wonko
Member
While I couldn't agree more with you, we have to remember that we are discussing this with children that have never really experienced "real life". Try discussing politics or current world events with kids today and they look at you like your speaking another language. I'm as guilty as the next guy of letting my kids spend way to much time in cyber space, and not helping them experience life the way it was for me growing up. As great as all the advancements in technology are, I fear they are ruining the youth of today. When my 13 year old has a tantrum because she wasn't allowed to upgrade to the Iphone 5, and my 7 year old son is crying because he can't have one yet, I just shake my head and remember the days of having to get off my lazy ass to change to one of the other 7 TV channels that we got.Lflank said:Again, I agree. I too saw it in the theater (several times, because I liked it so much) back in 1987. Two of the things I liked most about it were:
1. After decades of cheesy-looking stop-action monsters and even cheesier-looking guys in rubber suits and fur (the "cantina" scene in Star Wars made me groan repeatedly because so many costumes there looked abysmally bad even by 1970's standards), the Pred was one of the first to LOOK REAL (the xeno in "Alien" was another). The mandibles were something we had never seen before, the shoulder cannon and wristblades were new and unique, even the glow-in-the-dark blood was new and looked fantastic. Thank all the Hollywood gods that the producers didn't stick with the original "chameleon" concept (it was a fascinating concept, but just not do-able with 1980's technology) and brought Stan in.
2. "Predator" had what were, to me, very apparent social and political undertones which fit in perfectly with the world of the late-Cold War 80's. Remember, these were the Reagan Years, the US and the USSR were at each others throats, everyone thought the nukes would start flying at any time, we were spending more money than God on an ever-bigger military machine, invasion of Central America seemed imminent---and here's this movie that says "you think your big military machine is bad-ass? Well here's something that hunts your best-of-the-best heroes like rabbits, skins them, and hangs them up by their feet". It was a wonderfully subversive message for the time. The best scifi is about *us*, not about space aliens and FX. The best scifi comments on humans, as they are today, and as they probably always will be. In an era where superhero movies and story-less FX extravaganzas dominate the box office, I miss the idea that scifi is about us, and is a way to slyly comment on us and our times. Most scifi today has lost that, and is just about selling merchandised toys and happy meals.
THAT'S what's really sad...
Brian