This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Gena Radcliffe, Staff Writer

We all know what an elevator pitch is, right? It’s when you describe an idea for something as simply and briefly as possible, preferably under 30 seconds or about the time of an average elevator ride (unless you’re in the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai). I am quite certain that the pitch for Predator (dir. John McTiernan, 1987) was made before the elevator doors closed. Schwarzenegger fights an alien. Four words, it doesn’t get much simpler than that. The finished product could be described the same way. They could have put it on the poster without accusations of false advertising:

“What’s Predator about?”

“Schwarzenegger fights an alien.”

“Say no more.”

Predator was released near the end of a bizarre conservative streak in American film. Following the election of Ronald Reagan as President, Republican rhetoric became less focused on “one nation, under God” in favor of “us vs. them.” We were warned that America was constantly in danger of outsiders who hated our values and sought to destroy them. Sometimes, they were from the Middle East, sometimes from Latin America, sometimes from Russia, but they were out there, and they meant to do us harm.

Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris, two of the biggest action stars of the mid-80s, followed suit, starring in a series of movies that could be described as jingoistic at best and xenophobic at worst. While Schwarzenegger took that route in Commando (though his “South American” nemesis was played by Brooklyn-born Dan Hedaya), most of his antagonists leaned towards the fantastical, like James Earl Jones’s cult leader Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian. Perhaps it was Schwarzenegger’s comically large build that made it so audiences wanted to see him fight something other than mere mortal men. After all, when your character is introduced lugging an entire tree around on your shoulder without breaking a sweat, as happens in Commando, there isn’t much suspense in wondering if you’ll be able to defeat a dictator’s collection of inept henchmen. He needed to fight someone his own size…or rather, something.

Now, to be fair, Predator does open with Schwarzenegger, playing Dutch Schaefer (one of his more plausible character names), making short work of Central American communists, along with his military rescue team. It’s hardly a fair fight, though and requires so little effort from Dutch that he’s able to make wisecracks while throwing knives and firing machine guns one-handed. Girl Scouts put up a bigger defense than these guys. As it turns out, it’s an exercise to get Dutch and his team warmed up for the bigger, stronger, and far more unfamiliar nemesis, one that’s hidden in the jungle and has been watching them the whole time.

I don’t have to explain the plot of Predator to you. It’s right there at the beginning of this article: “Schwarzenegger fights an alien.” Anyway, you’ve probably seen it, and even if you haven’t, you know that it is where the phrase “Get to da choppa!” comes from, as well as the image of two beefy male arms clasping hands in either a show of brotherhood or an invitation to arm wrestle. The other arm belongs to Dillon (Carl Weathers), an old war buddy of Dutch’s turned CIA operative, who the plot ever-so-briefly sets up as a potential antagonist. That’s quickly dropped upon the arrival of the titular Predator, however: a hulking intergalactic monster with dreadlocks, a face that looks like a vagina, and a finely honed skill for hunting and killing.

The charm of Predator is that it’s set up like a slasher movie: a group of people stuck in the middle of nowhere are stalked by a killer and brutally picked off one by one. All it needs is a grizzled old man to wander up to them and say, “You’re all doomed,” though I suppose considering this takes place somewhere in South America it would be, “Estáis todos condenados.” 

Then the film unexpectedly moves away from the slasher movie playbook by giving these characters distinct personalities. Dutch, the hero, comes off like a boring dud when compared to nerdy Hawkins (future action film director Shane Black), who tells the world’s worst jokes; rootin’-tootin’ Blain (Jesse Ventura), who looks like what would have happened if Yosemite Sam went on a two year-long program of protein shakes and steroids; and Billy (Sonny Landham), who looks at everyone like he’s wondering what their livers taste like.

But no one makes an impression like Mac (Bill Duke), who shows up for the mission debriefing in a three-piece suit, while everyone else is in jeans and t-shirts, and it only gets weirder from there. Even when the situation with the Predator grows more dire, you’re still not entirely sure Mac won’t snap and kill everyone first. In one scene, he threatens Dillon, telling him, “You give away our position one more time, and I’ll bleed ya, real quiet,” in a voice that suggests he desperately hopes that happens. His most unsettling moment, however, is when he’s shown dry-shaving his face with a disposable razor. You know, to relax.

These are all capital-C characters, and it’s disappointing to see them go, even Poncho (Richard Chavez), who doesn’t do much other than stand around and look handsome. Clearly, McTiernan loves them too, as illustrated by the delightful “Remember these guys? They were great” end credits sequence, which, as has been pointed out elsewhere, looks like the credits for a ‘90s TV sitcom. 

Whereas Stallone and Norris were all grim and humorless exercises in rote, empty patriotism roles, Predator felt fresh and fun, with a much needed sense of humor. There’s even a fascinating eye for detail in both the Stan Winston-created design of the Predator (played by Kevin Peter Hall) and its otherworldly technology, like its cloaking device and medi-kit. This pays off in the finale, when the fatally wounded Predator, having just triggered an explosive device, mocks Dutch with the recorded laughter of Billy from earlier in the film. As Dutch flees, the laughter gets louder and more maniacal, making the moment both funny and surprisingly creepy. Dutch may have defeated it, but in the end, it literally gets the last laugh. To quote Bong Joon-ho, “To me, that’s cinema.”

Post Script:

Predator is in rare company with Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979) and The Terminator (dir. James Cameron, 1984) as an action movie that continues to stick the landing in its sequel. While Predator 2, isn’t quite as great, it’s still good, particularly since we learn that Predators (or rather the Yautja, their alien species name) have an ethics code, in that they don’t kill either pregnant women or anyone who’s unarmed. Unfortunately, in the apocalyptic hellscape that is 1997 Los Angeles here, everybody is armed, so that doesn’t really get in the way of a Predator’s hunting and killing expedition.

We’re just going to collectively ignore the two other sequels, as well as the woeful Alien vs. Predator movies (of which the best you can say for either of them is that at least they’re not as bad as Freddy vs. Jason) and jump right to 2022’s prequel Prey. If the original Predator was set up like a slasher movie, then Prey was a two-character study, as a pair of skilled hunters–one a teenage girl, the other a dreadlocked, vagina-faced alien–try to outwit and outlast each other. It puts a cap on an underrated franchise that wanted to try something a little different then its flag-waving companions in the action department and wonderfully succeeded.