Predator 2 - Rough Beast

November 4, 2008 @ 4:35 am

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

September 25, 2008 @ 10:24 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

September 9, 2008 @ 11:42 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

December 23, 2007 @ 1:38 pm

OK, I was really looking forward to seeing this after some of the ideas that our great friend Jorge (aka KillBillMe) posted. It has actually been sometime since I have seen the original (I picked up a copy for comparison, but have yet to watch it) so I really forgot how awful of a sequel Predator 2 was. After beginning Jorge’s edit, it all started to come back to me. Predator 2 was pure stench…

…now, Jorge did a fantastic job IMO to make this movie far more enjoyable. It still is no masterpiece, but I have a sequel to Predator that I can watch without inducing vomit. Smile The cuts of all the cursing and the sex scene may seem offending to some people, but after you watch this edit, you will see that it was a perfect decision. Why have the characters act like a bunch of rotten pirates? it made no sense. Most of the cheesy dialog has been cut (thank you so much).

but there were some things that just could not be fixed…. The setting of Predator 2 was horrible, it was a wierd Futuristic/retro/actually present day setting that had some sort of Dick Tracy feel (with over-dramatic drug lords). You really cant fix this visually, but by trimming away a lot of the fat, you notice it much much much less. Our attention is focused on the Predator interaction.

A cool idea, tha may have not been pulled off perfectly was mixing footage from AvP into the film to tie everything together. I really liked this idea, but felt that the arctic scenes just felt a tad too out of place. nice effort though.

All in all a great edit of an atrocious film

VIDEO QUALITY
4 of 5. It was almost perfect. Cuts are not noticable, and the picture is quite nice. There was a segment toward the end of the film, where the video does this wierd strobing pixel thing (that I have noticed before with some bad encodes). This is only for a moment, and it isnt really distracting.

AUDIO QUALITY
5 of 5. Great. I dont notice any cuts, and the audio flows nicely

THE DVD
4 of 5. We get a great video clip for Jorge himself, some cool trailers, and nice menus. I love the main menu, and the selection buttons, however I feel that the scene selection menus needed a bit of help. The little boxes just didnt do it for me. However, this is a really nice packaged DVD. Artwork was not created for this, but the Jorge had a contest in mind …..be prepared for January Wink

overall, a 4 of 5. A great edit of a horrible movie, and very well done. Thanks Jorge Wink

August 12, 2008 @ 3:24 pm

Definitely an interesting edit and really improved by its short runtime. Some good action scenes and pretty smooth video/sound edits. There are two things I would note about this:

1. As noted above, there was really no need (or much sense) in having the AvP footage – it just didn’t add anything to the story (in fact, it confused it – at no point did this seem to relate to the main story) and the movie would be even better if it were a little shorter.

2. While I understand that there aren’t many materials to work with (and the Jorge did a great job with what he/she had), I think this would have come off even better if it were framed as a 1-hour (44 minute or thereabouts) TV movie/special. I think the biggest improvement in this approach could’ve been made by a simple intro text explaining that we’re starting off in the middle of something (“In the future, gangs run wild and rule the streets, preying on all who oppose them, but… blah blah blah” kind of thing). Sure, it’s super cheesy, but the movie (in all forms) is cheesy. Not sure what that text should be, but I think it would ease the discontinuities present and allow the viewer to just accept that they’ve been dropped into a story already in progress (and I don’t think there is anything else Jorge could do about these other than this, as there is no footage).

SPOILER:

3. I might’ve not bothered with the group of predators ending – it would be a nice ending with just the final kill (heck, a short text outro would’ve been no worse than the “to be continued”).

Anyway, interesting work and certainly an improvement on the horrible, horrible Predator 2. Thanks Jorge!