If It Bleeds: Revisiting PREDATOR & embracing PREY
In recent years, the Predator has felt like one of the more forgotten movie ‘monsters’ in modern cinematic history.
Not that we haven’t seen pictures featuring the alien hunter, most recently Shane Black’s interesting but flawed 2018 effort The Predator, but rather this was a creature who simply hasn’t had the recurrent traction of other science-fiction creations on screen. Think of how many Alien films now exist. Consider the monsters of horror, be it Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger, who continue to find an afterlife again and again and again. The Predator’s appearances have been much fewer and further between, despite him being one of the more enigmatic and intriguing ‘monsters’ of the last thirty plus years.
The use of ‘monster’ is qualified by air quotes because the Predator doesn’t equate to me in the same vein as many of the aforementioned devils of cinema. The Predator, or the Predators as is probably the better moniker given no film yet has featured the same creature twice, is not by nature an evil creation. The Predator—or in deeper comic book lore a Yautija—is as the name defines him, a hunter of prey. He is a warrior who lives by a code. He seeks out the strongest and while his intent is to kill, he lives by a sense of honour. He is more Viking than demon. He is more Klingon than xenomorph.
This has perhaps never been better understood than in Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, the latest movie in the franchise, which if we’re lucky will begin a whole new lease of life for Jim & John Thomas’ creature. It deserves to, because the Predator has a hell of a lot more to give.
In anticipation of Prey, I decided to track back and take in the Predator franchise as a whole for the first time in a while.
The last time I saw Predator, John McTiernan’s 1987 now iconic original, was at the Prince Charles Cinema in London as part of one of their recurring Arnold Schwarzenegger marathon all-nighters. It might have been the second picture to play after The Terminator and around 11pm felt like the perfect time to embrace McTiernan’s sweaty, oily, gung-ho contribution to sci-fi action cinema. It is both a Friday or Saturday night with a pizza and beer movie but equally so much more. Outside of the first Die Hard, it is probably McTiernan’s best work.
Everyone knows the basics about Predator.
Schwarzenegger, approaching his career peak, as ‘Dutch’ Schaeffer, leader of a mercenary team of macho macho men who while on a secret mission in Central America to rescue hostages in guerrilla-held territory find themselves in the middle of a Predator’s hunting ground. Everyone is slaughtered in a hail of blood, bullets and skinned cadavers except Dutch, who in the final third—backed by Alan Silvestri’s magisterial score—takes on the Predator through the dark jungles, transporting himself right back into the horrors of Vietnam as he resolves to kill the hunter stalking him. Outside of his famous “get to da choppaaaaaa!”, who can forget Dutch’s fearless bellow to the Predator to “come onnnn do it! Kill me!”?
On this basis, it would be easy to just dismiss Predator as yet another Arnie action flick buoyed more by catchphrases and the Austrian oak’s enormous sense of charisma, but that’s not the film McTiernan makes. Schwarzenegger is a key component but his film is about the smart-talking, pre-Tarantino pop-culture spewing assortment of hard men—Shane Black’s Hawkins, Jesse Ventura’s Blain, Carl Weathers’ traitorous Dillon—and a good half of the picture keeps the Predator at bay, camouflaged in the shadows, watching the team through his infra-red as he bides his time. That’s the beauty of Predator - it never rushes. It doesn’t take the creature for granted. So when it does unfurl in all its weird glory, and Dutch asks our question too “what the hell are you?”, everything is earned.
You can understand why 20th Century Fox wanted to repeat the trick for a sequel. This is the late 1980s - the sequel is well established, as is the burgeoning concept of a franchise. High concept blockbuster filmmaking buoyed by stars, especially action gods, stands tall. Schwarzenegger, however, had other fish to fry and would never return to play Dutch, despite plenty of overtures. Predator 2, in 1990, replaces the post-Vietnam brawn of the jungle with a Los Angeles of the near future (aka 1997) embroiled in a heatwave; the corrupt, crime-ridden urban sprawl in which another Predator is hunting, stalking and ripping apart crime gangs amidst a vicious turf war.
Enter Arnie’s replacement: Danny Glover. He brings an altogether different temperament as LAPD detective Jim Harrigan; gone is the gruff but considered soldier and in comes the hard as nails, smart-talking cop who has learned to take no prisoners. Glover imports elements of his popular Roger Murtaugh persona from the successful Lethal Weapon films (of which by this point there are two) and adds a determined brio. Harrigan is the cop willing to buck the rules to get his man, a classic template in a way, but it becomes clear early on in Stephen Hopkins’ film that the Predator doesn’t entirely fit this landscape as seamlessly.
Credit where credit is due - the Predator franchise, by definition of the creature always being the main character, never entirely repeats itself. There are consistent motifs, recurring nods and winks, but there is no simple copy and paste. Predator 2 is also fun and diverting, throwing in Gary Busey’s somewhat manic government agent determined to capture the alien being (hinting at a conspiracy angle that won’t be explored again until 2018), and reinforcing the Predator’s warrior code by finding Harrigan a worthy adversary, not to mention expanding levels of a deeper mythology by having him gifted a flintlock pistol from the 1700s (more on that later), thereby suggesting a broader history we are not aware of.
Glover, however, is required in the final act to try and become Arnie in the original as Hopkins’ film essentially replicates the climactic battle in the urban atmosphere, to lesser returns. It doesn’t really work. And then the Predator disappears from the cinematic landscape. Numerous attempts to revive him across the next decade or more come to light - most excitingly a proposed Robert Rodriguez feature set at least partly on a Spanish galleon (a concept I had a go at years later as a piece of fan fiction - you might enjoy it). Yet it takes mashing two iconic creatures together, the Alien and Predator, in 2004 for the hunter to return to cinema screens in what many consider to be a nadir for the character from big budget schlock master Paul WS Anderson.
Cards on the table - I like Alien vs Predator. I always have. It’s technically more proficient than people give it credit for. The cast is good, even if the script is admittedly ropey, and it predates Prometheus (another underrated picture) in tying the Alien (and Predator) to prehistoric, Erich von Daniken-esque mythology. The original PC game is naturally better—a truly terrifying experience I can’t recommend highly enough—and there remains probably a stronger, genuinely scary picture to be made from a fusion of two science-fiction worlds that have been well explored in comic book expanded universe fiction. Yet, nevertheless, I always have a good time, and this was no exception.
Equally, I can understand why people struggle with AvP. Quite apart from the fact it shows far too much of creatures who benefit as antagonists by existing more in shadow than in focus, the Predator going up against an Alien transforms him probably more specifically into an anti-heroic figure than he should be. By definition of the xenomorph’s monstrous alien nature, a certain biological and sexual ferocity, the nobility of the Predator’s code emerges in how he must team up with Sanaa Lathan’s thinly drawn heroine Lex to escape the ancient Arctic temple setting. The Predator becomes too sympathetic.
Thankfully, given the critical drubbing the truly dreadful AvP: Requiem (the only one of these precursor films I didn’t bother to rewatch) received, the experiment of combining these two characters swiftly died a death, leaving the way open for Nimrod Antal’s 2010 interpretation, Predators. This is a film which resolutely attempts to reconstruct what worked about McTiernan’s original. It positions the unlikely figure of Adrien Brody as a Schwarzenegger-esque character at the head of an assortment of villains and gangsters dragged into a jungle environment (in this case an alien game reserve where Predators place humans abducted from Earth) only to be hunted by multiple Predators for sport.
In theory, the film should work gangbusters and, indeed, the first act largely does. Antal creates tension and mystery around the collection of characters, where they are, and keeps the Predators off screen. Once it fully embraces the reuse of Silvestri’s original score (which admittedly Predator 2 also was guilty of), and lets rip with the action, it begins to fall apart. It falls into the trap as many pictures in the 2010s did, on reviving beloved franchises or characters, of simply trying to cash in on moments or lines or iconic beats that audiences loved in earlier eras, forgetting to create such moments of their own. Predators is one such film, lacking equally the interesting characterisation (despite a fine cast oddly of character actors) both of the humans and the Predators to make the picture distinct.
Again, it takes time for another entry, almost a decade later with Shane Black’s return to the franchise, this time as writer-director after a succession of well received pictures including Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys, but it is fair to say that 2018’s The Predator is the biggest disappointment of the entire franchise to date, certainly given his legacy involvement with the series. Let me just be enormously self-serving and quote myself, in reviewing the DVD release in 2019 for Set The Tape:
“There is a pulp awareness to The Predator which sometimes—and only sometimes—edges you toward forgiveness for its significant shortcomings. Black seems to know we really shouldn’t take all of this very seriously. Yet in doing so, any sense of tension or suspense evidenced in Predator—the film this sequel so desperately wants to be—is stripped away. Remember how seldom we ever saw the alien in Predator? We might as well not bother having human characters in Black’s film given how much we see of the creature(s). Granted, we may know very much what the Predator looks like these days, but he is practically rammed down our throat from the first few minutes.”
Feel free to check out the full review for deeper thoughts but suffice to say, I emerged from The Predator wondering quite how the franchise had ended up here and, indeed, exactly where it might go next. Enter Dan Trachtenberg who, with the newly released Prey, has given the Predator an entirely fresh lease of life. Taking the pistol mentioned earlier from Predator 2 as a jumping off point, Trachtenberg crafts less a prequel or origin story but rather an Assassins Creed-style slice of alternate Native American history. In what will hopefully become a trend as opposed to a gimmick, one Rodriguez was maybe ahead of the curve on, the Predator is placed in a historical environment that allows Trachtenberg to explore the character in a way never before seen.
Prey ostensibly revolves around Naru, played by Amber Midthunder, a Comanche girl in the Great Northern Plains in 1719; a girl who rejects a life of cooking, washing and female supplication and seeks to be a hunter alongside her male tribal kin. As animals and other humans are attacked nearby, Naru (backed up by her trusty canine Sarii) becomes the only person convinced who we know to be a Predator is stalking them, and sets out on a hunt of her own. In Prey, the hunted becomes the hunter.
Trachtenberg strips the concept back to basics - one Predator, one hunt, but an incredible landscape in which we see the creature in a natural environment. We watch him hunt wolves and bears before he hunts any humans. We see the great pre-Westward Expansion landscape on which the Predator, and Naru, stalk and hunt and it is possibly the most beautiful and effective environment we have yet seen this character.
Trachtenberg understands the power and importance of mystery behind the creature and amplifies its place as legend and myth, considered demonic by swarthy French fur trappers who seek to capitalise on his appearance. The Predator, for the first time in a long time, is fearsome precisely because Trachtenberg places him in the context of a ruthless hunter. There is a code but it isn’t moral.
Prey likely won’t be the last Predator film, even if one hopes the next will appear in cinemas as opposed to simply Disney+, but it is the first film in the franchise since the 1987 original to truly capture the essence of this creature and provide him a landscape in which his potential can be maximised. The Predator has never quite had the films to truly do him justice since the first one. Prey changes that.
He might bleed, but he is far from dead yet.
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