Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
The soldier whose parachute didn't open, and who fell to his death, was Dutch from the first film!
Poor guy survived the events of the first movie with sheer badassery only to splat onto the ground due to faulty equipment.- If this is actually proved canon, I will laugh my ass off. And then feel horrible for laughing.
- They show the guy and it is clearly someone else.
This is the Yautja's home planet!
just cause it'd be too badass not to see!- I dunno, they showed the Pred homeworld in AvP: Requiem. This was stated as a "game preserve" and only one ship was present...
The idea of 'Seasons' isn't quite accurate.
They don't drop in one batch at a time, they continually drop in batches of animals to hunt. This is partially confirmed by Noland having been there for nearly forty years, describes ten seasons, yet the dead soldier at the beginning is only 'two weeks' dead (roughly) and they drop in a new batch right at the end. Perhaps they hunt for all of what amounts to a 'summer', then take the rest of the year off. So assuming a much bigger planet than ours, Noland's 'ten seasons' equating to about one every four Earth years instead becomes one a year accounting for an extra long year. Those picked from Earth are replaced with biological duplicates.
Most of the cast could go missing without causing a stir, but the authorities would definitely notice an inmate vanishing from death row. The humans picked to be hunted would be lifted out and replaced with dead duplicates. Their autopsies would conclude death from bullet wounds, embolisms, or some other cause that would not be mysterious under the circumstances.- But isn't part of the reason that they were chosen the fact that they're people who wouldn't be missed? Members of criminal syndicates, deniable operations mercenaries, soldiers, and inmates have a higher chance of being declared missing anyway — they do it to other people all the time, after all.
The dead guy, whose trap the group sprang, was killed by Nolan.
He probably pretended to be the guys friend before killing him for his stuff when the trap was complete. The hunting-ground seen here is just one of many that the Predators have seeded with other worlds' native life.
The plant life shown was introduced from Earth, explaining how Edwin could identify the toxic flower. The weird gray-skinned creature that Isabelle missed shooting was intended to be released into a different hunting-ground zone — one with vegetation native to its home planet — but was dropped in the wrong area due to some technical glitch, possibly the same one that'd prevented one of the humans' chutes from opening. If there's a sequel, it may feature Royce and Isabelle making their way cross-country to other artificially-cultivated hunting grounds, each filled with a different world's selection of alien vegetation and animals. The characters were held in stasis for a loooooong time before being released into the hunting preserve.
It's implausible to think that Noland could have survived in an environment that harsh since the Vietnam War, and he doesn't look old enough to have been the type of elite, seasoned Special Forces soldier that the Predators would have been interested in abducting at the time. Moreover, it'd be pretty strange for the Predators to change their previous habit of hunting humans on Earth for no good reason. Rather, they may have been collecting potential human prey for centuries and putting them into stasis, in preparation for when humans' technology and population-growth inevitably left it unsuitable as a hunting ground. Assuming Royce and Isabelle ever do get back to Earth, they'll find that it's been centuries since they were abducted, there's no more wilderness to speak of, and humans can now shoot down the Predators' ships.- You know, I've seen the movie a couple times and I apparently keep missing exactly where it's suggested that Noland was picked up during Vietnam. Anyway, as for the "predators changing their previous habit", the simple answer is that they haven't. Other groups of predators hunt on earth. This particular group of predators, or black predators in general, prefer abducting and hunting on their own ground. Hunting may be their hat, but they don't necessarily all have the same hunting practices.
- Its because of his fatigues, although given how many salvaged weapons he's using, it seems likely he got his clothes off someone else. Perhaps a mercenary who was using them by preference.
- Also, judging by the fact that Hanzo finds a katana he evaluates as 'very old', it's likely the Black Predators have been doing this for quiet awhile (at least as far back as one would use a katana as a primary weapon in any sort of combat), probably far enough back to have abducted a soldier from Vietnam.
- Noland says he was in the Air Cavalry and hums "Ride of the Valkyries" implying he's seen Apocalypse Now, which was released in 1979 - four years after the Vietnam War ended. While this doesn't discount him being a veteran, he couldn't possibly have been abducted during a war he saw a movie about afterwards. (Of course, since Laurence Fishburne was in Apocalypse Now, this is more of an Actor Allusion.)
- Or he could've met another dropped-off soldier who had seen the movie and made the obvious reference upon learning Noland's origin. This movie's characters presumably aren't the only ones he's suckered into his smoke chamber.
It was overcast when they crossed the first clearing.
When they finally see the Alien Sky they've already been in clearings. It was overcast then, so they didn't notice until the plot required it. The Black Predators aren't actually a different subspecies, they're just older than the others we've seen.
It's implied that the Black Predator trio are outcasts, given how they don't operate under the same honorable rules of the hunt as the other Predators did. Most Predators we've seen have presumably been fairly young, as they came to Earth in the first place to complete the hunting rites that would secure their status as mature members of their kind. If the Black Predators failed their tests due to their dishonorable methods, and have been living in exile ever since, then they've had time to grow to the full adult size for a mature Yautja, and to develop darker pigmentation over the years, much like young alligators or chimpanzees do as they grow up. The Classic Predator was a police officer.
Word of God says the Black Predators were criminals by their kind's standards. So maybe he was sent to arrest them, or most likely, kill them. Though he may have had partners with him to even the odds, but they were killed too. The Falconer Predator wanted to reclaim their honor.
Word of God is that these Predators are exiles. While Tracker and Berserker were content to hunt and kill, blood laws be damned, Falconer had grown disillusioned with his life on the game preserve planet, and wanted to live like a real Yautja. So when Hanzo stayed behind to fight while the rest retreated, Falconer saw his chance at redemption, and took it.He went down, but he went down like a true Yautja.
The entire planet is one big canned hunt event.
These Predators don't care about honor, or about the quality of their prey, they just want as many trophies as they can get. Any skull and spinal cord will do, they don't care as long as they've got something they can show off.