Predator

I'm kind of embarrassed to have clicked all 5 stars for this film, but I really like it. Understand, I don't take it entirely serious, I'm absolutely in stitches at times (like when Arnold and Weathers, old friends reunite and do the handshake/wrestle thing . . . with the camera focusing on their massive bi's LOL) Predator is a great action adventure and sci-fi genre film. THAT's what grabs me, I'm a sci-fi fan. In that regard, the story line is well written. It's yet another example how Hollywood can take a perfectly good idea and (almost)ruin it. I watch the film, enjoying the monster, laughing at the macho stuff and ignoring the vulgar stuff(there are a couple of blatant and UNNECCESSARY vulgar remarks. When the kids were younger, I bleeped 'em out). At 107 minutes, Predator is about average length, but it seems longer because it's really two films in one. First, there's the Platoon style soldier interaction and prep, jungle entry and hasty retreat. Second, there's the Arnold solo survival and bout with the creature. What I refer to as "Part 1" opens with Carl Weathers reuniting with his old buddy Schwarz for a special raid to save captured US GIs. Right away, the actors come across as WAY OLD for commandoes. Things start off routine and quickly run afoul as they discover mutilated bodies in the jungle. They successfully conduct the raid on a handful of unsuspecting combatants only to find no prisoners. Arnold realizes he's been duped by Weathers, but now faces a real threat as his men, one by one, turn up mutilated as well. The dialogue is pitiful with Schwarz and Weathers struggling thru their lines. Still, the story unfolds with the help of the one female, Elpidia Carrillo who is able to enlighten our heroes as to the history of the creature they face. Ventura and Duke seem more natural, but that guy with the glasses? OMG, really? You can't blame the monster! LOL. Part 2; the better half of the film IMHO, Arnold has his solo confrontation with the creature. It's a battle of brute strength and wits with the creature dominating in both departments. Thankfully, Alan Silvestri takes over and Arnold only delivers about 3 lines. Notably, his war cry which is probably dubbed. Later he utters; "bad idea" as the creature hits him in his most invulnerable spot, his head and finally, "kill me! Why don't you kill me!", which the creature should (and the director as well). The film has plenty of blood, guts, muscles and bullets. The sci-fi angle works for me along with the life and death struggle thing. The music score by Alan Silvestri is both intense and memorable. Trivia 1. They say you can see into the barrels of the guns revealing cone-shaped alterations to fire blanks only. 2. The chopper pilot and the creature are played by the same actor Kevin Peter Hall. Similar obnoxious films I've enjoyed> "Aliens", "Die Hard" and John Carpenter's "The Thing" Oh, let's not forget "Rocky" with Sly Stallone playing the creature. Enjoy!

Good sci-fi action movie, rating 4.9

Terrific item! Arrived in great shape!

Is it me, or has Arnold's acting skills gone down hill over the years? He did a fine acting job in predator, but his movies since then, you almost wonder if he ever had any experience acting at all. I know that we all say, hey it's arnold, he doesn't need to be an oscar winning actor to be popular and likeable. All his movies, and corny calling card lines like I'LL BE BACK, doesn't change the fact that his movies are mainly "action". Blowing things up, shooting bad guys, chopping arms off, and yes he has done some extremly odd movies, such as "junior" (Oh my i'm almost ashamed to mention that I've seen it. It was horrible.) He should have just stuck to what he is good at. And that is sci-fi/action-thrillers such as PREDATOR. You still can enjoy predator to this day. The most unforgettable scene is when the alien takes his mask off for arnold. The face looked so real. It was all like moist, and freckled, and his teeth were shiny and yellow, and his gums were pink with saliva and he had that disgusting triple opening type jaw. And teeth both inside and outside of his mouth. How did they pull off such genius make up effects, or even the face itself. That is one hell of an imagination. If you saw this film for the first time, without knowing the date of when it was made, you'd never believe the date was 1987. I don't even believe it. I also think that the action music added to the intensity. I miss these type of movies. How can anyone say the 80's sucked. Like 90 percent of all my favorite movies were made in the 80's, and they were so creative that writers copy the ideas to this day. Of course we can't forget the occasional corny 80's flicks, but you can't say no good movies were made in the 80's. This is by far the best alien movie ever. The writer obviously knew about predatorial behavior. IE. when the alien is eating his dinner, and he rips out the flesh of that guy, and screams into the darkness like a hungry wolf. The fact that his main advantage is he can camoflauge himself like many animals can do in the jungle (changing color when they feel thereatened to blend in with the jungle.) It's as if the alien was made for the jungle. Next, tracking the soldiers by their body heat. Like snakes do. Rapid movement and body heat. But then you know he is from outer space because of his heavily equipped body, weapons, aimers, controllers, lasers, knives. You almost stop believing that they can even kill it. And at the end when arnold discovers he too can be invisible with mudd, was GENIUS. Too bad he falls in the pond and it all washes off. The guy who played the alein was this big and tall black guy. I forget his name but he also had a small part in the movie i think, as himself. He must of been hella hot in that space outfit. This will always be one of my favorite movies. I saw it when i was a kid, and still love it. It's entertaining, funny, scary, intelligent, intense, and a classic. It is great.

Ordered this edition of Predator on Blu Ray from Amazon which was delivered quickly and in excellent condition. This is the first review I will have ever written that begins with the extras. My lord, there sure are a great deal of them and they are all really some of the best you can find. Not just previews for other films, tho that is there as well, but deleted scenes, a wonderful memorial to the actor who played the Predator that wasn't watching the clock, a super "Making of' that far surpasses those type of shorts found on other DVDs, great and interesting interviews with all the major actors after 15 years had passed. Oddly, Arnold didn't interview but is seen in several of the other extras, short takes with the writers and directors that actually were interesting and gave you real insight into the production. All of it was very pertinent and valuable. I guess the only poor extra was a preview into the remake with the horribly miscast Adrian Brody. This film has legs, there is no question about that. The reason is because this was a Sci Fi film not about the special effects but about the characters themselves. The special effects simply enhanced the story. It had you involved with each character, including the predator, on a basic and emotional level. You cared about them. Personally, I think Sonny stole the show with his mystical Indian awareness that they were all going to die. It really was an ensemble movie and not just about Arnold and that made a big difference. Of course, there were plenty of special effects and the lossless DTSHD audio was a big contributor in creating the claustrophobia of the jungle atmosphere. There was considerable use of the front left and right channels as, of course, the center channel. I was a bit surprised that the rear surrounds were not used more than they were. There were several spots where they came into play but I felt that, especially in the jungle scenes, there could have been more ambient FXs coming through them. The helicopters certainly made use of the entire 5.1 system and the sub got a good workout with the many explosions throughout. Honestly, I think the audio mix could have been better and made use of discreet channeling more than it did rather than simply have the same audio from both left and right surrounds. I own a fairly high end system, Aerial Acoustics all around with two Aragon Amplifiers and a Rotel Processor which recently replaced my old Lexicon processor so discreet use of audio channels is as important to me as a good video transfer. On the video side....we have a problem NASA. The transfer really was inconsistent. There is one scene very early on where Carl Weathers face looks as if it were smoothed over by photoshop pro and then in the next scene, just a few seconds later, his face shows the detail that was missing in the earlier shot. Glad it wasn't an important scene and it was a short shot but, I have never seen such a poor image on a DVD that was in that one shot. Most of the rest of the video transfer was fairly decent. Nothing great but not as distracting to me as that one shot was. Is the DVD on Blu Ray worth having? While not the best video transfer, it is still a great movie and the extras were all outstanding. Guess my answer is Yes. The price is right, and while not perfect, worth having in your blu ray library. All my movie reviews are of this nature and focus only on the quality of the transfer to BluRay so check them and see if they are of help as well. Hopefully, this review has been of some help to you in determining your purchase, hope I am on the correct path with a review of the transfer quality as opposed to providing plot summaries. Thanks

I used to consider myself a film purist but I guess I no longer can because I really enjoyed this 'digital noise reduction' version of the film. That's because the excessive DNR was noticeable mostly in the first 10 minutes (before they got to the jungle) and for a few scenes outside of that - scenes which had incredible amounts of grain which is why they look bad when they were DNR'd to death in this release - but I imagine they would have looked worse, and more out of place, if they weren't grainless like the rest of the film (Ah, but film grain is good, and it should have been left in - in the first place - right? Yes, I'll elaborate later). For film, grain IS good. Grain basically 'is' the detail in the film. There's no denying that. I already have the 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD, which I've watched many times so I know how grainy it looks. It never bothered me because I understood that that's how the film was shot. The thing is, the original Blu-ray release of 'Predator' used a poor codec and the disc was only single layered. So, the compression artifacts made the grain look even worse. People complained, and FOX came out with this release. If they did it right the first time, and used the proper codec and bitrate (due to having the 50GB dual-layer disc that they have now), I'm sure there would be a lot less complaints. But, they screwed up the first time. Wanting to satisfy fans and milk this franchise for all it's worth (since they left out all of the special features on the last Blu-ray), they decided to "clean up" the picture, put back all of the special features, and give a little sneak peek to the new 'Predators' movie. It was a good business strategy, but film purists would not agree. At first, I was very against the idea of this release. But hell, Amazon was offering it for $13.99 and I always wanted to own 'Predator' on Blu-ray (with the best picture possible and all of the special features), so i decided to give the disc a try. The first scene of the movie looks excessively DNR'd. I'm not denying that at all. However, I'll live with that since the rest of the film looks BEAUTIFUL. It looks like it was shot yesterday. I know, I know. It wasn't shot yesterday. It was shot in 1986 and released to theaters in 1987. The film stock used was cheap, hence the film should look grainy. I know that. But damn, the picture looks so gorgeous now. I still have my Collector's Edition DVD for when I want to be a film purist and see the picture in all of its grainy glory. I wanted the film on Blu-ray, and I wasn't about go to buy the original release which was more like an upscaled DVD. If the movie were released, grain in tact, with the proper codec and bitrate, I would have bought that. I feel that this disc is the lesser of two evils. If you want the movie to look like it did when it was in theaters, please, go and buy the lovely 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD. If you want the movie to look like it was shot yesterday, buy this release. I've seen the movie enough times to know how it's supposed to look. If you can get over the first scene looking excessively DNR'd, then give this release a try. I've included a page with some comparison shots of later scenes in the movie (to see the comparison, check out the 'Comments' section). If you prefer the grainy pictures, buy the DVD or the original Blu-ray. If you prefer the 'clean' (DNR'd) image, buy the 'Ultimate Hunter Edition' Blu-ray. Aside from the first scene (the infamous shot of waxy looking Arnold - which really didn't look as bad in motion on my TV as it did in the screenshot), there really aren't too many parts of the film where detail is lost due to the DNRing that took place. I know, grain is detail, but I'm talking about the lack of sharpness that can occur when too much DNR takes place. That doesn't really happen at all, aside from that first scene. Give the screen shots a look and judge for yourself. The detail looks very well preserved, which is the ONLY reason I recommend this release. If the whole movie looked like the first scene did, I wouldn't go near it at all. But, the picture quality ends up being pretty damn amazing, albeit artificial (since I know what it SHOULD look like). Like I said, I think this release is the lesser of two evils, especially since I don't think FOX will re-release it AGAIN any time in the near future. The lossless audio (DTS-HD MA) track is amazing, the special features are great, and the picture quality (artificial, I know) is astounding. If you are a film purist, stay far away. If you don't even know what DNR means and you just want a nice looking movie, you won't be disappointed. On a side note, the menus can be a little annoying. They are very Predator-like, but they take too long to navigate and while you fastforward, an image pops up on screen showing you what chapter you're on - this is the only disc I have that does this. That stuff was only a minor annoyance that doesn't really detract from the awesome disc. In summary, I normally wouldn't recommend such a DNR'd release like this, but since the only HD alternative was the lower bitrate (and worse codec) Blu-ray that was already released (with no extras), this seems like the obvious purchase - especially since the DNR is only distracting in that first scene. Once the action starts, the film looks beautiful - and the sound is amazing. PLEASE CHECK THE 'COMMENTS' SECTION FOR A SCREENSHOT COMPARISON!

I don't know what the fuss is about the quality of this Blu-Ray is about I think certain reviewers aren't fully aware of the remastering process involved in taking a movie this old recorded on analog film and mastering it into Blu-Ray format I'll explain that a bit throughout this review. I've been watching this movie since I was a kid on VHS and I've been looking at the same DVD copy of it for a long time. I bought this movie on Blu-Ray simply because it seemed pertinent to get one of my all time favorite movies in the highest possible quality and plus I needed to add something to my purchase to get free super saver shipping, ha. But anyways, this is an old movie and inherent in the type of film stock the film was made with is a bit of grain. The idea that Blu-Ray imparts digital remastering on films making them "perfect" looking images is a false one to say the least. Blu-Ray does bring out the colors allowing for a more clear and defined picture but along with that it will also cause grain to become more prevalent which is something people should be mindful of when purchasing a film this old in this particular format. Think of it this way, basically Blu-Ray raises the scale of the video your watching and with the bigger scale the the grain also gets bigger. Now there is a process to remove this grain from films such as this the grain/noise removal process is basically a filter that blurs the image slightly to make the grain go away, which is nice although heavily grained films such as this one it makes the image very, very blurry and causes a "soft focus" effect which can cause you to to miss out on more subtle things in the frame. Look to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn on Blu-Ray to see just how terrible a price you pay for a grain free picture. Personally I much prefer being to see subtle movements on actors faces over there being a bit of grain on the screen. It bugs me that people buy these things and then rail them for not being painstakingly restored frame by frame by whatever company decided to put it out. That's a very costly and time consuming process that is reserved much more popular films. I apologize for rambling I'll continue on to my review of the disc now. This is a great looking version of Predator the colors are as vibrant as they've ever been and I've owned this film in virtually every format since the late 80s. I'm guessing this disc was put out as part of promotion for the new "Predators" film because most of the special features originally on the two disc DVD collectors edition have been replaced by stuff featuring the the film makers from Predators but that's not such a big deal the two disc collectors edition DVD is still quite affordable and easy to find online and really it's kinda nice that they at least attempted to add something new instead of just rehashing the original release. The best bits of the original special features are included. The film it's self is 80's sci-fi at it's best it starts out with a space ship entering orbit and then turns into a pretty straight forward 80's military action film and towards the middle reverts back into a terrestrial sci-fi action and suvivalism film. It's really one of Schwarzenegger's best performances in that he actually appears to be threatened for once. The problem with his films is not that he's a bad actor, it's that he has this aura of invincibility due to his physique and generally cool demeanor but that all gets stripped away when he is confronted by an alien creature who is bigger, stronger and more equipped in literally every way. Arnold gets chased and beaten and brutalized by the Predator and never does the thought cross your mind, "awww Arnie could take that guy what a phony movie" for example the fight scene with Bennett in the film Commando. This film also features a great score, a wonderful premise, and an involving cast of supporting characters who all have great moments throughout the course of the film. I highly recommend this film to any one but the decision is up to as to your preferred format although I quite like the quality of this Blu-Ray.

This one was/is a classic man's testosterone movie 🎬. It has some moments that just clicks with how to make 😀 and holler for a great battle of man and the unknown.