10 Movies That Tried To Exploit Nostalgia (And Failed)

Following the release of last year's Shane Black-directed The Predator, Nimrod Antal's 2010 entry in the iconic sci-fi series is no longer even considered canon. Coming at a time when nostalgia wasn't quite so prevalent in franchise filmmaking as it is today, Predators is a decent enough shoot-em-up, albeit one that leans a little too heavily on John McTiernan's classic original.

Ensemble cast of trained killers? Present and accounted for, but this one-dimensional parade of cannon fodder is nowhere near as interesting as Dutch's memorable team of commandos. Jungle setting? Yep, but it's an alien jungle this time. Lead character covers himself in mud and sets traps using the environment to battle the Predator in hand-to-hand combat? Of course, but despite packing on the muscle Adrien Brody simply cannot hold a candle to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On top of that, Alan Silvestri's score is repurposed at various points, one character makes a direct reference to the original to explain that she knows what these things are, another wields a weapon very similar to 'Old Painless', and for good measure 'Long Tall Sally' plays over the closing credits.

It may have scored decent enough reviews and made over $120m at the box office against a $40m budget, but that still wasn't enough to warrant a sequel.

It's all well and good to drop in a little fan service every now and again but based on how quickly the movie faded from memory, the sheer number of callbacks and references in Predators made people more likely to want to watch the original again rather than follow these characters on further adventures.