AMKent books

Yesterday I was scrolling through YouTube in an attempt to entertain myself visually whilst eating a bowl of cereal. I stumbled across a teaser for the new Predator, no, not a new Jeffrey Epstein, I am taking about the 80s Arnold classic. Let me give you a brief rundown of the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic before I enter the bowels of unoriginality. Arnold, an incredibly muscular man and his team of incredibly muscular mercenaries are spearheaded by an incredibly muscular Carl Weathers. After they commit a genocide on a bunch of losers in the jungle, Arnold realises that Weathers has set him and his team up. They find a beautiful exotic woman who pretends she can’t speak English for a bit, and suddenly they realise an 8ft gigachad alien who hunts men who eat toolboxes for fun is their real enemy. One by one the testosterone fuelled, oiled up, water buffalos are taken out by a superior species. Arnold after a chase, realises that if he covers himself in shit the Predator is no longer able to see his heat signals. An idea clicks, and now we have two apex predators, the champion of humanity vs an unstoppable alien equivalent. By now you have either reached a climax or grown hair in all places, this is a natural by-product of the 80s classic.

So, back to what I saw as I scrolled, firstly, I see the Predator again. Nice, but not nice, because they have installed a skin fade. “What? He is an alien. Why would he go to the extra-terrestrial barbers to get himself a crispy faded and bladed haircut?” I hear you, additionally, they have smoothed him out as if he were donned with a Snapchat filter and have given him the eyes of someone with terminal liver failure. “NO MORE, IT CANNOT BE TRUE!” I assure you dear reader, it is, and not only that, but they have also given him German expressionist, extra bulged, young Frankenstein hunchback servant eyes. Why do they insist on doing this one might wonder, well, money, milking things, but you already know this. What upsets me is that virtually every remake, or continuation of a dead franchise, is destined to suck a big pair of hairy hairless balls. Predator has been run through the ringer more times than Liberace and Freddy Mercury combined. Predator’s been rebooted more times than a 2000s Dell tower. “But Prey was good!” Really? A 110-pound Comanche teen takes down a bear-slaying alien death machine? I’m all for empowerment, but let’s not pretend this isn’t cinematic cosplay. Yes, I know what you want to say, I am being toxically masculine, but you are reading an article about Predator. I will even it up, so the scales of sexism are balanced out, Adrien Brody, emaciated to the point that holding his gun looks tiresome, takes not only multiple Predators, but ones even more advanced than Arnolds.  

Remakes are destined to be dog shite, you are remaking a successful film and applying a postmodernist standard that contradicts the very fabric of why the film was successful in the first place. If you are not doing that, then you are merely repainting an older film for the sake of yung moolah baabaay. Either way, it’s fucking lame. Nosferatu was a LinkedIn Park, my chemical romance, emo version of Gary Oldmans Dracula. Yes, I know they are both based on a fable, but Nosferatu was basically a shot for shot remake until that whole weird sexual stuff started happening. Spike Lee’s Oldboy, hmmm how can we one up the twist that the jilted incestuous villain who had knowledge of his sister has tricked the protagonist into engaging in coitus with his own daughter? I know, lets make the entire fucking family have sex, just all out familial orgy, why not just throw the great grandmother in while you are at it! I am not getting onto Disney, there is not enough words.

Not all remakes are bad! I know this, this post is mostly satire, Psycho with Vince Vaughn was great. I am joking, it was awful, its almost always awful. When Ted Kaczynski warned humanity about the dangers of technological progression in his manifesto, what he truly meant was a repolished remake or reanimated corpse of an old classic. Matrix 4 should not have existed, if I could command prompt and delete it I would. Indiana Jones needs to stop, Top Gun 2 was cool, but it was an anomaly like Neo in The Matrix. I need to wrap this up, stop nostalgia farming you shills, lots of people are writing original stuff, bleed them like the Nosferatu’s you are. Anyway, I bid you a farewell and I will be rewriting this article when I run out of ideas.