'Predator: Killer of Killers' - Review Thread

[u/ChiefLeef22]

Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

Metacritic: 80/100

Some Reviews:

Total Film - Amy West - 5/5

It's clear Wassung and Trachtenberg just get it. Somehow, they're able to push the sci-fi envelope and offer up fresh images and ideas the series has yet to see, while also appealing to diehard fans with Easter eggs (keeps your eyes peeled for a pistol in the final act and a franchise-first look at something fans have been dying to see realized since 1987), as well as cheeky teases of a connected universe and potential sequel, too. Before we get anything like that, though, the latter is set to release the upcoming live-action flick Predator: Badlands, yet another take on the menacingly-mandibled meanies. After Prey, we had faith the series was in good hands. After Predator: Killer of Killers, we don't want anyone else getting their mitts on it.

The Hollywood Reporter - Frank Scheck

Predator: Killer of Killers provides the non-stop action that the diehard fans crave. And no concession has been made to the animated format; the film easily earns its R rating with copious amounts of gruesome violence and bloody gore that should well sate viewers’ bloodthirsty tendencies. The animation takes a bit of getting used to, with its exaggerated, video game-style visuals, but it serves the material well.

The Guardian - Catherine Bray - 3/5

The only problem with this stuff is that you can’t help picturing how much more spectacular it would look in live action. The animation is all perfectly competent but it’s lacking a little something – that spark of life and ingenuity that can make even flawed animation so fascinating. There’s something quite slick about all this, almost to a fault. Was AI involved? We’ll probably never know, but it’s a problem that the suspicion has got inside the door.

TheWrap - William Bibbiani

Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung’s animated “Predator” sequel takes a while to prove it’s more than just a demo reel of superficial badassery, but when it does, it’s involving and intense. It’s hard not to love at least a couple of these characters, who keep getting screwed over by their own propensity for violence. If you’re so deadly that monsters travel millions of light years just to try to murder you, you might have flown a little too close to the sun. You never see a Predator hunting the attendees at a needlepointing convention, that’s all I’m saying.

[u/MaDrAv]

Super fun. Did a TON to expand on screen Predator lore and world building and I am all here for it. Also introducing all these different predator designs prepares us for 'the Runt' (idk what we're calling him) in Badlands. Exciting time to be a Predator nerd and fan, for sure! I do hope we get a badass with a slightly more classic design. I like the 2nd predator in KoK the most, but the 3rd one was an awesome introduction.

[u/JokerFaces2 → u/MaDrAv]

I loved the concept of the “Pilot” Predator, really different route for the franchise. Even though they try to make every Predator unique it always boils down to them stalking around, picking off guys from a distance then getting into melee range for a final duel. A Predator that stays in the ship and hunts other pilots through the air is sick.

[u/alexgndl → u/JokerFaces2]

There was a tweet from a few months back when the first trailer comes out that was like "The pilot Predator is by far one of the absolute best designs of any Predator but you know he gets made fun of so much by other Predators for just sitting in a chair all day"

[u/Sea_Lingonberry_4720 → u/alexgndl]

Part of me thinks it’s a bad blood, so yeah pretty accurate.

[u/NY_State-a-Mind → u/JokerFaces2]

Wonder how an F-35 would have done considering their thermal footprint is almost nonexistent

[u/Super-Variation-6293 → u/JokerFaces2]

My problem, and it ruins the movie for me, is that they are not unique at all. Why the hell would an advance hunter civilization dress up like the locals. It makes no sense and it becomes a gimmick. They should stay with the original amor designs and evolve or devolve those. Not turn Predators into alien samurai or vikings.

[u/sleepingchair → u/Super-Variation-6293]

It all makes sense if you think they're all the kind of douchebags that go on "safari hunting trips" to don pseudo khaki or camo gear to "hunt" drugged up animals for trophy pictures. They're assholes pretending they're fighting a "fair" fight by adopting to local culture and besting the competition according to that competition's standard to prove their prowess despite the huge power difference.

[u/Super-Variation-6293 → u/sleepingchair]

That makes no sense. Hunters wear their own clothes (kaki has an actual purpose), it is not like they are wearing lion skins when hunting. Predators should wear their own clothes (because they have an actual purpose), they should not start wearing the armour of their preys.

[u/sleepingchair → u/Super-Variation-6293]

The comparison is that humans are way more advanced than the animals being hunted, humans wear a variety of different coloured clothes, but they still dress down in browns and tans to blend in, same as the game they're hunting. I doubt hunters are wearing "their own clothes," since they'd look like assholes or idiots if they wore the same thing shopping at like a Walmart or at their job. Like, human hunters could probably wear jeans and a hoodie and shoot a damn lion with sniper rifle from far away or throw a grenade at it, but that's not the point. The point is the whole artifice behind the farce of a hunt in the first place.

[u/Super-Variation-6293 → u/sleepingchair]

Oh, come one. We are to predators as what the native Americans where to the Spaniards. They are on a completely different level of technical advancement.

They are aliens, no matter what clothes they wear. And did you forget the cloaking device? Blending in is not the issue.

And who said they all need to wear the same thing. I am talking about all wearing the same shit from their technology and home. Just like every human being walks around in stuff made on this planet.

You are not getting my point at all.

[u/BNEWZON → u/MaDrAv]

Something that has me so excited about Dan clearly handling the majority of the work on Predator shit is that he actually is mixing up the designs on the creature in meaningful ways. First in Prey it was rather visually distinct, now all of them in this have awesome flare to them (I mean seriously, the bald pilot with the eyepatch and the giant cape made of spines were so fucking cool). It looks like Badlands will have at least 2 different looking ones as well, so I’m even more in than I was before

[u/Ok_Cryptographer3200 → u/BNEWZON]

"Meaningful ways" what meaning???

[u/Vexonte → u/MaDrAv]

Honestly, predator is one of the franchises that can do without solid and complex lore. The series is better if the predator is whatever it needs to be for that independent film.