Watching War Machine Gave Me An Experience I Never Got To Have With The Original Predator

Given my profession as an entertainment journalist/film critic, I don’t often get the luxury of going into any movie totally blind. Be it via CinemaBlend’s coverage, social media, trailers or word of mouth, I tend to keep abreast of new releases, and I thusly have a good idea of what I’m in for whenever the lights go down in a theater or I press play on a streaming service. Recently checking out director Patrick Hughes’ War Machine was a super rare exception, however, (all I knew going in was that it had a cast including Alan Ritchson, Dennis Quaid, and Esai Morales) and I’m super happy about it, as the genre switch that’s executed in the second half of the action film delivered the experience I feel I was always robbed of while watching the original Predator.

Structurally, the two movies are very similar. Both open as relatively familiar military dramas – the 2026 film following its protagonist through Army Ranger School and the 1987 sci-fi classic tracking a paramilitary rescue team trying to save a stranded politician in a Central American jungle – but things take a sharp left turn when the soldiers find themselves in a fight with an extraterrestrial armed with advanced technology and a murder-centric determination.

In the latter, though, I never got to be surprised by the presence of the alien, and not just because the film opens with a spacecraft falling to Earth; it features one of the most iconic big screen monsters of all time, and I didn’t see Predator until long after it had already cemented itself in pop culture history.

War Machine, on the other hand, totally took me by surprise – and I was tricked in large part because of the predictability of the opening sequence. As soon as I saw Alan Ritchson’s beard in his first scene, I knew that there was surely a time jump on the way that would see him clean shaven; and purely because I had no idea Jai Courtney was part of the cast, I had an inkling that his character wouldn’t stick around for very long. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Courtney was a corpse and the story jumped two years forward.

I felt as though I totally had the movie’s number from that point: Ritchson’s protagonist, only identified as 81, was meant to be recognized as the titular “war machine” because of his stoicism and extreme dedication to honoring his brother by completing his Ranger training, and the story would see him process his trauma and learn how live with his grief by becoming a leader again. In my defense, War Machine ultimately does do all of that… but I’m also willing to admit that I wholly ignored all of the flags hinting sci-fi action was on the way (including the news broadcast about the “asteroid” passing by Earth, which I just excused as a minimal effort at character building). When the alien twist finally arrived, it successfully blew my mind, and sent my enjoyment of everything to a much higher level.

Come December 2026 and the opportunity to reflect on all of my cinematic experiences from the previous 12 months, I can say with absolute surety that War Machine is not going to be a title that finds its way on to my annual Top 15 ranking. At the same time, I doubt that I forget the wonderful surprise it delivers to unsuspecting viewers and the great value in blindly buying a ticket and taking the ride.

War Machine is now available to stream with a Netflix subscription.