[Editor’s Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.]
Take 1:
In another regurgitated burp, Hollywood has again shown it’s unable to step out of the box and into a fresh creative realm. They’re remaking/rebooting the 1987 classic Predator. And to be honest–I can’t wait to rent it from Red Box. You know the box, tucked away in the corner of Safeway like an evil-little-red-monster taking dollars from Hollywood one at a time.
Having taken on this sucker punch assignment, I dove into the script with a semi-chub that if could speak would ask, “Is that a script in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” I found myself in this heightened state anticipating scenes depicting evil human spaceships with thirteen onboard monitors all tuned to Fox News, or scenes of pro-choice predators standing in line at a Planetary Planned Parenthood waiting to abort their alien burden. No such luck. Not even the humans in the script stopped at Whole Foods for an extra hot, soy, cappuccino served in a corn cup before being murdered by dreadlocked sporting monsters. Other than a single comment in the script about how we deserved to lose the Vietnam War, I cannot deliver a sucker punch, nor even a bitch-slap.
However, what we do have in this remake of Predator is a story about the useless nature of human beings, how they fall from the sky, and are torn to shreds by a higher specie. And, if the characters in the script were talking heads from MSNBC, they’d have a point. Sadly, that’s not who’s tossed into this all you can eat Country Buffet; instead, it’s a multiethnic band of assholes, and one hot chick.
After reading this script, I got an idea. What if I slipped back into my old “Liberal Thinking” and reread the script? What then would I see in this remake?
To prepare for this Altered State; I shut off the lights in my office, eased back in my chair, closed my eyes, and made like a William Hurt isolation chamber, so as to regress my mental capacity. I was now ready to convert my mind from logic and reason, to a state of emotional confusion. As I broke a sweat, I began to whine about the cruel nature of life, how the earth is melting, how all white people are racist, and how hot I find Janeane Garofalo. My mentally disfiguring transformation into the liberal mindset now complete, I opened my eyes, turned my little green desk lamp on, and reread Predators.
Take 2:
Like Ronald Reagan rising from the dead in a remake of Bedtime for Bonzo, Hollywood has remade another Conservative Icon star-making performance into a fresh summer blockbuster. In 1987, the womanizing, cigar smoking, party-line Conservative Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, starred in Predator as Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer. Starring alongside California’s Conservative Governor was former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. Who’s current bestselling book “American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us,” helps further explain Bush’s involvement in 9/11. Arnold leads a team of commandos hired by the CIA to rescue downed airmen from guerillas in a Central American jungle. The mission goes well but as they return, they find that something dark and athletic is hunting them, something sporting dreadlocks. With that sort of insensitive imagery this was no doubt commentary on white Republicans feeling stalked by blacks near the end of the Regan Presidency, due to his social policies.
That’s not the case in this fantastic and globally conscious remake from a script originally penned by Mexican-American writer/director Robert Rodriguez. The script opens with a montage of characters forced into crime by an uncaring world. In the story, we see the useless nature of the human when the only thing it can do is breath, consume stuff, and destroy the planet. Our characters literally fall from the sky and are forced to work with one another to stay alive. Leading this diverse group is: Royce, an angry white guy better suited for a tea party rally than a team of cultural diversity; Cuchillo, a Mexican man covered in tattoos and who knows the landscape; an Asian American excellent at mathematical calculations and martial arts; and a black man who does not have dreadlocks nor mentions anything about an athletic career. Rounding out the squad is a skinny NASCAR red neck, and a gorgeous Brazilian named Isabelle. (Played by an actual Brazilian.)
In this script, you get a sense that our disenfranchised group of lost souls want to leave the planet as they found it, untouched by man, even if it cost their lives. It takes a village, and together they’re forced into hard choices, cut and run, or stay and fight. It’s in the fight to kill an alien life that you sympathize with the characters moral dilemma. Self-sacrifice in the face of what we think is evil is the only way these characters can gain a sense of community, knowing they brought this terror upon themselves. This Reagan era remake is short on story but big on hope for the Predators’ survival. Predators shines a light on post 9/11 where we ask, “Can’t we all just get along?
TAKE 3:
Dazed and confused by this dangerous visit into the liberal mindset and wanting out, I turned on the overhead lights in my office and reached for my copy of Anne Rand’s Atlas Shrugged asking aloud, “Who is John Galt?” As the fog of emotional narcissism began to lift from my mind, I felt the rationale of my Neo-Con self begin to reemerge. I rolled up the script and with the remains of my liberal nightmare still lingering tossed it into the green recycle bin labeled “paper.”
****READ NO FURTHER: HUGE, MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD****
In closing, this “Adaptation” of a sucker punch Predators on paper reads like this; people fall from the sky, nobody cares for one another, people run, shoot guns, and get torn to shreds by alien monsters. The boy and girl who don’t like each other bond and just when it seems this new couple has shared their last breath that RINO of a Governor from California saves them from certain death in a cameo as Dutch.
Oh, come on you didn’t really need a SPOILER ALERT for this! Meet me at Red Box 30 days after opening weekend. I’m buying.
AND SCENE:
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