The Predator fails in every possible way

When it comes to big, dumb action movies the Predator franchise seems to have a pretty easy time getting the job done. After all, the core conceit -- big, dangerous alien is big and dangerous, people try and stop it -- is pretty bare bones. In fact, it's so bare bones that it really ought to be next to infallible. Sure, Predator movies can be bad, but at least they'll always be fun, right?

Wrong, apparently. If Shane Black's The Predator proves anything it's that you can, absolutely, turn what should have been an over-the-top action thrill ride about a bunch of screw-ups taking down a monster into a boring, and ultimately incomprehensible, mess.

It'd be difficult to describe what The Predator is actually about in a way that makes any sense. There's Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), an Army sniper who works picking off drug cartel heads, or something, and gets caught in a giant alien mess when a Predator ship crashes right outside of his operation area. The Predator kills McKenna's squad, but not before McKenna is able to steal some of its tech (specifically a mask and a wrist gun). Then, literally out of nowhere, Sterling K. Brown, playing someone who I learned later from IMDb is named "Traeger," shows up at the scene. He's representing a shadowy government organization called Project Stargazer, that, presumably, investigates Predators.

McKenna then inexplicably manages to get away from the wreck with his stolen tech (all while avoiding the shadowy government agents who are swarming -- how? We don't know, this all happens off screen), into a town where he bribes a man to send his stolen tech back to his family before swallowing one of the parts (a tiny orb) that came off. Why does he swallow it? Great question. It doesn't even result a punchline. In fact, the fact that he swallowed it and what effects that could have on him is literally never addressed.

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The next time we see McKenna, he's being questioned by Traeger's men and set up to look "insane" for having seen an alien. How did he get brought in? Who knows. Why is this protocol? We never learn. What is Project Stargazer aside from an alien-studying cabal of X-Files villains? We can't be sure. We then abruptly jump to McKenna being sent to a ward for troubled or emotionally distressed soldiers, where he meets a whole platoon of misfit toys played by Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen (who is sometimes just inexplicably absent from the group and also extremely British, which wouldn't be weird except he's supposed to be a generic grunt in the U.S. military), Augusto Aguilera and Trevante Rhodes. A lot of curse words get spoken, and a lot of raunchy jokes are shared and fail to land. There's the kernel of a good idea here, thanks to the charm inherent to a band of misfit soldiers gearing up to fight off a killer alien. It echoes, sometimes too transparently, the camp and fun found in the original 1987 Predator, but only briefly and in passing.

Meanwhile, Olivia Munn has been recruited by Project Stargazer to investigate Predators. Also meanwhile, McKenna's autistic son has gotten into the package of alien tech his father sent home and learns how to use it, sort of, and now he's important to Project Stargazer, too, for some reason. Also, there is another Predator who has come to Earth. Also, there is the first Predator who has survived and broken out of the Project Stargazer base. The second act is a string of "alsos," each more ridiculous and impossible to track until the whole movie is careening so far off the rails you'll find yourself deeply, honestly hoping the Predator wins this time just to spare yourself the confusion of having to sort out why you should care about any human on the screen.

All of these plot lines attempt to converge into one with all the halfhearted enthusiasm of a book report hastily scribbled the night before. No character is ever sure what they want -- though most, if not all, are really angry and ready to snipe and banter wittily with one another about it anyway -- and the stakes are never clear. At one point the idea of global genocide due to climate change is posed, and the next the movie really wants to talk about genetic hybridization. Sometimes it's about stopping the Predators, other times it's about stealing their technology. In one moment, the most important thing is saving McKenna's young son, and in the next it's trying to find a crashed Predator ship I was pretty sure had already been found in the first twenty minutes or so of the movie. One Predator wanted to save (?) humanity for some reason, but also still wanted to kill everyone.

On top of everything, there's the unavoidable issue of the movie's absolutely abysmal visual effects. More than once, the big, gory spectacle of a fight actually looked like something that had been rendered as a PlayStation 3 cut scene, fitting more in the mode of a made-for-TV movie than a multimillion-dollar blockbuster. The result is a grueling, baffling slog through scene after scene that leave you feeling like you've missed some critical detail or actual development. How did the team come together? Why are they suddenly in an RV now? Where did that helicopter come from? What does Project Stargazer actually want again? What is happening?

Don't expect to get any answers. Your guess is as good as mine.