Maybe You Can Fix Stupid. The Predator Underwent Extensive Reshoots
Hello nerds!
In director Shane Black's return to the property he helped launch, preliminary looks at The Predator made it sound like it could be as divisive as Shane Black's lone Marvel movie, Iron Man 3. Thankfully, it appears as those who have the power to change the movie have listened.
According to AVP Galaxy, the film Sequel/Soft-reboot changed vast amounts of the film's third act in reshoots.
“According to our sources the latest edits of the film following the reshoots have seen the so called “friendly” Predators that we’ve previously seen photos of completely cut from the film, as is the entire APC sequence and the various hybrid creatures. Only the Predator Dog mentioned in the recent set visits remains.
All death sequences involving the more prominent characters have also been completely changed now and the final battle with the Upgrade Predator takes place at night in the woods. After attacking the Project: Stargazer base, Upgrade gives the survivors a chance to escape before he begins to hunt them to find the best fighter amongst them.
The latest cut of the film tested also featured additional scenes that connected The Predator to the previous films, including Alien vs. Predator. Lex’s spear is now displayed alongside City Hunter’s spear from Predator 2. Casey, Olivia Munn’s character, is also shown some grainy pictures of the Predators from the first two films.”
You know, none of those changes are terrible. In fact, it's quite encouraging the studio and director Shane Black recognized and addressed these issues before the movie came out. It sounds like they're putting an actual effort into this film to revitalize the franchise and that's terrific.
And speaking of Shane Black, in a new interview with Empire, he opened up about why the original ending had to be drastically overhauled. Basically, it was a lot like The Dark Knight Rises; nighttime scenes that were shot in the day.
“The first time we shot the third act it was daytime. It’s all this spooky stuff but then its bright sunlight. It just didn’t work. So I said ‘Ummm, can we do this again at night?”
The director went on to describe how the new ending will be scarier than the first one they shot and he talked about the difficulty he experienced trying to breathe new life into the franchise. Which is great, if done right. If not done right, we get things like the dumb as hell Predator-Human hybrids in the first teaser. Thankfully, from the looks of the trailer, Shane Black has addressed these issues and even connected the reboot to the other films of the franchise. All in all, I think with Black's ratio of good movies to bad, we can give him the benefit of the doubt.
Afterall, he did cast Jake Busey as Sean Keyes in the film. Sean is the son of Special Agent Peter Keyes from Predator 2. For those unaware, the elder Keyes was played by Jake's father IRL, the legendary Gary Busey.
So we've got that to look forward to. Which is nice.
The Predator is in theaters on September 14, 2018.
And if you enjoy sill shit (who doesn't?), be sure to check out the latest podcast. The boys cover the delicious absurdity that is 1987's Masters of the Universe starring Dolph Lundgren, Chucky is rebooted and they review Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp. #HilariousUntilItWasHeartbreaking
