Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be a fanboy.

I’ve worked in comic book shops off and on since I was 14. I always enjoyed reading the latest theme series, but mostly I liked the lesser-known titles and graphic novels. Due to this, I found the various “Predator” comics and graphic novels and loved their cross-overs into the more mainstream titles.

Fast-forward to “Alien vs. Predator” in 2004. I was excited to finally see how well Hollywood could transform the comic ideas into cinema. The 1987 “Predator” with Arnold Schwarzeneger leading the pack was great by those bad-but-fun standards, so “AVP” could be pretty neat. Unfortunately there were some pesky logic problems, but overall, I was entertained.

Rewind to “Predator 2” in 1990. It was OK. Not as fun as the first film, but then sequels so very rarely are.

Even “AVP: Requiem” was OK by those bad-but-fun standards — well, no not really, but I’m a fanboy and I appreciate these things for some reason.

Now the current incarnation: “Predators,” or “Predator 3.”

I knew from the get-go it wasn’t going to be amazing, so I went with the thought of just enjoying some violence and seeing those cool predators in action.

For every scene of cool predators I wanted to see, I got triple the amount of human characters. Don’t get me wrong, they are needed for the plot, but in a movie like this, you don’t need a whole lot of plot development. People just want to see the predators hunting and being cool.

The story was able to make it almost 35 minutes before suddenly it was revealed — to no surprise of anyone watching — that one of the characters already knew all about the predator species, and explained all the tricks Schwarzeneger used to survive.

Naturally, this advice was generally ignored and the characters bumbled along, being picked-off one by one.

To keep this from becoming stagnant, the characters were written in a completely comic book stereotypical way. Each character has their particular background specialities, but little scope beyond that. For instance, the yakuza gangster battles a predator with a samurai sword, and the death row inmate had a shank for the entire movie — that was his weapon, nothing else. Oh, and he actually shanks a predator; I nearly fell out of my seat giggling.

Adrien Brody played the Schwarzeneger role for this flick, and let me tell you he was ripped. Not Schwarzeneger big, but I was really surprised to see a guy who always just looked tall and sorta gangly look like he could pull someone’s head off.

The deaths were fairly run-of-the-mill for these kind of movies, which I was fine with. If you happen to be a fanboy, you’ll notice a great deal of the deaths are taken almost straight from comic panels; even down to an occurrence where a predator pulls out a guy’s spine with skull attached.

There is a surprise visit from a Col. Kurtz-esque character that will either make you smile or roll your eyes with distaste — I smiled.

The rationalizing of the characters as to how to survive is, at best, laughable. The choices made are more like the choices normal people, rather than trained mercenaries. Oh well, at least they still died in sorta entertaining ways.

There is even a twist, of sorts. Granted, this twist was about as predictable as the ones from M. Night Shyamalan‘s latest features — as in really easy to see — but it was still fun-ish.

All in all, “Predators” is an OK movie to watch when you want something in the background and are bored. Go see it at the dollar theater or wait to grab it for a buck from a Redbox or on your Netflix que. Basically it isn’t worth the effort to see it outside of your own home unless you are a fanboy; in which case you likely went to the midnight premier.

Oh, and one more thing I will compliment. There was a preview attached for Robert Rodriguez’s film “Machete.” That preview was about as good as the entire “Predators” movie, but again, really only entertaining to a fanboy.