriter Shane Black, and the other I forget exists whenever he’s not on the screen.
- The writer is in the movie because the producer demanded it, and the producer demanded it because it was the 1980’s and everyone was on cocaine.
- None of them matter.
- They are Odysseus’ sailors: they exist to die alongside the hero and up the stakes a bit.
- Arnold is the hero, and this is Peak Arnold.
- You get the one-liners, the cigars, the muscles, the fistfight with English, the various glottal sounds he substitutes for words.
- Arnold doesn’t deliver dialogue so much as force it out of his mouth.
- Then there is the acting.
- Arnold’s acting can be summed up as “yelling” and “waiting to yell.”
- Acting wasn’t his job: Arnold was there to be Arnold, all 650 pounds of veiny, ass-grabbing glory
- The best movies have the best villains, and Predator has one of the greatest of all.
- He is freaky.
- He is deaky.
- Predator gonna getcha.
- And remember: we know bupkiss about Predator.
- We didn’t need to hear about his stupid planet or his stupid race or meet stupid XXXtreme versions of him, and we certainly didn’t need to see him fight the fucking Alien.
- Stupid.
- He was perfect and mysterious and ugly, and Hollywood rooked him immediately.
- Terminator got to be cool for two movies, and so did the Aliens’ Freddy was scary for at least three movies, and so was Jason; hell, even the Gremlins had two good flicks in ’em.
- But Predator got turned to shit right away.
- Poor fella.
- All he wanted to do was hunt humans and rip out their spines to make art.
- And all of a sudden he’s in Los Angeles facing off with Danny Glover and Gary fucking Busey.
- Or staring at Topher Grace’s steely visage.
- (Not kidding. Topher Grace was in one of the sequels, and he went to fight Predator and Predator was like, “Dude, I kicked Arnold’s ass,” and Topher was like, “I told my agent I couldn’t pull this part off but he said I could,” and then Predator pulls his arms off, but you can tell his heart’s not in it.)
- Or fighting the stupid Alien.
- Hollywood made two of those films, and then Trump went on to win the Presidency and those facts are unrelated.
- Neither monster deserved those films; they were better than the material.
- One took place in a magic cave in Antartica and tricked Lance Henriksen into showing up, and the other happened in the rain at night.
- I think there was some bullshit about Colorado, but every single scene is pitch-black and sopping wet.
- And if you guessed “To hide the shoddy special effects,” then give yourself a prize.
- Poor Predator.
- An honest reading of the fight makes it a draw.
- Technically, you killed Arnold at the end.
- It would be tough to outrun a nuclear blast over even ground, and this was thick jungle.
- You put up a great fight.
- I’m on your side, buddy.
- Just another Hollywood tragedy.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: arnold shwarzenegger
Okay, this is my new favorite thing.
Did you know Arnold’s dad was a Nazi? A real one, not these softboys with their shitty haircuts.
Maybe we should have had Arnold wait to enter the country; you know, just until we figured things out.
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