By skyforbes Though some of the other sequels brought cool new additions to the franchises many of them suffer from the same fatal flaw. A problem I call UPPING the ANTE. Each movie seems to try and bring a bigger, stronger predator. In Predators for instance, Adrian brody takes on some super predators with a stick. And In the shane black film we get an iron giant predator.
What these two films in particular forgot is that us fans fell in love with the predator from the original film, he's the bad guy. But he's the equivalent of Jason Voorhees, in the sense that he's the main attraction of the franchise. Cool character design, a sense of honor, fascinating lore that leaves much to the viewers imagination, cool tech that is both primal/tribal yet futuristic, and an unmistakable intelligence that is compatible with humanity …but bound by something else.
The lazy approach is to try and improve upon this by simply making him bigger or more dangerous, instead of taking us on a new emotional journey with the character we already know and love.
Obviously, each predator is different. But in predator badlands we get the runt, so to speak. But he is consistent with all we came to know and love from what was established in the first two films. What makes him compelling is we finally get a glimpse on the world and minds of his kind, and we follow the character on his journey. Thematically very different from the first two movies, yet Respectful to the lore (presumably because it clearly borrows from the expanded universe in comics and books).
Now, predator is a great example for my case. But there are others. The new Star wars comes to mind. Terminator is another example. Each movie has to introduce a new super bad guy. But in the first film, again. We fell in love with the t800. The lore that surrounds him and his timeline. In the first movie he's the bad guy. The second movie kept him relevant and interesting how? Not making him more advanced. But by giving him an emotional journey for us to follow. He goes from programmed killing machine to being semi conscious. That was the real journey. Sure the t1000 was a new big bad, but was used to illustrate the weakness and strengths of our real hero, who most importantly isn't indestructible.
Terminator Dark fate was a big miss because it tried to force us Grace. A faster more efficient killer to follow who is just a knock off of universal soldier. It's just a shallow attempt to one up the character we all actually came to see.
Oh, and don't even get me started on Jurassic Park. I came for the Trex. A trex is plenty enough terrifying to thank about with out adding additional mutant hybrid things. I'm here for the dinosaurs? Why is that so hard to understand.??