Predator is the best damn Alien knockoff of them all, interesting since Alien is the best damn Jaws knockoff of them all. (Jaws is almost surely a damn knockoff of something else as well.) Such is the evolution of cinematic art. Throw a little Rambo in there too for spice. What makes Predator work on a broad level (apart from hugely competent filmmaking) is how it is fundamentally simple, nearly as stripped down as this sort of thing can be.
Legend (that is, Cracked.com) has it that Predator was conceived by screenwriters John and Jim Thomas as a serious response to a joke about Rocky IV. The joke goes that that series had gotten so outrageous that it could only be topped next if Rocky battled a space alien. It seems the brothers Thomas mistook Rambo for Rocky (a common, if dumb, mistake), and smacked their alien into a war-torn jungle. Yeah, the script on its own ain’t that good, really. However, it is the greatest ever accumulation of cheesy 1980s action movie quotes – at its lowest level, Predator represents the apogee of a very particular style of action picture, when the men were men, the explosions huge, and the homosexuality latent.
So Predator’s real saving grace, that main factor which elevates it from potentially similar fare like the great yet awful Commando, is director John McTiernan. Though essentially untested at the time, McTiernan was just one year away creating from his epochal Die Hard, then The Hunt for the Red October two years later…Man, McTiernan was on a roll in the late 80s, before Harlin-esque feces like Rollerball rendered him mortal. The entire production, ushered by McTiernan’s extreme professionalism and moderate artistry, is the very definition of a B-style picture elevated to an A level through presentation.
I don’t want to anticipate Predator’s more specific qualities, so I’ll just jump into the picture and let them arise as they will. Things open with an alien spaceship jettisoning a pod towards Earth. It’s essentially the same opening as The Thing, except this ship’s doing it on purpose. This is a brief early seed to justify the sci-fi weirdness to come.
But let’s ignore that for now, because Predator is first and foremost an action film. (Like Aliens, Predator is a sci-fi/horror/action hybrid, but the proportions are totally different.) An awesome Apocalypse Now helicopter flies into the coast of fictional Central American nation Val Verde, a silly little running gag in producer Joel Silver’s action films (again see Commando). We get to know McTiernan’s style, as the movie starts off effectively at 11, and only increases from there. The standard 80s action clichés are rendered strangely effective here, made even more effective by Alan Silvestri’s rousing score (which works when it’s not reminding me of Back to the Future).
Meet our hero, a bundled-up mass of biceps and testosterone, ex-Green Beret, Vietnam vet, Delta Force Major Alan “Dutch” Schaeffer. That’s more or less the purest assembly of action hero tropes, so who else could essay the role of Dutch but that great human being Arnold Schwarzenegger? What a unique, bizarre movie star career he’s had, going from an Austrian bodybuilder to Mr. Universe to the governor of California, a state he cannot pronounce! I have nothing to say about Herr Gropenfuhrer that the rest of the Internet hasn’t said about him (or occasionally Chuck Norris), so let’s just take a moment of silence to ponder Schwarzenegger in our own particular…idioms.
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Okay, I’m ready to go! Dutch meets with Major General Homer Philips (R. G. Armstrong), lighting his second cigar in under a minute. Like many a video game opening cut scene, Philips outlines the first action mission for Dutch. He and his team shall be joining Apollo Creed – er, George Dillon (Carl Weathers) in guerilla-infested jungles to rescue a lost cabinet minister. This movie is astoundingly efficient and fast paced, so I’ll do likewise and move on.
Those Apocalypse Now helicopters fly into the jungle, Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” playing in place of Wagner – Schwarzenegger doesn’t need any obtuse Hitler references to help him out. Here we’ll be meeting our cast, who seem insufficiently macho only because we’ve already seen Schwarzenegger. Even without him, this’d be the manliest cast ever assembled…again, aside from The Thing (there’s no Wilford Brimley factor here).
Meet cha- chewin’ big man Blain (Jesse “The Mind” nee “The Body” Ventura, pro-wrestler turned governor of Minnesota). Yup, so far at least two U.S. governors have come out of this amazing film. I fully expect Carl Weathers to run for something in the next decade.
Meet Mac (Schwarzenegger’s Commando costar Bill Duke), shaving his face for the first of fourteen or so times.
Meet a Native American spirit tracker with the astoundingly indigenous name of Billy (Sonny Landham, an actor so dangerous the producers hired bodyguards to protect the other actors from him).
Meet Hawkins, teller of vagina jokes (Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black). This role is pretty useless, but there’s a reason Black was on set. See, he was really a studio spy in place to ensure McTiernan proved capable. They needn’t have worried.
…Poncho (Richard Chavez) is also there.
The team sets down in the thick, cinematic jungle, an endlessly generous setting full of shadows and shapes. Filming in the jungles of southern Mexico, McTiernan uses this location to carefully control the movie’s tone, creating countless scenes of dialogue-free atmosphere. The movie’s actual content is so basic, so there isn’t much for me to respond to – accept that it’s more experiential than intellectual, more so even than most action movies. Anyway, soon the team discovers the hostages’ downed helicopter. Billy uses his tracking skills to detect six other U.S. commandos have already passed through (he can probably also tell their favorite books and what they had for breakfast). Billy scouts ahead, and finds three of these commandos…well, most of them. They’ve been skinned, hanged, and pretty much killed repeatedly. Dutch knew these men, and grows mad at the guerillas who surely did this. He also grows mad at Dillon, who isn’t revealing all that he knows.
Now, there’s something even more foul at work here. Cinema’s most unique killer point-of-view cam watches the team through the foliage, rendering them entirely in thermal imaging. Usually, these POVs are the laziest way of delaying the killer’s introduction (‘cause you gotta keep your villain off screen as long as possible), but the infrared vision alone suggests there is something worse about this particular killer.
Soon enough the team has made it to the guerilla compound, and shortly thereafter that they’ve engaged them in a raucous, explosion-filled shootout. As McTiernan’s inaugural action sequence, this is the perfect summation of all 80s jungle movies that came before it. A mere twenty minutes into Predator and it’s already delivering incredible Schwarzennegerian goods. Arnold, for his part, instigates the fighting by picking up a truck (a pickup truck, har har) to lob at the guerrillas. There’s nothing quite like blatant demonstrations of grotesque masculinity! Along those lines, Blain battles with his beloved “Old Painless,” the sort of minigun usually mounted on helicopters. I doubt this is realistic, but I could care less.
Schwarzenegger gets a couple of sublimely stupid one liners: he hurls a knife into a guy and quips “Stick around,” then explodes a door and quips “Knock knock.” I love this nonsense without irony. Blain is apparently in an unofficial badass competition with Dutch here, and gets his own, far superior one liner: “I ain’t got time to bleed.”
These men’s testosterone levels are at such astronomic levels, they barely notice a rare influx of estrogen into their world. Anna (Elpidia Carrillo) makes a move on Dutch, and Dillon captures her. Dutch realizes that they were set up, part of an assassination mission for Dillon. (Oh yeah, killing off roughly fifty rebels is okey-dokey when it’s about rescuing a nonexistent cabinet member, but it’s not in order to stop an invasion.) It really doesn’t matter, though. All this preliminary action stuff is really a narrative red herring, an excuse to show off how muy mucho macho the cast is. This is the last moment that Predator is a pure action movie.
Tonally, things shift over to the horror mode now as our team drags the uncommunicative Anna along as they evacuate into the jungle. That same thermal imaging POV surveys the wreckage, holding up a dead scorpion in its – Oh my! – in its claw. Ooh, if somehow you’d missed the boat, this synchs it: Predator is a monster movie!
In keeping with the new horror tone, McTiernan changes up the feeling of the silent jungle trek. Ambient noise cranks up, drowning out the pure testosterone that has characterized the film so far. Billy stands at terrified attention, surveying the overgrowth ahead. Tension is repeatedly built up, to be shattered wonderfully by the increasingly shocking heat vision.
At least one traveler cannot take all this tension. Anna beats the hapless Dillon away with a great big stick, Teddy Roosevelt style, and hurtles off into the trees. Hawkins chases after her. He’s told his last pussy joke, because a strange invisible something emerges from the jungle and kills him! The effects in this movie, all practical and optical (no CGI yet), hold up astoundingly well to this day…well, my philistine buddies might disagree. What they cannot argue, though, is that the deaths in Predator are all nicely unique and bloody.
Translated by the otherwise pointless Poncho, Anna claims that “the jungle took [Hawkins].” Dutch believes that something’s up, as guerillas wouldn’t leave behind Hawkins’ radio, weapons, and vital internal organs. Still not realizing the direness of the situation, everyone spreads out to find Hawkins’ corpse, which we are treated to, dangling nude from the trees.
Then a laser bursts Blain’s chest wide open!
Mac arrives just in time to see the unseeable – a vaguely humanoid form, blurred into the jungle background. Mac collects up Blain’s beloved minigun to fire off indiscriminately into the foliage, soon joined by Dutch, Dillon et al to partake in this hyper, loud bit of gun pornography. McTiernan is now toying with the hypothetical action ideal. Our little tipoff is Mac’s line several minutes later when the firing stops: “We didn’t hit anything.”
This isn’t exactly true. The creature lumbers off, leaking a luminescent green blood. It sits casually upon a log and turns off its skin camouflage for the first time. McTiernan stays in close, never revealing the whole beast. What we can tell, at least, is that it’s a lizard-like, clattering creature with bizarre technology…just like Steve Jobs. Hi-yo!
Dutch’s team is still twelve miles from the extraction point, and nightfall’s coming, so they set up a defensive position for the evening, surrounded by a perimeter of trip wire. Dutch questions Mac about what he saw, but Mac is too terrified to form a coherent sentence. With his admission that “nothing on this Earth” could have survived the overeager minigun assault, the movie’s sci-fi angle becomes clear. Dutch, experienced mercenary that he is, recognizes the creature is intentionally picking them off in a slow manner, almost like…a hunter (the film’s working title). For as much as it’s a reworking of The Most Dangerous Game, an alien hunting humans for sport is a potent idea, one that it thankfully left in the subtext here. Still, Billy understands the situation: “We’re all gonna die.”
Dutch’s sentiment, however, is far more poster-ready: “If it bleeds, we can kill it.” And yeah, we’ve seen the beast bleed.
Little more happens that night, except Mac kills a boar in a fit of rage, and the Predator steals away Blain’s body – yeah, I’m going ahead and calling it the Predator now.
Come morning, and the inexplicable discovery of no non-boar tracks, Anna reveals she speaks English (is actually C.I.A., though that plot thread no longer matters) and she knows more about the monster. It is a local legend, a creature that comes to kill the men folk in only the hottest of summers, “The Demon Who Makes Trophies of Men.” [Musical crescendo.] I just love this portrayal of the Predator as a legendary superstition, a mythological boogeyman, and it’s an angle I’d like to see more (though I get the impression AVP bungles that notion pretty spectacularly).
Dutch leads his men in a pumped up montage, readying a snare trap out of bamboo technology, meant either for the Predator or the Road Runner. The surprisingly accurate working theory is that the Predator won’t sense this “Boy Scout” method nearly as well as state-of-the-art trip wires and such – it may not hold water logically, but in the world of Predator, the more primitive your solution is, the more awesome, therefore the more effective, it is. Dutch himself stands out as the Predator’s tasty cheese; the very instant McTiernan thinks we’re relaxed, the invisible Predator appears shrieking in the sprung trap. It escapes with quick laser action (boy, that sounds like an ad for an action figure), sending the log counterweight straight into Poncho’s torso. Dillon fires off randomly at the trees, recalling this technique’s earlier efficacy, and earns the Predator’s first full-body view sans camo. We’ve got us here another brilliant Stan Winston creature design, sporting some nifty dreadlocks and wearing a mask that would make Jason envious. He’s a bit too humanoid, perhaps, as per the practical needs of a suit in the hot Mexican jungle, but otherwise the Predator’s solid.
Originally, Jean-Claude Van Damme was all set to don the suit – it was believed his Belgian martial arts prowess could lend a ninja-like air to the Predator. But to the eternal bane of all who try to make Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, not even a significant action star like Van Damme can make for a convincing foe, not even in a horrifying alien suit. The solution here was to replace the Muscles From Brussels with simply the largest man they could find – Kevin Peter Hall, nearly eight feet’s worth of sasquatch (“Harry and the Hendersons” – shudder). Well, the guy towers over the Austro-Californian, so it works. And pity poor Hall, who was effectively blind in the Predator suit – as a result, he actually managed to smack Arnold around a bit.
Anyway, at this stage in the movie Mac tears off after the Predator, intent upon avenging Blain. Dillon chases after Mac, hoping to make up for his various mistakes like Dallas at this juncture in Alien. Mac is granted his best action line in a movie that is just oozing with them like so much phosphorescent blood: “I’m gonna have me some fun!”
Oh no, it’s the Predator that has some fun, using some sort of tri-shot laser scope to blast oodles of Mac’s brain matter all over the camera lens! Trust me, it’s not exploitative. The Predator then circles around on Dillon and uses another kind of laser to shoot his arm off – this footage of Carl Weathers would later get replayed on “Arrested Development.” The Predator reveals a new weapon (each on-screen death demands a new weapon, and possibly so do the toy manufacturers), two blades jutting forth from his wrists. With these he offs Dillon.
Here’s a rundown of different fictional characters and their number of wrist blades:
1 – T-1000
2 – The Predator
3 – Wolverine
4 – Freddy Kreuger
5 – Some moronic, overcompensating jerk
With that fell swoop, both the film’s black guys are dead (long after the two non-Schwarzenegger white guys got killed).
Dutch races through the jungles with Anna, carrying the injured Poncho in his bare hands, he-man that he is. Billy stays back on that river-crossing log from King Kong to face off against the dreaded, dreadlocked Predator. He strips himself of his guns (for honor) and his shirt (for the ladies), then places stage blood all over his chest with one of those blood-spewing prop knives – or at least that’s how they filmed it. Elsewhere in the jungle, Dutch hears Billy’s pained death screams. We’re supposed to think the Predator got him off screen, but I think Billy accidentally impaled himself upon his own blade like a jackass.
Something like 15 second later, the Predator has finally done Poncho in with his trusty laser. Anna rushes for Poncho’s rifle, but Dutch prevents her – he knows now the Predator only hunts those who are armed, because a seasoned warrior is the tastiest warrior. Dutch offers to remain alone and face the beast. Anna opts to ditch Dutch, obeying a line the Internet loves to mock: “Get to the chopper!” It doesn’t come across the same when I write it in normal English; it loses all of Schwarzenegger’s lovely inability to enunciate.
Dutch runs from the Predator’s heat vision POV, unarmed and desperate. Finally he tumbles off an enormous cliff into the river, which proceeds to toss him about far from the Predator’s reach. (Hell, the same tactic’s worked for Butch, Sundance and Harrison Ford!) If I were the kind of pretentious ponce who’d ascribe symbolism to a movie like Predator (and I am), I’d say this is a cleansing baptism, readying Dutch for his final battle. The immediate effect of all this is to get Schwarzenegger shirtless and covered in mud – this is for all the ladies, and for all those closeted homosexuals who love old Schwarzenegger epics. The mud fouls up the Predator’s heat vision sensors, and the water fouls up its camouflage (it also cleans the beast’s dreadlocks for the first time ever). In short, it can now be fought.
This is the final major turning point for Predator, as it effectively turns into a primitive, primal survival movie, pushing forward a man versus other conflict with hardly any dialogue. For as simple as Predator has been up to now, we’re now reduced to a jungle, no guns, a monosyllabic Austrian, and one speechless rastafalien. The rest of this movie kicks ass!
Dutch knows he has time to prepare, as the fun for the Predator is in the hunt. So Dutch montages out a series of caveman traps, effectively upping First Blood’s ante. He lifts logs and fashions arrows with brute, naked man strength. Meanwhile, the Predator steam cleans Billy’s skull to add to his ghastly collection. I once saw a skull just like this awaiting me at my place of work – spent the whole day with CSI (dead serious). And in the purest darkness of the jungle, Dutch rises from his primeval wood fire and bellows into the night. And this (roughly “Aaaaaeeeiiirrrrghh!”) is the movie’s best one liner!
On rare occasions I will refuse to fully recount a movie, either out of laziness or a desire to leave the best part unspoiled. Here it’s a combination of both. Dutch’s battle with the Predator is an epic action movie showdown, slowly paring the weapons until it’s actually a fistfight – the Predator, a rare chivalrous movie monster, does this on purpose in order to make it a fair. En, somewhat fair...
And you know what? The xenomorph is a penis-vagina with acid for blood. The Predator is a Jamailien with glowstick liquid for blood. I’d rather hang out with this guy any day.
The noble psychopath even removes its steel mask for the first time, because even now the movie needs another new monster reveal. Behold, mandibles!, the end result of this one time James Cameron turned to Stan Winston on an airplane and said, “I’ve always wanted to see something with mandibles.” Dutch says, in response to the Predator (if not James Cameron), “You’re one ugly motherfucker.”…Poetry. This movie is poetry.
Finally Dutch mortally wounds the Predator (I ain’t revealing how – watch the damn movie). With its dying breaths, the Predator sets off an alien countdown and cackles maniacally like a Bond villain. Dutch perfectly understands its intentions. Seeing as this is the end of an action movie, there has to be a big ass explosion to outrun. So Dutch runs for his Austrian life, outrunning a freaking NUCLEAR EXPLOSION! (Seppuka-boom!)
Then the chopper picks him up.
Predator was not hugely successful upon initial release, not even winning its opening weekend. Critics mostly hated it (at the time), taking it for a generic sci-fi/action movie rather than the ultimate summation of all generic sci-fi/action movies. Time has been kind to Predator, rendering it ultimately a sort of Alien for drunks. The Predator creature, introduced piecemeal over the entire film, proved enormously popular, the sort of fun monster audiences could actually root for in a way they never could for those animalistic xenomorphs. It’s this same unrelenting animalism that makes me side with the aliens over the Predators any day – but stupidly comparing monsters isn’t something we’re set to do…yet.
Related posts:
• No. 2 Predator 2 (1990)
• No. 3 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
• No. 4 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
• No. 5 Predators (2010)
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