Predators (2010)

I saw the original 1987 PREDATOR with Arnold Schwarzenegger and enjoyed it. Then, I saw the 1990 sequel with Danny Glover and thought it was okay. I saw the 2010 ‘sequel’ PREDATORS, and like the first one, I enjoyed it. Produced by Robert Rodriguez and Directed by Nimród Antal (Vacancy, Armored), this installment shows nine heavily-armed individuals: the American mercenary Royce (Adrien Brody – The Pianist), the disgraced American physician Edwin (Topher Grace – Spider-Man 3), the Israeli IDF sniper Isabelle (Alice Braga – I Am Legend), the American Death Row inmate Stans (Walton Goggins – TV’s The Shield), the Russian Spetsnaz soldier Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov – 15 Minutes), the Mexican drug cartel enforcer Cuchillo (Danny Trejo - Machete), the silent Japanese Yakuza assassin Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), the African RUF death squad officer Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and the insane American Air Cavalry Soldier Noland (Laurence Fishburne – The Matrix trilogy), being hunted on an alien game reserve planet by members of a merciless alien race known as Predators. This movie took 16 long years to make. In 1994, Robert Rodriguez himself wrote an early script for the film for 20th Century Fox while he was working on his 1995 film DESPARADO. He presented the script to the studio, but was denied when they realized that the budget would be too large. 15 years later, the studio decided to go with his script. Filmed in 53 days from September 28th to November 19th, 2009, the locations of the film were shot between Hawaii for the Exteriors and at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas for the Interiors. Rodriguez was originally going to direct it, but he instead produced and went with Antal because he enjoyed his earlier films. They both expressed that they wanted this film to be only a sequel to the original Predator films and try to distance itself from the ALIEN vs. PREDATOR films, which Antal said that they made the Predator characters too ‘cartoonish’. As a fan of the original and went to see it on opening day at age 14, Academy Award winner Adrien Brody said in an interview that it was a dream come true for him to do this film and put on 25 pounds of muscle to prepare himself the role of Royce, for which he was specifically chosen by Antal and I thought he did a great job in his performance. Stuntman Derek Mears, who played Jason Voorhees in the reboot of FRIDAY THE 13th and did stunts for such films like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, don the costume of the Classic Predator alien and it was the first time for it to be seen again in 22 years. As I said before: I enjoyed 1987’s PREDATOR, thought 1990’s PREDATOR 2 was okay, and as for 2010’s PREDATORS, I thought it was enjoyable to watch.