The Predator (2018)

The Predator (2018): written by Shane Black and Fred Dekker; directed by Shane Black; starring Boyd Holbrook (Quinn McKenna), Olivia Munn (Casey Bracket), Trevante Rhodes (Nebraska Williams), Thomas Jane (Baxley), Keegan-Michael Key (Coyle), Sterling K. Brown (Traeger), and Jacob Tremblay (Rory McKenna):

1. The Predator in this movie gets a definite article because it's 11-feet tall and comes with two Predator dogs and the ability to speak English.

2. The funniest line in the movie was apparently not written by writer-director Shane Black, who was not having a good week when he wrote this movie, but rather by Olivia Munn's sister.

3. Olivia Munn needs to hire an agent who stops putting her in front of green screens. She does look less discombobulated than she did in X-Men: Apocalypse.

4. Because there can only be one active woman in an action movie, Yvonne Strahovski gets sidelined for the most part even though The Predator kidnaps her son.

5. Boyd Holbrook, who plays the protagonist, Strahovski's ex-husband, and the father of that son, has negative charisma.

6. The son has autism. In the Predator universe, this makes him "the next step in human evolution!"

7. Shane Black labours so hard to make the wacky group of crazy soldiers who team up with Boyd Holbrook, um, wacky and memorable, that one can fairly see the flop sweat running down Black's face.

8. The last 20 minutes are so frenetic and (literally) dark that I don't know whether Sterling K. Brown's evil Black Ops guy is alive or dead when the movie ends.

9. The now infamous deleted scene probably involves our wacky group of Predator fighters procuring the RV that mysteriously appears 55 minutes into the movie.

10. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned down a cameo after reading the script.

There are a few moments, and it's not unbearably awful or anything. Lightly recommended.