BEFORE: OK, I know I said yesterday that I wasn't going to mess with the chain, since I had a solid road to the end of the year. And when I said that, the next film in my chain was "Leap!", an animated film about a ballet dancer - and I was going to follow that with "Ferdinand", an animated film about a non-violent bull. Those films are NOT very Halloween-like at all, but I was willing to include them in an animation block, because "Ferdinand" was going to link via Sally Phillips to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", and I'd be back on the horror beat.
But right there, just KNOWING that I've got a solid path to Christmas puts me in a position of strength, what harm is there in just moving a few things around, experimentally, to see what results? I can always just resort to the path that I'm sure gets me where I want to go if the new road doesn't link up to the same destination. It took me a couple hours last night, time I should have been spending clearing my DVR before my vacation, but I found a different path, a BETTER path. I can drop the two kiddie animation non-horror films, and also that film about golf, which had no business being in October, anyway. Thankfully there's enough cross-over between films that with a few modifications, I can use almost exactly the SAME 17 films I had on the list before, just now in a different order, and I can get to the same end point. (You may remember this also happened back in July, I tore apart my remaining documentaries when I realized I had a bad link, and still got to the same place on the same day.)
What happened was this - I've got my cast lists color-coded, if an actor appears more than once in the whole document, I turn his or her name blue - this lets me know that this appearance represents a diverging path, I can choose to follow it or not, but I at least want to be aware of it. And the "key" to figuring out the new path turned out to be a Key - Keegan-Michael Key (carrying over from "Hotel Transylvania 3"), because I noticed that his name, in blue, also appeared in the cast list for "The Predator". This sequel only recently was added to my list, it wasn't there several months ago when I put this year's October chain together. But that prompted me to check out a couple other actors, and add one more film (currently running on premium cable) to the list, I'll watch that one tomorrow. And with these two additions, I can connect back to my planned horror chain in a different spot, and just re-shuffle the deck a little bit.
Thankfully, some films act like nexus points - "Dark Phoenix" is one of them. About half the cast list is colored blue in my system, and so that film links to about 6 other horror films on my list - that's the kind of thing that gives me some options, only I really only need it to link to two. Honestly, it doesn't really matter which films are in the October chain, as long as I get to "Dark Phoenix" and "Godzilla: King of the Monsters". But I think the chain is stronger now, there's a greater percentage of horror films, though there's still one non-horror animated film (instead of three) and one about cavemen, but I think maybe that's better than a film about golf. We'll see. But what a rush, changing things up at the last second, just because I found a new link!
And weirdly, this is all possible because Cee-Lo Green got into some legal troubles back in 2012, and was unable to reprise his vocal role as Murray the Mummy in "Hotel Transylvania 2", so he was replaced by Keegan-Michael Key, who then returned for the third installment.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Predators" (Movie #933)
THE PLOT: When a young boy accidentally triggers the return to Earth of the universe's most lethal hunters, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled scientist can prevent the end of the human race.
AFTER: Someone definitely tried to put a new spin on the franchise with this one, it's not just the old "alien hunts humans in the jungle" type of story - though there is a bit of that in there near the end. There was an attempt here to give the Predator species a reason for doing what they do, and that adds to their mythos, so that should be a good thing, I suppose. The theory put forward here is that the Predators aren't just hunting, they're harvesting DNA from the strongest species in order to make themselves stronger. Essentially they're becoming GMO's, or else they came to Earth and heard people talking about designer jeans and misheard it as "genes". English can be a tricky language, after all.
I guess maybe in that first movie where they encountered genetically superior beings like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura, they figured "Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join their genetic material to your own." But the clock is ticking on harvesting the best of what humanity has to offer, because thanks to climate change, humans are done in a couple of generations, and the planet will be too hot for people to live on - but not the Predators, turns out they like it warm. So that explains the increase in the frequency of their visits, which I thought at first was a reference to the other "Predator" films, but unlike some other cash-grabbin' franchises, the frequency of "Predator" films has actually gone DOWN - there hasn't been one since 2010. Way overdue for a soft re-boot - that's where you try to move the franchise in a new direction, but still pay some kind of respect to the stories that have gone before.
Quinn McKenna, the lone survivor of the initial encounter with a Predator in this film manages to not only defeat it, but walk away with some gear, including a helmet (which he ships home - thank God the post office only asks if you're shipping something "liquid, fragile or perishable" and Predator armor is none of those things...) and its cloaking device, which he (for some reason) swallows. Good luck with that colonoscopy, your gastroenterologist's not going to be able to see a damn thing... We can only hope that he can pass it through his system in advance of when he's going to need that later.
The helmet gets inconveniently (but quite coincidentally) delivered to his home address, because he forgot to pay the bill on his P.O. Box, but I think that's a NITPICK POINT. Wouldn't the post office be more likely to just refuse the package, and ship it back to where it came from? I don't see a U.S. mail employee taking the time to look up the soldier's billing address and hump that package out to his home, when shipping it back to where he mailed it from (which was...where, exactly?). Oh, I get it, he probably put his home address as the return address on the package, either that was very clever of him or I just fixed a mistake that a screenwriter made. One No-Prize, please.
Wouldn't you know it, his 12-year old son, Rory, is on the spectrum, he's got Asperger's or autism or something, and somehow this means he can decipher an alien language, get the helmet working and also accidentally alert the other Predators to his location. But not before wearing it out as a SWEET costume on Halloween night, with the extra advantage of incinerating those bullies that have been making his life miserable. ("You WILL root for the chess team, or I'll incinerate you..."). I hope he got a lot of candy. That's ONE direct trick-or-treating tie-in, will there be more?
Meanwhile, Quinn's been interrogated about his encounter with the alien and thrown in with a bunch of other "crazy" soldiers for observation and holding - but does this track? His superiors KNOW that the Predators exist, they even have a body - so they know he's not crazy, right? Or is committing him the easiest way to get rid of him? Placing him in the "Loon Platoon" only increases the chances of him forming a friendship bond with the other "mental cases", and accidentally forming a motley crew of hair-trigger suicidal experts that coincidentally has exactly the combined skill sets needed for a mission to take down the aliens, right? But no, what are the odds of THAT happening?
Wait a second - helicopter pilot, explosives expert, sniper - Ah, I see what you're doing there. And they've all got PTSD or Tourette's or some brain injury that, combined with the kid's disorder, is going to make a powerful statement about people overcoming their disorders and dysfunctions to come together and solve the problems of aliens taking over suburbia. And not the ones coming over the border to take our jobs, these are the ones from off-planet who want the whole ball of wax, including our spines. But I have to question whether suggesting that kids with autism or Asperger's represent the next leap forward in human evolution is true, or even an appropriate thing to speculate about.
This is non-stop action, more or less, they kept the story moving and packed a LOT into 107 minutes. But the last act of the film is a battle that just keeps piling stupid on top of stupid, until it's impossible to determine which way is up, or what exactly these soldiers are fighting for. Honestly, with all the characters so eager to die at the hands of the Predator it feels like they all can't wait to get out of the movie, no matter the cost. If anything, it reminds me of "The Masked Singer" (season 2 currently airing on Fox) and the way that one masked perfomer is forced to reveal their identity at the end of every show - but not-so-coincidentally, last season the non-professional singers and lesser-known talents got revealed first, and the most well-known and talented artists ended up in the finale. In other words, if the voting on that show isn't rigged, I'd be very surprised. After all, just because an audience is allowed to use voting devices, that doesn't mean that their votes are correctly being counted - it's the easiest system in the world for the producers to cheat with. Just discount the audience vote, and announce that the sports star or comedian got fewer votes than the career recording artist. Already in season 2 they've unmasked a video-game player and an ice skater, so I stand by my theory.
And the final bit of the last act makes no sense, it's just there to set up a sequel to this film. Cagey, for sure, but still quite moronic.
Also starring Boyd Holbrook (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Trevante Rhodes (last seen in "Moonlight"), Jacob Tremblay (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Olivia Munn (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Sterling K. Brown (last seen in "Marshall"), Thomas Jane (last seen in "1922"), Alfie Allen (last seen in "Atonement"), Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey (last seen in "Enemy of the State"), Yvonne Strahovski (last seen in "The Guilt Trip"), Brian A Prince, Francoise Yip, Mike Dopud, Niall Matter (last seen in "Watchmen"), Gabriel LaBelle, Nikolas Dukic, RJ Fetherstonhaugh
RATING: 5 out of 10 chess pieces
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