Bloody Disgusting is reporting that Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios is involved in a ‘reboot’ of Predator at Fox. I have been sitting here for twenty minutes or more trying to figure out why. This makes no sense to me. Almost literally. It’s like Bloody Disgusting just ran something in Thai on their page with a picture of Dutch and the Predator next to it. I’m puzzled. Baffled. Perplexed.
Here’s why I’m puzzled: Predator is a concept that needs no reboot. It’s an open ended franchise that can be set anywhere, anywhen, anywhy. If you want to make a new Predator movie just make a new Predator movie and set it in Afghanistan or something. Voila. It’s like an anthology franchise – each Predator can be a new dude and its been established that it isn’t Dutch who is the star of the series, it’s Stan Winston’s suit. This is in stark contrast to the Alien franchise, which has been stuck with the Ripley character to the point that a non-Ripley Alien might feel weird.
Assuming the Bloody Disgusting scoop is right (and they’ve been on a roll), maybe the term reboot is just getting tossed around because it’s a hot Hollywood buzzword right now. Maybe it’s like how in comics for a while they kept giving series new #1s because they would get better sales on them, while in the past series continued previous numberings because people liked the feeling of a book that lasted. So if this happened ten years ago it would have been Predator 3, but since it’s 2009 it’s just getting called Predator and being touted as a reboot.
But I think that’s too smart for Hollywood. I bet there’s a new Dutch.