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Predator (film)

1987 film directed by John McTiernan

Predator is a 1987 film about a team of commandos reunited in a Central American jungle for a rescue and extract mission, but the lurking secret of the jungle will leave the crew facing death from something never before seen on Earth. A sequel was produced and released in 1990.

Soon the hunt will begin.
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
You're one... ugly motherfucker!
I ain't got time to bleed.
GET TO THE CHOPPER!
Stick around.
Directed by John McTiernan. Written by Jim Thomas and John Thomas.
Nothing like it has ever been on earth before (taglines)

Dutch

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  • RUN, GO! GET TO THE CHOPPER!
  • You're one... ugly motherfucker!
  • [after pinning a man to the wall with his knife] Stick around.

Dialogue

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General: Eighteen hours ago, we lost a chopper... Carrying a cabinet minister and his aide in this charming little country. We’ve got a transponder fixed on their position... [Pointing] About here.
Dutch: ... This cabinet minister, does he always travel on the wrong side of the border?
General: Apparently, they strayed off course. And we're fairly certain they're in guerrilla hands.
Dutch: So why don't you use the regular army? What do you need us for?
Dillon: 'Cause some damn fool accused you of being the best!
Dutch: ... Dillon!... You son of a bitch!
[Dillon and Dutch arm wrestle]
Dutch: What's the matter? The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?
Dillon: Dutch, what the general is sayin' is a couple of our friends are about to get squeezed and we can't let that happen. We need the best. That's why you're here...
Dutch: Go on.
Dillon: Simple setup. One-day operation. We pick up their trail at the chopper, grab those hostages, and bounce back before anyone knows we were there.
Dutch: What do you mean, "we"?
Dillon: I'm goin' in with you, Dutch.
Dutch: General, my team always works alone. You know that.
General: I'm afraid we all have our orders, Major. Once you reach your objective, Dillon will evaluate the situation and take charge...
Dutch: What happened here, Billy?
Billy: Strange, Major. There was a firefight. They were shooting in all directions.
Dutch: I can't believe Hopper walked into an ambush.
Billy: I don't believe he did. I can't find a single track. It just doesn't make sense...
Dutch: What about the rest of Hopper's men?
Billy: There's no sign, sir. They never left here. Hell, it's like they just disappeared...
Dutch: ... Stick with the guerrilla trail. Let's get the hostages. [To the others] We move. Five-meter spread. No sound.
Poncho: You're hit! You're bleeding, man.
Blain: I ain't got time to bleed.
Poncho: Oh, okay. [firing a few round from his parabolic grenade launcher] You got time to duck?
[after Dutch's team completes the assault on a rebel camp, he notices something amiss]
Dutch: You set us up! [pushes Dillon to a wall] It's all bullshit, all of it! The cabinet minister, the whole business. Got us in here to do your dirty work.
Dillon: Look we just stopped a major invasion. In three days they'd have been across the border with this stuff!
Dutch: Why us?
Dillon: Because nobody else could've pulled it off. You're pissed about the cover story, I knew I couldn't get you in here without it.
Dutch: So what story did you hand to Hopper?
Dillon: Look, we've been looking for this place for months. My men were in that chopper when it got hit! Hopper's orders were to go in and get my men and he disappeared.
Dutch: He didn't disappear - he was skinned alive!
Dillon: And my orders were to get somebody who could crack these bastards!
Dutch: So you cooked up a story and dropped the six of us in a meat grinder...What happened to you, Dillon? You used to be somebody I could trust.
Dillon: I woke up. Why don't you? You're an asset. An expendable asset. And I used you to get the job done, got it?
Dutch: My men are not expendable...and I don't do this kind of work.
Dutch: He's killing us one at a time.
Billy: Like a hunter...
Dillon: Hold it Dutch, I'm going after Mac!
Dutch: That's not your style, Dillon.
Dillon: I guess I picked up some bad habits from you, now get your people the hell out of here!
Dutch: You can't win this Dillon.
Dillon: Maybe I can get even...
Dutch: ... Dillon! [Throws him an extra weapon]
Dillon:... Just hold on to that damn 'chopper.
Dutch: He's using the trees... [approaches and grabs Anna] Yesterday - what did you see?
Dillon: You're wasting your time.
Dutch: No more games.
Anna: ... I don't know what it was. It...
Dutch: Go on.
Anna: It changed colours, like the chameleon. It uses the jungle.
Dillon: You sayin' that Blain and Hawkins were killed by a fuckin' lizard? That's a bullshit psyche job! There's two or three men out there at the most! Fuckin' lizard...!
Dutch: What's your name?
Anna: Anna.
Dutch: [draws his knife] Anna... this thing is hunting us. All of us. You know that.
[As Anna nods, Dutch cuts her bonds, freeing her hands]
Dillon: What the hell do you think you're you doing?
Dutch: We're gonna need everyone.
Dillon: I'm taking her back! We're out of here in five minutes.
Dutch: We're not going yet.
Dillon: Look, the rendezvous is ten to twelve miles away from here; you think the chopper's gonna wait?
Dutch: Dillon, we make a stand now, or there will be nobody left to go to the chopper.
Anna: There is something else... When the big man was killed, you must have wounded it. Its blood was on the leaves.
Dutch: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
Dutch: What the hell ARE you?
The Predator: [distorted replay] What the hell are YOU? [activates self-destruct device. Dutch runs off into the jungle as the Predator laughs. Dutch jumps into a ditch seconds before detonation]

Taglines

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  • Nothing like it has ever been on earth before.
  • It came for the thrill of the hunt. It picked the wrong man to hunt.
  • Soon the hunt will begin.
  • [from trailer] 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. We cannot see it, but it sees the heat of our bodies and the heat of our fear. It kills for pleasure, it hunts for sport. But this time, it's picked the wrong man to hunt.

About Predator

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Schwarzenegger and his team are, to say the least, very definite physical presences; the only force that could possibly threaten them would be their opposite, something airy and unseen. ~ Dave Kehr
 
Echoes, echoes, and more echoes … until all the machismo is hollow. Something telling is going on here, tonally. The final image of the sequence is the predator watching the heat fade out of the scorpion in its own palm. It's like the film is saying: there's always someone bigger. ~ Phil Hoad
 
I remember going to see it with my older brother who was a bodybuilder and we saw every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that came out and we went to see that one thinking it was a Commando type film and then it starts turning – I remember the audience reaction to the film in the theater, they were kinda confused when it turned sci-fi and horror and Arnold didn’t really win at the end, a Predator blows himself up and flies off looking like he’s going to a looney bin in a helicopter. And they were a little like “wow what was that movie?” ~ Robert Rodriguez
 
"Predator" is an ominous high-tech Stone-Age mixture--ominous because the production is high tech and the script, and its values and mentality, are Stone Age. ~ Michael Wilmington
  • James Cameron: I always wanted to see something with mandibles.
    • John McTiernan, Kevin Peter Hall, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joel Silver, John Davis, Jim Thomas, John Thomas (2001). If It Bleeds We Can Kill It: The Making of 'Predator' (Television program). AMC.
  • One of the great science fiction horror films, often imitated, but never properly duplicated, not even by its own sequel.
    • Cargill, C. Robert (August 2, 2007). "The 10 Best Movies of 1987". Film.com. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
  • There's something deeply hypocritical about a film that first establishes that its guerrillas are the evil variety by having one of them cold-bloodedly execute a hostage, then gives its squad of "expendables" free rein to cold-bloodedly murder all of them minutes later. It's the Reagan era all over: tobacco-chewing, tough-talking, US of A military triumphalism on one hand and self-pitying, bugle-salute sentimentalism on the other (when Bill Duke – giving the one thing in Predator that could actually be termed a performance – goes all misty-eyed over his microwaved buddy Ventura).
    Most of the big 80s action directors displayed some ambivalence towards the mildly fascistic butt-kicking mores of their chosen form: James Cameron developed his My Little Pony eco side; Paul Verhoeven sharpened his satire. But the full mess and insincerity and dumb contradictions are there unapologetically in Predator, a piece of preening post-Vietnam powder-puff for the US ego.
  • I think Predator has odd moments of self-consciousness too. The one interesting (as opposed to efficient) piece of screenwriting is the scene after they've stormed the rebel encampment, when the alien hunter is watching the soldiers in infrared. Carl Weathers's CIA agent thanks Duke for skewering a deadly scorpion on his back; Duke's reply – "Any time" – is played back with menacing distortion by the predator, until it sounds like a warning. The radio operator (played by Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black) tells a variation of the dirty joke he tried out in the helicopter, also concerning an echo. Landham finally gets it, and his booming laugh is picked up by the alien and played back, grotesquely. Echoes, echoes, and more echoes … until all the machismo is hollow. Something telling is going on here, tonally. The final image of the sequence is the predator watching the heat fade out of the scorpion in its own palm. It's like the film is saying: there's always someone bigger.
  • Predator presents a confused but not unsympathetic mix of genres: the in-your-face, shape-shifting horror of Alien (film) and the sweaty military mystique of Rambo and Top Gun, with the whole salted by the camp humor and comic book heroics of the typical Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. It`s also, if only half-consciously, a political allegory, with something unformed but urgent to say about U.S. involvement in Central America.
  • McTiernan had a good idea in making his monster all but invisible. (through the film`s first hour, his presence is suggested only through a clever optical effect). Schwarzenegger and his team are, to say the least, very definite physical presences; the only force that could possibly threaten them would be their opposite, something airy and unseen.
    McTiernan, regrettably, seems more interested in spectacle than suspense, and the attack sequences are filmed for splashy visual impact. And an apocalyptic finale that raises the antiwar message to the nuclear level is more than McTiernan's metaphor can bear. But Predator remains, if not exactly a thinking man`s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, at least an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that reflects some thought.
  • In the context of racially charged white anxieties about immigration and social order, the historical demonization of Black men is a trope, a stereotype, that easily maps onto cinematic typecasting. The 1987 Hollywood film that launched the Predator franchise fits this pattern.
    Predator depicted a Black, dreadlocked, large and super-virile male in a way that converged white art with white political history. A white man once said he thought it was cool that I had dreadlocks like the Predator. This is not a compliment.
  • PREDATOR starts out as a second cousin to Rambo and Missing in Action, with Arnold Schwarzenegger (as Maj. Dutch Schaefer) leading a covert mission to find military operatives missing in Latin America. After 45 long minutes, he and his cohorts (among them Carl Weathers) find an enemy camp and conduct a raid. Knock, knock, says Mr. Schwarzenegger, kicking down the door to a hut. Stick around, he says, running somebody through with a sword.
  • Predator, which opens today at the National and other theaters, is alternately grisly and dull, with few surprises, though the creature's face, when finally revealed, has an interesting claw configuration where its mouth ought to be. The habitat is a good deal more interesting than the action, since it contains both floristy-looking palm fronds and large, deciduous trees that have produced some autumn leaves. The film was shot in Mexico.
  • Grisly and dull, with few surprises.
    • Mitchell, Elvis (June 12, 1987). "The New York Times Review: Predator". The New York Times. p. C6.
  • Yeah, I think there’s something very unique about that movie. For one, the movie itself is something that inspired me to do mixed-genre pictures later. I remember going to see it with my older brother who was a bodybuilder and we saw every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that came out and we went to see that one thinking it was a Commando type film and then it starts turning – I remember the audience reaction to the film in the theater, they were kinda confused when it turned sci-fi and horror and Arnold didn’t really win at the end, a Predator blows himself up and flies off looking like he’s going to a looney bin in a helicopter. And they were a little like “wow what was that movie?” And it just caught on and kept growing in popularity. And the movie itself was very unique.
  • Slightly above-average actioner that tries to compensate for tissue-thin-plot with ever-more-grisly death sequences and impressive visual effects.
    • "Predator Review". Variety. January 1, 1987. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
  • "Predator" is an ominous high-tech Stone-Age mixture—ominous because the production is high tech and the script, and its values and mentality, are Stone Age. It's in the bare-bones action-adventure mode that producers Joel Silver and Lawrence Gordon used in "The Warriors" and "The Driver," chic action-fables where nothing impedes the streamlined flow—neither logic, originality nor a single naturalistic moment. Sometimes the form works, but in "Predator," they've hit nada. There's a difference between Walter Hill's minimalism and vacuity—which is what we get from Jim and John Thomas' screenplay. It's arguably one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made as a major studio movie. There's no need to do a Mad magazine movie parody of this; it's already on the screen.

Cast

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See also

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