PREDATOR (1987) Retrospective / Review

there's something out there waiting for us 18 hours ago we lost a chopper carrying a cabinet minister in his aid from this charming Little Country we've got to transplant a fix on their position it's about here apparently this trade-off course and we're fairly certain they're in gorilla hands Pilots have each got one round in the head whoever had stripped the [ __ ] out of it be a rescue team we have assassins payback time we need the best that's why you're here simple setup one-day operation we pick up their trailer and Chopper run them down grab those hostages and bounce back across the border before anybody knows we were there for something holy God Jim Harper I know this man Green Berets out of Fort Bragg now what the hell what are they doing here I don't know [ __ ] she's just a jungle came alive and took him oh [ __ ] it's not what she said know something what is it I'm scared [ __ ] you ain't afraid of no man whatever it is out there was us we're not even five minutes it's not going yet but the Rendezvous is 10 to 12 miles away from me you think the Chopper's gonna wait Dylan we make a stand now where there will be nobody left to go to the chopper foreign in June of 1987 and it shot to the number one spot the weekend of its release originally produced on a budget of 15 million dollars it pushed to over 18 million down to reshoots it had been reported that it made over 98 million worldwide making it a successful movie but the documentary for the DVD suggests it took years for it to break even the director John mctin said it lost more than its original cost this I find baffling it was big on home rentals when it came out and I'm sure most people own a copy of predator in some form or another on VHS LaserDisc or dvd when it came to Blu-ray there are three different versions available there's the Bare Bones release with no extra content then there was The Ultimate Edition that brought over all the extra material from a two-disc DVD and now there is a 3D version of Predator although I don't think anyone really asked to see the film in that new money grabbing format the ultimate edition Blu-ray came under a lot of controversy for its picture quality now Predator does have a lot of grain evident in its picture there are reports of the additional cameras on set were loaded with the incorrect film stock hence why the quality changes now and again so when it came to the second release on blu-ray Fox added a lot of digital noise reduction to remove the Grain and the image came out looking really smudged and soft making the actor's skin look like clay many home video enthusiasts gave the pitcher a one out of 5 star rating so I decided to save my money and not upgrade to the ultimate edition first time screenwriters Jim and John Thomas had originally come up with the idea of a group of hunters who came from another planet to hunt on Earth but seemingly that direction ended up not being the best way to go about it so they went with the idea of one Hunter and the most dangerous subjects for them to hunt would be man it came to the attention of 20th Century Fox who showed it to the producer John Davis and Joel Silva who both became interested in the project John Davis was impressed with John McKinnon's first feature film Nomads that starred Pierce Brosnan and brought him on board Predator would be John's first Hollywood film Arnold was very excited to be involved once he read the script and once the other cast members became attached things moved forward and they set up production in Mexico which proved to be very difficult to shoot down to the immense heat on rough terrain during the course of filming they didn't know what the Predator would look like and when it was finally delivered to the set they were all shocked at how bad it looked and it was nothing like they had hoped now the original design of the Predator was a disproportionate ungainly creature with large yellow eyes and a long neck Jean-Claude Van Damme was actually hired to wear the suit they originally wanted someone agile but after Jean-Claude tried out the suit he complained that it was uncomfortable to wear and it was too hot some reports from crew members said Jean-Claude Van Damme believed the red suit he wore was the actual color of the final design of the Predator not know it was only to help with the optical effects to achieve the camouflage this was in the early stages of Van Damme's career and I'm guessing he would take any job just to boost it he had no experience wearing these outfits and was let go very quickly once they decided they needed to redesign the suit but some fans believe that Jean-Claude did additional stunt work doubling up for Arnold in some shots near the end do you think it's Jean-Claude or another stunt double I'll leave it for you guys to decide with the reduction facing financial troubles and the studio nearly causing the project to shut down John mctinon consulted Stan Winston to help design a new Predator while on a plane ride to Fox Studios alongside aliens director James Cameron Winston sketched some ideas Cameron suggested he'd always wanted to see a creature with mandibles which became part of the Predator's iconic look Stan knew of Kevin Pisa Hall from Harry and the Hendersons and he thought he would be ideal to be the Predator thanks to his great height and his experience working in the tough conditions of wearing a large latex outfit thankfully Kevin pulled it off and made the character his own down to how he moved his body he totally sold you on his performance and helped the character become a part of movie monster history the movie has a very small cast I'm just going to highlight the ones that many of us will remember fondly from the movie Arnold Schwarzenegger was already household name thanks to Conan and the Terminator he'd already worked with producer Joel Silver on Commando Arnold plays Dutch the captain of the elite special forces team Bill Duke plays a Mac who also starred in Commando with Arnold he got the part down to his previous experience working with producer Joel Silva Carl Weathers plays Dylan and is definitely the best actor out of the bunch I'm sure most of you know Carl best from the Fantastic Rocky series Sunny Landon plays Billy the expert tracker and isn't afraid of no man so he is certainly someone you don't want to mess with with in reality the actor had to have his own bodyguard to protect others from him he had a reputation for getting into fights and the insurance company involved with the production wasn't too Keen to have him cast Shane black was cast as Hawkins who spent most of his time telling bad jokes in attempts to make Billy laugh The Producers wanted him also to rewrite the script while on set Shane had Rose to fame for his excellent script for Lethal Weapon and was good friends with Joel Silva I believe Shane did some uncredited rewrites on the film as I think the dialogue between Arnold and his team is very much in a style of Shane Black's writing and then we have Jesse Ventura a bunch of slap jawed [ __ ] around here this stuff will make you a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus just like me he was an ex-navy seal so the training the cast had to go through was a walk in a park for him he had also been a wrestler beforehand so he delivers a lot of his lines like a wrestler would you just have to watch the behind the scenes Stuff Ventura has a big ego and that's what people love about him that year he also starred in The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger the movie opens in space with an alien spacecraft approaching Earth's atmosphere and it jettison's a pod which descends into a Central American jungle later Dutch and his elite team arrive and are led to believe they are here to assist with an operation to rescue a presidential cabinet minister who had been abducted by Guerrilla forces a team consists of Mac Blaine Billy Poncho and Hawkins Dutch meets his old military fan Dylan who is now working for the CIA who accompanies them as a liaison Dutch stresses they are a rescue team not assassins and is not confident about the legitimacy of this Mission the team has dropped off in The Jungle by a helicopter and the hunter Tracked Down the captives begins they soon find a wreckage of a downed helicopter which was taken out by heat-seeking missile Dutch finds this to be very strange would a guerrilla forces team be that well equipped then they come across the remains of an army Special Forces team whose in this area puzzles Dutch the group is horrified to find the bodies have been hung and their skin removed they finally Tracked Down the gorillas to a heavily defended Rebel encampment then comes one of the most over-the-top action set pieces of the 80s and they wipe out all the rebels except for a woman named Anna whom Dylan takes as he's a prisoner Dutch is enraged when Dylan confesses the rescue mission was just a ployed to get his group to attack the rebel camp and that the men they had found in the downed helicopter had disappeared in a failed Rescue of the two CIA agents touch is fed up with Dylan's lies and wants to get out the jungle as the team makes their way to the extraction Point little do they know they are being observed from afar by an unknown creature using thermal imaging billy gets spooked out when he feels they are being watched leaving them all unsettled Anna briefly escaped but when Hawkins catches her he is stabbed and dragged off by a nearly invisible creature that spares the unarmed Anna this gives an indication of the Predator's motives that he doesn't kill the unarmed moments later while the team is looking for Hawkins killer Bane is taken out by a Plasma Blast which blows out his chest Mack captures a glimpse of creature and opens fire on it managing just to clip its leg but it disappears into the jungle leaving some of its Blood On The Leaves they decide to set up a trap for this Predator Anna describes a creature as something of a local Legend implying that Predators have been hunting man for years Richard Greenberg's Optical house worked on the visual effects which involved producing the alien's ability to become invisible its thermal vision point of view its glowing blood and the electrical spark effects the invisibility effect was achieved by filming the actor in a bright red suit because it was the opposite of the green of the Jungle and the blue of the sky the red was removed with chroma key techniques leaving an empty area the tape was then repeated without the actors using a 30 wider lens on the camera when the two shots were combined optically the jungle from the second take filled in the empty area because the second tape was filmed with a wider lens a vague outline of the alien could be seen with the background scenery bending around its shape for the thermal vision infrared film could not be used because it did not register in the range of body temperature wavelengths the filmmakers used at infometrics thermal video scanner as it gave good heat images of objects and people the thermal effects are very inconsistent in the film and was certainly improved upon considerably for the sequel near the end of the movie it makes it very difficult to see what is going on during the face operating Dutch and the Predator additional visual effects to the opening title sequence of the Predator arriving on Earth were supplied by dream Quest images who later worked on the abyss on Total Recall Predator was nominated for Academy Award for its visual effects but unfortunately lost out to Inner Space foreign really grabbed the Public's attention with his musical talents on Back to the Future and he continues on his wave of success with his incredible score to Predator Alan creates a memorable theme tune for the movie with its use of a military March and throws in some tribal-like drum sequences to evoke those images of the Jungle the score is full of his now familiar genre characteristics there are a lot of familiar cues in his scores he created after Predator check out Ricochet it sounds pretty much identical the score was released on CD in 1987 but was not released in full it wasn't until 2003 that full soundtrack was made available it was released in limited numbers and sold out very quickly when Predators arrived in 2010 the soundtrack was re-released again on CD and it apparently sold out in one day so the demand for the music is still extremely high so if you want to own a copy on CD you're going to have to cough up over 50 pounds to get your hands on it a video game was produced at the time for the Spectrum amstrad Commodore 64 Atari St and Amiga like many movie related games back in the day on the old micro computers they were mostly pretty bad and Predator is a right stinker it tries to visually capture the jungle in the character Dutch but it's just a run along shooter that is poorly executed with its game mechanics and controls it also struggles with its frame rate most players complain to its difficulty my friend Richard and I did do a let's play of the Amiga version the graphics were pretty bad even for the time the Predator hunts you as its targeting display appears on screen which you have to escape from and at the end you have to fight him in hand-to-hand combat the Predator just runs at you throws a punch then runs away then you just have to repeat until you kill him once he's defeated there is no ending it just ends giving you a total score what a waste of time the NES version plays a little better than the home computer releases but probably Bears less resemblance to the film than the other games produced and it seems like just another game that has had its Graphics slightly changed so it can be sold as a new product it's just another sloppy platform game that has loads of problems and bears bugger all resemblance to the movie apart from the bonus levels that show you a more faithful representation of the movie it makes no sense why this happens why isn't the rest of the game like this it further confirms to me that they just repackaged a different game and slapped on this big mode Edition as a quick attempt to visualize the movie imagine paying 50 for that when it came out I would have been Furious now I've produced comatose to Predator 2 and predators and also provided a retrospective on the 1990 sequel Predator 2 is a good film and it was only natural that it would move to the city to offer something new The Producers borrowed many ideas from the then successful comic series but it was met with mixed reviews I think people have warmed to it more over time I pay personally felt it didn't have as well written characters as the first film and the action wasn't as spectacular or as exciting the visual effects were more impressive and the introduction of the predator and his new weapons were a nice addition but despite its problems it's very watchable and doesn't shy away from the violence Predators was a long time coming and I thought I'd never see a third movie Robert Rodriguez had come up with the idea for a third movie in the early 90s that would feature Arnold returning but that idea never got off the ground despite this fox Unearthed his old script and decided to finally bring it to the big screen in 2010 obviously changes were made to the original story but Robert wants it to be a sequel to the first movie that would distance itself from the Alien vs Predator series the movie feels very much like a remake of the first Predator flick which many hardcore fans had criticized it for it Returns To The Jungle which is the ideal setting for these movies and sets a new band of characters that have to face off against three new Predators there's a lot to like in this movie I like the idea of it being set another planet and there being an extension of the Predator Universe the photography is stunning making great use of the Panavision Genesis camera and composer John devny brings back Alan silvestri's themes for the new score which pleased all the fans the action was okay and enjoyable but nothing really mind-blowing the design of the new Predators weren't that impressive they seemed overly designed and very forgettable the main star Adrian Brody made a good effort and got in good shape for the role but I think he tries too hard with the growly batman-like voice to be honest I tend to watch this movie more than Predator 2. I don't really know why I think I kind of prefer the characters more despite the dialogue being a bit cliched if you ignore the AVP movies Predator has a good Trilogy of films now Shane black recently confirmed he's working on a sequel to Predator some believed it was a reboot but thankfully they are going with a follow-up he is collaborating with his friend Fred Decker who many of you may know wrote and directed RoboCop 3. their aim is band and explore more the Predator mythology I love Shane Black's work so I'm really excited to see him involved again with the Predator series Predator is a great example of the best of the 80s action movies which has huge doses of testosterone most of the main cast is stupidly buff and the camera never shies away from their muscles the first scene when Dutch catches up with his old friend Dylan it's one of the most memorable moments from the film you son of a [ __ ] Predator is a movie I can watch over and over again in my eyes I can never get bored of it the story is simple and straightforward once you are in the jungle the atmosphere sucks you in and a sense of being watched is evident from the get-go the director has many shots of the team just looking around capturing the dense forest and the harshness of the surroundings the introduction of the Predator's spacecraft sets it up so the audience know it's a science fiction film so once you see the heat vision you are aware they are being hunted by an alien of some kind therefore the audience is slightly ahead of the characters in the film many of us didn't see it in theaters and I can imagine watched it on TV on those late Saturday nights the strange thing is if you tuned into the film five minutes late and you missed the introduction of the Predator being dropped off on Earth the surprise of them encountering the monster is far greater it gives great ambiguity to what is watching them from afar the beauty of John mctin's direction is that it keeps you waiting ages to you see the predator in full it keeps the suspense going in until the Epic reveal it's tough to do and to keep the audience glued to their seats especially with a very simple story he skillfully pulls it off as much as I love the Predator character and the series he is a bit of a cheater he has far more advanced technology and has heat vision but to make it fair for the humans regular weapons can still harm him if you beat him he just blows himself up like a spoiled child who can't get his own way or like a YouTube let's player who rage quits down to frustration he doesn't just kill himself but practically destroys everything around him luckily Arnold has a larger lock to hide behind man those handy tree logs can stop anything the beauty of the film is that you care about the characters you grow to like them very quickly down to their camaraderie the humor plays a big part and their competitive nature plays off really well Arnold is really starting to show you some credibility as an actor in this film obviously he won't win any Oscars and with his more recent acting efforts he has appeared to have got worse as an actor over time his delivery of his lines is to a good standard and clearly shows he's trying his best apparently spent a lot of time observing Carl Weathers while he was performing to fine-tune his own performance one of the best things with him is when he loses his temper with Dylan and claims they were set up to take out these Guerrilla forces you totally buy into their disagreement and it seems real I like the story arc of the character Dylan he has a different point of view on how things should be executed on the mission and fights for Authority with Dutch but Dylan comes to redeem himself and the mistakes he made by attempting to take on the predator in respect of his Fallen comrade I always thought they should have showed the death of Billy you just hear him scream off camera it still works in a way but because you're led to believe Billy is someone you don't want to mess with especially as he cuts himself in preparation for battle it's a bit of a loss to the audience Predator is great popcorn entertainment and that's what it really sets out to be I don't think it tries to be a contender to alien it just gives you what you want from an action film and they give a nice sci-fi element top just to sweeten the deal the movie has dated pretty well over time they come off large effect still looks nice in many areas there are Parts where the Predator is jumping through the trees at a very slow pace and this effect was very experimental so you have to cut it some slack if it's a bit ropey in places despite the sequels and spin-off movies the makeup and performance of the original Predator is still the best in Predators they did a fantastic job of copying the exact design I think they even used the same mold as the original outfit but for me the original still looks the best I think just down to the lighting and they make up expertise on set it just looks perfect some people I know find the movie to be not that special and they can take it or leave it I suppose it's a film that kind of gained more importance over time and instead of just being considered a throwaway 80s action flick there is more to it that you may have missed on the first viewing if you haven't seen it in a while I think you should watch it again and you will notice how good the atmosphere and suspense is in the First full 25 minutes but I'm sure most of you out there love the film as much as I do a bunch of stupidly buffed men firing off shitloads of rounds of ammunition and a big alien to battle against what more could you want from a film it's probably one of the most fondly remembered 80s films because it delivered the goods on so many levels and it can easily compete with the action films of today yesterday what did you see wasted your time I don't know what it was go on exchange colors like the chameleon it uses the jungle I see oh [ __ ] I see it I see it when the big man was killed you must have wanted it blood wasn't the leaves leads we can kill it stick around all right foreign don't forget you can still buy the poster celebrating 100 retrospectives you can find a link in the description box below or by visiting my website if you enjoyed the video you can find more by clicking on these videos and by subscribing to my channel if you want to gain access to reviews and commentaries early you can donate through patreon

Channel: Oliver Harper

Views: 458,616

Keywords: oliver harper predator, predator review, oliver harper retrospective, retrospective review, 1987, Predator (Film), video game, ollie harper, Arnold Schwarzenegger (Celebrity), jonh davis, joel silver, shane black, bill duke, commando, jesse ventura, ollyh82, spectrum, nes, oliver harper, 80s, retrospective, predator 2, predators, AVP, stan winston, kevin peter hall, review, feature, overview, making of, amiga, c64

Id: hnp0tu1QiRg

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 18 2014