Predator (1987)
A leaner-than-customary Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Major “Dutch” Schaeffer, who, along with his crew of elite special ops commandos, is sent to the jungle of a hostile Latin American country on a covert hostage rescue mission. However, he soon finds out there’s more to the mission than he had originally been told by his old friend, Major George Dillon (Weathers), leaving them in a firefight with other military factions in a country they aren’t supposed to be in. Worse, they discover that some of the soldiers in the area have been killed in a most disturbing manner, skinned, disemboweled, and left for vultures to feast on. And worst of all, Dutch’s crew appear to be the next on the prey list.
The idea for Predator came from the mind of writer Jim Thomas, with help from his brother John in coming up for ideas on where the story should go, reportedly spinning off from a joke regarding Rocky IV about Stallone having to fight an alien next because he’s beaten the best human opponents anyone could imagine. They shopped the Hunter script around via sending letters to various studios and high rollers on the hope of a sale, but they were getting rejected at nearly every turn. The exception: 20th Century Fox under its head, Lawrence Gordon, who green-lit Aliens to great success. The early development on Predator was that it would be a film to be directed by New Zealand filmmaker Geoff Murphy as his next sci-fi project after The Quiet Earth. Back then, it had the attached title of “The Hunter” (later, just “Hunter”), with leader of a team of about ten Navy SEALs as the hero, taking on a high-powered alien, this one resembling the old hunters who would go on safari in Africa, but the opposite of a he-man — represented as a woman or an old man, who has traveled to Earth, specifically Central America, to hunt large game, one of the targets being humans.
Jim and John Thomas had envisioned Sylvester Stallone in the role; Murphy had Harrison Ford in mind. These ideas didn’t sit well with the producers, who felt that the elite team would not be seen as antagonizing the Central American guerrillas or villagers, which comprised of old men, women, and teens, as they had written into the script. Even if this might be realistic, it would be a hard sell to the American public and would confuse the story with politics they had no interest in delving into. They also despised the appearance of the hunter-alien as a woman, old man, or even human-like, insisting that it needed to be menacing, ugly, and obviously other-worldly.
When Joel Silver became attached as producer, he had his own notions of what would work, including offering Arnold Schwarzenegger the lead role. Murphy couldn’t buy an Austrian would represent the all-American GI they had in mind to head the Navy SEALs, but Silver would win out when Schwarzenegger’s Commando did well at the box office, proving Americans would accept him without issue. Murphy would soon be fired, as Schwarzenegger signed on with the stipulation that he could pick his own director. That director was not Murphy, who Schwarzenegger had never heard of.
Schwarzenegger had brought along his friend to the project, American producer John Davis, and this would represent the first film produced by his company, Davis Entertainment. On the recommendation of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who found the low-budget and production-troubled 1986 movie called Nomads to be directed with tension and atmosphere he thought would be intriguing, Davis would work on getting Gordon and Joel Silver to secure the directorial services of John McTiernan. McTiernan made his mark as one of the best action directors of the 1980s with Predator, a unique and very skillfully made mash-up of guerilla action flick and science fiction backbone. It’s deceptively simple, yet absolutely gripping once it gets going, thanks to the time McTiernan takes, working from a script by the sibling team of Jim and John Thomas, in establishing its characters, their mission, and reducing the plot down to just what the audience needs to know, which makes the events that happen later in the film all the more horrific. (The one knock is that this sparse screenplay uncharacteristically gives Arnie some unnecessary exposition toward the end as he explains to himself, and to the predator, just what he’s thinking as if we couldn’t figure out what was going on through body language alone.)
In addition to McTiernan’s tight direction, Predator soars to the top of the 1980s action flick pack through its brilliant camera work, with some breathtaking cinematography by Donald McAlpine, and a gorgeous score from Alan Silvestri, one which is worthy of a major sci-fi epic franchise, though fans of Back to the Future do say they get taken out of the film when they hear some familiar patterns to the music. It also features special effects that are simple but very appropriate, which makes it one of the few sci-fi flicks of the Eighties to stand up equally well today. Particularly memorable is the use of first-person, infrared technology to clue us in as to how the “predator” manages to thermally see the men who are camouflaged and also its ability to use voice mimicry to separate the men from the rest of the pack for an easy kill. And once you see the ‘predator’ close-up, it’s a sight you will not soon forget.
Schwarzenegger, in his prime as an action star, is mostly subdued, giving a few of his traditional one-liners (his ad-libbed line,”Stick around!”, punctuates a scene in which he impales someone standing, and his unintentionally funny line, “Get to da choppa!” would become a popular internet meme), but his physical action performance ranks among his very best. In the initial phases of the script, the only big character of the film was that of “Dutch”, which Schwarzenegger was not keen on signing on for thinking it was just another iteration of roles he’s played before. He said he would be more interested in making a team film like some of his favorite Westerns, The Wild Bunch or The Magnificent Seven, which prompted rewrites to the script until they could get the superstar actor to sign on. with something he liked. The seemingly ironic end credits of the film feature a curtain call for each member of the cast in homage to the old war movies that would once do the same. Though the film has a lot of death and destruction, McTiernan felt all along that he was making a fun film and thought it the final bow from the cast was his last tongue-in-cheek wink to the audience.
It also features a fantastic supporting cast of macho actors, most selected specifically by McTiernan and Silver, including Carl Weathers, Sonny Landham (who had worked in Joel Silver productions like The Warriors and 48 Hrs., but needed a bodyguard to keep him from getting into violent altercations), and ex-pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura (who left his gig commentating for “Wrestlemania II” to pursue), who all would undergo about six weeks of grueling boot camp to get into huge physical shape and to learn how to rappel from ropes, climb trees, and handle a variety of weaponry. Weathers was the seasoned pro that McTiernan wanted to work with the other actors, especially Schwarzenegger, to up their game due to their competitive nature because they want to work harder than the other guy, whether it’s in pumping iron before each day’s shoot or in preparing for their lines. Weathers also has the more nuanced role, a compatriot of the men doing battle, but also one that harbors a bit of a secret on what the nature of the mission actually is. Bill Duke was another seasoned actor who Schwarzenegger liked working with, having just appeared together in Commando. Despite the attempt to incorporate experienced actors, the biggest liability still remains the stiff performances, especially by Schwarzenegger when he delivers dialogue more than two words.
Shortly after filming began, Schwarzenegger would take leave to get married to Maria Shriver and go on a short honeymoon in Antigua, ending with them arriving together on the set to resume filming his scenes. Trivia: both Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura would go on to become U.S. State Governors. Not to be outdone, Sonny Landham, who plays Billy, unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of Kentucky in 2003. Shane Black, who plays Hawkins, the bespectacled commando with a gift for raunchy jokes. Black was selected, not for his machismo or acting ability, but because McTiernan wanted another writer around that would help with the rewrites to the script as things went along. According to producer John Davis, when Black refused to rework the script, claiming he was hired as an actor, not a writer, his character was one of the first to get killed. McTiernan does give credit to Black, though, for coming up with elements for his character that were not in the script; McTiernan encouraged Black to tell, on camera, a couple of the raunchy jokes he was telling people on the set to try to break up the tension. Regardless of his early dismissal for not completely playing ball, Black proved to be quite the talent as a writer and would go on to greater success the same year as the screenwriter for Lethal Weapon, kicking off a long and lucrative career as a screenwriter and, later, an action director in his own right. In fact, Black would return to the series, not as an actor, but as the director and screenwriter of 2018’s The Predator.
In addition to almost unbearably hot and humid weather, the leeches, the snakes, the vast areas of mud, and nearly the entire crew contracting Montezuma’s Revenge from the lack of clean water, bigger production problems would soon set in, mostly due to issues with nailing down the nature of the film’s “bad guy, aka, “the Hunter”, especially in what it would look like, with the initial costume, designed by a small effects company run by Richard Edlund to cut costs, deemed too shoddy, impractical, and not at all effective in eliciting terror (Schwarzenegger would compare it to a human-sized lizard with the head of a duck). Initially, Jean-Claude Van Damme, who was an associate of casting director Jackie Burch who would constantly hustle her for any work she could find, was in the prototype Predator suit made with rubber and felt (the real suit was still not made, much to McTiernan’s chagrin), but he found the costume afforded very little visibility and grew too hot to give him the ability to exert himself with any of his trademark martial arts moves, rendering him ineffective.
Without being able to show off what he could do, and with the realization that his character would be off the screen most of the film and that he’d be unrecognizable on those moments where he might appear, his desire began to wane and caused some friction with the cast and crew in having to hear his persistent complaining. He was gone after two days, though whether he quit or whether he was let go depends on who is asked, with one story being that he was mad at having to wear the headpiece that was making him pass out from dehydration and smashed it to the ground. Van Damme was subsequently deemed not physically imposing enough at 5’10” and too lean compared to the beefy heroes he would be fighting against (Schwarzenegger and Weathers are 6’2″, Sonny Landham 6’3″, with Bill Duke and Jesse Ventura 6’4″). causing the entire shoot to shut down for about eight months to retool and get the costume and make-up ready for a larger Predator, at the suggestion of the more expensive newly hired effects guru Stan Winston, played by the 7’2″ Kevin Peter Hall, during the film’s climax.
As for the look of the Hunter that they decided to go with after much groupthink, Joel Silver suggested something akin to the large Rastafarian warrior painting that was hanging in his office at the time, which gave Winston the notion that the Predator needed to be more intimidating and fearsome than the humans he would do battle against. As for the face, Winston happened to be on a flight with James Cameron during the promotion of Aliens when the director had suggested that he would like to see a monster in a film that had mandibles or gills. Winston worked with the look to put mandibles on the face of the Rastafarian, and the Predator’s look that we all know was finally born. In fact, at this stage, they decided to change the name of the film to Predator to match the new look and vibe of the suit. As for the Predator’s blood, the initial color or orange wasn’t standing out the way McTiernan liked, so one of the effects team suggested they use the contents of a glow stick to give it that other-worldly look. He loved it.
During a break in production, Schwarzenegger would leave to shoot The Running Man. For the return, Schwarzenegger would return to film the final 30-minute climax between himself and the hideous creature that relished the hunt of a worthy adversary. Kevin Peter Hall would portray the Predator to be injected throughout the movie in pickup shots, not revealing the entire look until the end (Hall does double duty as the helicopter pilot at the end of the film). Despite its issues and the slap-dash production, the effects work from the late-arriving Stan Winston and company would earn the film an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, which it would lose to the sci-fi comedy, Innerspace.
With Vietnam films all the rage in the 1980s, Predator would follow in the footsteps of Aliens by making the action a semi-metaphor for the Vietnam experience for American soldiers trying to take on an enemy who seems to be blending into its environment to gain the upper hand on a squad of elite soldiers. In fact, McTiernan had specifically wanted to get a few actors who had been in the war to portray soldiers in the movie who could lend some authenticity to the story. At the end of the film, if humanity is to prevail, it is by becoming one with the environs, ditching the high-tech weaponry to cover oneself with mud and blend in with the trees. The Predator learned to do this with technology but for the last man standing, he has to go back to our roots as a civilization to take down the much more highly advanced predator.
When finally released, Predator was greeted with a lukewarm critical reception, many who dismissed it as a run-of-the-mill super-macho-soldier-in-the-jungle movie for one half and a standard alien movie the other. The introduction to the film in which we see the alien spaceship is an unnecessary tip-off that mutes the suspense down the road of just what the soldiers are getting into long before they figure it out on their own, too late. Nevertheless, the film would still attract general audiences, who felt that the entire film was set up to subvert expectations of formula genre films. They helped it succeed in the end to the tune of about $60 million in the U.S. and nearly $40 million to add to that total from other parts of the world, all on a budget reported to be only $15 million.
Its success would spur on several attempts to continue the franchise without the involvement of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declined to continue because they wanted to keep costs low and wouldn’t pay for the suddenly hot McTiernan after back-to-back hits with Predator and Die Hard. A mainly unconnected sequel called Predator 2 would be released in 1990 that put the Predators in the gang-ridden Los Angeles several years in the future.
Though testosterone-charged, action movie fans will enjoy this the most, this cross-genre excursion should also please the science fiction crowd, as well as aficionados of horror, as its plot feels very much like a slasher film, though with much better technical specs and a more developed premise. It’s not a brilliant piece of cinema by any stretch, but when you’re in the mood for exciting and intense action, few films out there fit the bill better. As Bill Duke’s character of Mac might say, ‘You’re gonna have you some fun”.
Qwipster’s rating: A
MPAA Rated: R for strong, bloody violence, sexual references, and language
Running time: 107 min.
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, Elpidia Carrillo, Sonny Landham, Richard Chaves, Shane Black, Kevin Peter Hall
Director: John McTiernan
Screenplay: Jim Thomas, John Thomas