Okay, Badlands really has nothing to do with the first movie, but it's one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, and I found it highly amusing to see today that the two most recent films in my AMC app are Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Predator:Badlands, in light of that datum. So I am using it as the title of a double review.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce Springsteen, during a period in 1981-82, following his tour for "The River". The film kicks off with Springsteen wrapping up the tour, before going off to hole up in a rental house in Colt's Neck to work on his next album. With only occasional meetings with his producer, John Landau, played by Jeremy Strong, and tech support visits from a guy called Mike, played by Paul Walter Hauser, he plays with music and wanders the area, occasionally jamming in a club with a local band, and starting a relationship with a single mom waitress, who may or may not be historical, but she's not either of his IRL wives. Interspersed are memories of his childhood and his difficult relationship with his father, played by Stephen Graham, who was a detective in the Venom movies and Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire. The elder Springsteen was apparently a surly drunk, whom young Bruce was often sent by his mother to fetch home from bars, with the typical helping of domestic abuse, but there were good memories, too, and his relationship with his father is an ongoing theme in the film, with the differences and similarities between their childhood & adulthood relationships shown as well.

The film tries to detail an introspective journey on Springsteen's part through a transitional period in his life. Historically, it is known that his follow-up to "The River" was "Nebraska," a deeply personal album, whose title track is an attempt to get inside the head of mass murderer, Charles Starkweather. For my money, whatever artistic value is to be found in the piece, Billy Joel gave the man and his crimes more musical attention than they deserve on his much more fun album seven years later, "Storm Front." Be that as it may, the album to follow "Nebraska" would be "Born in the USA", the one that made Springsteen a global superstar, and provides most of the radio play of his discography in the forty years since its release. So "Nebraska" represents, per this film, Springsteen's own struggle with his stardom and success and the resultant estrangement from his working class roots. According to the film, he was writing both albums at once, and recorded the songs for both in the studio together, but was unable to reconcile the rock of BitU, with the more personal material that he would release as "Nebraska" as well as being dissatisfied by the sound of the band and recording. As far as the album relates to the plot, it's about Springsteen's efforts to make and keep the album as the personal journey he composed it as.

White gives a great performance as Springsteen, disappearing into the role. I don't have the knowledge or qualifications to judge his singing, or know if it was him, or just technical wizardry making him sound like The Boss, but I thought the outcome was pretty damn close. The film does a good job thematically foreshadowing, or embodying, Bruce's journeys with his physical journeys in the story and his relationships, but the script can also be a little on the nose, such as a scene where the producer actually explains the character arc to his wife, or the resolution of the arc between Bruce and Doug. They also seem to have borrowed too much from the musician biopic formula, in attempting to depict Springsteen's struggles to get "Nebraska" made the way he wants it, as a visionary struggling artist sticking to his guns against the pressure of The Man, but come on. This was a guy with several best selling albums, coming off a sold-out tour, who had already turned in a couple of certain hits for a future release. This was not a kid with a garage band trying to break into the industry on his own terms. And the film at least does show this to be the case, that his producers recognized the quality of "Nebraska" even as they doubted its commercial potential, and Springsteen's conditions didn't help in that regard either, but ultimately, they were willing to do it, because he's Bruce Springsteen. So it's not like they lean too hard on that.

Overall, I think it was a good character piece, and I say that as someone without much in common with IRL Bruce Springsteen beyond our state of birth and class origins, or any real admiration for him as anything other than an entertainer. Nonetheless, this was one of the better and more sympathetic stories I've seen about a character trying be an artist over an entertainer.

For those curious about the soundtrack, it's mostly music from "Nebraska" being performed naturally enough, although he shuts off the radio at one point when one of his at-the-time bigger hits (either Blinded by the Light or Hungry Heart) comes on. The film does, however, open with Springsteen and the E-Street band (actors, not the actual surviving members, who, incidentally, are not at all characters in this film, and I don't think they have any dialogue in the 2 or 3 scenes where they appear) performing "Born to Run" and later on, we get a scene of them recording "Born in the USA" as the band and the production team get increasingly into it as the song goes on.

I think it's been one of the better theatrical releases I've seen lately.

Of course, that list includes the last Downton Abbey movie.

Predator:Badlands
This doesn't quite seem right.
Predator:Badlands
There I fixed it.

Remember the good one that came out in the 80s (kind of like Springsteen, come to think about it)? The memes it gave us, like "I ain't got time to bleed," and the Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers handshake? Remember how Shane Black proved what a great actor he actually is, by making you think he belonged for even a split second on the same screen as Weathers (RIP), Bill Duke, two (yes, two) future US state governors in Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, before going on to be the dipshit who wrote & directed "The Predator" ? Well, that was then. This is the time where everything not baseball sucks.

Someone decided that it was time for the Predator to be a protagonist. Someone decided that they were going to make a third attempt at making a Weyland-Yutani synthetic in female form be not annoying or off-putting (they failed). Someone decided that the theme of a Predator's character arc (why is this time forcing me to use those last three words in that order?!?!? ) needed to be "found family." I am not hard to please when it comes to Predator movies. I liked Predators. I enjoyed Aliens vs Predator:Requiem. I found positive things to say about The Predator. I mostly stayed awake through AVP and Prey. See how easy an audience I am? If you want to just look at this as an action movie about an alien fighting other aliens, it's not the worst thing in the world, I guess. I never know what people are talking about when they complain about CGI, so I can't help you there. If you need to take a particularly undiscerning child to the movies, this one will probably do nicely. There's no sex or swearing (because there are no humans) and the plot and character work is at about that intellectual level.

Anyway, the protagonist of the movie is a Yautja, which normal people call a Predator, named Dek, who is scorned by his clan for being small and weak. Nonetheless he trains with his big brother in the ways of a Predator. Except, not. Because they train with swords, not hunting weapons. And then, despite the rejection of their father, he ends up going to the most dangerous planet the Predators know about, to prove himself by killing the most dangerous known creature in the Predators' bestiary, a Kelicks, I think. He ends up crash landing without most of his gear, and he has not earned his cloaking device, and what gear he retains besides his sword with its lightsaber edge is soon lost to him in a hilariously contrived attack by the local fauna. Dek soon finds half a synthetic named Thia, who looks like Elle Fanning, and has come to this planet on a research trip and has been programmed with heightened sensitivity to make her better able to understand the dangerous animals. It also has the ability to speak Predator-language, but the film does not want to waste the actress' oral diarrhea in subtitles, so it soon switches to a "universal translator" function whereby the actress can speak English, and Dek will hear it speaking in Predator. Anyway, Thia needs locomotive capabilities, because the Kelicks broke off its legs, so it offers Dek a deal, to guide him to the Kelicks in exchange of being carried there. They also run across an allegedly cute monkey thing, which Thia wants to adopt and Dek does not. They have adventures, and Dek is basically an asshole until it's time for him to Learn The Lesson, at which point he completely switches his motivation and values to be pleasing to a Disney test audience (yes, this is Disney, too), with no explicable reason for it. He is also racing against time because the rest of Thia's team of synthetics are also hunting the Kelicks and this is automatically a bad thing, because Weyland-Yutani synethics. Except not. They are explicitly stated to want the Kelicks because its regenerative capabilities will be useful to their human masters. At which point I have to ask "Why are we rooting for Dek, who is A. an asshole, B. a member of an asshole species that are not humans, and C. in opposition to a ... force, for lack of a better word that wants to actually help the human race, even if for an evil profit (excuse me, Disney, are you giving away showings of this movie for free?)?" Leading the antagonistic synthetics is Tessa, another of Thia's model, but programmed for field work and fighter, where Thia is programmed for lab analysis. Thia really, really like Tessa, and Tessa seems to have made Thia's well-being a higher priority than their sapient masters might have wished, but it's a measure of how far society has fallen that I found myself relieved and grateful that their relationship was merely ficitiously sororal, instead of romantic. Anyway, I believe Tessa is just Elle Fanning in different makeup again, and then there are a bunch of lesser synthetics all played by the same man. I guess this is so we don't have to feel bad about Dek fighting and killing humans? Except it doesn't work, because their mission is for humans, while Dek's is about being accepted and gaining status in his asshole society. And he's an asshole.

Except on bit is that they seem to think that part of his being an asshole is his refusal to recognize Thia's personhood and calling it a tool. It's even implied that the only reason Dek takes Thia along is because even though "Predators hunt alone" Thia does not count, because it is a tool. Because that is literally true. At one point, when Thia is attempting to reattach its legs, we are supposed to feel bad and worried, because Dek is fighting a monster nearby and Thia's self-repairs could be thwarted. Okay, and why? Because, programs duplicating intellect and self-awareness means robots can be people? At one point, Thia tries to engage with Dek on the topic of leadership qualities and cites the ethical superiority of wolves, because the leader of the pack is the one that takes care of the other wolves. A. I doubt it. B. So what? Why should Dek care? C. Wolves don't have ethics. They do what they do because of instincts. D. Their ways have limits. They nearly got wiped out by a bunch of selfish monkeys, who reversed course and let them exist and even protected them, because some monkeys got sentimental about them.

Anyway, in addition to all the bullshit about "characters" who are not human, and don't really have characters, when you get right down to it, the science fiction stuff is rather dicey too. Just as one example, the Mu/Th/Er program on the synthetics' ship talks to Tessa the same way it talked to Ripley & co on the Nostromo and other vessels. Why do two advanced AI computers need to communicate using vocalized English sounds? Why do Predators, famous for their shoulder-mounted blaster guns, with targeting lasers, also have bows with lightsaber strings? Why do they have grenades that can instantly freeze everything in an area the size of a small room, no matter how big or strong they are? They don't remotely fight fair, but what is the point of something like that if you're hunting for sport and trophies?

It's just dumb. Maybe it's a little passable as a stand-alone generic alien warrior film, but by calling it a Predator movie, you just invite comparisons with the original, with which it has nothing in common, other than Dek and the eponymous antagonist of the first film being nominally members of the same species. So were George Patton and Mohandas Ghandi, who were contemporaries and the subjects of Academy-Award-winning biopics. But no one would call those films the same thing or the same kind of movie.