For those of you keeping an eye on the statuses of some of our favorite scary franchises, the last few days have been incredibly busy. Not only did Universal show off some footage from the upcoming Halloween reboot at CinemaCon yesterday, but today saw 20th Century Fox show off footage from Shane Black's The Predator after a number of teases from the director. Now audience reactions have started to hit the web, and it looks like opinions are decidedly mixed. CinemaBlend's own Sean O'Connell was in attendance to see the footage, and he took to social media to confirm that the film looks merely fine. He wrote:
So, while Shane Black's The Predator doesn't necessarily look bad, Sean O'Connell's Twitter response to the footage seems to indicate that it's not necessarily a showstopper. The Predator sounds like a fine follow-up to the films that preceded it, but our reaction to the footage isn't necessarily glowing yet. As far as the plot is concerned, the film features Logan's Boyd Holbrook as a soldier whose squad comes under attack by the titular hunter, and X-Men: Apocalypse star Olivia Munn as a scientist with a deeper understanding of the Predator species.
That opinion of The Predator footage largely seemed echoed by the reaction of io9's Germain Lussier. In fact, in his post-presentation social post, Germain similarly explained that the film looks fine enough, but tempered his opinions with the reminder that he has faith in Shane Black and Fred Dekker to do the source material justice. Lussier wrote:
Of course, there were more positive reactions to the footage as well. In fact, The Globe And Mail editor Barry Hertz took to social media after the screening to note his excitement for the material and the abundance of humor present in the footage, particularly involving one notable scene with Room star Jacob Tremblay. He specifically said:
Finally, we round things out with the reaction from Slashfilm editor Peter Sciretta, who shared Barry Hertz's largely positive response to The Predator's footage and noted a strong sense of optimism for the film's bloody, jungle-based action. Sciretta wrote:
So with those reactions in mind, it looks like we still don't know exactly what to expect from The Predator just yet. The film hasn't won over everyone who has seen footage just yet, but it also seems to have earned enough fans to pique our interest and get the excitement turned up a bit more. Now it's mostly a matter of waiting to see how causal members of the mainstream audience respond to footage when it finally hits the web.
On that note, CinemaBlend will bring you more details related to The Predator as news pertaining to the film breaks. Until then, mark down your calendars and watch out for its September 14 theatrical release.
