Back in the day (the 1980's) I was a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. (To be honest, I still am.) And one of my favorite of Arnold's 80's heyday was Predator (1987). I was a kid at the time, but something about the story intrigued me. Maybe it was that it started as a Rambo-type military story and became a much weirder science fiction story. Maybe it was my nascent love of stories that turn the tables on preconceived notions, a love that has only deepened over time. Maybe I just thought the Predator was cool.
Over the intervening decades I have watched most of the later iterations of the Predator, most of which were okay but none of which quite captured the same feeling as the original for me. Still, I was really excited when I heard that the newest Predator movie would be set in the early 1700's in North America and most of the human cast would be Native American. What a cool idea!
So I watched Prey (2022). And it was great! (More on that below.) But then it put me in the mood to watch all the other Predator movies. And because I am always willing to go the extra mile for you, dear blog readers, I embarked upon a predatory journey of cinematic excellence (or at least cinematic kinda okayness).
I watched almost all the Predator movies on Hulu, even both Alien vs. Predator movies (yes, there are two). I didn't watch 2018's The Predator, but I watched it in theaters in 2018, which I feel is the bare minimum to maintain my Predator street cred.
Okay, here we go!
And just to warn you, I ain't got time to avoid spoilers. So watch for that shimmer. The spoilers are out there.
Prey (2022)
I read somewhere that while most of the dialogue in Prey is delivered in English, there is a Comanche language dubbed version on Hulu. So I watched it in Comanche with English subtitles, which I really recommend. Just go into the extra features section of the Prey page on Hulu to find it. I also impressed myself that when some French-speaking Europeans show up and the subtitles are also in French, that my middling French skills got me through most of it. But mostly it was really cool to hear spoken Comanche, because we don't hear enough Native languages, many of which are endangered these days.
Our story begins with Naru (played excellently by Amber Midthunder), a woman who wants to become a warrior and hunter like her brother despite her people's gendered division of labor. While Naru and her dog (who is delightful!) are out hunting, wouldn't you know it, they see mysterious signs of something that turns out to be ... you guessed it: a Predator!
Much of the film consists of Naru's cat and mouse games with the Predator. And as in the original film, it's not traditional brute force, but her wits, that win the day. In fact, I'd say Prey does a better job than most of the other films (maybe even the original) of showcasing the main character's grit and ingenuity, because Naru is consistently underrated by most of her human peers as well. It's inspiring stuff.
Another thing: Sarah Schachner's score is amazing. It will definitely be going into my rotation of film scores (I've been listening to a lot of scores the last few years).
Like most of the Predator films, Prey has an inspiring theme of intellect and determination in the face of stark odds. I think all the movies encourage some thinking about domination, whether through colonialism of one group of humans over another or environmental domination of the non-human world.
Predator movies always turn the tables: in the first one the US is once again meddling in Latin American politics when they find themselves being, well, meddled with to put it lightly, and in Prey our heroine finds herself caught between would-be oppressors of both the terrestrial and extraterrestrial variety.
There's something melancholy about the way Prey ends: having vanquished both human and Predator foes, the main characters realize what Europeans are bringing to the Americas and the danger this has for the culture the movie spends so much time depicting. So they suggest relocating. The film leaves us thinking about larger tragedy of contact between Europeans and Native Americans, one of the most horrific tales in human history.
I don't know if a Predator movie can help us think through all this, but maybe it could prompt a bit of thought on who are the predators and prey environmentally, politically, culturally, and philosophically. No matter where you think you are in the scheme of things... listen carefully for that weird clicking noise and watch for a shimmering in the trees.
Predator (1987)
I loved this movie when I was a kid. And watching Prey made me want to revisit it. I'm glad I did!
One thing that struck me: this movie has a diverse multi-racial cast! So much so that if it were released in 2022, a bunch of racist trolls would complain about it being "woke." But this seemed totally normal to me in the 80's, because even a ten-year-old kid in 1987 knew that there are different kinds of humans on Earth.
Another thing about the trolls: there were a lot of obnoxious complaints and pearl clutching about the new movie and how people 300 years ago, especially Native Americans with bows and arrows, could possibly stand up to the technology of a Predator. (Man, these people need to get a life.) But what's hilarious is that these people never seem to have watched the original movie they claim to love.
When Arnold and his diverse band of merry men (and one woman) first meet the Predator, they unleash all their modern weaponry, including Jesse Ventura's giant gun. And they accomplish absolutely nothing except destroying a bunch of perfectly nice jungle.
It's only when Arnold figures out how to beat the Predator with mud and (dear readers, I kid you not) an actual bow and arrow that he prevails.
Predator finds a weird way to undermine the 80's action hero hyper-masculinity without making Arnold look like a weakling.
Predator also gave us many cultural gifts. It gave us some classic lines like "I ain't got time to bleed" and "You're one ugly motherfucker." It stars the future governors of California and Minnesota, and above all it gave us this meme format with Arnold and Carl Weathers.
Predator 2 (1990)
I'm sure I saw Predator 2 when it came out, but I had forgotten how weird it is in that way that movies in the late 80's and early 90's often were (my favorite example of this weirdness is another Arnold classic, Total Recall).
This time a Predator (maybe one of the same ones from the first movie?) shows up in Los Angeles in a then-future 1997. Man, people in 1990 thought things would really go to shit in seven years, with heat waves and gangs turning LA into a literal war zone (in reality the late 90's gave the US Bill Clinton and boy bands, oh, and increasing mass incarceration, which I guess the movie plays into with its message about fear of crime even though actual crime rates were declining at the time).
Danny Glover is (what else?) a police detective who, although he never exactly says so, is still too old for this shit. So we have a Predator movie this time with a Black man as the lead and another diverse cast. Nobody tell the trolls how "woke" Hollywood was in 1990!
And once again, it's not the military or militarized police that defeat our Predator, but Danny Glover with some smarts. He literally kills the Predator with its own weapon.
Another highlight: Gary Busey in one of his most sedate-for-him rolls, which is still a bit much.
Alien vs. Predator (2004)
We had to wait 14 years for another Predator movie, and it... was okay. Alien vs. Predator (or AvP as it is affectionally/sarcastically known) brings together the Alien and Predator franchises, which is a pretty cool idea (or I remember thinking it would be when I went to see it in 2004).
With perhaps a nod to The Thing, we set our scene in fair Antarctica where a Predator ship melts through the ice to uncover an ancient secret. Alex Weyland (who founded the company that would send all those ships into chest-burster territory in the Alien movies) sends a team of people to check out the mysterious heat signature.
Lex (played by Sanaa Lathan) leads another fairly diverse team (so "woke" these Predator movies!), most of whom are picked off either by Xenomorphs or Predators. You see, we find out that the Predators have been coming to Earth for thousands of years to hunt Xenomorphs, using humans for gestational purposes for their adorable little face-huggers. Does this make any sense in the context of either Alien or Predator canon? Who cares? It's a fun ancient alien (vs. predator) premise.
A cool thing about this one is that Lex not only can't defeat the Predators with overwhelming firepower, but she has to make an actual alliance with a Predator to escape the Xenomorphs. The Predator respects her as a warrior after she bests a Xenomorph and uses its head and spine as weapons. There's an element of gaining the Predators' respect throughout a lot of the movies (in Prey, for example, at one point the Predator doesn't kill Naru because it doesn't see her as a threat), so that was an interesting part of this one.
But can you gain the respect of people who want to kill you? Should you? Interesting questions for sure in what is otherwise a bit of a silly "let's-mash-together-two-IPs" Hollywood cash grab.
While I might not go so far as to call AvP a good movie, it's entertaining enough.
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
The AvP fun continues in this sequel. While I saw all the previous Predator movies in theaters or shortly thereafter on video or cable, I don't think I ever saw this one until I watched it recently. And I'm not sure I missed much.
A ship with some Predators and Xenomorphs crashes in Colorado. And we meet probably the whitest cast of any Predator movie yet. I often felt like I was watching a CW teen drama, but with a few Predators and Xenomorphs thrown in to mix things up.
The biggest thing that doesn't work for me, but I guess is a choice, is that the humans do defeat the Predators and Xenomorphs with overwhelming military power. They literally nuke the whole town. And then Weyland Industries gets their hands on some Predator tech. Uh oh.
To me this undermines most of what makes the Predator movies cool. But maybe the filmmakers were, to paraphrase Aliens, finally following Ripley's advice and nuking them as the only way to be sure.
This one leans more into the Alien side of the equation, which is interesting, I guess, but it makes it work less well as a Predator movie in my opinion. It's my least favorite of the Predator movies for sure.
Another thing: How can this and AvP feel so old and dated? I mean, they just came out a few years ago, right? Or is it possible that the mid-2000's really was a long time ago? Nah.
Predators (2010)
Predators has a neat premise: What if the Predators have a sort of interplanetary game preserve where they handpick (or claw-pick as the case may be) the fiercest predators from other planets and then hunt those predators? This is also the only Predator movie to take place entirely off Earth, although you don't find that out at first.
We get another diverse cast (sorry, trolls). Adrien Brody makes for an interesting tough man, and I love Alice Braga and Walton Groggins as a soldier and serial killer respectively. Mahershala Ali is woefully underutilized in a pre-stardom role for him. And Topher Grace plays a meek doctor with secrets of his own (remember that he was a big star at the time!). It's always fun to see Danny Trejo, although we don't see him for long.
But by far my favorite part of Predators is Laurence Fishburne in a delightfully unhinged role. Seriously, I love Morpheus as much as the next nerd, but I loved this scruffy bastard of a character, too, which shows just some of the range of Fishburne as an actor (see also his grumpy grandpa in Black-ish).
Predators probably does more to highlight the environmentalist themes of the franchise than any other Predator movie. If this is how Predators treat humans, then how do we treat our environment and the non-human animals we share this planet with?
And maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but also, if all of these mercenaries and cold-blooded killers can learn to get along to defeat the Predators, what would it take for all the nations of Earth to learn to get along?
And there you have it! I do remember liking the 2018 movie, and I may write about it another time. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see where those wily Predators turn up next!
PS: Happy Labor Day to my US and Canadian readers! Let us band together to defeat the Predators of labor exploitation with our grit and ingenuity!
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