Shane Black’s The Predator may not end up looking or feeling exactly like its 1987 forebear, but the latest red band trailer for the film lets us know straight away why director Shane Black was chosen for the job. Black was born of the cinematic era that yielded the original—one in which things were loud and bold, and hypermasculinity was operating in overdrive—and looks to be doing his best to revive that old world in his new sci-fi venture, no matter the cost.
It rarely pays off expect the reboot of a long dormant franchise to feel exactly like its series’ original installments. Not only are we more often than not dealing with different creative forces behind the revival, but the results of a shift in the way cinematic stories are told on the whole—movies today don’t generally feel the way they did in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and so forth.
And while that’s not a bad thing by any stretch (change is important! Variety is healthy!), there can be something enchanting, if only for the novelty of it, about seeing a reboot that feels born of the same DNA that conjured up the original.
Black has been working screenwriter since ’87, having written the script for the original Lethal Weapon. While he surely retains some of the tools he used to write that staple of the era, more recent entries like Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys show that his sensibilities have eroded, even if slightly, with the sands of time. So no, we shouldn’t expect Shane Black’s The Predator to feel like it was plucked straight out of the late ’80s, but it may well have the late ’80s feel that some fans are hankering for.
What are you expecting from The Predator? Let us know!
Image: 20th Century Fox
