Predator: Every Film Ranked Worst To Best

Three years after the death of the Alien vs. Predator franchise, the Predator's own franchise was revived with Nimrod Antal's Predators, a long overdue sequel to 1990's Predator 2 that utilized a script and concept that Robert Rodriguez had initially worked on back in the mid '90s. Rather than revisiting Earth again, the franchise took off into space, to a planet used by the Predators as a hunting ground for game collected from all over the universe.

It's a neat idea, and some of the film's exploration into the tribal hierarchy of the Predators themselves is engaging, but ultimately the sequel doesn't lean as hard into its own concept as it could've, more focused on the relatively bland humans at its core rather than exploiting the idea of other alien races also fighting for survival. Not helping matters is the fact that Adrian Brody tries (and fails) to carry the same Schwarzenegger-like gravitas that that action icon is famous for, providing the film with a staggeringly dull lead in the process, we're subjected to the cringeworthy existence of Topher Grace's psychopathic doctor, and actors like Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Mahershala Ali, and Walton Goggins all have their presence thoroughly wasted.

Like Alien vs. Predator, Predators is ultimately harmless, with some neat action and the introduction of a few new wrinkles in the franchise's mythology, but it also lacks the type of propulsive suspense running through its veins that made its two direct predecessors, particularly the original film, work so well, standing as an average entry in the creature's cinematic legacy, far from a dismal failure but far from something worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the film that started it all.