It’s probably just a coincidence that two movies from 1987 with the same star saw updated versions released recently. But since they’re both playing in the same window of time, let’s examine them together, shall we?
On the hunt for more evolved action heroes
With a combination of the unlikely pairing of “The Defiant Ones,” the tragic inevitability of “Sweet November” and the wacky animal dynamic of “Every Which Way but Loose,” a franchise that’s been sequeled, prequeled, animated and spun off across the last several decades has new life breathed into it in “Predator: Badlands.”
Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a member of the Yautja, better known as Predators, a race that prizes conquest above everything.
With hopes of proving his worth to the members of his clan despite the small size that has kept him an outcast, his quest brings him to Genna, The Death Planet, a dangerous world where every life-form is trying to destroy every other, most notably the Kalisk, a beast renowned by the Yautja for being unkillable and therefore the ultimate prize.
With few supplies or weapons, Dek finds himself reluctantly paired with the only other thing capable of speech on the planet: a synthetic human named Thia (Elle Fanning) who’s been stranded there for ages without a pair of legs.
As the two navigate their way through a hostile ecosystem, their mutual goals intersect more than they believe but perhaps not for the reasons they may think.
With a mix of a scaly bodysuit and CGI to create the gruesome, fanged face not even a mother could love, Schuster-Koloamatangi gives us the most detailed portrayal of this particular breed of extraterrestrial we’ve seen yet, relying on his wits and hand-to-hand combat to stay alive without his traditional armory handy.
Dek may be the runt of his family, but he’s no quitter, even if it means having a chattering blonde computer strapped to his back.
Fanning more than holds her own as the sweet-natured gynoid talking her new friend through feelings that may be more hazardous than the deadly territory, which she happens to know a lot about as a Weyland-Yutani product. If that name sounds familiar, the corporate colonizer of the “Alien” franchise isn’t limited ruining just one world, which is why they engineered a planet of their own, where all floral and fauna are constantly on the offensive, be they sentient snakelike vines, poisonous gas fruits or razor grass.
Out of all the vicious beasties in this makeshift menagerie is a blue-tinged, bug-eyed, ape-like monstrosity who could beat up Clyde the orangutan with minimal effort all while looking like a less polished version of Stitch.
But, you can call her Bud.
Whether you enjoy it ironically or genuinely, the hyper-machismo of the “Predator” titles has always been its hallmark, which is turned on its ear in this go-round.
Director Dan Trachtenberg follows up the drastically different “Prey” and the animated “Killer of Killers” — both on Hulu — with more backstory than we’ve ever gotten for these characters, who have routinely been seen as the villains of the galaxy whether they’re playing peekaboo with mercenaries in the jungle or battling it out against the Xenomorphs in Gunnison, Colorado.
Rarely have we gotten a sense of why the Yautja live the way they do, this time seeing their plight through the beady yellow eyes of a member of their ranks whose puniness makes him an abomination to a culture that culls all weakness.
Very telling that as soon as he’s in a situation where he has the upper hand, he reverts to classic beta behavior like treating his new hiking buddy as a tool rather than a person — literally growling that in her face — but every good hunter needs to know when to adapt or die.
The same goes for movie franchises.
One step ahead of the rest
It may seem incredibly far-fetched that a country’s culture would be singularly focused on the activities of a TV personality — certainly not something happening in today’s world — but for those who want to tune in to one form of madness rather than the other, “The Running Man” is a pleasant enough cautionary distraction.
In the near future, society runs on game shows.
Media corporations are the de facto rulers of the nation, keeping the American populace in a constant state of hope that the poorest among them could win big bucks as they embarrass themselves on television for the amusement of the rest of the masses.
Hamstrung by his short temper and strong conscience in the cutthroat working world, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) has never wanted to be part of this sickening system, but when family needs arise, he finds himself volunteering for the biggest show of them all, “The Running Man,” where a windfall awaits any contestant who can survive 30 days of a fugitive lifestyle and being pursued by a crew of assassins helped along by citizens who can report on him for bounties.
Though Richards is a good deal smarter and more physically capable than most who take on the fool’s errand, it doesn’t take long for him to realize that there’s a reason this game has yet to see a winner.
With much more everyman appeal than the last guy to play this role, Powell proves quite watchable as the voice of reason in a world that’s only a couple notches on the intelligence meter above the pure dimwittedness of “Idiocracy.” He may be more compact in body, but he can still mimic the bulging forehead vein and frustrated bellowing that were cornerstones of most Schwarzenegger performances.
Of course, he has to contend with the machinations of the most evil being imaginable: a reality TV producer.
Josh Brolin may as well be Thanos all over again as the charming and persuasive head of the show and the brains behind its most manipulative tactics of getting participants and audience members amped up for the action by any means necessary.
A prize of 1 billion New Dollars — a fishy-sounding futuristic currency with a familiar face on its paper bills — only matters when you’ve given the dregs of society a spectacle to divert them from their miserable lives, after all.
Coming hot on the heels of the film adaptation of “The Long Walk” earlier this year, this flashy, loud, tongue-in-cheek look at where we’re headed as a society is well-handled by director and co-writer Edgar Wright.
Fires start, things go boom, the requisite chase sequences are executed, but it’s the pacing and geometry of these kinds of moments that make it stand apart in terms of Wright’s handling.
Carrying on the stylish looks of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” “Baby Driver” and “Last Night in Soho,” Wright turns what could be a dull and familiar shoot-’em-up story into a thrilling adventure where jokes land in between the punches and the escalating kill count has real stakes to it.
Wright also manages to retain the humanistic angle throughout the chaos that’s bound to happen when the cardinal rule of the country is “No helping!” and the people in power do everything they can to control the narrative by lionizing the anonymous masked figure who’s tasked with eliminating Richards.
One masked man is mysterious and intriguing, whereas a group of them are just a bunch of Goons — no, really, that’s their name — doing the dirty work needed to further class warfare.
While he takes the long route getting to it, Wright drives home the point that a world demanding your constant attention for the sake of the almighty ratings numbers — even the folks at UBS in “Network” would be disgusted by a lot of these ploys — isn’t a functional one.
Although if we’d actually learned anything from the original movie or Stephen King’s book, we wouldn’t need to be reminded of that …
Double the moral
Watching both of these films back-to-back serves as a look at just how hard it is to be a good guy these days.
A pair of frustrated male protagonists each facing impossible odds — Dek for honor and glory and Richards for filthy lucre and the possibility of social upheaval — are a long way from the action hero Arnold portrayed again and again back in the day.
Are they better? Debatable.
Are they more relatable? I’d say so.
All apologies to the Governator, but his characters were never meant to be the kind of dude with whom viewers were meant to identify so much as blindly idolize.
By re-examining what did and didn’t work with ’80s action flicks, we find new vantage points in retrospect, in this instance considering how positive masculinity can thrive when it doesn’t have the boot of an oppressive system firmly on its neck.
You might find “Predator: Badlands” a less satisfying role-reversal of Arnie’s adventures — all the cartoonish violence with fewer swears — or the new “Running Man” to be overlong and determinedly less subtle than its predecessor — Reminder: The original co-starred “Family Feud” host Richard Dawson, so let’s not overromanticize it — but it’s worth a think to consider why you feel that way.
Don’t let me or anyone else tell you what your storyline is.
Source link
-
-
-
-
-
