Predator: Badlands

Well, that was more fun than it had any right to be, and it's much better than it looks.

Going in, all I really knew about Predator: Badlands was that the internet hated how the young Yautja looks. Some didn't like his hairstyle, others complained that his face was CGI instead of practical. The complainers are idiots. Assuming all Yautja wear their hair the same way is borderline racist, and the CGI looks a lot better in context.

I give this movie lots of points for actually doing something different with the Predator franchise. Let's face it, the first Predator was just "Alien in a jungle," and its sequel was "Alien downtown." The further sequels played more with the formula, but they still felt like retellings of the same story. Even the best Predator movie, Prey, had a plot that wasn't too different from the original.

But now (potential spoilers ahead), we get to see a Predator movie from the monster's point of view. For the first time (I think), we get to see them talk to each other with actual dialogue (in subtitles), and understand more of their culture.

At its core, it's a coming-of-age story, about a tribal warrior having to kill his first dangerous prey. Stylistically, it feels very Star Wars (it even opens with what's basically a lightsaber duel). But the Yautja themselves feel very much inspired by Star Trek's Klingons.

While there are no xenomorphs in this movie, Weyland-Yutani plays a big role in the story. Alien/Predator fanboys argue incessantly about what is and isn't canon to each other's universes. As I understand it, the Alien films don't take place in the same universe as the AvP and Predator films. I'm not sure if the AvP films are canon in the mainline Predator films, nor do I really care. The point is, Badlands does acknowledge that the other universe exists.

Anyway, it's fun film, with lots of sci-fi gadgets and strange creatures. The ending does open up potential for a sequel, but I doubt they'll follow up on it. This feels like more of a one-off to me, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

New ranking order:

1. Aliens (1986)
2. Alien (1979)
3. Prey (2022)
4. Predator: Badlands (2025)
5. Alien: Romulus (2024)
6. Predators (2010)
7. Predator (1987)
8. Predator 2 (1990)
9. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
10. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
11. Alien Resurrection (1997)
12. Prometheus (2012)
13. Alien: Covenant (2017)
14. The Predator (2018) 
999. Alien 3 (1992) 

Tron: Ares

It's hard to rate the Tron movies, to be honest. The first one was one of my favorite films when I was a kid, but as an adult it's kind of cheesy and slow-paced. The second one was beautiful but exposition-heavy and sort of pointless. Despite all their flaws, there's a special place in my heart for the Tron universe.

Ares is also heavy on the exposition, but it doesn't feel as ponderous as the previous films. At its core, it's about two rival corporations, fighting over a piece of code that will change the world. The evil corporation, headed by the grandson of the original movie's antagonist, doesn't care who gets hurt as long as they make a profit. Meanwhile, the good company wants the code for completely ethical purposes, such as ending world hunger. It's sad that in a story about living computer programs, an ethical corporation is the hardest part to swallow.

The special effects are absolutely stunning. I saw it in 3D, and I highly recommend it. The visuals are easily the movie's biggest draw. Unfortunately, once you get past that, there's not a lot to say about it. I loved the nostalgic references to the original movie, and it had some really pretty action scenes. I also like that it spends plenty of time in both universes, with AI machines getting 3D printed into ours.

I love the little touches, like how the vehicles are printed with supports like a those from a filament printer. Or the nostalgic references, like the first movie's sound effects being used as someone's ringtone. There's plenty of fanservice for those who loved the original.

Still, not a lot happens. The majority of the movie follows a forgettable protagonist trying to get a MacGuffin from one side of town to the other. It's kind of like a high-tech remake of 2012's Premium Rush.

If you're a fan of the first two movies, this is a great entry in the series. But it's still just as flawed as the other two, with more eye candy than substance. 

The Long Walk

It's probably been thirty years since I read the Richard Bachman (wink wink) short story, "The Long Walk." If you asked me which Stephen King stories need be adapted to film, this would have been low on the list. I mean, it's not a very cinematic concept. The majority of the story is just watching people walk.

I don't remember the book enough to tell you how close they got it. But I do remember one thing: The book was very bleak, and made me feel physically tired just reading it. And in that respect, the movie captures the spirit of the book quite well.

Since the story was so simple, I kept expecting them to stretch it out with Grinch-levels of flashbacks and other superfluous content. But they didn't go there. There are a few short flashbacks, but the majority of the movie is centered on the dialogue between the walkers. In a strange way it reminded me of Stand By Me.

Visually it looks like an episode of The Walking Dead, with similar costumes and color filters. The gore is explicit and sickening. I was about to say it was unnecessarily gory, but the frankness of it does help you feel like you're walking in the characters' shoes, so to speak. You feel their horror.

Is it a good adaptation? Yes, it's damn near perfect. Will I ever watch it again? Absolutely not. This is a fantastic movie, but it's hard to call it entertainment.

Alien 3: Assembly Cut

So in my last blog I finally caught up on the Predator movies I'd missed. I thought I was completely up-to-date on the theatrical Alien and Predator movies, but I realized I was still missing one thing.

Okay, so you know by now I hate Alien 3. In fact, you're probably sick of hearing about it. If so, skip this blog entry. I will be covering a lot of the same ground.

I dislike the movie for several reasons, but the biggest is the way it screws up its predecessor's ending. I believe Ripley and Newt earned their happy ending. My fondest wish for the franchise is a new movie that reveals Alien 3 and Resurrection were just nightmares Ripley had in hypersleep, and the new film could follow the adventures of an adult Newt.

Alien 3 has some plot holes right from the start, such as how/when did the queen xenomorph lay at least two eggs (without her egg sack, mind you) somewhere on the Sulaco? How did a facehugger get into Ripley's cryo tube and impregnate her without interrupting her cryosleep? The timing just doesn't work, and it feels like we're just supposed to accept it because "that's the plot of the film, deal with it."

Plus it sets up problems it doesn't fix. I've mentioned this in previous blogs, but I like happy endings. The job of a writer is to come up with a problem, then fix it. From the moment Ripley learns she's been impregnated, she's a walking corpse. The audience is supposed to wonder "how is she going to get out of this one?" And then it's the writer's job to come up with a solution we weren't expecting. Problem: Ripley's going to die. Solution: Ripley dies. Wow, that's sooooooo creative, writing team. I hope you all got raises.

Overall it just doesn't do anything interesting or new with the series. The first movie had one alien, the second escalated the conflict to an alien army, and Alien 3 is just the first movie all over again, but not as good.

But putting all my prejudices aside, is Alien 3 a good film? If you have no prior expectations from the Alien universe, is it a satisfying cinematic experience? Does it stand on its own as a solid film?

In my opinion, no. Not at all. It's dull, it's boring, the action is chaotic, the dialogue is bad, the sound quality sucks, and I don't care about the characters. It can't even pick a genre: It's not scary enough to be horror, and it doesn't have enough action to be an action movie.

Back when it was released in 1992, most people seemed to agree with my assessment. But in the years since, the new generation has been much kinder. I think there's a tendency for people to enjoy things more if they've always existed from their point of view.

It's like the Star Wars prequels. The people who grew up on the original trilogy found the prequels to be disappointing, but the kids who grew up with all six movies seem to love them. Same with Alien: To the new generation, there have always been at least four Alien movies, so they don't have the disappointment of waiting years for a sequel only to be let down.

It's the difference between what might have been, versus what's always been. When a new movie is announced, our imaginations are ignited. What's it going to be about? Do the marines find an alien homeworld and take the fight to them? Do the aliens make it to Earth? So many cool ideas. So when the actual sequel just rehashes the first movie's plot, it's a big letdown.

A couple of years before Alien 3, a company called Dark Horse released a series of Alien comics that explored a lot of cool ideas, some of which would have made for great cinema. Some of the comics even featured the survivors of the second movie in new adventures. But Alien 3 made those stories obsolete. I know comics are rarely considered canon, but I'd rather believe in those superior stories to the one presented by Alien 3.

One cool thing the early comics revealed is that xenomorph queens aren't born queens. They're like bees, in that the other aliens feed it royal jelly so that it grows into a queen. I like this explanation a lot more than Alien 3's "Ripley just happens to be impregnated with a queen."

I've heard some defend Alien 3 by saying it's the movie that established how horrific this world is: That there is no hope for you if you exist in the Alien universe. Personally I don't think that's a thing that needed to be established, but some people are into dismal universes. 

Even the director, David Fincher, hates the film. He didn't have enough creative control over the theatrical cut, and the final product didn't match his vision. Enter... the Assembly Cut. Also referred to as the Special Edition (well, it's more complicated than that, but I'll spare you), this director's cut was released in 2003, and more accurately depicts Fincher's original plan.

For years I heard that it's a much better film. It's beloved by many of the people who hated Alien 3's theatrical cut. So as much as I was loathe to load up that movie again, I decided I had to give it a chance. I knew it still kills off the survivors of Aliens, but I had to get past that and judge the movie on its own merits. It was finally time to give this movie the chance it deserved. 

So... did I like it?

Well... it is a much better film. The editing is more cohesive. The characters have more depth, and are no longer just interchangeable bald guys. The extra footage does add to the story. The sound quality is a lot better. Now that I can actually hear the dialogue, the plot even makes more sense. Other than my prejudices about the deaths, it's actually... not too bad.

It still has flaws. While the practical effects on the xeno's close-ups are some of the best in the series, the CGI long shots (or is it just poorly-matted puppetry?) are downright cartoonish. I mean, "takes me right out of the film" goofy. There's more and more of these shots toward the end of the film, and those shots made me laugh out loud in scenes that were supposed to be filled with tension. Seriously, they could have edited in the sprites from the SNES game and it would have looked better.

With most of the characters being violent criminals, it's hard to really care when they get killed. At no point was I emotionally invested in anyone but Ripley. It actually has a decent cast, and most of them do a great job, but I just didn't care whenever they died. I wish there could have been more than one female character in the movie, but that wouldn't have worked with the plot. 

The bottom line is, the Assembly Cut is a much better cut of the film. It almost feels like a real movie instead of a rushed cash grab. The Assembly Cut is a lot like Highlander 2's Renegade Version. It polishes a turd until it's almost pleasant to look at.

But we didn't make a Love Connection today. My prejudices still stand - they shouldn't have undone the previous movie, and it still doesn't do anything creative with the franchise. This is definitely the cut to watch if you want to see it, but for me, the timeline ends after Aliens.

Note that there's also alternate cuts of Alien, Aliens, and Resurrection. The only one I've yet to see is Resurrection, but I'm told it's not that dramatic a difference (except for the ending). If I ever watch Resurrection again, I'll be sure to watch the alternate cut for completeness sake.

Here's my updated version of my ranking of the Alien/Predator movies, with alternate cuts included. 

1a. Aliens (1986) Special Edition
1b. Aliens (1986)
2a. Alien (1979)
2b. Alien (1979) Director's Cut
3. Prey (2022)
4. Alien: Romulus (2024)
5. Predators (2010)
6. Predator (1987)
7. Predator 2 (1990)
8. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
9. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
10. Alien Resurrection (1997)
11. Prometheus (2012)
12. Alien: Covenant (2017)
13. The Predator (2018) 
14a. Alien 3: Assembly Cut (2003)
14b. Alien 3 (1992) 

Prey

Prey is the best Predator movie, and it's not even close. It succeeds on every level - the cinematography, the creature design, the story, all of it. It's just a beautiful movie from start to finish. Heck, it would have been an excellent film even without the Predator in it. They could have replaced the Yautja with a big bear or something, and it still would have been a good coming-of-age warrior's tale.

You know what, I'll go even farther - this is the only good Predator film. Which is not to say the others are bad, but even the best ones are generally "good for a sci-fi popcorn-muncher" or "good for a macho action/horror film." But Prey has no "good for x" qualifiers, it's just good cinema. What "The Dark Knight" did for superhero films, Prey does for Predator movies. It brings legitimacy to the genre.

But wait, no, I'm not done yet. I'll even say something that's going to shock some of my friends out of their shoes. Prey is a better movie than Aliens. No, I mean it. I love Aliens, and it's still my favorite film. And as you'll see at the bottom of this blog entry, I still rank Aliens number one. 

But if I'm going to be truly objective here, Prey is serious cinema in a way that Aliens is not. Rather than just keep the audience entertained with blood-pumping action and quotable quips, Prey does something rarely seen in either series. It's art. Every frame would look good on your wall. The Yautja has never looked better, the pacing is good, the camera angles, even the lighting.

Oh man, the lighting. That's a whole other rant. Movies are too dark these days. I hate directors who think we need realistic lighting. There's a story about filming LotR: The Two Towers where somebody asked the director where the light was coming from, since the battle was at night. He replied, "The same place the music is coming from." People have to remember that these are movies, and movies are more fun when we can see them. Prey has a few scenes set at night, and all of them are well-lit.

If I have one complaint about Prey, it's that some of the animals look obviously CGI. But they still look fantastic, and the CGI-ness actually helps me, because there's a lot of animal gore that would bother me if it looked too real.

When I started typing this review, I decided I'd update my ranking of the Aliens/Predator movies. I wrote the last one before I saw Alien: Romulus, so it needed updating anyway. In typing out the new list, I remembered I still hadn't seen The Predator (2018). I was planning to skip it entirely since it was so poorly reviewed. But then I decided I'd get it out of the way so I could rank it.

It's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it's definitely not good. The dialogue is often painful, and it has a lot of shallow comedy that feels out-of-place in a Predator film. The acting is ridiculous, like Power Rangers quality. The tone is uneven, and the climax is downright goofy. But it's got some fun action scenes, and overall it's still more entertaining than Alien 3.

And in related news, I've watched the first three episodes of Alien: Earth and I'm loving it so far. I'll blog more about it once it's finished. 

Ranking the Alien/Predator movies: 

1. Aliens (1986)
2. Alien (1979)
3. Prey (2022)
4. Alien: Romulus (2024)
5. Predators (2010)
6. Predator (1987)
7. Predator 2 (1990)
8. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
9. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
10. Alien Resurrection (1997)
11. Prometheus (2012)
12. Alien: Covenant (2017)
13. The Predator (2018) 
999. Alien 3 (1992) 

The Naked Gun (2025)

I'm a sucker for parody movies, but a lot of them are really lazy. My favorites are Airplane!, Airplane 2: The Sequel, and Top Secret. I also enjoy Hot Shots and a couple of entries in the Scary Movie series. But that "(Something) Movie" series went seriously downhill, and the later films were just compilations of weak references and fart jokes.

The Naked Gun also ranked among my favorites. Hardly anybody remembers that Police Squad was originally a TV series, a show I remember with great fondness. The Naked Gun sequels weren't quite as good as the first, but they all had their moments.

The 2025 movie makes a passable effort at capturing the feel of its predecessors. The humor is a little uneven. At times it lifts jokes right out of Police Squad, other times the humor feels closer to Austin Powers. And occasionally the plot almost verges on serious, at least briefly. 

There's a lot of mood whiplash there, and it doesn't keep up the "laugh-a-minute" pace of the older movies. And, sadly, there are a couple of fart jokes. But it's still pretty decent, and one of the better silly comedies to come out in the last decade.

One casting quibble - The big bad guy is a tech mogul played by Danny Huston. Meanwhile, his henchman is played by Kevin Durand. Durand is often said to look a bit like Elon Musk. I can't help but wonder if it would have been funnier to have Durand play the tech billionaire, and really play up the Musk references. Heck, electric cars already play a big role in the plot. With as much as the previous Naked Gun movies made jabs at celebrities, I'm surprised this didn't occur to anybody. It just feels like a missed opportunity, but oh well.

While the new movie doesn't quite match the level of zaniness of the originals, this is a worthy continuation of the series. This is, for the most part, my kind of humor. It's a great homage, but I really miss Leslie Nielsen.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

I wish it was higher praise to say this, but this is the best Fantastic Four movie yet. It's sad that it's so hard to translate F4 to film, but I think it's because the entire concept feels so cheesy and retro. The 2005 movie was so light-hearted it was hard to take seriously, while the 2015 film tried to lean into the body horror aspect and failed miserably.

Okay, I actually like the 2005 movie, sue me. The 2007 sequel was a bit of a letdown, but I think the 2005 film was a great representation of the team. Still, it can't hold a candle to 2025's First Steps.

There's a lot of reasons the new movie succeeds, but for me, the biggest factor is that they set it in an alternate universe. By making the entire world a cheesy, zeerust-themed retrofuture, the team feels like a natural part of their world.

Rise of the Silver Surfer tried to play it safe with Galactus, because they thought a mile-high guy in a purple helmet would look silly. In First Steps, they give us a world where Galactus looks no goofier than any of F4's other villains.

We've all seen movies set in the 50's, where the set designers went to great lengths to make sure the cars and outfits were period accurate. First Steps faced the same challenge, but even more so because the world depicted is such a hodge-podge of eras. They picked a unique visual style and committed themselves to it, and it feels consistent throughout the film.

I like the way their powers are depicted, especially Reed's. Watching him swing through town like Spider-Man looks way better than you'd think.

I do feel the movie had some pacing problems, and I'm still not 100% sold on the cast. Johnny especially felt sort of bland. Some better banter might have livened things up a bit. But that's a small quibble; overall it's a Fantastic film that makes up for some of the misfires in the past.