The animated movie released this weekend on Hulu. It has four segments. One segment takes place in Scandinavia in 849, and involves a girl boss viking. The second segment takes place in 17th century Japan, and involves two Japanese brothers. The third segment is a dog fight between a Predator ship and a US Air Wing, and a latino kid from Florida defeats a Predator. The last segment is the three of them are taken to the Predator homeworld with them fighting each other and a super big Predator.
The viking segment is super girl boss cringe. As a normal sized older woman named Ursa just plows through multiple enemies at once. In one scene she cuts a dude in half with one swing of an axe. Her and her squad of 5, including a very small woman defeat a company sized army of vikings. She fights using two broken shields and is just mutilating dudes left and right. When the Predator arrives he kills everyone with the two women injuring the alien. Every white dude dies. At one point she picks up an anchor by herself without making a sound. And defeats the Predator.
The second segment is the Japanese one. This segment had no women in it at all. The two brothers, one is a Samurai, the other is a ninja, have to fight together to beat the Predator.
The third segment is set in 1942 during WW2. A latino kid is drafted and becomes a mechanic/pilot during the war. He ends up fixing a broke plane and flying to warn his Air Wing about a strange bogey. Everyone in the wing is white and from Texas, they all die. The kid survives with the plane falling apart, and defying all physics by holding onto wings and jumping around while the plane is attacked by the Predator. He somehow figures out the Predator relies on heat to see and ends defeating the Predator ship.
The last segment involves taking all three survivors to the Predator homeworld to fight each other for a chance to fight the Predator boss. The fighter pilot somehow figures out the alien tech to free the three of them and fly the alien ship. The viking woman ends up staying behind to help the males escape. The movie ends with a bunch of alien ships rising in the air to hunt down the escapees.
TL:DR - Predator: Killer of Killers is not only woke, it's just a bad movie. The animation is middle of the road, and doesn't really help the movie. It does have a fair amount of cartoon gore, if that's your thing. The Predators from each segment have no consistent look and look completely different. There are some call backs to the movies. The flintlock from the end of the second movie pops up. I say just skip it
What is with the forced 10-fps character animation nowadays? Do people actually think that looks good?
For some fucking reason people thought it was a good idea in the Spider-verse movies, then they did it again in the Puss in Boots movie, and I just want to explain to these fuckers that dropping frames during action scenes is a hardware issue, not an artistic style to be emulated.
At least in your two examples it was in highly stylized movies that committed to the bit as more than just a trope to check off. We can disagree on it being a good style, but it went whole hog to it.
Now everyone wants to copy it without having to put in the effort, just like after 300 came out we needed the same slo-mo nonsense as that one.
This
Now you have video games doing that too, and the whole thing about it is that it's limited to just the character animations, everything else scrolls normally.
I couldn't begin to tell you. It's either an aesthetic or financial decision I'd imagine.
Predator as a series suffers from the same problem as slasher movies.
They always have to be nerfed to be "beatable" by some final girl, or unlikely hero dude to twist subversions. Which means these ultra strong badass warriors or killers, honed on a lifetime of combat, need to make glaring and dumb mistakes that allow them to be tricked by someone who only started fighting a few hours ago or is so physically weak they can be overpowered by someone that small.
So no matter how awesome or badass you make them, it all has to fall apart when suddenly they become "human" enough to be killed and beaten instead of an almost supernatural force of destruction beyond comprehension. You know, the thing that makes them scary and cool to begin with.
Its why only the first Predator movie really worked. Because it used men who were the pinnacle of combat and arms with a similar lifetime of training and genetic fit for fighting it with some of the best weapons they could have on them, and it still took all they had to even remotely outplay one of them.
For all its faults, AVP: Requiem honestly understood this one aspect and turned the Predator into a well thought out warrior, who is clearly planning ahead and competent at all things, who is simply overwhelmed by the much more powerful monster before him. And he still manages to take it down.
Nice call out to AvP; Requiem. Actual fans recognise Wolf as the best depiction of a Predator in the entire series. He was such a no-nonsense badass that went in, got the job done and looked like a consummate pro the entire time. It's such a shame the rest of the movie was trash, but Wolf was a nice highlight and actually was the only other cinematic Predator to match the depiction and combat prowess we saw from the original film.
One of my biggest peeves is that more movies than not by this point use the excuse of "oh its a young/fringe/cult/etc Predator! that's why it acts weird and nothing like the established canon!!"
When the only two Predators everyone agrees on are the two that are the exact thing we expect and want from them.
Remember the Animatrix? It had different styles and stories set in the matrix. It makes me wonder why only that came out when I would love to see it for others.
for the other matrix movies? the wachoski trannies probably didn't want people to notice that rando (Japanese) studios and directors are more thoughtful and creative about the matrix than the original creators themselves
Probably true.
Even though it isn't an anthology, Batman: Gotham Knight (not to be confused with Gotham Knights), has a few different segments that all use fairly different styles of art (though it's not nearly as diverse as the animation and artstyles present in Animatrix, for instance, there's no 3D animated segments). Came out in 2008.
There's also that newer Star Wars Visions anthology show, but it's post Disney acquisition, and I don't care enough about SW to watch it.
Yes, I remember. Didn't they use one of the stories as a trailer of sorts? I think they played "Flight of the Osiris(?) before certain movies. It was a bridge from movie 1 to 2.
I just remembered, flight of the Osiris was CGI motion cap right?
Yeah, a few of them filled in holes. The robots trying to make peace with humanity and humanity rejecting it basically told the prequel.
The prequel cartoon really bothered me. I was 19-20 when it came out but I remember heads getting squished and it really got to me.
It also made humanity the antagonist of the setting. When the theme of the trilogy was that our irreducible humanity is a treasured spark of divinity. Really jarring.
Yeah there was some whack body-horror in those shorts…I still remember the runner (jogger?) pushing past his limits and his leg muscles tearing in gory detail
Wait... how does the viking girl and the samurai dude survive for hundreds of years to be rescued by the latino?
Cryogenics
I was curious because they had a samurai on the cover and as I was watching it on a pirated site, not 10 mins in I saw the leader of the vikings were some old grandma. I switched it off and watched the original Predator movie instead.
If hey didn't have the collecting people aspect and stayed with a Predator during different eras one offs it has potential.
I was going to make a post about this yesterday but did not. My wife turned it on and I got through about 10 minutes and left to do something else. Nothing like a grey haired female Viking queen killing all the male Vikings with ease to really take you out of it.
Yeah this is an absolute travesty, and the amount of young people I see hyping this up as "the best Predator movie ever!" is more disheartening than the Predator franchise being turned into woke trash.
When I pointed out all of the illogical scenarios and massive plot holes that you outlined in your rundown, today's youth generation just responded with "Who cares? It was entertaining". Basically confirming that Idiocracy really is becoming a reality, and people are just too stupid to use basic logical reasoning.
Dan Trachtenberg is a woke hack who has turned the Predator franchise into just another conduit for spreading "The Message".
His depiction of Predators include them being absolute retards who have no idea how their own equipment works, and having humans understand their equipment better than the Predators.
While the AvP films and Predators had their flaws, at least they respected the Predators enough that they were competent and skilled in using their equipment, but here -- Dan has made it where NONE of the Predators understand how their own equipment works. Yet some uneducated, Saturday morning cartoon spic could figure out Predator tech just by closing his eyes?
Yeah, this whole movie was horrible. The amount of people I see defending it on normie sites is the real black pill; that normies just accept corporate slop without questioning it. It's funny because people like Nerdrotic or Critical Drinker could go either way with this. The amount of people who defended Prey is also equally embarrassing -- some 45 kg teenager surviving a bear trap and defeating three grown men and then manhandling a space alien with her rope and hatchet was just pure superhero fantasy. Yet, I see so many people just overlook that to praise that film, and I'm seeing the same thing with Killer of Killers.
It was inevitable though, since the original Predator was the apex of masculinity. It was about Tier 1 operators put in an impossible situation and having to buck up and adapt on the fly. What made the film so great was that the Predator was just that much better, and it was to highlight that even the best of humanity didn't really stand a fair chance against a Predator. But with Dan Trachtenberg at the helm, Predators are now Saturday morning cartoon villains who are goofballs that can be easily beaten by a middle-aged wench with a broken shield.
Sounds like they should have just made the one about the Japanese brothers and left it at that