Fred Dekker

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Underexposed–New book unearths 50 movies from major filmmakers that almost made it to your theater

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May 27, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Stanley Kubrick’s The Lord of the Rings starring The Beatles. Peter Jackson’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. George Miller’s Justice League. Robert Rodriguez’s Barbarella. Shane Black’s The Monster Squad. Two John Carpenter movies you’ve never seen. If you’re wondering what the best movie was in any given year, you have plenty of options. You can look for the movie that had the biggest take at the box office. You can look to critic reviews. You can scroll through the Internet Movie Database. You can review awards lists or Alternate Oscars. Or you can just watch the movies and choose for yourself. Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, a new book arriving this month from Abrams, could have been called False Starts–it’s a book about movies that almost made it to the big screen.

Peppered with movie poster mock-ups from art group PosterSpy, filmmaker and film enthusiast Joshua Hull tracked down interesting histories of some of the best and most quirky movies that almost got made, but were either abandoned, had legal rights issues, lack of funding, lack of interest, or simply were not made to save audiences from a bad idea. They aren’t from obscure creators, either. The list includes projects from Alfred Hitchcock to Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg–and some are ideas that sound like they could have been pretty great. What were they thinking? Find out in this book.

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Tags: Abrams Books, Alfred Hitchcock, Alien 5, Aliens 5, Alternate Oscars, Andy Wachowski, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cheech and Chong, Chloe Grace Moretz The Little Mermaid, Chloe Moretz movies, David Fincher, David Lynch, film production, filmmaking, Fletch 3 movie, Fletch Won, Fred Dekker, George Miller, Guillermo del Toro, Hollywood movie business, Jason vs Cheech & Chong, Joel Schumacher, John Carpenter, John Carpenter Shadow Company, John Hughes, John Hughes Oil & Vinegar, Joshua Hull, Kevin Smith, Kurt Russell, Maya Hawke, Maya Hawke The Little Mermaid, Neill Blomkamp, Neill Blomkamp Alien 5, Peter Jackson, Peter Jackson A Nightmare on Elm Street, PosterSpy, Quentin Tarentino, Ridley Scott, Robert Rodriguez, Shadow Company, Shane Black, Shane Black The Monster Squad, Sofia Coppola The Little Mermaid, Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick The Lord of the Rings, Steven Spielberg, The Beatles, The Coen Brothers, The Lord of the Rings, The Wachowskis, Tim Burton, Underexposed book preview, Underexposed book review, Underexposed The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, Underexposed The 50 Greatest Movies Never made book review

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The Predator: The Art and Making of the Film takes fans inside Shane Black’s creative vision

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October 17, 2018

Review by C.J. Bunce

Not since the original Predator, Alien, and Aliens has Hollywood been able to match these sci-fi classics, despite attempts with eight sequels in these franchises. But the ninth attempt–this summer’s release of The Predator–has come the closest to matching that classic blend of sci-fi, horror, future military, and action thriller. In the new behind-the-scenes book The Predator: The Art and Making of the Film, writer James Nolan explains why director Shane Black’s return to the franchise after 30 years was the right stuff needed to bring the excitement and fun back for fans of the original genre-defining alien hunter.

The colorful hardcover includes Black’s own multi-page mission statement provided to the cast and crew, where he provides a truly unique look into the mind of a Hollywood director and storyteller. He unveils the risks, the challenges, and his choices to resurrect the spirit of 1980s blockbuster action movies, while providing an update that is both loyal to the original movie and its ground-breaking creators like Stan Winston, while carrying forward a future vision for the film series. Hired to serve as writer on the original 1987 film, Black chose to take on an acting role instead, and the rest was sci-fi history–until he was entrusted last year to helm this sequel. To provide a first-hand account of production, Nolan interviewed Black, his writing partner Fred Dekker, key cast members Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Trevante Rhodes, Jake Busey, Jacob Tremblay, Thomas Jane, Keegan-Michael Key, and Augusto Aguilera, Predator actor Brian Prince, stunt performer Trevor Addie, production designer Martin Whist, director of photography Larry Fong, special effects supervisor Jonathan Rothbart, set decorator Hamish Purdy, costume designer Tish Monaghan, prop master David Dowling, producer Bill Bannerman, special effects icons Tom Woodruff, Jr. and Alec Gillis, and many more.

The biggest attraction in the book is the detailed photography of the interiors of the two alien spaceships and the armor and props. Readers get to see concept artwork, computer mock-ups, designs, in-process photographs, and close-up stills. In many films props are just set decoration that help to create the environment, but in The Predator the prop gauntlet, the helmet, and especially the “kudjad” spaceship key factor directly into the mystery. Who could ever get enough of the aliens–the dreadlocks, those teeth, the shoulder cannon? And then there’s the giant hunter, whose size and ship also factor into not just the finale, but the future of the films.

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The Predator–A wall-to-wall blast for fans of the franchise and military sci-fi action movies

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September 27, 2018

Review by C.J. Bunce

Shane Black has finally delivered what fans of the Predator alien have been after since they first saw Arnold Schwarzenegger take the creature on in the original 1987 film that featured Black in an acting role as one of the marines. The movie The Predator, in theaters now, delivers exactly as promised. More Predators. Bigger and badder alien fight scenes. Great new sci-fi special effects tech. A wall-to-wall movie of rude jokes and one-liners. A squad of maladjusted, badass misfits in the realm of The Dirty Dozen (if every character was played as Telly Savalas’s character), only this time the squad isn’t recruited for a suicide mission to fight the bad guys. The surprise comes with an actual, serviceable plot that knocks the predecessor sequels out of the ranking (some elements… gasp… it even handles better than the original).

For diehard fans of the franchise who read the prequel novel (a great read we reviewed here earlier at borg) the movie lives up to the introduction provided in the book, which gave plenty of backstory for Sterling K. Brown’s pseudo-military leader Will Traeger–one of the movie’s key villains. Screenplay writers Shane Black and Fred Dekker include an ambitious, layered story with interesting subplots. One thread follows a boy played by played by Jacob Tremblay, the autistic son of star Boyd Holbrook’s tough Captain McKenna. The kid begins to play with what can only be described as “really cool alien tech” his dad sends him in the mail. Olivia Munn gets to play her most badass character yet, a biologist called in to work with the research group that has caught a Predator, being studied in a lab led by Jake Busey, who plays the son of the character his father Gary Busey played in Predator 2–Jake Busey offers a solid performance as a low-key scientist that could make it back for a future sequel. Another subplot follows the alien hunters as they each search for some secret objects. The ensemble ad hoc military unit that takes on the Predator includes a diverse team of actors pulling together a chaotic brand of chemistry: Trevante Rhoades, Thomas Jane, Augusto Aguilera, and Keegan-Michael Key. Another subplot sets up the next film nicely, a new phase for Predators this film only touches on.

The reason we see more than one kind of Predator is explained in the film, but each has incredible updated props and costumes, and the plot makes great use of both. It’s all loyal to the original. The best part of the 1987 film was the absence of the alien throughout the film, appearing sporadically, menacingly, like the shark in Jaws. We don’t see much more of the alien in this movie, but we get to see what he looks like head to toe in the lab, we get to see how his arm gauntlet and helmet work, and plenty of action scenes as in the original. One character even gets into the head of a Predator (sort of) to understand its technology and motivations.

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Hunters and Hunted–Prepare for the return of The Predator with new prequel novel

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August 13, 2018

Review by C.J. Bunce

Shane Black, director and screenplay writer of next month’s sci-fi action film The Predator, could have gone in any direction with his return of the Yautja alien hunters to Earth. He, along with co-screenplay writer Fred Dekker, decided to continue onward to the present day following the events of Predator 2. Since the third film, 2010’s Predators, was set away from Earth it doesn’t factor in to the new film and neither does 2004’s Aliens vs Predator and 2007’s Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, so The Predator is basically Predator 3. If you missed the latest trailer, check it out here. The first trailer (and the movie) begin with a child opening a package where he finds a strange futuristic device. His play with the device ends up triggering the return of one or more Predators to the planet. So what happened between Predator 2 and this kid handling the device? You can find out in The Predator: Hunters and Hunted, the official movie prequel to Shane Black’s The Predator, from author James A. Moore.

The novel follows a single Predator on a hunting excursion to southern Georgia in alligator country where he starts plucking off townsfolk, biker gang members and local law enforcement. Derived from the team headed up by Gary Busey’s Peter Keyes in Predator 2, a new government-funded initiative is focused on locating and capturing one of these aliens, and this Georgia sighting has been their first lead since an appearance in Los Angeles back in 1997. We get a brief appearance from Keyes’ son Sean (to be played by Jake Busey in the new movie), but the focal point is an opportunist named Will Traeger–Sterling K. Brown’s character in the new film–who is carefully manipulating both a military special ops unit called the Reapers and Congressional leadership to gain full control of Keyes’ project, now called Project Stargazer. Traeger’s impediment is the current project lead, General Woodhurst, a four-star general played by Edward James Olmos in early cuts of the film (later to be excised entirely from the final cut). Woodhurst is very much like Olmos’ General Adama in Battlestar Galactica, a military strategist more than someone on the front lines with the troops. Woodhurst and Traeger are the guys in Washington, DC, trying to gain funding while answering to the federal agencies dolling it out.

A Yautja alien in Shane Black’s September theatrical release, The Predator.

For most readers the more interesting part of the prequel novel will be the viewpoint of the Predator. While not giving us the play-by-play of the bureaucrats, the story alternates between the Predator’s perspective and thoughts and the Reapers’ efforts to capture him (the Predator’s vantage was also a feature of the novelization of Predator 2). The best scene in the book is entirely removed from everything else–an inspired, vivid one-on-one battle with an alligator. Why waste time on these puny humans when you have a real threat like that? The prequel novel is key to the coming movie because it establishes from the Predator’s perspective an important code that the hunters must follow. Unless this gets recounted in the movie, it’s some key data to know before heading into the theater.

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