Filmic Inertia [movies]

Predator 2

Now with more Jamaicans!

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With the country's first African-American president taking office last week, it's easy for most Americans to start getting the idea that racism is dead in this country.

But though our nation is finally ready to let a black man run the country, America still has a hard time with the idea of ethnic heroes being portrayed in our movies, comics, magazines and television shows.

My friends and I have a game, it's called "The Name 10 Black Actors Game." It's fairly simple. There are no rules. You just ask a friend, a co-worker, a random person in a bar, etc. to name 10 working black actors off the top of their head.

I guarantee the first answer will be Denzel Washington, the second answer will be Will Smith and the third answer will maybe be Samuel L. Jackson if they've really got their thinking cap on. The fourth answer may take awhile ... it may not ever come, depending on who you're talking to.

There just aren't that many prominent black actors out there, sure, but more importantly, there aren't that many mainstream movies that want to acknowledge that black people are anything more than sidekicks.

That's why, whenever I get the chance, I pull out my trusty old copy of "Predator 2" and slip it in the DVD player. It's one of the only movies I can think of where the hero of the story, the real hero, is a normal guy that just happens to be black. He doesn't have a snappy retort to everything, he doesn't talk jive, he isn't a caricature of what white people think black men are like - he's just a dude with a shit job in a really fucked up city with some seriously messed up stuff going on around him.

It's refreshing to see in a world where black characters in movies have to basically walk around with a shirt that says "Hey, I'm the Black Guy!" in huge day-glo letters, or where roles have to be re-written for Will Smith by his own private writing team because he couldn't just play any old character - he has to be sassy-talking and street-wise or the world just wouldn't know what to think of him.

Danny Glover got a lot of attention for doing the Lethal Weapon movies because, well, Mel Gibson was standing right there next to him the whole time and people were bound to notice him sooner or later. But that audience didn't follow him over to "Predator 2," which really is a shame because he's great in it. Glover's role obviously wasn't written for a black guy. The filmmakers could have just as easily cast James Caan - his character's name is Mike Harrigan for chrissake - but that's part of what makes this movie such a one of a kind achievement.

The role was written for a white guy, it could have easily been played by a white guy, the movie it was a sequel of starred a white guy and it still went to Danny Glover! Against all odds. When the hell does that happen? Almost never, folks. Almost never. Hollywood Rule No. 5: Never cast a black actor unless absolutely necessary.

But our cultural stereotypes don't stop with race - a lot of people will ignorantly argue that sequels are never as good as the original movies that spawned them. But you know what? A lot of people think Britney Spears is a good singer. A lot of people think George W. Bush was a good president. A lot of people say a lot of shit, but it doesn't make it true.

The reason most sequels fail is because the people involved are just trying to recreate the magic that succeeded for them the first time around. It's an easy pitfall.

Unfortunately, what the filmmakers fail to realize more often than not is that it was probably the uniqueness of the original that was appealing to the fans in the first place. This is just another area where "Predator 2" defies all odds.

"Predator 2" is nothing like "Predator." Sure, the alien is the same, and sure, they're basically both about lone badasses outclassing said alien with nothing but their own bootstraps, but that's pretty much where the similarities die.

First difference: "Predator 2" abandons the jungle for a dystopic future Los Angeles. Second difference: it's basically a sci-fi noir flick, which as a film geek, I love. Third difference: the original "Predator" contains absolutely no Jamaicans, while the sequel - chock full of those rudeboys.

The point is, it would have been super easy to just hire another five or six roided-out beefhead b-list actors, give them some big guns, fly them to the part of L.A. that looks most like a jungle and had a "Predator" sequel knocked out in like ... two weeks, max. But they didn't do that, and I, for one, commend them for not taking the easy route. Instead, they created a whole new setting, a whole new backstory and a whole new set of characters.

They didn't have to, but they did. They broke Hollywood Rule No. 4: Never do more work than is absolutely necessary.

That's not to say this movie is completely, painstakingly original - it does follow a lot of the action movie formulas and lone cop cliches, but I don't have a problem with that. Point me to a movie that isn't cliche in some way and I'll gladly illuminate you as to something you overlooked. But what matters most to me when watching a movie is not whether I've heard someone express a similar sentiment in another movie, but that I can buy what's taking place on screen as being organic to the story being presented.

In this case, yeah, I totally buy it. If I was Lt. Mike Harrigan and this was happening to me, I can't say I'd react any differently than Danny Glover does. I'd be cussing my boss out, going off on my own and trying to get to the bottom of it.

Call me cliche, but that just seems like the logical thing to do. And, you know what? It worked! He caught the bad guy, solved the mystery and put an end to the problem. Can't argue with results.

"Predator 2" will always hold a special place in my heart because even with its cliches, even though it's a sequel, it's still more original than 99 percent of movies being churned out today. It reminds me that you don't always have to go the obvious route to make a great movie. You don't always have to cast the obvious guy that you think audiences will want to see, you don't always have to put forth the bare minimum of effort and you don't always have to beat a dead horse.

The film industry has a lot of crazy, self-imposed notions of what will bring them success. They don't like taking risks, they don't like standing on shaky ground when their money is on the line.

I can certainly understand where they're coming from in that approach, but the problem with that mentality is that it leads us to situations like what we're experiencing today where the same five stars appear in variations of the same five movies over and over again, year after year.

Nobody is creating anything, they're just trying to appropriate something that's already proven successful. Nothing changes.

But look around you. Things are changing in the real world and it's time that our media reflects those changes.

So now that Barack Obama is in the Oval Office, can we please get some color up there on the silver screen? Can we see somebody at least attempt not to follow the beaten path? Please?