My favorite alien organism in Predator Badlands was the brachiating carnivore with trilateral symmetry. That was neat.
I also like the novel communal (?) branch like thing that would strike like an army of snakes. Cool.
There was a grazer with a weird set of mouthparts that I didn’t get a good look at, unfortunately, but it had to be good because they were adapted to feed on razor-sharp fields of leaves. Show more next time.
I was mildly disappointed with the main big bad monster, which was just kind of ape-like, and had unrealistic powers of regeneration. I want to see the energetic breakdown of the metabolic costs of rebuilding whole body parts in seconds — that’s pure fantasy. Not going to happen.
Also, and this was a problem with the Avatar movies, too, if you’re going to get creative with strange background animals, do think in evolutionary terms. There should be some shared continuity of structure in various clades, not just random odd beasties with no visible relationships between them.
I was deeply disappointed with the main “alien,” the Yautja, who was just a man — a perfectly ordinary, familiar human being — wearing a mask with funny flexible fangs on it. Pathetic. Unbelievable. Cheap and cheesy. Drop that transparently fake alien from future episodes (you know they’re going to keep making these “predator” movies, and the weakest prop in the whole franchise is the predator.)
I’m also a bit tired of the “warrior alien” trope. Advanced alien cultures are going to be more diverse and complex than the “everyone fights for honor” nonsense that’s affected the genre since at least the Klingons, and it’s boring and makes those aliens into one dimensional characters. Stop it.
I guess there was a plot that I didn’t pay much attention to — it was something about big fights with an evil corporation trying to exploit alien monsters, don’t care, been there, done that. Elle Fanning stood out as a good actor who was playing two synthetic humanoids, but I never understood why, if you have mastery of building artificial organisms with intelligence that you’d put them in a limited human form. Get funky with it next time, and let the synth engineers imagination run wild. If I could do that, you know I’d have giant spider-squid hybrids with vaguely human minds running rampant over the cosmos.
Have you ever thought about or / and attempted to write your own SF novels or screenplays PZ?
Would be fascinating to see what you come up with and how you go with that – quite seriously, no sarc.
Guessing that you probly don’t have the time or inclination for it but still..
Of course, SF is often more about metaphorically examining and extrapolating from (& messaging / conveying truths about) the now rather than seriously attempting to predict the future than actually trying to be scientifically accurate as the main priority, again, still.
PS. Could convergent evotution do one helluva lotta of heavy lifting here?
Certainly basic morphologies and features do have obvs advantages and do tend to naurally recur, eg sharks, icythosaurs, dolphins.. & everything evolves into crabs eventually so I gather and ant eating critters – echidnas*, pangolins, um, anteaters, have similar features..
Exhibit A , Caecilians, worms, legless lizards, snakes, eels and nematodes.. the fossorial – & sometimes marine and sometimes terrestrial depending upon species lifestyle..
Physics sets limitations the best solutions to which are often at least similar and thus more likely to evolve as best suits..
.* Then there’s the co-incidental (?) similarity of the hegehog and the echidna…
Meh, the only good Predator was the one from 1987, but I’m biased because I met that one’s voice. (Fun fact: He also voiced Eeyore and Optimus Prime.) He explains how he came up with the vocals here and it is a great video:
https://youtu.be/gpjhI-eRE6c?si=LOZQwcpRn4zsdtQA
That man is the reason I could sit through Predator. I couldn’t handle the big “face reveal” until I found out he was the voice. Now that’s my favorite scene of any movie ever because of this!
I have to remark that in principle, rapid regeneration could be physically possible if there are some enormous energy reserves somewhere that can be mobilised in no time. The energetic breakdown could perhaps be something like a sudden shrinking of blood vessels.
I’m still waiting for Puppeteers.
@5 Chigau;
OMG! A Ringworld movie! Here, take my money!
Or, you know, science fiction. The creature was, perhaps, technologically enhanced.
BTW, do you ever enjoy any of these mainstream, big-budget, action/superhero flicks anymore?
Get funky with it next time, and let the synth engineers imagination run wild. If I could do that, you know I’d have giant spider-squid hybrids with vaguely human minds running rampant over the cosmos.
And kill enemies with webs and squid-ink? Please. I’d just send out a species of wolf-centaur hybrid, with opposable thumbs on all six hands/feet, plus a prehensile tail that can hold their weight and assist in climbing. They’d have a thick coat of fur to protect them in at least some harsher atmospheres (and also against bites and sings form large bugs like yours, NEENER). And wolves are pack-animals, so they’d be far better at unit-cohesion and chain-of-command than either spiders or squid. Also, wolf-centaurs look WAY cooler than big spider/squid thingies, which would help to win the hearts and minds of whichever population I need to liberate or conquer.
@Raging Bee #8:
…or eat.