Scar just wants to fuck. Bad?

-Bloo-, Xenomorph, 6 years ago

Hi all. I'm drunk. Let me argue with myself for a second:

AVP writers tend to give Predators lots of human characteristics and goals to make us care about them--or it could be a deliberate contrast meant to make the Aliens more monstrous in comparison--which almost always turns the Predators into noble heroes or "sympathetic" serial killers. (E.g., Scar is a serial killer, yeah, but he's also a bro who wants to bang mid-'00s Sanaa Lathan, which, I mean--relatable. I instantly forgive him for all that "killing" stuff. But then he got the wrong girl wet when he dumped the Queen in the ocean, so... memorable? Good job, writers?)

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to turn Predators into heroes/serial killers/etc. It's fun to turn Predators into "real" characters by giving them human quirks. And honestly, how can you not? They're basically humans, right, except they're not in any real way, and also they're aliens from space and didn't evolve on Earth, so never mind. However, I can't help but think their "human" qualities makes them worse as a concept. (Full disclosure: I'm a hypocrite. All my Yautja characters are basically just humans with snuff kinks. It's fun to write; boring to read about.)

Anyway, what the hell was my point, oh yeah: MAIN ARGUMENT: Wouldn't Predators work better as monsters?

Scar is a bad character because they tried to make him into a character. He's not a character, though. Or, I mean he is but he shouldn't have been. He should have just been. Do you know what the fuck I am talking about? LET ME FINISH.

Predator 1 is often regarded as the best Predator film, yet Jungle Hunter isn't treated as a hero or even a serial killer (or even as a "character"! Whoa holy fuck.); he's just a force of nature, or mankind's shadow, or, at the very least, Dutch's shadow, since Dutch is a soldier and is basically The Predator as a human, I think, right? So, like, Jungle Hunter is scary because he represents the darkest parts of who Dutch is as a person (and by "darkest" I mean "this is the man's career and he takes pride in it, so really, it's the brightest parts of him as a person), and now it's back for him, because only we can really kill ourselves, except when you don't, which is a lot of the time, surprisingly.

Scar is not Jungle Hunter. Well, I mean, he shouldn't be 'cause he should be his own thing. Scar is doing the opposite of whatever the hell a Predator should be doing, which is "being scary." He is soft when he should be solid. Scar is erectile dysfunction. So he's scary but in a way he's not supposed to be scary. Scar is scary because he sucks. Rather, he prevents you from getting sucked. Scar is every moment you spend masturbating to your crush's wedding photos. You've been at it for hours; you're flaccid. You have calluses. You're not in any of the photos. Remember? You weren't invited.

Jungle Hunter is scary because no one can escape him. Dutch may have "defeated" him, but it was still technically because of Jungle Hunter that Dutch later died after the events of the film (IIRC). So, like, what the fuck? Jungle Hunter is an amazing movie monster because he kills shit even after he dies. Whoa.

Everything I said here--the relevant parts, which, um, I guess you can piece that together for yourself--also applies to the very first Alien (BIG CHAP), and also the first Queen. Just as Jungle Hunter never "really" killed Dutch, neither Big Chap nor the Queen directly killed Ripley, but they gave her space PTSD and space cancer and also put a space baby in her, so. Right. She's basically dead anyway. Also she killed herself once, and then her clone killed her other cloned selves 7 times. They also took away her daughter twice. Her real daughter first, and then her Newt daughter. And also if you count the Newborn as her daughter, then they took away her children 3 times. Oh, god.

So Big Chap eventually caused Ripley's death the same way Jungle Hunter eventually caused Dutch's.
Jungle Hunter and Big Chap work as monsters because you can never really get rid of them. They are you.

^^^I guess the same feeling was invoked at the end of Predator 2 (i.e., "if you strike me down, I got some homies that'll take my place, mmmkay) and also Aliens (i.e., "I'm hiding in your ship, bitch"), but Alien 3 drops the ball (I don't even remember how that movie ends, actually); Resurrection just sucks, though its characters are good, if extremely flat; AVP has Scar in it so it's pretty bad already, and it somehow humanizes the Queen which is also bad; AVPR has Wolf which is cool, but it also has everything else, which is, ugh, god; and Predators humanized Not!Jungle Hunter by turning him into Jungle Jesus, and then he ended up getting decapitated by Satan Hunter, whose homeboy had a massive stroke at the dog races, I think, and his other less stellar Bird Watching friend had an anime fight with Token Asian #1 in a corn field. Also Topher Grace? Really? Fuck you.

Predators have always fascinated me far more when they're treated like Jungle Hunter was. I don't think that's ever been replicated--not even by Predator 2. I think Wolf came close to feeling like another "force of nature" monster rather than a "serial killer/hero" monster, but I wanna forget Requiem ever happened.

COUNTERARGUMENT: Concrete Jungle (the game, not the book). I forgot the Predator's name in that game, but from my probably extremely misguided memories of him, I think he's a fleshed out character that also gets the "force of nature" feeling across well if only because he's unstoppable and doesn't give a fuck about Italians and France. CJ is the opposite of Predator 1 in that, actually, Predator Guy's shadow is not another Predator, but a man. A Predator Man. With gay samurai clowns. Man, what the fuck was that game?

tl;dr Predator better as a monster. Not good to fuck, maybe

Scar is an asshole

Hey also discuss your characters here, I think. 'Cause you guys are good at making Predators that are interesting to read about. Why aren't none of you writing Predator books?

DeathWraith, Xenomorph, 6 years ago

Oh, so her name is Sanaa Lathan.


EDIT: So I'm not sure I'm of the same mind, but I understand your thing. I mean, I can appreciate the same kind of force of nature type of monster the same way you do, but I don't think I prefer Predator 1 to Predator 2, because I don't get that force of nature feeling from Jungle Hunter. I've always seen the Predator as the Human Alien, representing what we are to a species of lesser technological advancement, because we are apex predators and the Predator is just one step higher on the food chain.


On the other hand, the Xenomorph is the Alien Alien, we didn't know where the fuck they came from, we didn't know what anything they did meant until it happened. You could expect the Predator to hunt like us. Using unnatural camouflage, using high powered weapons, exactly the same as human hunters. But you could not have predicted that looking at a giant egg would make a vulva with fingers and a tail jump on your face and shove its dick down your throat, resulting in a snake like thing bursting through your ribs and growing into a giant skeletal thing with a penis head and acid blood and a mouth inside its mouth whose motivation is fuck knows what. I realize that reads as if I'm talking about the mouth's motivation and I agree that it's better that way.


I've always argued that the final piece of the puzzle in this shitty crossover that has defined most of our lives would be the thing from The Thing, because that thing is both things. You have no idea what it's gonna do, but you can also have evening tea with it.

Deathdrop, Xenomorph, 6 years ago

This is the Best Thread, and also I am gay for you guys.

"every moment you spend masturbating to your crush's wedding photos"

... Everything all right at home, Bloo? Asking for a friend.

On topic: I had this weird idea that Predators' psychology is fundamentally different to our own in that they don't distinguish between literal and figurative in quite the same way. In other words, a Predator understands that night and day are subjective words describing the ways in which the light from a star hits the surface of the planets that orbit it. A Predator ALSO understands that day and night are the result of Death chasing Life across Heaven, determined to win her favor (or whatever mythological explanation sounds coolest, I dunno).

A Predator holds both of these views simultaneously, and sees no contradiction.

I feel like this is related to the discussion, but I'm also tired as fuck, so...

-Bloo-, Xenomorph, 6 years ago

I'm fine because that never actually happened to me because they never got married yet I mean what?

After giving this topic some thought over the last 2 months, I think you guys are right about literally everything because I definitely used my critical thinking skills to carefully read and analyze what it was you wrote.

I do like the more mythic take on Predator logic. I'm not going to watch the new Predator movie, whatever they're calling it.