Tag: Science Fiction

Predator: Badlands (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Cast out from its clan, an alien hunter and an unlikely ally embark on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.

They had to know, didn’t they? The writers, the directors, and the studio. When they made a Predator movie about a rookie Yautja being helped and trained by a woman, they knew it would piss people off. Even though it’s obvious that Yautja don’t come into the world as fully trained badasses, the woman was a robot designed by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and the Predator franchise has always had a slightly matriarchal bent to it anyway. None of that would matter, the internet would see it and go “This film hates men. Woke!” then bitch and complain like the whiny jackasses that they are.

Yet they still made it. I respect that. I’m glad they did, too, as this is a fun movie. Its not quite as violent as it could be, it’s a 12A, and I’m not saying it needs to be an ultra bloody 18 with guts and decapitated heads flying around, but there are moments where it feels neutered slightly, where you can sense it’s deliberately pulling back to make sure it keeps its rating.

Badlands is an incredibly easy movie to like. Part of that is down to Elle Fanning, who plays Thia and Tessa very differently from each other. She’s exceptionally charming as Thea; funny, smart, and able to kill things easily, just what I look for in a woman. Okay, she also has no legs, but I can fix her. Its essential she does a good job, because she’s the most human character we spend time with. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi (yes, I did copy and paste that) does a good job as Dek; physically imposing when he needs to be, physically vulnerable when faced with a new threat, but he is still playing a character who is obviously not human, so there will be that slight disconnect.

This is as good a time as any to mention the world-building (not in a LEGO way). The film does hold your hand slightly when introducing certain aspects of the planet, but it does in a way that makes sense. Dek is new to the planet, so he doesn’t know the environment (such as the exploding plants, the grass that is like glass, etc), so it’s logical that he’d need Thea to explain it to him.

For all the good it does in building up the world, some of the characters feel underdeveloped. Chief among those is the Kalisk. We’re told it’s a seemingly unkillable apex predator on a planet full of danger. Yet it never really feels like it. It just feels like another creature; there’s nothing particularly awe-inspiring about it.

There’s also an issue with Dek at times. His relationship with Thea reminds me of How I Met Your Mother, where characters would come close to reaching the narrative ending, but the show would get renewed for another series, so the writers had to quickly snap the characters back so they were further away from their goal. There are many instances where Dek learns the same lessons again and again.

There’s a sequence near the end where our ragtag group of misfits take over a base, and it’s brilliant. The tooling up sequence leading up to it? Could be clearer. But the actual sequence itself? Masterful. Expertly shot, creative in terms of deaths, and very funny. Sequences like that are made for the big screen, so see this at the cinema while you can. It ties into the Alien franchise in a way that’s not too heavy on the fanservice. It’s such a smart way to do it, and it shows just how much effort was put in.

M3gan 2.0 (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: M3gan comes back, this time as a hero.

This is a terrible horror movie. That’s mainly because it’s not a horror movie. I’m used to horror franchises delving more into action or comedy, but it’s usually a few minutes in and it’s a sign of decline. I can’t remember a time it’s been so drastic as this. There’s no traditional horror movie beats, no shots that fill you with dread or keep you awake at night. What there is, is quips, fights, and weirdness.

On the one hand, the genre switch means that M3gan 2.0 is fun to watch and will appeal to a wide audience while still keeping true to the spirit of the original. On the downside, from the first trailer, where it was made clear that this time she’ll be more heroic and will be teaming up with those who defeated her in the first movie, comparisons have been made to Terminator 2. Those comparisons are much harder to ignore when the change of genre makes the movies even closer. It’s almost begging you to make those comparisons, and when it does, it doesn’t hold up.

On its own merits? It’s a lot of fun. It’s violent, funny, and kind of sweet. It has really good characterisation. Making M3gan a hero could have backfired, but it works wonderfully. That’s helped by the fact that even when she was a villain in the first movie, her entire motivation was doing what she felt she should do to protect a child. So she could easily turn them into heroes without changing their motivation. It feels like the next logical step. Her introduction is a lot of fun, with her controlling the aspects of a smart house to defeat an invading police force, who burst into a house all guns blazing to arrest an unarmed woman and a child, but because this isn’t real life, nobody got shot.

The performances are also key, the main characters from the first film return, and it’s clear they all love playing these characters. There aren’t too many new characters, but those who are introduced fit in perfectly.

Now onto the downsides. There are a few minor ones in terms of tone and consistency, and some moments are just a little bit too much like a video game for my liking. The major issue for me is the villain reveal. I live quite near a 12th-century castle. A castle, which is a crucial part of local and national history. A castle, which is vital to tourism and is a visual centrepiece of the local area. If you visit this town, you kind of HAVE to visit the castle.

That castle isn’t as clearly signposted as the villain reveal in this movie. I guessed it from the character introduction, not only that they would turn out to be the villain, but also their motivations and reasoning. It felt so obvious as the film went on, with a few “but nobody could have known this” about things which he would have known about. It’s so clear that I felt it was a red herring; I didn’t think a movie in 2025 could be this obvious with its twist. I haven’t seen a reveal this obvious since, well, every superhero movie where a character named something like “Evil Von Murderface” turned out to be the bad guy.

In summary, don’t go in expecting scares, and you’ll have one hell of a good time. It has a lot to say about AI, specifically about the role of humanity in controlling it. It’s much smarter than it needs to be, and I will always love that. I will also always love it when, in the final product, an editor takes out a really creepy moment from the trailer.

Alien: Romulus (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of disillusioned colonists get set for one big job to earn enough money for their freedom from the corporation that essentially owns them. As you can guess from the title, they meet a Xenomorph.

I managed to catch Covenant at the cinema during its theatrical release, and I wasn’t too impressed by it. Part of me wondered whether that was because I hadn’t seen any of the others. However, just through cultural osmosis, I recognised certain bits of it as paying homage to the original, making it seem like a greatest hits package, albeit one rerecorded by a different line-up because the lead singer fired everybody and didn’t want to pay them royalties so replaced them all with session musicians. By which I mean, I recognised the narrative and visual melodies, but they weren’t as sharp and exciting as I knew they had originally been.

Now, onto Romulus. Romulus VERY heavily leans into the original, taking place between that and Aliens, as well as featuring dialogue that explicitly references the original, just oddly delivered. The Xenomorph in Romulus is the same creature from the original, and there is an android that physically resembles Ash (the android, not the result of fire, or the Pokemon animal torturer). Now I have actually seen the first two films in the franchise, so am more able to spot more subtle references, it wouldn’t be a stretch for me to dislike Romulus as much as I did Covenant. Especially since it was written/directed by Fede Alvarez and co-written by Rodo Sayagues, the team responsible for the “you’ve kind of made a rapist sympathetic” horror movie Don’t Breathe (which I heavily disliked) and its “So you’ve made the rapist the hero now?” sequel Don’t Breathe 2, (which I utterly despised).

I didn’t. I, well I don’t want to say “enjoy”, as it was tense as hell and disturbing, but I was thoroughly “oooo”‘d, and a little bit “aaaaaa”‘d. There are some truly fantastic set pieces in this, full of creativity and intelligence. The use of the acidic blood in some of the scenes is superb, with my personal highlight being when the characters make a zero gravity journey through a corridor whilst the acidic blood floats around them. Some amazing scenes make the best use of gravity mechanics available to the characters. It felt like Alvarez and Sayagues looked at the toys they had to work with in terms of the technology and location developed earlier in the franchise, and then thought of scenes that would make the best use of them.

I haven’t felt this tense (at the cinema at least) since Civil War, which also starred Cailee Spaeny. The Alien franchise has many flaws, but one thing it’s always EXCELLED at has been casting perfect female leads. Noomi Rapace, Katherine Waterston, Weaver etc are all critically acclaimed performers, and I know that Spaeny will get there. She received some acclaim for her role in Priscilla, but that’s not enough. She was incredible in Civil War, to the point where in my review (link here) I specifically pointed out her performance, saying (and I quote):

she is damn near perfect. I want to see what she does next because she is fucking phenomenal in this

I didn’t quite expect her next performance to be this good. It’s genuinely difficult to figure out which of her performances is better. I dunno, maybe her next film will be shit. I’ll just see what she’s in next. *checks*. Knives Out 3. Oh damn, she’s in line for a perfect three-film run.

Romulus isn’t all perfect, some of the fanservice is a little bit too obvious, the final third drags a little bit, and some of the CGI feels a little weird. Those are very nitpicking criticisms though. Overall it’s incredible. There’s so much to like about it. David Jonsson (last seen here in Rye Lane) as a defective droid is great, with the character providing so much tension and humanity throughout, especially with a few of the narrative reveals (essentially the trolly problem) adding some background to humanity’s relationship with androids. The other characters are fine, but aren’t really explored enough, they don’t need to be though. Not everybody is a main character, so it’s fine if some characters are less developed than others.

The location is also a highlight. Much like the other entries in the franchise, there’s a kind of future-retro feel to everything. There’s a lot of future technology, but all the computers etc have all clearly seen better days. It would be much like having a film in 2010 featuring VHS players, but the film itself being released in the 1950’s.

Overall, I loved this movie. It’s cruel, atmospheric, and downright terrifying in parts, absolutely perfect for cinema.

Ad Astra (2019)

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This was the perfect movie for me at this time, it’s just what I needed. The last film I watched was so bad it almost put me off the concept of film, and the concept of enjoying things. This film put me back on track. It’s glorious as fuck. It looks magnificent, there’s not even a single second where you don’t buy into everything you watch on screen. I was sold in the opening scene when a space station blew up and people plummeted to earth (horrific way to die when you think about it by the way) and the way it looked meant this scene which could just look like a standard action scene, instead looked as terrifying as it would be in real life. Really, think of how that scene would play out in most films; it would be loud, lots of screaming, but you won’t feel anything. You’d be very aware you’re watching a movie and that there is no suffering on screen. This is the opposite, you feel everything that happens.

It’s not just the visuals, the sound work is great too. Well not just the sound, the use of silence too. Far too many films are scared of silence or don’t utilise it properly. When it’s used effectively it’s one of the best tricks in a filmmakers arsenal. This is doubly so in two specific genres; horror and sci-fi. The sound of silence can really help drive home isolation and nothingness. We’re so used to some form of background noise that complete silence is incredibly unnerving to experience, in a good way.

Now onto the bad; I felt this movie was lacking emotional depth. There’s a moment at the end which is supposed to be a huge emotional moment but for whatever reason, it didn’t really hit home. I think it might be because the entire film was building towards something happening, and then it did happen it wasn’t executed very well and just seemed kind of bland. Also, the narration was unnecessary.

There were also a few moments where it dragged slightly. Not as much as you’d think though. It’s a long film, and A LOT of the film is just padding, but it kind of works as these are the moments where the film breaths and truly comes into its own. Some of the wasteful scenes do highlight another problem with this film; disposable side characters. Brad Pitt’s character is undoubtedly the main character, but that would be a weird film to watch for two hours, so the film brings in side characters for very brief moments. Sometimes they just tell him “your dad killed my parents” and then help him on his way, sometimes they worked with his dad years before they had an argument and stopped talking, and sometimes they want him to detonate a bomb on a planet to kill his dad. Either way, these characters all only appear for a few minutes and then are never referred to again. Also, it’s kind of weird how his entire character is his dad, even in terms of how other people relate to him. Look at all those characters I just described, they’re all focused around his dad, not him. As such he doesn’t really get chance to develop much of a character, I realise that could be the point to show how we live in the shadow of the sins of those that came before us, but the character spends most of the film on his own, it’s important he is well defined and this just about doesn’t manage it.

So in summary, see this, and see it a cinema, it’s what it deserves. This film is crying out for a big screen and immersive experience. And it’s great to see Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland again. Side note; Donald Sutherland would be a great voice for an animated movie.