Can Rodriguez Revitalize The Predator Franchise Without Going AVP?

We've been very uneasy about Robert Rodriguez's Predator reboot for some time now. Now that the director has spilled a few ideas for his space-set action movie, we're even more concerned... but excited nonetheless.

In an interview with Ain't It Cool News, Rodriguez discussed his plans for the dreadlocked beasties. The director mentions that his treatment to the monster film is very R rated, which is a step in the right direction. He also discusses that adding the "s" to the end of Predator sounds like more of a nod to what James Cameron did for Ridley Scott's Alien, but I get the feeling that this could mean that there will most likely be more than one big bad alien, which sounds like a bad idea. I'm wary of his ideas to explore the alien universe, with more than one Predator running around. The core brilliance of this franchise comes from its simple concept, which is "Human versus beast."

Rodriguez talks about his original treatment and ideas for the feature, which have not been fleshed out yet with an actual screenwriter, so bare in mind these are just ideas... that will most likely be used in the film.

"I set it on a jungle-like Predator planet. It was just a writing assignment, so I didn't have to worry about budget constraints or how the movie would actually get made with the technology that existed back then, so I just wrote any cool thing I could come up with... "

"We'd create new otherworldly characters while not taking away from the draw our main Predator has. I think another reason I called it Predators was to mark it as a project that should be taken seriously by a filmmaker to make a worthy follow-up to a classic, much in the way Cameron made Aliens a compelling work on its own, following Ridley Scott's Alien."

Hmmm introducing new aliens, I'm not so sure how I feel about that. One of the reasons I adore Predator is because that ONE alien alone is so unstoppable that it can destroy an entire city, or a team of trained killers, all juiced-up on steroids and red meat. Until the beast comes up against Dutch, and it becomes a mano-a-alien showdown of biceps and wits. He'll conquer the beast with his savvy skils and muscles, or die trying. A herd of Predators would wipe out the human population, especially on their own turf.

Sure, Danny Glover wasn't a juiced up commando, but he had the home team advantage. And of course, the second film did show more than one Predator at the end, but only one of them went hunting, because that was the Predator code. Remember the final scene — it's about respect for the mutual warriors not an all out assault. Featuring more than one Predator changes the rules completely, and you risk spawning another AVP.

While new aliens are always nice, I'm much more interested in the alien-human throw down than exploring a new universe. I hope that if they're going in this direction, it eventually becomes a stripped down one on one fight and not a whole space battle, because in truth, that's all I really want from my Predators.