{"id":49910,"date":"2022-06-14T06:48:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T06:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/35-years-ago-today-predator-was-released-to-some-shockingly-negative-reviews\/"},"modified":"2022-06-14T06:48:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T06:48:00","slug":"35-years-ago-today-predator-was-released-to-some-shockingly-negative-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/35-years-ago-today-predator-was-released-to-some-shockingly-negative-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"35 years ago today, Predator was released to some shockingly negative reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<h2>The prequel, Prey, arrives this August.<\/h2>\n<p>We know what the title says, but excuse us while we talk a little while about <strong>The Witches of Eastwick<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Released in cinemas on 12 June, 1987, the weird horror-comedy hybrid was directed by George Miller (what a fabulously eclectic filmography that man has, from Babe to Mad Max: Fury Road), and stars Jack Nicholson as The Devil, who is attempting to seduce Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher, in the hopes they will birth him a son.<\/p>\n<p>It had a budget of $ 22 million, and was a moderate hit, making $ 64 million in North America alone (the worldwide box office is not recorded, for some reason), and critics were also moderately friendly towards it, as the movie scored 67% on Metacritic.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"ast-oembed-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Witches of Eastwick (1987) Official Trailer #1 - Jack Nicholson, Cher Horror Comedy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mLs1y_KSTKk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\"><\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So why are we talking about The Witches of Eastwick?  Well, on the very same day that movie was released, another weird horror hybrid was also released in cinemas: <strong>Predator<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Yep, Arnie&#8217;s action-movie-that-is-actually-a-horror-movie was launched in cinemas as a sort of macho-counter-programming movie, hoping to draw the men in, as the women flocked to see Nicholson as a horny demon.<\/p>\n<p>Shockingly, Predator had a much smaller budget than The Witches of Eastwick (reportedly as low as $ 15 million), and even more shockingly, had a smaller box office result in North America &#8211; just $ 59 million.<\/p>\n<p>And as if all of that wasn&#8217;t shocking enough, critics did not care for it at all, landing with a score of just 45% on Metacritic.<\/p>\n<p>In hindsight, some of the reviews are actually sort of hilarious:<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Los Angeles Times:<\/strong> &#8220;It&#8217;s arguably one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made as a major studio movie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Washington Post:<\/strong> &#8220;Frankly, scarier critters have checked into bad hotels.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>San Francisco Chronicle:<\/strong> &#8220;The movie, a rather pointless thing when you get down to it, has little of the provocative intelligence that was found in Terminator.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The New York Times:<\/strong> &#8220;Alternately grisly and dull, with few surprises.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, hindsight has reframed Predator as one of Arnie&#8217;s very best movies, and one of the greatest (and only) mash-ups of action and horror ever made.<\/p>\n<p>For director John McTiernan, it arrived just one year ahead of Die Hard, making for a killer one-two punch (and the third punch arriving two years later, with The Hunt For Red October).<\/p>\n<p>For Arnie, as of his filmography, Predator had a lower critical score than Conan The Destroyer, Commando, The Running Man, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and just barely landed above Last Action Hero (another of his movies that has been re-evaluated with time).<\/p>\n<p>That didn&#8217;t stop Hollywood from giving it a sequel (Predator 2), and then a sort-of-reboot (Predators), and then a sort-of-reboot \/ sequel (The Predator), and this August, a prequel ( Prey).<\/p>\n<div class=\"c-message_kit__gutter\">\n<div class=\"c-message_kit__gutter__right\" role=\"presentation\" data-qa=\"message_content\">\n<div class=\"c-message_kit__blocks c-message_kit__blocks--rich_text\">\n<div class=\"c-message__message_blocks c-message__message_blocks--rich_text\" data-qa=\"message-text\">\n<div class=\"p-block_kit_renderer\" data-qa=\"block-kit-renderer\">\n<div class=\"p-block_kit_renderer__block_wrapper p-block_kit_renderer__block_wrapper--first\">\n<div class=\"p-rich_text_block\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p>Predator is available to watch right now on Disney +.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><div class=\"ast-oembed-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Predator (1987) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_1wDBNHYDv8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p><em>Clips via MovieClips Classic<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n    if (consentManager.isAllowed('facebook')) {\n        !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\nn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;\nn.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\nt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,\ndocument,'script','\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');<\/p>\n<p>fbq('init', '453001074905905');\nfbq('track', \"PageView\");\nfbq('track', 'ViewContent');<\/p>\n<p>        consentManager.sentEventFbPixel = true;\n    }\n    <\/script>    .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The prequel, Prey, arrives this August. We know what the title says, but excuse us while we talk a little while about The Witches of Eastwick. Released in cinemas on 12 June, 1987, the weird horror-comedy hybrid was directed by George Miller (what a fabulously eclectic filmography that man has, from Babe to Mad Max: &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/35-years-ago-today-predator-was-released-to-some-shockingly-negative-reviews\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">35 years ago today, Predator was released to some shockingly negative reviews<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.maximummedia.ie\/joe_ie\/eyJkYXRhIjoie1widXJsXCI6XCJodHRwOlxcXC9cXFwvbWVkaWEtam9lLm1heGltdW1tZWRpYS5pZS5zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tXFxcL3dwLWNvbnRlbnRcXFwvdXBsb2Fkc1xcXC8yMDE4XFxcLzA5XFxcLzEzMTM0NTI5XFxcL3ByZWRhdG9yLTEwMjR4NTU1LmpwZ1wiLFwid2lkdGhcIjo2NDcsXCJoZWlnaHRcIjozNDAsXCJkZWZhdWx0XCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL3d3dy5qb2UuaWVcXFwvYXNzZXRzXFxcL2ltYWdlc1xcXC9qb2VcXFwvbm8taW1hZ2UucG5nP2lkPTI2NGEyZGJlMzcwZjJjNjc1ZmNkXCIsXCJvcHRpb25zXCI6W119IiwiaGFzaCI6ImVmNGE2NWEzMjZiMTNjZGQ4YjBlNDdmMGJhN2IyNmFjZWQ3Yjg0YzYifQ==\/predator-1024x555.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}