The Predator (Movie Novelization) Review

Getting through some of the backlog, and next up is the movie novelization of The Predator. The film itself was… fine. Not amazing, not awful. So I was curious if the novelization would expand on the story and flesh things out.

Title: The Predator (Link to Amazon)
Author: Christopher Golden

Description:
This is the official novelization of Shane Black’s The Predator. Based on the screenplay by Shane Black and Fred Dekker, it stars Yvonne Strahovski, Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling Brown, Thomas Jane, Jake Busey, and more. From the edges of space to the woods of southern Georgia, the hunt comes home as humanity faces the deadliest Yautja yet.

Review

Christopher Golden does a solid job converting the movie into prose. It’s action-packed, fast-paced, and hits all the major beats. The problem? It moves too fast. The Predator’s arrival is rushed, the main villain’s death happens so quickly I had to flip back to make sure I didn’t miss it, and there’s very little room to breathe.

What I really missed was extra material. Normally, novelizations give us a peek at cut scenes, expanded lore, or deeper character work. Here, it’s basically a straight script-to-page adaptation, and it even feels like parts were trimmed. The characters land flat, making it hard to care when they die, and without any added depth, there’s no real reason to pick this over the film.

If I could do it over, I’d skip the book and just rewatch the movie. It’s not a terrible read, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Go watch the film, then swing by my YouTube channel and say hi.

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