Predators, or at least half of it

Went and volunteered to prescreen Predators tonight to make sure it was put together correctly before the first show tomorrow.  Unfortunately that turned out to be a mistake, because they were having many varied issues with the closing paperwork.  The unfortunate part was when Jon kept coming into the theatre to get my help with why this or that number was way off.  Overall, I probably saw about half of the movie, and missed the entire end while we were sorting everything out.  What I saw wasn't bad at all, and I'll definitely have to go watch it again straight through to get the whole story.

One of the things I liked most about the Predator movies was the way the predators seemed to have an entire culture that we were only catching glimpses of.  Obviously, the Alien vs Predator movies don't figure into this at all.  I never even bothered to see the second one.  The book on the other hand, having absolutely nothing to do with the movie, wasn't too bad at all.  Again, there were lots of insights into the bizzare predator culture.  I especially liked their concept of Aliens as the ultimate "hard meat" and Humans as the ultimate "soft meat" (anything not a predator is pretty much considered meat).

As hard meat, the Aliens were perfectly evolved killing machines, naturally deadly and instictively able to adapt to just about any environment.  Just one could slaughter a predator if he was caught off-guard for even a moment.  Hunting these things was a very common part of the predators' culture as exercises used to hone their reflexes and combat abilities.

Hunting the human soft meat on the other hand was considered the ultimate test of a predator's abilities.  Only the most skilled and battle-hardened predators could even obtain permission to do it.  The reason was that although at first humans were laughably easy to kill, they learned quickly.  Unlike the Aliens, which had known attacks to defend against and very few weaknesses to exploit, over time the humans would start learn your attack patterns and figure out how to exploit your weaknesses.  Once you started hunting them it would only be a matter of time before they started hunting you in turn.

Back to the movie, one of the nice things about all the human charcters being dangerous combatants was that there was hardly any panicking or "this can't be happening" mantras being chanted.  Granted, it's a pretty realistic response for most people, but those characters always grate on my nerves.  These guys kept their wits about them and did their best to deal with the situation as it came.  There were a couple of fights initially, but once they figured out what was going on they realized that holding grudges wasn't going to help them any.  I can't say for sure since I missed half of it, but it looked like the writer actually left the requisite 'trouble-maker' off the roster.  You know the one I mean: he's the guy who's already proven himself untrustworthy but for some unknown reason is still part of the group, and you can just tell that he's only going to cause problems and create conflict until he finally betrays everyone or somehow chickens out.

So yeah, I'm definitely eager to see the rest of it.