Predator (Blu-ray)

Not only was this release of Predator billed as an extended version on amazon.ca (which obviously it wasn't); it was also one of my most anticipated Blu-Ray releases. And at first glance, it looked like it might be a winner. But alas--only a few minutes into the feature and it becomes painstakingly obvious that the people responsible for the technical aspects of the encode went *completely* overboard with their desire to apply DNR to the feature in order to artificially 'clean up' image noise and grain, while at the same time severely reducing the amount of detail in each frame and making the overall result look like it has been put through a meat-grinder (to use a phrase from the film itself) ;)

As stated on various forums and in other reviews, this practice is bound to be controversial, as some actually mistake this as being 'sharper' and more 'HD-like' (often when viewing on an 40-50 inch LCD sitting 3-4 meters back). But let me assure you; it *is not*. Compare it to older releases which were done _properly_ (like North By Northwest, Dr. No) and John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (released around the same time as McTiernan's Predator), and you'll see what I mean.

All evidence that this movie has actually been shot on film is gone. It now resembles more an FPS game with waxy, unrealistic characters (just look at Carl Weathers' mustache!)

In short, this release is a complete travesty and an affront to the Blu-Ray format. FOX's customers deserve _a lot_ better than this. Liberally applying Digital Noise Reduction is an extremely quick'n'dirty way to 'spruce up' (in some people's eyes) a picture. Had it been properly re-mastered from a better print than the previous Blu-Ray version, and encoded using a _proper codec_; eliminating the digital artifacts which came as a result of the old MPEG2 encode, the end result would have been so much better.

Too bad a great movie such as this had to be returned to Amazon. But I for one will not stand for this at all.

Predator is an awesome action movie in it's purest form. Consider this: 1) A bunch of big, bad [...], military guys with even bigger guns will go into the jungle on a mission. 2) The leader of this group will be Arnold Schwarzenegger 3) In this said jungle will be an alien opponent of mythic scale just waiting for some new sport. 4) It will have an unknown director who will use optical effects never before created. Now consider the genious who green lit this project, producer Joel Silver. Silver may just be the greatest thing to happen to the action movie since James Bond leapt from Ian Fleming's page onto the screen in Sean Connery's body. The very idea of this film is preposterous, yet Silver saw something, as he must have with such films as Lethal Weapon, Die Hard (also directed by McTiernan), and The Matrix. He must have seen the potential for greatness.

Why is Predator so brilliant? I don't know, it just is. From the word "go" this movie is nonstop. McTiernan, just put the pieces together right. Surrounding Schwarzenegger with guys like Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, and Sonny Landham, was inspired. Also inspired: giving Ventura the gattling-gun and the line, "I ain't got time to bleed, or Landham's line, "There's something out there waiting, and it ain't no man. We're all gonna die." Alan Silvestri's heart pounding score, the amazing special effects from the predator's camouflage and it's POV, and Arnold, how great is Arnold? Pretty great (he certainly has some of his best one-liners).

Man, this movie just rocks. It transcends it's genre, everything about it is tip-top. It is definitely one of Arnold's best roles. So what do I think? Is Predator one of the best action/sci-fi movies ever made? I think yes.

This release has become infamous. I won't talk about the movie, I am sure you already know about that. This Blu-ray version has been blasted with Digital Noise Reduction which has removed most detail from the picture, leaving it with a detail and texture similar to an early Pixar film. Check out the "Digital Bits" for more on this. We deserve a LOT better than this, and don't buy it until we start getting a lot better.