Back
in the summer of 1987 -- thirty years ago -- 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). At least, that's how critic Roger Ebert described the film.
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, as Ebert 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 soldiers show no mercy, and give no quarter to their enemy.
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. And they have no reason to expect mercy.
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 chose 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-1980's, 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 typical of its time period 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 utter stillness 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 what might be termed 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-light 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. It's just Rambo with an alien!
Yet in its own way, Predator glides right past such clichéd dialogue
and situations. In doing so, it actually comments on them; it comments on two-dimensional thinking. 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 macho mode of expression becomes a tool to use against them.
As
a whole, Predator tricks the audience with its appearance or visual trapping 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.
Thirty years later, 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 the day 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?
