You don't need me to tell you that Predator is one of the greatest action movies of the 1980's, in fact of that it's one of the best action movies of any decade ever combining a brilliant cast with more testosterone than the entire population of Long Island. Explosive cut pieces cuton Edge special effects and a talented director at the top of his game, a production that shift gears effortlessly from gungho Special Ops War movie to gory slasher horror flick to brutal Survival Story, all that in the span of less than 2 hours.
Predator rightly sits amongst the upper echelons of action movie royalty alongside other Classics like Aliens and Terminator 2 and it spawned an entire franchise worth of sequels and spin-offs, some good, some bad and some absolutely horrifiyng (hashtag: Prey)! The most interesting is that the movie actually came within a hair's bread of being a complete disaster as the baguer cas and crew wrestled with nightmarish shooting conditions, sickness, malfunction and special effects, violent and dangerous cast members and conflicting Creative Visions. In short it's perfect further for production hell.
The idea for predator actually began as a literal joke after the release of Rocky 4 back in 1985. Hollywood executiv started quipping that since Rocky had beaten practically everything on Earth, his next opponent was going to have to be some kind of space alien. A spiring writers Jim and John Thomas weren't laughing though in fact they thought it was a pretty good idea and soon pened a screenplay about a group of alien hunters coming to Earth to hunt humans for sport.
The script eventually caught the attention of Joel Silver, who liked the basic premise and commissioned it as a big budged action movie with up and cominging director John McTiernan attached to hel the project. Straight away they knew who they wanted for the main role, Arnold Schwarzenegger by this point was basically King of the Hill when it came to action stars and Silver already had a good work in relationship with him after doing Commando together.
Arnold wasn't convinced at first though quote: "The first thing I look for in a script is a good idea , a majority of scripts are rip-offs of other movies. People think they can become successful overnight. They sat down one weekend and wrote a script because they read Stallone did that with Rocky. Predator was one of the scripts I read, and it bothered me in one way. It was just me and the Alien. So we re-did the whole thing so that it was ateam of commandos and then I liked the idea."
Nice one Arnold.👍 With the script hammered out and Arnold signed up the rest quickly followed, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke and Sonny Landom, all joined the production which soon set up in the jungles of Mexico to begin shooting and that is where the problems began! The first and most obvious one was the environment, the terrain they were shooting in was extremely rough and uneven, making it almost impossible to move people and Equipment quickly from one place to another, but the participants were not discouraged by this.
It wasn't exactly fun for the actors either as Arnold himself remarked: "We were always on a hill, we stood all day long on a hill, one leg down, one leg up, it was terrible!" Daytime temperatures soared to well over 90° and plummeted at night time, which wasn't great when the entire Final Act of the movie takes place at night and Arnold himself was shirtless and covered in mud for most of it, he also couldn't warm himself up because the mud would dry out and Flake off his body.
At the end, the result was that he spent half of his time battling against hypothermia, he even resorted to high proof alcohol one point to try to ward off the chill, but all it really did was get him drunk. The rest of the cast weren't doing much better, especially when the water purification system at their hotel broke down and they all got stricken with travelers diarrhea. The situation got so bad than Sonny Landom and Richard Chavez had to keep run into the bathroom between takes.
Dehydration and heat exhaustion became major problems and Arnold literally sh*t himself while out running one morning. The only guy on the whole production who managed to avoid it was John McTiernan who ate only canned food and drank bottled water throughout the whole shoot. Yeah, he might have ended up losing 25 pound in weight, but he never got sick so good at him I guess. Another big headache was Sonny Landom, the actor playing the team's point man Billy.
Sonny apparantly developed a bit of temper once he got a drink in him, which was surprisingly often as it turned out and after starting a few too many fights at local pubs and nightclubs, the production team ended up hiring a 24-hour security detail to watch over him, not so much to keep him safe from other people, but to keep other people safe from him. Interestingly Predator also marks a rare on-screen appaerance for Shane Black who was more of a screenwriter than an actor, even back then.
Black would eventually go on to become one of the highest paid writers in Hollywood before deciding it was a good idea to direct a new Predator movie in the style of an action comedy and then promptly vanished in Obscurity. In this case though his main reason for being there was to keep an eye on McTiernan. This was was the guy's first major directing and the studio weren't entirely confident he'd be able to handle the pressure, but if things were tough for the actors they were reaching crisis point for the special effects teams hired the predator to life.
The original concept for the Predator imagined it as a fast athletic and graceful Alien and for this reason they hired Jean-Claude Van Damme to do the motion capture work. Unfortunately the creature suit designed by boss film studios and cumbersome preventing from using his Martial Arts training, he also wasn't entirely happy about basically being an uncredited special effect, when his own career was starting to take off, and let's be honest, the suit looks pretty f***ing laughable when you see the test footage.😂😂😂
A few weeks into production and Van Damme had enough and quit plunging the movie into crisis modes. Not only their actor walked away, but it was pretty clear that the original Predator design wasn't working and audiences were more likely to laugh at it than be scared. Stan Winston who had handled the visual effects on Terminator and immediately set to work redesigning the Predator suit and in one of those happy little coincidences of life he just so happened to be sitting next to James Cameron on the flight out from Los Angeles while sketching designs for the Predators face.
At this point, Cameron suggested adding mandibles to its jaw to make it look more like an Alien and thus a legend was born! With the revamped Predator ready, this time played by 2.18 m former basketball Player Kevin Peter Hall production was able to restart and the finale could be filmed. The new design wasn't without problems though, especially because Hall couldn't actually see through the Predator Mask during his big fight scenes with Arnold, so he was forced to memorize every move before they shot each scene.
When Hall tried it, this resulted in him missing a lot of punches and whacking Arnold right in the face more than a few times. Damn, Arnold really got put through the ringer with this movie. Production finally wrapped at the end of June 1986 after a grueling 3mon shoots. Cast & Crew were battered and exhausted, but the movie was in the can and when it released a year later, Predator would go on to make almost 100 million 💲 at the box office and ultimately became one of the most beloved Sci-Fi Action films ever mades!
I think, it's a real Testament to the hard work, dedication and resourcefulness of everyone involved that they were able to rescue a falter in movie from the brink of disaster and ultimately produced something that's just as entertaining and watchable now as it was more than 30 years ago. It might have been hell to make, but it's Heavenly to watch with enough popcorn & Coke.🍿