Be prepared for possible spoilers, I'm not good at not at keeping some stuff hidden, but I try.
Predators does capture that essence and magic, but has some serious flaws that keep it from being as good or better than the original.
The acting in the film was overall really good for an action flick. Adrien Brody brings substantial credibility to the cast, though his dialogue consists mostly of one-liners. This isn't a problem, because the point of this film isn't to have in-depth dialogue, it is meant to thrill and entertain and to show the story instead of explaining it all in detail. Nimrod Antal and Robert Rodriguez did a good job of building the two main characters throughout the film. Adrien Brody and Alice Braga worked well together and through their interactions showed more about each other's characters. I like that Brody was intentionally put into the lead role, instead of them looking for someone that had the same sort of stature as Arnold.
The rest of the cast would be considered fodder for the slaughter that is necessary for a Predator movie. It would have been really nice to know more about each of these characters. One character in particular should have been built up more throughout the movie, to give his actions enough meaning that the audience cares what had just happened. The rest of the characters other than Braga and Brody seem a little underdeveloped and it would have been nice to have more of an explanation about how they were considered kick ass enough to be on the planet, like explaining what each of them was doing before they were kidnapped.
I like Danny Trejo a lot, and he's a bit of a staple for Robert Rodriguez, because he just looks like a badass. On the flipside of that coin, I can't stand Topher Grace in movies anymore. He was horrible in Spider-Man 3, and this movie he was just annoying. Laurence Fishburne played the one person to survive for so long on the planet. The trailers made it seem as though he was going to play some sort of mentor to the rest of the group, however he seemed to play more of a plot device. His role was simply there to move the plot along and provide a little back story. I would have been fine with this being the case if he had been the mentor as well, but overall it seemed like a waste of time. The problem is that Fishburne has mentor-character experience with playing Morpheus in the Matrix trilogy. So, they should have had him basically like Morpheus but a lot more deranged from the isolation and solitude. It was just a wasted opportunity, which seems more like the scripts fault than anything.
The one main difference between the characters of Predator and the characters of Predators would be the cohesiveness factor. In Predator, it was a unit of special forces, where they worked closely with each other and had developed a history together. The characters of Predators seemed like the "Best of..." collection from the show "Deadliest Warrior". As soon as the group started to mesh better, the movie's action started to pick up and one by one the characters fell. And truthfully, it worked to the movie's advantage. The characters have only one thing in common, and it is hard to build the group's trust immediately.
I would have liked if there had been more interaction between the humans and possible alien life on the distant game preserve planet. The movie had its "wild boar" moment, but having the setting being a jungle for the most part and not having more creatures coming after the people seemed weird.
The creature effects were great. The Predators each looked different enough that you knew which one was doing what, while still looking like they were all capable of massive damage. The Predator known as Mr. Black was particularly cool looking.
The other special effects were decent. I think I might be tired of big explosions in movies or something that is supposed to look so massive in scale, and thankfully Predators played those moments a little more intimately. There wasn't a point when the Predators decide to just destroy half of the woods in some sort of Michael Bay's-wet dream of an explosion looking for the people. The one large explosion serves a purpose and isn't too much. I know that seems weird to be against, but I think Hollywood just wants to do everything on such a huge scale these days that everything else seems less important.
The story is sweet and simple, and it shows throughout that they made efforts to keep it that way. We don't need to know all about the Predators and the movie never tries to tell us too much.
The main critique I've heard about the movie has been that it is too much like the original. There are certain elements that are taken from the original, but the point of this movie was to bring it back to what the original had been like. We needed to go back to step away from the AVP series and to kind of ignore the not-so-good Predator 2. They even reference the events of Predator at some point, and so logically, these characters take certain hints about what to do. Oh, and there are some obvious references to Dutch (Arnold from the first) in one scene in particular. They took elements from the first, because they were fans. The main thing separating this movie from the first is that the group isn't together in this film and that the location is different. The story is fairly similar and very close to being the same, but has great potential in being a launching point for more quality movies in the franchise. The movie desperately wants to be what Aliens was to Alien, which is why the name is Predators. The problem is that it needs a little bit more work at breaking new ground. Where Aliens moved away from essentially an alien slasher flick on a isolated spaceship towards a movie that had those elements but added plenty of action to the mix, Predators had to move back towards its roots. I would like to see some more things that are different from a sequel and it definitely started that at points, introducing an interesting and important component of Predator culture and society.
I think this movie would have benefited if it had been made sooner, and closer to the original. With so much time passing between this one and the original, and the release of the AVP movies, it was necessary for there to be a lot of backtracking to reintroduce the franchise to audiences.
With Ridley Scott working on some prequels to Alien and Robert Rodriguez working on this, I think two classic sci-fi/horror films will finally get back on track after the train wrecks that were their crossover movies.
There were a few missed or mishandled opportunities in the movie, but for the most part it was an awesome movie for fans of the original. I enjoyed it more than any other movie this summer, even more so than Iron Man 2. I guess it deserves a 4 out of 5, because it is a must-see for any fan of the original. And if you haven't seen the original, go see it and then this.
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