Make a Predator Period Piece, Please.
Or, If It Bleeds We Can Kill It
Reposted from my column ‘Touch The Wonder at DigBoston.com
http://digboston.com/boston-lulz/2013/10/touch-the-wonder-make-a-predator-period-piece-please/
This shit needs to happen.
Why haven’t they done a Predator period piece story yet? Seriously, this seems like a completely awesome and rather obvious direction to take the franchise. Especially now that the franchise lays dormant after its latest entry, the 2010 Robert Rodriguez-masterminded Predators, failed to do anything really novel with the concept.
When I say Predator period piece I’m not talking Jane Austen’s Pride and Predators, though God knows that would sell, thanks to popular tripe like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the like.
And I don’t mean this either:
Original art by Daniel Singleton. www.dansingleton.com
Instead, picture a story which utilizes this particular character’s long and thus far mostly unexplored history of visiting earth.
Imagine a historical action epic that happens to also have an invisible masked alien killer who looks kind of like Boba Fett’s Rastafarian cousin who threw away his basketball scholarship (dude’s tall) because he found Jah instead.
Yeah, I know, old joke of mine recycled from this very column … but it works.
Visualize Predator working his way up the food chain of history’s greatest warrior societies. Now that’s the sort of story I’m talking about and the sort of story the Predator franchise needs in order to get people excited again.
So allow me to offer some sage-like advice to creative folks who are much more accomplished than me.
(Rest assured I will not let my complete lack of creative achievement or my severely unproven talent prevent me from telling actual successful creative people what to do with their careers and properties.)
With Predator you can pretty much pick your medium. Film, comics, hell, a one-man stage play performed at a community theater, and I and other dorks will still be interested as long as it involves Predator. Incidentally I would actually love nothing more than to see that last one, principally to watch the actor in question vacillate between being the guy being hunted and then switching roles to become the Predator who’s stalking himself. A no-budget, community theater Predator replete with shabbily homemade cardboard armor and a janitor mop converted into space monster dreadlocks. Who doesn’t want to see that?
But even though I’d tune in for any of these mediums, most people want to see Predator first and foremost in the medium that spawned him and that’s film.
So here are the three best examples of how to make the Predator period piece movie.
This includes time periods, possible story elements, even supposed allegorical significance that can be laced into the stories. I know, I know, I’m a lonely man and have committed far too much time and thought to this junk.
But hey, if I don’t step up and save that big, mandible-mouthed, “ugly motherfucker” I just know that Schwarzenegger is going to make some pitiful sequel where he once again faces off with his former intergalactic adversary. And I for one don’t want to see a Predator movie starring some over-the-hill, out-of-shape old guy with depressing man-tits. A guy who has no business being an action hero yet somehow, against all logic, manages to handily defeat an eight-foot-tall, warrior alien who routinely de-skins people and tears out their spinal columns like he’s peeling shrimp. Besides, they already did that with Danny Glover and Predator 2. Anyways, here’s three different ways they can make a Predator period movie that will undeniably be excellent.
Predator in Feudal Japan:
Original Art By Daniel Singelton. www.dansingleton.com
How whackadoo freakin’ cool would it be to watch Predator taking on samurais in feudal Japan?
The answer is very. Imagine this as a modern day Kurosawa movie: picture white snow everywhere and a group of noble samurai on some sort of mission of honor and vengeance trekking through the snow only to be targeted by an invisible assassin in the dark. Then envision the Predator picking off the bushido-bladed suckers left and right for the remainder of the film.
We’ll have the film take place during the Sengoku period of feudal Japan, so it can involve some ninjas getting eviscerated along with samurais, for the sake of variety. Maybe the samurais even think at first that the Predator’s attacks are the result of some ninja clan? It could be fun seeing Predator’s mutual slaying of both the ninja and samurai causing both to erroneously blame the other for various attacks and result in them trying to destroy each other while Predator continues hunting both groups. In fact, Predator playing both sides against each other is very similar to the plot of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (not to be confused with Usagi Yojimbo, the talking samurai rabbit that hung with the ninja turtles, though that would be space tits if he and Predator fought too) and it could add to the classic samurai flick flavor of this Predator period piece.
The best thing about going with this time period is that the samurai’s own lethal honor code so perfectly echoes the Predator’s own warrior ethics.
For instance, Seppuku (as any 14 year-old will tell you) is when a samurai faced with certain death, or after committing an act that causes him or his clan deep shame, commits suicide by disemboweling himself with a small blade. The samurai does this when bested by an opponent so that he may die with honor rather than fall into the hands of an enemy.
Remind you of anything? Exactly. Predator’s arm bomb thingamajig that had the countdown with all the crazy symbols. Crazy symbols that look so much like the symbols on the digital clock of all my microwaves I had growing up that I developed a problem. You see after the power goes out and then comes back on, the crazy symbols that flicker on a reset microwave clock eerily resemble that of the Predator’s arm nuke. So much so that to this day I’m always terrified that my microwave is going to explode and then take out me and the whole jungle before I can either reset it again or “get to the choppa.”
(This actually happened to my little brother when he was 7 years old. I’ll never forget the sight of my brother staring at the microwave’s clock in utter terror then running out of the house screaming “Run! Run! It’s gonna blow!”)
Predator in the Prohibition Era United States
Original Art by Daniel Singleton. www.dansingleton.com
First up, before anyone gets too worked up, yes, I know they already had Predator in the 1930s in the beginning part of the video game Predator: Concrete Jungle. But since that game sucked something fierce and the ‘30s setting was just a small part of the game, we’re going to overlook it. A Predator movie taking place in this volatile period of American history could be a violent, stylized gas. You could have the alien working his way up through the hierarchy of Italian mobsters and bootleggers whilst simultaneously carving a path through the chain of command of the police and federal agents out to bust the aforesaid crooks.
It could be like The Untouchables only instead of the weird, alien presence of Kevin Costner, breaking into blind tigers and shooting up hooch barrels with a tommy gun,
you can have the much less inhuman Predator descending into speakeasies and taking folks apart like human Legos while hot jazz music plays in the background.
If the studio really has guts, (they won’t) they could release it in black and white and make it a film noir/old fashioned creature feature hodgepodge type of flick. How dynamic would it be to see Predator cutting down some Mickey Spillane-type in a fedora in a damp and dark back alley, with beautiful German expressionist-inspired wafts of smoke framing their silhouettes as the Predator slips this poor rube the old wet hello?
Then Predator dances a Charleston over his disemboweled corpse. 23 skidoo!
Dynamic? It’d be gangbusters. Yeah, see.
Predator in Medieval Europe
Original Art by Daniel Singleton. www.dansingleton.com
You know what the original Predator movie was missing? Dudes with beards wielding swords.
Medieval Europe solves this problem rather easily. There are a lot of different classes for Predator to clash with here, and most of them are decidedly bearded, as well as part of very clearly drawn hierarchy systems for the creature to murder his way through. He can have his pick of human skulls and other macabre trophies picked from the likes of armored knights, brutal Vikings, and even dangerous and cunning thieves.
I’d personally like to see how the Predator would have faired against Teutonic Knights during The Crusades. This opens up the possibility of having Arab warriors dealing with the Predator as well. Plus, with the religious overtones of The Crusades, as well as the fact that Western and Middle Eastern conflicts continue to this day, there can be many subtextual points made that can still be relevant to modern audiences. And like all science fiction, the beauty of this is that any sociopolitical messages can be offered in subtle, symbolic, and subversive ways.
We’ll be careful with it, Predator doesn’t have to become another fuckingAvatar.
What’s great about all of these period piece ideas is that they enable a Predator movie to return back to one of the original film’s greatest strengths: they can be two movies in one.
The original Predator movie was, for at least the first-third of its running time, (minus the title sequence with the Predator’s spaceship arriving on Earth) a men on a mission war movie. It’s a miniature Sgt. Rock story, (hence the comic book’s cameo in the hands of one of Dutch’s commandos, yeah, I know that guy is director Shane Black, stop sharpening your retainer into a shiv) it’s essentially just another Schwarzenegger action movie. Then blammo, you start getting weird infrared shots from Predator’s POV and the story transforms into something more.
Tarantino nicked this nifty trick when he wrote the excellent From Dusk Till Dawn, which begins as a crooks on the run flick then 180s into a vampire death slumber party. Spoiler alert, the movie’s 17 years old, you should have watched it twice already. Both movies are perfectly enjoyable examples of their respective genres but then deftly segue into monster mayhem and become something truly unique.
Each one of these Predator period pieces can easily do the same.
The feudal Japan story can be a samurai epic like Seven Samurai until Predator comes bone collecting.
(Bone collecting like scary murderer style, not bone collecting like secret vacation on Fire Island away from the wife and kids; though, that would be a really interesting Predator story too)
The prohibition story can be a China Town or Godfather homage until Predator arrives and crashes the nostalgia party.
The medieval story can be part Game Of Thrones part Monty Python and The Holy Grail (None shall pass!)
and then our guy materializes and turns some sword swinger into his newly minted bone bling.
The Predator story lends itself so easily to this period piece stuff because all of these characters and time periods have easily defined film genres and hierarchies. And that’s what Predators and Predatorfilms do best: They take the familiar trappings of a certain story and insert a character who is the physical embodiment of survival of the fittest. A character who works his way through any jungle you throw at him until he gets to face his lion. That or he settles for Danny Glover.
Just kidding Danny, I love you. Just watching you participate in a dance off with the Predators on the set of Predator 2 ensures it. Seriously, watch this video:
[All the original art made for this article was created by Mr. Daniel Singleton.dansingleton.com]
