Prey (2022)

So what have we here? Well it's a Predator movie so there isn't really that much to explain. One difference with this latest entry is the fact there aren't two different tribes of Predators runnin' around. This time we're going back to the original in terms of plot and tone (although they said that about 'Predators'). This time it's Predator versus primal man...woman...girl. This time it's back to booby traps, mud, and hunting. This time it's a Predator versus a Native American girl, yup, welcome to 2023.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no issues with strong female characters, we've had many of them in many classic movies, but it's actually getting a bit old now. To add to that this female character is supposed to be really young, not sure how old exactly but she looks like a damn teenager to me. Kinda like taking Newt, adding some years, and then pitting her against a Predator. Actually that could work! Anyway the main crux (or carrot) for this entry is the fact it's a Predator vs. Native Americans. To be honest this sounds like the perfect idea for a Dark Horse graphic novel series for sure, but a full-blown movie? I just find it cheesy because you can swap out the Indians and use ANY period warriors and it would be exactly the same. Predator vs. Vikings. Predator vs. Knights. Predator vs. Samurai. Predator vs. Spartans. Predator vs. Mongols etc...The list goes and every idea would literally be the same albeit the locations obviously.

And here lies the problem, this movie isn't actually very original at all and once again pales in comparison to both the 1987 original AND the 1991 sequel (I said what I said). The plot is completely predictable naturally. The young female (with an awkward American accent) wants to be a warrior but the rest of the tribe poo poo this idea (present-day social commentary!), so she has to prove herself. At first she fails but after much perseverance and the arrival of a Predator she manages to do just that. Along the way we get various callbacks to the original including dialog, shots, and scenes. The main difference is this is a prequel so the Predator is using dated tech and for some reason looks completely different...again.

But yeah I wasn't really impressed here. The movie is surprisingly dark so you actually don't see that much gore. I get that they tried to make it look natural with natural light in the wilderness and adding to the suspense factor, but it didn't work for me. The movie wasn't suspenseful and I couldn't see a great deal because a lot happens at night. There is gore but it's almost entirely CGI which is just pathetic I'm sorry. This is why older flicks are so much better, real blood effects, practical effects, squibs etc...This is why Paul Verhoeven movies are so God damn epic. You don't ever really see the Predator's face that well again because much is set at night, and I didn't really like the new design. His mouth is HUGE! Takes up half his face and his eyes are almost on either side of his face! Didn't like the bone-esque looking mask either. Couldn't really see how it stayed on his face to be honest.

I also didn't like seeing all these wild animals getting killed frankly, kinda depressing. I get the gist of the Predator obviously but I really don't see why he would be killing wolves or snakes (I get the bear). The Predator is an intelligent species, it can tell the difference between another creature being a threat and another creature merely hunting for its own survival, right? So why would it kill these animals unless they actually attacked him, especially creatures that are so small. I mean, does the Predator have to kill every flippin' predator species it comes across in order to prove itself or conquer that particular planet??

Around the halfway mark a load of French voyageurs turn up because of course they do. Naturally these guys all turn out to be a really nasty bunch of White guys (of course) and cannon fodder for the Predator. At first it seems like there's only a handful of them but as the Predator starts wiping them out their number seems to grow rapidly (cannon fodder required for action sequences as there aren't many Natives and the Natives are of course goodies). Once again the visuals are disappointing because you don't actually see any of the kills and all the blood is CLEARLY CGI. It's also around this point where our female protagonist turns out to be a martial artist of sorts and is able to take out multiple grown men at the same time...ugh!!

Spoilers but the Predator kills himself in, what seems to me, like a really dumb way. His mask houses his laser targeting system and his wrist gauntlet fires these darts things now. So wherever the triangular red dots point that's where the darts go (homing). Well it seems the Predator forgets this and tries to shoot the female Native point-blank range without his mask on (which has been cunningly placed facing the back of his head by the female Native) so naturally the darts just home in on the back of his head and boom. Then there's the ending where our female protagonist arrives back at her camp and throws the Predator's head on the ground in front of her tribe, all of whom seem totally unfazed by the alien head at their feet. The fact she almost kills herself by trying to kill a bear when she totally didn't need to because it was just minding its own business. I get she's trying to be a hunter but come on! Weigh up the situation girl!

So yeah...overall this was a mixed bag for me. In general the visuals are nice with some lovely atmospheric location shots. The Natives all look and sound authentic as do the French men whilst the Predator certainly sounds good and comes with those nice infrared optics. Alas the movie is packed with terrible CGI, bad acting, dim visuals at key moments, and the Predator doesn't look as good as it should. They keep changing the look but the original simply cannot be beaten so why try? The real issue here is the movie is simply another retread of the same old formula but merely with Native Americans. They have to move this franchise forward, maybe into space? Maybe onto the Predator home world? They cannot keep doing the same thing over and over geez!

5.5/10

Black Adam (2022)

So if this movie confirmed anything it was one thing, Dwayne Johnson isn't a real movie star, he simply cannot carry a top-tier movie. Johnson merely seems to be the ultimate ensemble actor who can boost a franchise, but on his own, he simply ain't got the chops. The new Arnie he certainly is not, confirmed.

This character was supposed to be in the original 'Shazam!' movie but due to Johnson's ego he managed to get his own project focusing purely on his muscles...I mean the character. Further to that, this version of the movie was originally gonna have the character Shazam (from the original movie) as the protagonist/antagonist for Black Adam to fight, but again Johnson's ego got the better of him as he wanted the story to focus on him and Black Adam. And thus a problem was born. Add to the fact that DC movies generally don't do well anyway and voila!

Plot wise the whole thing is so basic and generic with little imagination in my opinion. Black Adam is accidentally resurrected from his tomb by a strong female character trying to uncover an ancient mcguffin. Black Adam is seen as a bad guy thusly the Justice Leag...sorry Justice Society (a precursor to the League) is called into action to bring him down. After much terrible CGI fighting Black Adam is found to not actually be evil but somewhat misunderstood (shocking) and they now need his help to take down the generic big evil end-of-level boss (at the end of the movie). So essentially it's just the same old guff with different characters (imagine that).

The main issue I found with this movie was the simple fact that most of the runtime is made up of the Justice Society fighting Black Adam, and that's it! The entire movie is set within this fictional ancient city which merely looks like somewhere in Egypt or the Middle East and nothing much else really happens. We just get lots of the usual superhero battle sequences involving lots of super punching and super throwing either into things or through things. No one ever seems to realise that these attacks aren't working but they just keep doing it because there's nothing else they can do, ugh! (wash rinse and repeat). The CGI effects are overall pretty terrible to boot which doesn't help matters. Everything is SO obviously CGI with that nasty plastic rubbery-looking gloss stuck alongside obvious-looking bluescreen shots and obvious sets. It sounds cliche but everything just looks like a videogame sequence. It just doesn't look convincing at all and in this day and age I simply expect more because I know it can be so much better.

Black Adam himself suffers the same problem any Dwayne Johnson movie suffers, Dwayne Johnson. In that I mean Johnson simply cannot act beyond his persona and he ALWAYS comes across as Dwayne Johnson in a costume, whatever that might be. You want a fun comedy romp in a jungle, or a ridiculous action flick with glimmering muscles then he's perfect, but that's it. Johnson trying to play it dark and murdering people just doesn't work because it just doesn't suit him. For the time being, he simply doesn't have the range.

As for other characters, let's quickly talk about the Justice Society. Boy oh boy do these guys suck ass. I mean seriously, talk about the poor man's Avengers. The bottom-of-the-barrel superheroes. We couldn't afford any decent characters or there weren't any good ones left so we had to use these guys, geez!! Hawkman looks ridiculous with his bird-shaped helmet adorned with feathers, he's also been race-swapped. I guess his super power is mainly flight? I guess that's useful for...flying. As her name suggests Cyclone controls the wind (Ugh!). Seems kinda useless and funnily enough she doesn't really do much in the movie because how's that effective against a Superman-type character like Black Adam? She's also race-swapped. Atom Smasher has the ability to grow to an enormous size like a giant, again pretty useless in the movie. And last but not least the poor man's Dr. Strange...Doctor Fate who funnily enough has virtually the same set of powers, I think, I'm not a comic expert. And yes I realise some of these characters appeared before their Marvel counterparts but I always found it funny and stupid how both Marvel and DC have essentially characters that mirror each other. They even have their X-Men-type ship to fly around in that is stored in their own X-Men-type mansion.

I guess the biggest disappointment here is after all the cookie-cutter crap I had to sit through to get to the cookie-cutter finale, the big bad guy turned out to be this laughable looking Devil/Satan-esque character that looked like he was getting ready to fight Sub-Zero. Talk about videogame looking nonsense Jesus! Literally everything in this movie was the most generic of generic superhero poop I've seen so far. You could have literally had ANY superhero character in here and it wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. The human characters were completely inconsequential, much like the plot really. And naturally you had Marvel-esque quips (which totally underscored the tone) because DC is always playing catchup despite that Marvel aspect now losing favour.

I didn't really expect much here, at this point it merely feels like they are churning out superhero movies of any and all characters simply to keep the wagon rolling. This movie is literally the epitome of cookie-cutter, paint by numbers, off the factory line etc...There is nothing here that is original and nothing here that needed to be shown. This movie simply didn't need to be made. A Dwayne Johnson vanity project that admittedly could have been something as we've all been wondering how The Rock would fair in a cape, but somehow he screwed it up and all we have left is a plain boring superhero clone of a movie. That Superman credit scene will also go down in cinematic history as one of the biggest 'what if' dead ends ever (bit like Skeletor in 'Master of the Universe'). An open ending to something that will probably now never happen.

4/10