Prey (film) - Predator flick

[MinionZombie]

I suspect Warner Brothers also having to shelve their $90m pile of Bat Girl virtuous woke ball crap only gives further hope... There seems to be multiple reasons floating around, one of which is that it 'looked cheap' and to rectify that would have cost a boatload of money, so it was actually more valuable to scrap the whole movie as a tax write-off (one of the conditions of which, apparently, is that it can never see the light of day, otherwise if it is then it can no longer be considered a write-off). I'm not familiar with the comics, but I had heard that that movie was based on a rather underwhelming run of Batgirl comics. And there's a whole industry of cunts that feed that kind of nonsense "outrage" online, too, even if there has been a recent trend in Hollywood to lean into the "Strong Female Character" trope because they think there's dollars to be made there. It's a vicious cycle. I've seen countless articles (often on the likes of UniLad, where the terms "article", "journalism", and "writing" are taken with a truckload of salt) that lean in hard to 'pushing the woke narrative' either in terms of raging about something or boasting about something. Oftentimes neither such reaction is appropriate and it's all just been done for the clicks. However, the more one side pushes the more the other side pushes, and then it really turns into a shit show, but when certain times it is an accurate response then it makes the likelihood of something else - which bears certain hallmarks or cliches of 'wokedom' - then you end up with 'woke presumptions', which have been accurate as often as they've been inaccurate in recent times. The inaccuracies get forgotten about, but the direct hits are certainly remembered. There's no doubt been a push in recent years in Hollywood for "strong female character" - without, it should be said, an actual understanding of what that exactly is nor how it should be enacted. Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor et al are exactly how to do it. These days it's all too performative (like that moment in End Game where all the female superheroes crowded together into one shot) and therefore cringe-as-fuck and overloaded pandering, which ends up coming across as quite false to any sex who is viewing the show/movie. The key problem is the people they're getting to write some of this stuff, well, simply cannot write worth a damn. They've no idea how to subtly lace a "message" into a narrative, so it's just jackhammered home in the most obvious and surface manner, often with a strong undercurrent of (ironically enough) punching down someone else to big another person up, with a smattering of rather ugly character traits (arrogance, lack of self-awareness, zero culpability or humility etc) dusted on top. Then there's execs who have gone all-in on this 'performative woke' stuff. Kathleen Kennedy and her line-up of t-shirts saying "the force is female" is moronic beyond belief. The force isn't female or male. The force is the force. Ironically, they're segregating fans and diminishing opportunities for people from different backgrounds to come together. By drawing attention to race/sex/gender/whatever, they are placing barriers and dividing lines in amongst the playground of the show/movie/comic/whatever. Rather than bringing people together, it's pitting them against one another, or knocking certain fans down in a manner that's ironically kinda racist/sexist/whatever. The whole thing is asinine. Geekdom is a shared experience and is a place of common ground. Geeks have a hard time socialising, typically, but when they find someone to share their passion with is what breaks down those socially awkward barriers and brings people together. The corporatisation of 'wokery' (including these dreadful companies which measure a corporation's 'woke points' to determine better stock price value) has been to the detriment of everyone, utterly corrupting any good intentions and actually poisoning the well, turning it into a battleground instead of a common ground. It's all pretty vile.

[shootemindehead]

It's a vicious cycle. I've seen countless articles (often on the likes of UniLad, where the terms "article", "journalism", and "writing" are taken with a truckload of salt) that lean in hard to 'pushing the woke narrative' either in terms of raging about something or boasting about something. Oftentimes neither such reaction is appropriate and it's all just been done for the clicks. However, the more one side pushes the more the other side pushes, and then it really turns into a shit show, but when certain times it is an accurate response then it makes the likelihood of something else - which bears certain hallmarks or cliches of 'wokedom' - then you end up with 'woke presumptions', which have been accurate as often as they've been inaccurate in recent times. The inaccuracies get forgotten about, but the direct hits are certainly remembered. I avoid clickbait...because it's, ya know, clickbait. Any article or YouTube video pushing one thing or another will generally get ignored by me. There's no doubt been a push in recent years in Hollywood for "strong female character" - without, it should be said, an actual understanding of what that exactly is nor how it should be enacted. Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor et al are exactly how to do it. This is part of the problem though. Why does "strong female character" always HAVE to mean action? It's always taken down to it's lowest common denominator and at its most basic literal translation these days. One of the best written "strong female characters" I've seen in recent years was in Kelly Reichardt's 'Wendy and Lucy', because she felt like a real person and not some geek masturbatory fantasy. One of the best female characters of anything was Clarice Starling in 'Silence of the Lambs'. Again, she felt like a real person. She isn't Arnold Schwarzenegger in a skirt. But if we circle back to fantasy characters like Ellen Ripley, she's "strong", not in it's base way, but because she can be damaged and move on. It's clear in 'Alien' that she had feelings for Dallas and when he dies she's obviously upset and she only wins out the day by fortune basically, mixed with guile and a bit of nous. In 'Aliens', she's devastated to find out that her daughter is dead (Directors cut) and projects that loss on Rebecca. In 'Alien 3' she is further hurt by the lost of Rebecca and new potential beau, Hicks. All of this rounds her off and makes her character make sense, which to my mind is what makes a character "strong" whether they're male or female. The key problem is the people they're getting to write some of this stuff, well, simply cannot write worth a damn. And this is an issue that's been plaguing all levels of film making recently. The writing for most movies today has been extremely poor and I blame the rise of these stupid, insipid, superhero movies for that in no small part. These idiot films have an already built in audience of geeks and nerds that are willing to spunk away millions on shite just to see "more". Doesn't matter a fuck what the quality is, so long as it's "more". So naturally the writing gets weaker and weaker because the studio doesn't even have to try any more. The sooner that trend is dead the bloody better. Problem is, it's seeping into other areas of film making too. Then there's execs who have gone all-in on this 'performative woke' stuff. There's controversy in it and controversy can often generate talk, which in turn generates money. "Go woke, go broke" ain't true and the studios know it too. The whole thing is asinine. Geekdom is a shared experience and is a place of common ground. Geeks have a hard time socialising, typically, but when they find someone to share their passion with is what breaks down those socially awkward barriers and brings people together. I'm fucking sick to death of geekdom to be honest. I'd rather they all pissed off back to the parents basements and went back to tossing off over Buffy or whatever. The corporatisation of 'wokery' (including these dreadful companies which measure a corporation's 'woke points' to determine better stock price value) has been to the detriment of everyone, utterly corrupting any good intentions and actually poisoning the well, turning it into a battleground instead of a common ground. It's all pretty vile. Capitalism in effect Mini. If there's a potential buck to be made, they'll go for it to the detriment of everything. The only thing to take stock from is that it's a fad and will pass eventually. It'll become something like Blaxploitation or the tokenism of 70's movies that will look quaint in later years.

[MinionZombie]

This is part of the problem though. Why does "strong female character" always HAVE to mean action? Indeed. "Strong female character" should be just "strong character", and the word to focus on there is "character". Characterisation is piss weak most of the time in movies and shows now. "Strong" should actually mean "complex", but any time a character is made "complex" it's basically saying the baddy is actually a goody for really silly reasons, or a goody doing bad things is excused because they're a goody and have feelings (e.g. WandaVision). Characters in general should be complex, providing there's the appropriate context for that (i.e. I don't need Arnie to be "complex" in Commando, for instance), but again the piss weak writing has no idea what that is or how to do it. Reva, in Obi-Wan Kenobi, for instance, was a dreadfully written character whose journey was littered with franchise pot holes and a bizarre relationship with moralism. Also "Strong" (in the basic physical sense of the word as you mentioned) just translates in Hollywood to someone who is clearly physically weaker beating the absolute shite out of someone who's taller and more muscular. Sometimes you see it done right, but so often (e.g. Birds of Prey) you see stupid instances of big muscly dude bro cannon fodder getting rinsed by female characters who are clearly not strong enough to beat them, and yet they do with ease. Now, compare Birds of Prey to The Suicide Squad, where Harley Quinn much more convincingly takes on a whole host of dude bro cannon fodder - she used tools to help her, deployed her flexibility and athleticism to move faster and avoid hits, she used her surroundings to get the upper hand (e.g. cell doors) and so on. It was far more convincing and worth cheering for. Birds of Prey was a joke the way it carried on. And I just stumbled across this chestnut: https://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/pc_ne...tagonist_12627 Hulu's new film Not Okay starts with a surprising disclaimer that reads: CONTENT WARNING: This film contains flashing lights, themes of trauma, and an unlikeable female protagonist. Viewer discretion advised. The trigger warning was added by the director, not the Disney-owned platform itself. The film's director Quinn Shepard said, while it might not be taken seriously, the warning was inspired by some very real concerns. She said: The content warning was borne out of, to be honest, our test screenings. We un-ironically and consistently got responses from -- I'm not going to say what demographic, but you might be able to guess -- people who were quite literally like, 'Why would someone make a movie with an unlikable woman?' It's something I've repeatedly heard, and a lot of my other writer friends have as well. If you portray flawed women or women who reflect societal flaws, you get notes like, 'I literally don't understand why you tell a story about this character.' And this is an issue that's been plaguing all levels of film making recently. The writing for most movies today has been extremely poor and I blame the rise of these stupid, insipid, superhero movies for that in no small part. These idiot films have an already built in audience of geeks and nerds that are willing to spunk away millions on shite just to see "more". Doesn't matter a fuck what the quality is, so long as it's "more". So naturally the writing gets weaker and weaker because the studio doesn't even have to try any more. The sooner that trend is dead the bloody better. Problem is, it's seeping into other areas of film making too. *cough* Obi-Wan Kenobi *cough* Also, one of the worst and most insulting pieces of screenwriting I've seen in recent years was in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, where all the adults stand by and let a child decide that yeah, it'll be a good idea to unleash fucking dinosaurs onto the mainland. I was screaming at the stupidity of it. Every single person who is injured or dies as a result of that, well, their blood is on the hands of that idiot child and every idiot adult who trusted a child to make a decision. I mean FOR FUCK SAKE!!! There's controversy in it and controversy can often generate talk, which in turn generates money. "Go woke, go broke" ain't true and the studios know it too. I wouldn't say there's nothing in it. People start avoiding some of these flicks/shows and they get bad reps and in the long run it damages the brand with poorly written dreck (e.g. Wonder Woman 1984 is awful crap that has been shat all over by fans, while Wonder Woman was really good fun and well regarded by fans). If you're targeting something to a very niche demographic and pitching it according to a niche Twitter/TikTok demographic, then it's hardly surprising when a lot of mainstream viewers and existing franchise fans take issue with it. It's like people who harp on about the low attendance of certain female sports but then don't support it themselves. Capitalism in effect Mini. If there's a potential buck to be made, they'll go for it to the detriment of everything. The only thing to take stock from is that it's a fad and will pass eventually. It'll become something like Blaxploitation or the tokenism of 70's movies that will look quaint in later years. There's already hints of it, which, one could argue, feeds somewhat into the "go woke, go broke" mantra. Said mantra is, however, too simplistic and ignores various other factors that are usually just as important and need to be taken into account, but, as an example, look at the kick back online against The Rings of Power, which is practically a meme factory already and it hasn't even been released yet. A guy in the background of a promo video pissing up a wall set the tone early on.

[paranoid101]

Red Letter Medias review very positive too. My 2 cent on woke culture if a movie or tv series is good I will watch it, regardless of who or what has been cast in it, woke culture is just a load of nonsense used by teenage edge lords to shit on stuff even before its come out and a lot of it goes way to far with hate and death threats thrown at the cast and crew, if something is good its good, if its bad then its bad, stop judging stuff even before you have watched it. End rant lol

[shootemindehead]

Also "Strong" (in the basic physical sense of the word as you mentioned) just translates in Hollywood to someone who is clearly physically weaker beating the absolute shite out of someone who's taller and more muscular. Sometimes you see it done right, but so often (e.g. Birds of Prey) you see stupid instances of big muscly dude bro cannon fodder getting rinsed by female characters who are clearly not strong enough to beat them, and yet they do with ease. Now, compare Birds of Prey to The Suicide Squad, where Harley Quinn much more convincingly takes on a whole host of dude bro cannon fodder - she used tools to help her, deployed her flexibility and athleticism to move faster and avoid hits, she used her surroundings to get the upper hand (e.g. cell doors) and so on. It was far more convincing and worth cheering for. Birds of Prey was a joke the way it carried on. I generally don't give a toss about comicbook movies. They're superhero trash written for 7 year old boys, so anything goes really. There's a guy with a shark's head in 'The Suicide Squad' FFS, so I'm not going to be thinking too hard on the relative physical abilities of female superhero characters in other movies in the franchise. Also, one of the worst and most insulting pieces of screenwriting I've seen in recent years was in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, where all the adults stand by and let a child decide that yeah, it'll be a good idea to unleash fucking dinosaurs onto the mainland. I was screaming at the stupidity of it. Every single person who is injured or dies as a result of that, well, their blood is on the hands of that idiot child and every idiot adult who trusted a child to make a decision. I mean FOR FUCK SAKE!!! Haven't seen it and won't see it. Jurassic Blah is the very definition of an IP that's been getting stretched into meaningless drivel since the very first sequel. I wouldn't say there's nothing in it. People start avoiding some of these flicks/shows and they get bad reps and in the long run it damages the brand with poorly written dreck (e.g. Wonder Woman 1984 is awful crap that has been shat all over by fans, while Wonder Woman was really good fun and well regarded by fans). If you're targeting something to a very niche demographic and pitching it according to a niche Twitter/TikTok demographic, then it's hardly surprising when a lot of mainstream viewers and existing franchise fans take issue with it. It's like people who harp on about the low attendance of certain female sports but then don't support it themselves. 'Wonder Woman 1984' was crap because it was just crapply written. Audiences didn't reject it on the basis of "woke" or any other silly neologism. They just recognised a bad movie. TBH, the first movie was a crushingly mediocre effort that was vastly overpraised. But again, we're talking superhero bollocks. Anything goes. There's already hints of it, which, one could argue, feeds somewhat into the "go woke, go broke" mantra. Said mantra is, however, too simplistic and ignores various other factors that are usually just as important and need to be taken into account, but, as an example, look at the kick back online against The Rings of Power, which is practically a meme factory already and it hasn't even been released yet. A guy in the background of a promo video pissing up a wall set the tone early on. The situation with the Rings thingy I can sorta understand. The point of Tolkein's races is that they were distinct and separate, with various elements at war with each other, until they had to come together in an alliance to tackle a deeper issue. So having mixed race dwarves and elves just goes against Tolkein's world. Or having Galadriel being this girl power hack and slash shieldmaiden is just going to wind up fans of his writing. Now, to me, I don't really give a shit. But the sheer unnecessary drive for what Amazon are, apparently, doing here is palpable. In any case, the show isn't even out yet and already there's tons of videos and comments online from the "industry of cunts" I mentioned earlier, trying to clickbait their way into a few bob through manufactured outrage.

[MinionZombie]

The situation with the Rings thingy I can sorta understand. The point of Tolkein's races is that they were distinct and separate, with various elements at war with each other, until they had to come together in an alliance to tackle a deeper issue. So having mixed race dwarves and elves just goes against Tolkein's world. Or having Galadriel being this girl power hack and slash shieldmaiden is just going to wind up fans of his writing. Now, to me, I don't really give a shit. But the sheer unnecessary drive for what Amazon are, apparently, doing here is palpable. In any case, the show isn't even out yet and already there's tons of videos and comments online from the "industry of cunts" I mentioned earlier, trying to clickbait their way into a few bob through manufactured outrage. There's certainly a lot of clickbait also going on with Rings of Power in reaction videos, lots of large expressions and huge bold words saying things like "FAILURE!" and so on. I feel that the likes of, say, Nerdrotic or The Quartering or HeelvsBabyFace would do an awful lot better if they discarded the over-reactions and knuckled down to the hard facts and basic essence of the arguments - e.g. Nerdrotic's 'silly fey voice' that he puts on when quoting 'woke types', or HeelvsBabyFace's 'yelling white fat man' playing directly into the Comic Book Guy cliches, and then, well, The Quartering just seemed to be some guy reading articles and being grumpy while surrounded by myriad social media links and I saw no point in it. I've only seen a smattering of the latter two and was thoroughly turned off, while I've seen more of Nerdrotic, but regularly have to dish out the salt when viewing. About the best is Critical Drinker - who gave this Prey film a drubbing from trailer impressions, but then had the good grace to row back once he'd seen it while still providing criticism where appropriate. Then you get over-reactions to the over-reactions, which then ironically helps double-down the 'woke stuff', or the attempted pursuit of it. The 'woke types' then think that anything 'anti-woke' is some red-faced goon huffing and puffing their house down, and then become completely blocked off to any kind of fair criticism, which helps nobody, and it all continues to spiral and self-perpetuate and get increasingly negative and the writing gets even worse. The funny thing about Wonder Woman 1984, which did have a few cringey forced moments of 'impressed little girl looking in awe at WW' and supposed 'MeToo' relevance (did it, though?), was that when viewers pointed out the glaringly obvious horrorshow of how Steve Trevor came back to life (by his spirit possessing the body of a random guy who had no say in the matter at all). This poor random guy loses all control and autonomy of his life and body and voice, because WW is sad about a guy she knew for a couple of weeks 70 years ago, AND THEN SHE FUCKS HIM. How the filmmakers couldn't see the total moral atrocity of that storyline is beyond me, and then for them to just wave it away when it was brought up was just insulting and showed how little they cared in general - it certainly flagged up how little they gave a shit about the script, which was the proverbial swiss cheese of logic holes. Staggeringly bad writing that flew in the face of a basic element of established story (i.e. that WW was in WWI and then basically disappeared from public life until BvS ... but nope, there she is flying in the fucking sky and hanging out in a mall ... wtf ... )

[MinionZombie]

Just watched this tonight and, aside from a couple of rather heavy handed dialogue exchanges (that are also kinda needless as the scenario says all that needs saying), as well as a couple of naff winks to the previous movies ("if it bleeds, we can kill it" and ye olde pistol from Predator 2), it was a really solid flick and surprisingly - pleasingly so - good. The predator design was a bit iffy in the face region, but it was a beautifully shot movie with some nice bits of action thrown in and a great central performance driving the whole thing along (plus the bonus of an excellent on-screen doggo ) ... and all-said-and-done it absolutely shits all over "The Predator", which was such a bloody let down. Definitely worth checking out.

[Neil]

Started watching it... Got distracted... Didn't get back to it... I'll put it back on the "watch soon list"