(Redirected from
Predator (movie))
| Predator |
Predator DVD Cover |
| Directed by |
John McTiernan |
| Produced by |
Joel Silver,
Lawrence Gordon,
John Davis |
| Written by |
Jim Thomas,
John Thomas |
| Starring |
Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Carl Weathers,
Bill Duke,
Sonny Landham,
Shane Black,
Jesse Ventura |
| Distributed by |
20th Century Fox |
| Released |
June 12, 1987 |
| Running time |
107 min. |
| Language |
English |
| Budget |
$18,000,000 |
| IMDb profile |
|
Predator is a 1987 science fiction movie that was directed by John McTiernan and released on Friday, June 12, 1987. It featured actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, Elpidia Carrillo, Richard Chaves, Shane Black, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall and R.G. Armstrong. The jungle scenes for this movie were located in southern Mexico, near Palenque. The movie was filmed in Puerto Vallarta.
The movie blends effectively the '80s hard action movie genre with a healthy dose of sci-fi horror. Energetic and manly, the movie was successful enough (earning $60 million in the United States alone) to generate a sequel, Predator 2, in 1990.
Taglines:
- Soon the hunt will begin.
- Nothing like it has ever been on Earth before. It came from another planet for the thrill of the hunt. It picked the wrong man.
- In a part of the world where there are no rules, deep in the jungle where nothing that lives is safe, an elite rescue squad is being led by the ultimate warrior. But now, they're up against the ultimate enemy. Nothing like it has ever been on earth before. It kills for pleasure, it hunts for sport. But this time, it picked the wrong man to hunt.
- We cannot see it, but it sees the heat of our bodies and the heat of our fear.
- In this movie, Arnold will experience every meaning of the word Pain .
Plot
The story begins in outer space. A dark, featureless spacecraft hurtles toward Earth. As it makes a close pass on the night side of our planet, it ejects an object that enters the atmosphere and leaves a fiery trail.
Scene change — somewhere on the coast of Central America. The mission begins when six U.S. Special Forces soldiers led by Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer (Schwarzenegger) are ordered by General Phillips (Armstrong) to rescue a Guatemalan cabinet minister who has been captured by guerrilla forces after his helicopter crashed in the jungle across the border.
Along with CIA man Dillon (Weathers), the team is dropped behind the border and begins looking for traces of the minister and his escort. Instead they find the crashed chopper, which appeared to be a "reconnaissance bird", rather than a transport, as well as traces of a dozen rebels being followed by several men with American equipment. It is noted that the pilot must have been hit with something akin to thermal vision, given the accuracy of the shot.
Shortly thereafter, they discover three dead U.S. soldiers hanging from trees, all of them skinned- Dutch recognizes the dog tags of one skinned man, and questions why they were out in the middle of the jungle- Dillon claims to know nothing. The search and rescue mission continues, and they soon discover the guerrilla post and the hostages being held there. The team attacks and destroys the guerilla base but all the prisoners are already dead and turn out to be CIA men- Dillon made up the cabinet minister story, and also admits that the skinned soldiers that had gone missing were ordered there as well.
With all guerrillas killed and a female prisoner, Anna (Carrillo), in their hands, they make for a pickup point. As they move through the jungle they are stalked by something that they are unable to see.
As the groups stops when Billy, the team's tracker, notices something in the trees, Anna attempts to escape, with Hawkins in pursuit. He reaches her, but the creature attacks and kills Hawkins (Black) and Blain (Ventura) before vanishing into the jungle using active camouflage. However when Mac (Duke) catches Blain falling to the ground with the corner of his eye and rushes to him, he sees the predator and the Predator glares at him flashing his yellow eyes. Mac starts shooting at the predator whilst screaming with fear at the same time. Then the other soldiers turn up and also start shooting, but as they attempt to kill it by saturating the jungle with bullets, they succeed only in slightly wounding the Predator.
They mount a defensive position with claymore mines, flares and trip wires.
Meanwhile, as the Predator is healing itself, we are given a glimpse into the motives of the creature when it pulls out a human skull, dragging one finger gently across the forehead, as though it were admiring its new-found trophy. The Predator attacks once again in the night and destroys the defensive position. The creature steals the body of Blain without alerting anyone or setting off any of the traps. Early in the afternoon, the soldiers once again mount a defensive position, this time by preparing a net in an attempt to capture the "killer". The creature falls into the trap but breaks free by firing its shoulder cannon. Another cannon shot destroys a branch that swings down and injures a soldier gravely.
The predator escapes once more and later goes on a killing rampage that finishes all of Dutch's men with the exception of himself and the female prisoner. Knowing the predator won't kill unless a victim is armed, Dutch kicks a gun out of the woman's hands and tells her to get to the evac helicopter.
Dutch escapes the creature and falls off a cliff into a huge river. Thinking he escaped, Dutch desperately scrambles through the mud-covered ground upon hearing the Predator land seconds behind him. Knowing he can't escape in his condition he resigns himself to a fatal end by huddling against a mass of thick branches and logs but as the creature gets closer it merely pauses. It doesn't see him and walks away, because the Major is encased in cold, gray mud, shielding him from the creature's infrared vision.
Dutch waits until the creature is out of his sight and then begins preparing primitive weapons. After nightfall, Dutch sends a war cry that is heard by the creature. The ensuing showdown ends with Dutch being wounded and the Predator activating a nuclear self-destruct device that leaves a large area of jungle burned. The rescue team arrives and airlifts Dutch and the woman out of the jungle.
Plot Parallels
Some claim to see "clear parallels" between the plot of "Predator" and the plot of the ancient Anglo Saxon poem "Beowulf".
In both stories a group of elite foreign warriors arrive in an area suffering the depradations of a mysterious, almost-invisible monster that has defeated other warriors on their own ground — in "Beowulf" a great hall; in "Predator" the crashed (or downed?) helicopter. The newly arrived warriors sleep in or near this place, and the monster comes in the night to attack them. They fight, but the warriors' weapons and tactics are ineffective against the monster, who is protected by near-invisibility, and magic that deflects weaponry. The monster sees in the dark and can kill with flashes from its eyes. Picking off the warriors one by one, the monster takes, or returns and steals, the corpses of its victims, to keep as trophies.
At one crucial point the monster flees the warriors after being wounded in the arm. A sign that the monster has been wounded, an indication of its mortality, is seen in the finding of its blood, a substance of unnatural colour. (In "Beowulf", two related monsters are dealt with in succession, but in "Predator" they are conflated into one.)
In both stories it is the individual heroic leader of the warriors who alone survives, and eventually defeats the monster(s). He discards some of the potent weapons with which he has been equipped (a firearm in "Predator"; a sword in "Beowulf") when he realises they are useless against the monster, and in the end he is protected by his own special armour (or mud, in the "Predator" version). The warrior hero deliberately provokes the monster into hunting him for one final confrontation. He has made elaborate preparation for this confrontation, and in it he defeats the monster, without relying on some of his own sophisticated weapons.
Ultimately, he uses ingenuity and cunning to protect himself and outwit the monster. He turns its own weapons against it and fells it by his own singular might, removing its head (or, in "Predator", prising off its helmet) in final victory.
Both stories contain the element of gradually coming to know the nature of the mysterious monster(s), and learning how to counter it.
Details
The original alien was going to be a more insect-like creature, and was going to be played by Jean Claude Van Damme, but it was decided that it wasn't scary enough and was re-designed. Van Damme quit after two days, unhappy with being cast as an uncredited special effect.
The revamped "Predator", played by the late Kevin Peter Hall, is equipped with an impressive line of weapons, including a shoulder-mounted plasma cannon (plasmacaster), metal armor, wrist computer system, survival kit, wrist-mounted double-edged blade, cutting tools, and a cloaking device that bends light rays, rendering the creature almost invisible. Also an explosive self destruct system accessed by the wrist computer system.
One of the most effective aspects of this movie was the merging of the villain's design and the driving force of the suspense in the script. In all Horror and SciFi-Horror movies, one of the leading methods of generating suspense is to slowly reveal the villain throughout the movie. This is usually done using fleeting glances and extreme closeups.
However, in Predator, the inclusion of the mask, heat-based vision, stealthy behaviour and the cloaking field allowed the creature to be slowly revealed without using these gimmicks. This "hiding in plain sight" method increased the suspense of the film, as well as creating neat easter eggs for interested fans. For example, a diligent fan will notice the predator's distinctive chatter in the scene where the skinned corpses of several GI's are found.
An interesting fact about Predator is that three of the movie's stars went on to become gubernatorial candidates, two of whom won.
There is also a series of novels, comics, computer games, and a movie that connects Predator with the Alien series, called Alien vs. Predator. An arcade game in the series features a fighter based on Schwarzenegger's character.
The line "Run! Go! GET TO THE CHOPPER!" (also spelled as "GET TO DA CHOPPA!") has become popular on the Internet, and has been used a lot recently by SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt and Neil Everett in hockey highlights. The line, "If it bleeds, we can kill it," is also used by Van Pelt when the Nashville Predators lose.
- The helicopter pilot at the end is the man who plays the predator, late actor and mime artist Kevin Peter Hall.
- Predator was the director John McTiernan's first studio movie. The studio wanted writer Shane Black to watch over McTiernan because it was his first studio film, so Black was hired for the part of Hawkins in the film.
- Both director John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger lost 25 pounds because of this movie. Schwarzenegger lost the weight before the movie shot because his role called for it, but McTiernan lost the weight because he did not eat the food in Mexico, fearing it would make him sick.
- The General Electric Minigun used by Blain in the film has become a running gag in the books of Robert Rankin; after the words: "Fires up to 6000 rounds per minute. 7.62 x 51 mm shells. 1.36 kg recoil adapters. Six muzzle velocity of 869 m/s." were uttered by Elvis in They Came And Ate Us.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_%28movie%29 under GFDL
