Halloween Blogging: Predators (2010)

Given the nature of Hollywood product in 2016, many of my efforts in daily film criticism here involve the assessment of sequels, remakes, prequels and even re-imaginations. 

These are the three most important benchmarks, in considering the worth of a sequel film, in my estimation.

1. Is there a sufficient measure of fidelity and respect for the original material?  In other words, does the sequel appear to honor what was positive and beloved about the movie that spawned it?

Bad sequels, by contrast, tend often to undercut the very qualities that were good about the original, usually in a cynical attempt to cash in quickly and bring in a strong first-weekend haul.

2. Does the sequel add to the franchise mythos in some significant or valuable way?

Is the world established by the original film enlarged and opened-up by the efforts of the sequel, or reduced by them? 

Again, this is vitally important. If we are treading deeper into a particular fantasy world, are the discoveries there worth excavating? Or, in some fashion, do the new discoveries ruin and conflict with what we already now?  Do they sour the brand?

3. Finally -- and this may be the most important criterion -- does the sequel also function as a stand-alone work of art in some significant way? 

What concerns me here is this idea: if you were to see the sequel in question alone, with no pre-conceived notions, and with no knowledge of the original, would the film make you want to see the previous entry? 

This third criterion is vital to a judgment of the film not merely as sequel; but as an independent example of cinematic art.  Can the sequel stand  proudly on its own two feet?

If you consider a few great sequels in film history, like The Godfather Part II (1974), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), The Road Warrior (1982), and Aliens (1986), for instance, each film fulfills all three of the above-listed criteria. 

So it is a relief to report that 2010's Predators is both a good sequel and a good film in its own right, if perhaps not in the class of the four high-watermark sequels I tagged above.

Let's weigh each of these sequel benchmarks one-at-a-time, vis-a-vis Predators. 

First, has this sequel been crafted with a sense of both seriousness and fidelity to its beloved source material (the 1987 McTiernan film, Predator)?

The answer is undeniably "yes." 

Predators lands us back in the modern warfare/soldier milieu of the 1987 Predator, and also re-introduces the familiar alien hunter and his preferred territory: a steamy, overgrown jungle. 

Furthermore, the design of the titular monster is abundantly faithful to what came before; and the Predators act in a fashion audiences understand and recognize.  To wit, the film remembers how a Predator can tricks its prey with a cloak of invisibility, and also with vocal mimicry (a duck call...), for instance. 

Attentive audiences will also note a reprise of Alan Silvestri's accomplished Predator scores, and a climactic nod to Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally," which was featured in the Schwarzenegger edition from  the Reagan Era.

Much more importantly, however, in terms of seeming  faithful and honoring the Predator legacy, Predators avoids a dramatic structural mistake I have seen cropping up in more and more sequels and re-imaginations of late. 

This mistake is simply to assume that because a modern audience boasts some familiarity with the film's central monster or villain, it is permissible and  even desirable to simply cut to the chase (cue the CGI...) and forgo suspense and atmospheric build-up.  It's like the filmmakers can't be bothered or patient enough to make the old monster seem fresh -- and scary -- again.

This is an arena where Predators really thrives. Director Nimrod Antal opens with a bravura action sequence involving soldiers in atmospheric free-fall, but then lands the confused human protagonists in a jungle of mystery and ambiguity. 

Of course, we immediately understand that they are being hunted by Predators, but the characters do not know this important fact; at least not initially.  Commendably, the movie takes its time to build character recognition of the grim situation, and also develop ably the alien landscape of a Predator "game preserve." On the latter front, there's a fantastic, visually-stunning ,and truly epic reveal early in the film, when the "hunted" soldiers realize they aren't in Kansas anymore.

It's a trap with no escape, and this film makes you feel the terror of the soldiers at being outmatched, marooned on unfamiliar, unfriendly turf.

The Predators don't actually appear on-screen until approximately the half-hour point of the film, and Antal uses his first-act duration wisely.  He builds up an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that lasts throughout the film. In this case, he is a patient director, and doesn't show us the monster in extreme close-up in the first minute of the film...the way that we saw New Freddy in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, by contrast.

Also, Laurence Fishburne appears in the film as a kind of hybrid version of Quint from Jaws (1975) and Kurtz from Apocalypse Now (1979).  His purpose is to function as the film's "voice of fear."  He has survived who-knows-how-many encounters with the Predators and remains abundantly terrified of them. 

This is a powerful, unsettling fact, because we associate Laurence Fishburne with the messianic, nearly invincible Morpheus from The Matrix Trilogy, a character of great heroism and presence.  Here, that same towering man is reduced to blubbering insanity. 

As I wrote in my review of Jaws, sometimes fear can be generated in considerable doses by a technique I term information overload; by storytelling.  Consider the famous U.S.S. Indianapolis story that Quint told his shipmates aboard the Orca.  It's the scariest damn thing in the movie because it's personal; because it is intimate.  Quint was there, he saw it happen...and he survived.

Fishburne's character, Nolan, serves the same function in Predators; not merely acting as the voice of fear...but as the voice of personal experience. 

Again, Predators is nowhere near as good or powerful a film as Jaws, obviously, but the narrative approach here is commendable. Rather than using overt flashbacks of the confrontations Nolan describes so apprehensively, Antal maintains the mystery and power of the film's alien creatures by focusing on the frightened storyteller; on his voice; on his words.  This approach allows the audience to experience this man's terror and madness. An action scene would have been spectacular, but a strong man's sense of personal fear can be even more powerful.

This is what honoring a franchise is all about. 

By contrast, a negative example might help explain this point better. In AVP: Requiem (2007), Aliens and Predators landed on modern-day Earth...and mid-west small-town folks basically defeated them and survived. Children were among the survivors. This victory in our day and age made two breeds of fearsome aliens look weak and inconsequential. 

In previous Alien films, colonial marines and androids were decimated, ship's crews were killed, and Ripley sacrificed her life to assure that an alien could not get to Mother Earth, where it would run rampant and destroy all this "bullshit"  that we think is so important. 

Requiem retroactively shat on all of Ripley's amazing accomplishments by having a 21st century town-sheriff with a shotgun outsmart and survive an encounter with not one kind of alien menace, but two. What's the big deal Ripley, huh?

That's dishonoring a franchise.

That's dishonoring two, actually.

Predators makes no similar mistakes.  It develops at a good pace and plays fair with an alien race we have seen in previous films. It maintains the dignity of a beloved screen monster. And even the creature design is better too. By AVP: Requiem, the Predators looked like squat, overweight wrestlers rather than lean, seven-foot-tall hunters from another world.

Okay, benchmark two.   Does the film add to the mythos of the franchise?  When the fantasy world of the franchise is opened up, does it add to our knowledge, or contradict it?

Again, Predators is successful. 

The film reveals that Predators train and control monstrous alien hunting dogs (with a whistle, no less), and clearly this revelation fits into the hunting milieu we associate with the previous films, so that's to the good. 

And secondly, the film's inventive setting -- a planetary game preserve -- also fits in with what we understand about the Predators; that hunting is their primary sport, and that they entertain themselves with a variety of game, in a variety of settings.

Another facet of the film I felt was successful involved the introduction of warring breeds of Predators.  Apparently, this society features some pretty serious racial divisions. In other words, we get a look at a Predator we know...and also a fearsome one that we do not know.  

The new breed of aliens does not feel overtly out-of-place (like the Newcomer in Alien Resurrection, for instance), but rather a natural extension of what we know of the Predators: that they are warlike and highly-competitive. 

The film also picks up on one of the few good ideas of AVP (2004):  that Predators can, on occasion, work with their prey if the situation demands it.

Finally, we get to the third benchmark: does the film stand on its own two feet?

Again, I believe it does.

The script is highly literate, finding time to quote that great hunter, Ernest Hemingway.  But more importantly, the movie strikes on a worthwhile theme: that the Predators -- the monsters of another world -- are battling the monsters of our world.  Here, the Predators test their mettle against guns-for- hire, death squad murderers, drug runners sociopaths, snipers, Yakuza and other individuals who have turned murder into a profitable art. They truly are the predators of our civilization.

This is not really an idea enunciated in any previous Predator movie, and it comments on the world we live in today, in 2015.  We've had almost fifteen years of non-stop war now.  Murder is big business on Earth at the moment and so Predators (written over a decade ago) feels not just smart, but actually relevant to current events. 

For all these reasons, this is the best Predator movie since the original in 1987.  That's not to say the film doesn't have some flaws. For one thing, you can guess right off the bat who the last three survivors of the film will be. It's easy...and a bit too predictable, even if the film attempts valiantly to throw in two inventive, climactic curve-balls.

Yet, that quibble almost doesn't matter when you get a sturdy sequel that demonstrates respect for its source material, opens up the universe of that source material, and tells a solid, standalone story at the same time.

The Predators featured in this film are involved in a process of evolution; making themselves better killers.  I was pleasantly surprised that the filmmakers sought an evolution of sorts too.  In sequels. 

The end result?  They made a good one. 

Halloween Blogging: Predator 2 (1990)

The opening shot of Predator 2 (1990) is a remarkable one.

Director Stephen Hopkins’ camera rockets over a dense jungle landscape, thus reminding audiences of the 1987 John McTiernan film and its Central American locale. 

Then -- as the camera continues to speed over myriad tree tops -- it pans up to reveal…modern Los Angeles, the urban jungle, on the horizon.

This composition is a great visual way to connect the two films in the franchise, and a sure sign that Hopkins boasts an active intellect and more to the point, a great eye.

It’s as if the last moments of Predator have become, literally, the first moments of Predator 2. 

Predator 2 is also appreciated by many horror movie fans because it provides the first cinematic evidence of a “shared” universe with another beloved franchise: Alien (1979). 

During the climax of this sequel cop/warrior Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) finds his way aboard a grounded Predator spaceship and sees a trophy room that boasts a Giger-style alien skull.

At first blush this might seem like a throwaway moment, but, certainly, it paves the way for the Alien vs. Predator movies of the 2000s. Already, Dark Horse had seen success by pairing the two monsters in a comic series, but Predator 2 is the first such evidence of a shared universe on the silver screen.

Whether that’s a good thing or not, I’ll leave up to you, the reader, but Predator 2 intimates a shared history between two great movie monsters in a way that isn’t entirely obvious or craven (like, say, Freddy’s finger knives dragging Jason’s hockey mask down to Hell.)

Instead, the reveal of the alien skull in Predator 2 is an awesome moment that expands significantly both franchises.We now know that Predators have defeated the acid-dripping, silver-jawed monstrosities, and likewise that those monstrosities have been around since well before Ripley’s first encounter with them. This moment in the film thus succeeds in the manner that was intended.  It tantalizes us with possibilities, and with a history/relationship we don’t fully understand...but can imagine.

 

This sequel also shares much with another science fiction film of 1990: RoboCop 2.

For example, both Predator 2 and RoboCop 2 feature moments that suggest the tabloidization of American news, the rise of such fare as Inside Edition or A Current Affair. Both films also worry about runaway crime rates in America at the time, and obsess on the notion of our streets becoming the battleground for drug and gang wars. 

And both films -- truly -- are anarchic in visualization, graphic violence and tone, suggesting that the near future will be a time of visceral, bloody horror, sensational news and beleaguered infrastructure. 

In both films, the cops can barely hold their own.

Predator 2 never quite reaches the provocative and anarchic highs or lows of RoboCop 2 but -- to its ever-lasting credit -- the Hopkins sequel is more than willing to acknowledge the humor inherent in its central scenario.

At one point, the hulking Predator ends up in the bathroom of a cranky old woman, and at another juncture attacks a busload of commuters (including a Bernard Goetz character…) simply because they are all armed. 

This scene may represent the best argument for gun control ever put to genre film: Don’t carry a weapon on your way to work, because the Predator -- while on safari -- interprets all gun-owners as “soldiers” and wipes them out with extreme prejudice. Seriously, this film imagines Bernard Goetz-vigilantism as the norm of 1997, and it's a commentary right in line with the imaginings of the RoboCop films.

I admire many aspects of Predator 2 and consider it a worthwhile sequel overall, yet I don’t see it necessarily as an equal to its predecessor in terms of suspense and storytelling. The movie occasionally suffers a bad case of Alien-itis too: cribbing too liberally from 20^th Century Fox’s other space monster franchise.

That tendency doesn’t help the film to cement its own individual identity, and works against the director's best efforts.

“Shit happens.”

In the near-future year of 1997, Los Angeles is choking under perpetual smog, and its streets are a war-zone. 

There, rival gangs -- the Jamaicans and the Colombians -- duke it out for superiority. One of the city’s best cops, Mike Harrigan (Glover) attempts to bring order to the streets, but soon finds that a third, chaotic element has been added to the summertime bloodshed.

In particular, a stealthy alien hunter or predator has arrived in L.A. and begun picking off gang members, as well as cops like Harrigan’s trusted friend, Danny (Ruben Blades).

When a federal agent, Keyes (Gary Busey) begins interfering in his investigation, Harrigan suspects a dark secret. 

He soon comes face to face with the intimidating alien hunter, and learns that Keyes and his men are planning to capture it…

“There’s a new king in the streets.”

When I think back on Predator, which I reviewed last week on the blog, the images that stay with me, in particular, come from the last third of the picture. There, Arnold’s character, Dutch went up against the Predator with no advanced technology in a primordial jungle, and won.  

The battle could have occurred in prehistoric times.

Obviously, a sequel to Predator couldn’t plumb the identical imagery or locale, or even concept, and so Predator 2 tries hard to carve an original space for itself.  The sequel notes, for example, that in the 1990s, “cops” are the warriors of civilization, fighting back criminals on the streets and protecting an endangered populace. 

This is a valid concept, and also feels very much of the epoch. If you gaze at the 1990s, and consider series such as Law and Order (1990 – 2010), or movies such as The First Power (1990), Fallen (1998), Resurrection (1999) or End of Days (1999) it’s not difficult to see how the police procedural format became incredibly popular, and dominated genre entertainment.

Predator 2 fits in with that trend, and Danny Glover makes for a very different kind of “soldier” than Arnie did. Both men are fiercely protective of their teams, but Harrigan is -- living up to his name: “harried” -- forced to accommodate multiple levels of hierarchy and bureaucracy in a fashion that Dutch simply did not.  Dutch eventually had to deal with Dillon’s duplicity (as Harrigan deals with Keyes’ secrecy and cover story), but Harrigan is more constrained from the get-go based on his job, his heavily populated “arena” of battle, and other factors of late 20th century human civilization.. 

One way to gaze at the Predator franchise is simply as a study of soldiers, an examination of the qualities that go into the making of a good one. Predator, Predator 2, and Predators (2010) have different things to tell audiences on that topic, and all the observations are intriguing. Certainly, Predator suggests that  good or advanced weapons don’t make for the best soldiers.  

Predator 2 seems to suggest that a good soldier succeeds by overcoming not his enemy, but those unofficial enemies who make his task more difficult. Harrigan must contend with the presence of innocent civilians, bureaucrats, and infrastructural impediments on his mission to stop the alien hunter. Meanwhile, Predators seems to suggest that real soldiers are a breed apart, and that breed seems to span all cultures.

The downside to Predator 2’s approach is simply that as soon as you have a rampaging alien creature in familiar, city environs, some moments there are going to read as…funny. You can’t play on the feelings of isolation that you might in the jungle setting.  

So when a Predator crashes through a bathroom wall here and nearly runs into an old woman brandishing a broom, you’re in a whole different kind of territory. The last act of the film suffers from a tonal ping-pong between action, comedy, and horror. I prefer the back-to-basics, straight-on approach of Predator’s finale in the jungle. It’s more pure, somehow; more consistent.

Predator 2, at times, seems to verge on camp. If the film featured a more pronounced, consistent social commentary (as is clearly the case in the gonzo-crazy RoboCop 2), the tone-changes in Predator 2 might have tracked better. I like Gary Busey just fine, but his presence -- and line readings -- ratchet up the tongue-in-cheek aspects of the film.

Lions, and tigers and bears. Oh my.

In the introduction, I also noted creeping Alien clichés in this film. There’s one scene here in which right-thinking Harrigan watches on a row of high-tech monitors as wrong-thinking Keyes leads an ill-fated attack against the Predator. The Predator decimates the team, and Harrigan -- tired of being on the sidelines -- steps up to save the day, or win the battle.  

This scene is an exact mirror of a scene in Cameron’s Aliens (1986).  There, Ripley watches on a row of monitors as the Colonial Marines get their asses kicked on Sub Level 3. She must take action herself, because she is right, and Lt. Gorman is so clearly wrong.  

There's even a similar deer-in-the-headlights moment in Predator 2 for  one Gorman surrogate, Garber (Adam Baldwin).

Similarly, Harrigan appropriates a Ripley-ish line from Alien, while talking to Keyes. “You admire the son of a bitch,” he realizes. 

This is also what Ripley realized vis-à-vis Ash and the xenomorph in the Ridley Scott 1979 original

It’s just baffling that a film seeking so aggressively to artistically break free from its successful predecessor would mindlessly ape another film series at the same. These moments are transparently derivative, and undo some of the creative success Hopkins achieves with this sequel.

Still, I appreciate the final revelations of Predator 2. These moments prove chilling. One of the final scenes, inside the spaceship, features not only an alien skull, but evidence that the Predators have been interacting with humans for a very, very long time indeed. They have been here, are here now, and will return soon.  

That’s a creepy thought, and I love how the old Predator leader demonstrates grudging respect for Harrigan, his prey, by gifting him a gun from the 1700s…a souvenir emblematic of their differences, and shared history.

Writing for The Washington Post, review Rita Kempley wrote persuasively of Predator 2’s “dismal irony” and “brooding fatalism” (November 21, 1990). 

I like those qualities too, and I enjoy this sequel quite a bit. I’ll take it over AVP: Requiem (2007) or Alien Resurrection (1997) any day. Predator 2 doesn’t scuttle its franchise, and in some ways it expands the cycle's reach in a wonderful, creative way.   

And yet the tonal lapses into comedy and rip-off territory prevent Predator 2 from being a truly great sequel to one of the best action-horror films of the eighties.

Halloween Blogging: Predator (1987)

Back in 1987, the conventional wisdom about John McTiernan’s Predator (1987) was that it started out like Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and ended up like Alien (1979) or, perhaps, James Cameron’s Aliens (1986).

By framing the film in this simplistic fashion, Predator could be viewed as a simple or derivative swipe at two separate genre inspirations. 

It was part action movie and part sci-fi/horror movie. 

And that, the critics declared, passed for originality in Hollywood.

That’s a left-handed compliment if I ever read one!

The truth about Predator, contrarily, is that it is all of a piece, and thematically consistent throughout. 

Indeed, the intense film forges a debate about warriors or soldiers, and asks, specifically, what the best soldiers are made of. 

Do soldiers succeed because of their technology? 

Or do the best soldiers succeed because of some combination of instinct, experience, and a tactical understanding of their enemy?

McTiernan’s film sets up this debate in the film's visualizations.

Specifically, a squad of American soldiers, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch, rain down death and destruction on Third World, Central American soldiers, literally coming down to a village from a point on high to do so. 

This action occurs in the first act, and establishes, per the dialogue that Schwarzenegger’s team is “the best.” We see that adjective vividly demonstrated in a siege set-piece of extreme violence and bloodshed.

The next act of the film, however, deliberately reverses that equation. It positions Schwarzenegger’s team on the ground, and puts an alien hunter at an even higher position -- in the tree-tops -- to rain down death on his “primitive” Earthbound counter-parts. 

The soldiers who were the predators are now the prey.

In both cases, the technologically-superior force wins, and the perceived primitive or lesser opponent is knocked down and defeated. 

In both cases, McTiernan vividly and explicitly associates that sense of superiority with a sense of geographical height; a high physical vantage point, captured by the camera's position.

The winner can, literally, reach heights that the loser can’t, and this is one important reason for his victory.

However, in the third and final act of Predator, Arnold and the alien hunter go head to head -- on equal footing -- and it is only on that terrain, one not involving technology, but rather instincts and know-how, that the best soldier is identified, and a victor is crowned.

So where many 1987 critics choose to see a film that is half Rambo and half Alien, I see a film that develops logically and consistently act to act. You can’t get to that final, almost primordial reckoning in the jungle between the Predator and Dutch unless you frame the debate in precisely the way the screenplay does, and in the way McTiernan does. 

In short, the film depicts the best soldiers in the world demonstrating their ability to defeat all comers, only to be defeated by an enemy better than them; one not of this world.  

The first and second act are two sides of the same coin, the idea -- with apologies to Star Wars Episode I (1999) -- that there is always a bigger fish out there waiting to demonstrate superior technology.

Predator’s third act -- a glorious back-to-basics conflict that looks like it was authentically staged in a prehistoric setting -- makes the point that the greatest hunter or soldier is actually the one who understands his enemy, and trusts his instincts. 

Why make a movie in this fashion? 

Well, in a sense, Predator might be read as a subversive response to the militarization of action films in the mid-1980s, and the kind of shallow, rah-rah patriotism that gave rise to efforts like Heartbreak Ridge (1986), which celebrated an American military victory over…Grenada.

Grenada? 

Was Grenada really a challenge to American domination, given our military budget and might? 

Contrarily, Predator takes a group of tough-talking “ultimate warriors” and puts them in a situation where they aren’t merely shooting fish in a barrel. 

They are the fish in the barrel.

In reckoning with this sudden and total change in fortunes, we begin to glean a true idea of courage and heroism.

All of the Earthly politics in the movie -- illegal border crossings, a false cover story, documentation about a possible invasion, and so forth -- add up to precisely nothing here, and there's a reason why. Those details are immaterial to the real story of soldiers who reckon with an enemy that goes beyond the limits of Earthly knowledge.

Ironically, to be the best soldier in a situation like that, it isn’t the big Gatling gun that matters. It’s the ability to adapt to and understand the kind of menace encountered.

Predator features a lot of macho talk and clichés about war (“I ain’t got time to bleed,”) but it succeeds because it cuts right through this surface, hackneyed vision of military might and suggests a different truth underneath.

There’s always a bigger fish.

“You got us here to do your dirty work!”

An elite squad of American soldiers, led by Dutch Schaefer (Schwarzenegger), is dropped into a Central American jungle to rescue a cabinet minister being held by enemy rebels. 

Going along with Dutch’s team is the mission commander, the not-entirely trustworthy Dillon (Carl Weathers).

Once in the jungle, Dutch and his men launch an attack on a rebel village, and find that Dillon has manipulated his team so as to acquire military intelligence about a possible Russian invasion. The group soon takes a captive, Anna, (Elipidia Carillo).

But before the soldiers can be air-lifted out of the jungle, an extra-terrestrial hunter -- a Predator – sets his sights on the group, killing Dutch’s team one man at a time. 

Anna reports a local legend: about a demon who makes trophies of humans and is often reported in the hottest summers.

And this year, it grows very, very hot…

Losing his men rapidly, Dutch must come to understand his enemy’s weaknesses and strengths, and makes a final stand in the jungle, using every resource available…

“Payback time!”

John McTiernan’s camera in Predator rarely stops moving. It tracks, it pans, and it tilts, but is seldom quiescent. 

The constantly-on-the-move camera conveys a few important qualities about the film. The first idea it transmits is that the soldiers inhabit a changing and changeable world, one that only instinct and experience can help them navigate.  

The always-in-motion camera reveals the soldiers -- sometimes violently -- intruding into new space, new frames, and new aspects of their world.  The camera’s movement -- a kind of visual aggression -- suggests the force that the soldiers carry with them.  

This movement, this force, is then balanced by McTiernan against the still-ness of the Predator’s vision or perspective. A contrast is quickly developed and then sustained.

Throughout the film, we see through the Predator’s eyes, or in Predator-vision. These shots, from high above the landscape (in the tree-tops) tend to be still, un-moving. They thereby capture a sense of the whole world unfolding before the Predator, a complete panorama or landscape.

This is an important conceit. The soldiers are  always moving through a changing, shifting world that they, through their actions, impact.  

But they don’t get the whole picture, so-to-speak.  

By contrast, the Predator vision gives us long-shots, and shows the entire jungle terrain around the soldiers.  This viewpoint suggests omnipotence and power.  

The Predator, quite simply, is able to see more of the world, and see it better. He is able to strike from the tree tops with his shoulder-mounted laser cannon, and target with laser sighting his distant foes.  

His sight is superior, until -- importantly -- Dutch manages to “see” through it; recognizing the flaw in the Predator’s infrared vision.

Again, this is an argument against relying too heavily on technology. Dutch’s soldiers rely on big guns, and get decimated.  

The Predator relies on his mask’s vision system (infrared), and Dutch -- smearing himself in mud -- negates the advantage it provides.  

But again, what’s important is the way that all this material is visualized.

The soldiers, on ground level, cut through and move through the frame, violently interacting with the world on a tactile, aggressive level.  

The Predator, like some great vulture, sits still in the trees (until he strikes), silently hanging back and taking in the lay of the land. He has the luxury to operate from a distance, from up on high, unobserved.

The film sets up a battle between these two perspectives, and one might even argue that the Predator ultimately loses because he abandons his best perspective -- the tree tops -- in order to get down to (and enjoy combat on…) Dutch’s level.

Over and over again, however, McTiernan’s gorgeous, moving compositions suggest that the soldiers don’t have the full picture. Not only is the Predator cloaked, but he has access to the world above the soldiers, the world that they can’t see. A brilliantly-orchestrated shot mid-way through the film sees Dutch hunting for Hawkin’s missing body. He can’t find it. After capturing imagery of Dutch trudging through the brush, McTiernan’s camera suddenly moves upwards, and keeps doing so.

It goes up and up, past a bloody fern frond, and then continues its ascent, until we see Hawkins’ naked, bloodied corpse dangling from the tree top.  The Predator is operating in, metaphorically a more fully three dimensional environment, this shot reveals. 

Dwight and the other soldiers can’t compete on that level. They literally can't even see to that level. 

Those who don’t appreciate Predator tend to watch the film, listen to the macho tough talk, and consider the film a kind of stupid, macho action/horror movie. 

Yet in its own way, Predator glides right past such clichéd dialogue and situations. In doing so, it comments on them.  These cliches are not points of strength, the movie informs us, but points of weakness.  When the Predator uses his duck call device, for example, he apes the men at their most verbally simplistic.  “Any time…”  Or “Over here.”  

Then he is able to trick them using their own words. Their mode of expression becomes a tool to use against them.

As a whole, Predator sort of tricks the audience with its appearance too -- as a macho war movie -- and then treads deeper to examine our conceits about the military, and military might. 

When Arnold finally defeats the Predator, he does so not as a twentieth century soldier with high-tech weapons, but as a mud-camouflaged cave-man, relying on his instinct, his knowledge of the land, and hard-gleaned information about his enemy.

Even then, Arnold barely wins.  

The Predator sacrifices his superior technology, comes to the ground, and takes off his mask because he wants to fight like Arnie; he wants to experience battle like a human would. That desire proves to be the alien's undoing, a sense of vanity about himself, and an unearned sense of superiority to his nemesis.  

And again, this quality reflects dynamically on the first act of the film. Everyone keeps calling Dutch's team "the best,: and the team itself wipes out the Central American rebels while hardly breaking a sweat.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, right?

Dutch, by contrast, demonstrates qualities that our culture doesn’t always value, especially in terms of our military men. He shows compassion and decency with Anna, a prisoner.  He trusts her when the situation changes instead of continuing to treat her like a foe.  

He also rejects Dillon’s approach to war (that the ends justify the means), and does his best to get his men out of a situation in which they are not really fighting for their country, but acting as pawns in someone’s illegal agenda.  

Finally, Dutch is curious -- intensely curious -- and flexible enough to understand that he is being hunted by something inhuman. He doesn’t reject the possibility that this could be true, and instead contends with the facts. 

 “If it bleeds, we can kill it” Dutch concludes, and that is a perfectly logical and sensible argument in the face of what seems an irrational conflict: a battle with an invisible alien.

Dutch is lucky, of course, too. He discovers the secret of defeating Predator-vision by accident, by ending up in the mud. But he also makes the most of his opportunities by demonstrating flexibility rather than rigidity. He changes his very identity to win.  He goes from 20th century high-tech soldier to primitive cave man, to carry the day.

Predator still dazzles, in part because of McTiernan’s often-moving camera and approach to visuals, but also because of that incredible final sequence in the jungle.  

Arnold and the colossal, frightening alien duke it out on a little parcel of land, surrounded by water.  The setting is picturesque, but more than that, it seems to evoke some kind of genetic memory, a feeling for the day when humans didn’t understand the world and were prey to saber tooth tigers or bears, or anything else that might find us when we ventured out of our caves. 

The film’s final battle -- shorn of high-tech military hardware -- gets down to the bloody basics and is incredibly satisfying on a human level.

Today, we have military drones, smart-bombs, and other incredible technology to help us win when we wage war, but Predator is a remarkable reminder from another movie age that the biggest, best guns don’t necessarily make great soldiers.   

If they did, the Predator would have won his battle with Arnie, right?