Predator is now 37 years old and the biggest shame of all is that entire generations will never experience it’s impact and care not to. Case in point: A new intern from the kitchen, name: Dylan. Yes, I was the asshole and no, the poor bastard didn’t see it coming. “Dylan?” “Yeah,” the kid replied. “You son of a bitch!” I said. He just looked at me like Who the hell is this guy? “It’s a line from Predator dude,” I said. “Huh?” “The movie Predator. You know, right at the beginning, Arnie and Carl and the big power hand slap?” “No idea.” “Well then, ok, ok, your homework assignment is to watch Predator as soon as you possibly can.” He gave me another one of those looks, the one that said “Who the fuck is this old guy and why the hell is he bothering me? I’m just trying to clean these chanterelle mushrooms over here.”

Well, allow me to set the stage for you, young man. We open to the theme of Predator, a triumph of big orchestral sound by the one and only Alan Silvestri. A chopper flies in low over a body of water and settles down near a shoreline army base. The bird is being watched from inside a shabby hut by a mysterious older general type and what looks like a CIA man in a white shirt and tie sitting down at a round table underneath a ceiling fan. Cut to the whirligig where we see Arnold for the first time, super chill in a pair of sunglasses and lighting himself a big ass stogie. He disengages from the vehicle as the music hits a crescendo of drama and the general comes down a set of stone steps to greet him. A trio of jeeps bring Arnie to the general through the shallow waters of the shore, he emerges again in all his jacked, crewcutted glory, approaches, shakes the general’s hand. There’s a deep respect between the two men as well as questions beginning to accumulate during all of this. What is he doing here in this strange place, what do they want with him?

They go into the shabby hut and Arnie asks, “Why not the regular army, what do you need us for?” Then the voice from the other room, the CIA man speaking, “Because some damn fool accused you of being the best.” Arnold turns and looks: Cue the epic line and the explosive handshake which leads to a bit of a face off between the two men where Arnold dominates, showing off his bicep which bulges through the too tight red polo.

Weeks afterward I attempted to greet the new guy by saying “Dylan, you son of a bitch!” And going in for the big slap, even going so far as to say, “What’s the matter? CIA have you pushing too many pencils?” He never quite thought it was funny and he never watched Predator even after all my prodding. I chalk it up to Gen Z and their hum drum attitude toward nearly everything. I think their testosterone levels are so low from all the screen time and microplastics they just can’t get excited unless it’s an instagram meme.

Just know that if I ever meet you and your name is Dylan, you will experience the same.

Yes, the old days of the ultra macho action movie are long behind us. The studios have tried and failed. It’s so odd, but nothing will really ever match the original Predator. Trust me, they’ve tried and not just once, let’s count them up shall we? Not one, not two, not three, but seven, yes seven sequels, the latest installment, Predator: Badlands, set to hit the silver screen sometime in 2025. Funny how these formulas never add up to a decent sequel, yet here we are 37 years later and another movie sits and lurks behind the corner. Have we really run out of ideas?

I saw the original in the theater with my uncle (yes, I’m that old) who always took me to every action and sci-fi movie back in the day even if said flick was way too mature and excessively violent for me to handle. He was also the guy who lent me his Stephen King novels from back then. Anyway, Predator was probably up there on the list of stuff I shouldn’t have seen so young. When he died I wanted to include this in his eulogy but didn’t as I couldn’t figure how to squeeze it in. Ah, good old Uncle Dave, I remember when he took me to Aliens when I was nine and the time I borrowed his copy of Pet Semetary (King’s admittedly scariest novel) and had nightmares for a week after.

The plot of Predator breaks down pretty easy. A bunch of über badasses all get together in the jungle somewhere and blow some shit up but have no idea that they are now hunted by a creature from another planet with all kinds of weird and gruesome technology at its disposal. The cast features two future governors, yes, Arnie and Jesse “The Body” Ventura both somehow became governors many years later which makes the mystique of the movie even better in my eyes. Guess what? Arnie survives in the end but Jesse Ventura gets his chest cavity blown apart by a molten bolt of plasma.

The rest of the cast/cannon fodder features Shane Black, the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood at the time who penned the original Lethal Weapon and other gems such as The Last Boy Scout. Also on board, as Dylan himself, Carl Weathers, legend, Bill Duke as “Mac,” a dude Arnold already beat the shit out of in Commando, Sonny Landham as “Billy,” a legit psychopath who, rumor has it, was such a pill that a private security agency was hired on set to make sure he stopped harassing the other actors, and last but not least, Richard Chaves, an actual actor…Hey, they had to have at least one in there.

The lone woman is played by Elpidia Carrillo, a hostage who the guys pick up along the way after the seven of them destroy an entire army. She’s the token creepy exposition foreigner who explains to the guys how being hunted by some bizarre creature always happened back in the day when the mercury skyrocketed. Cue the classic line from Jesse Ventura, “This shit makes Cambodia look like Kansas.”

That’s just the thing. Although the formula is basically the same old shit, Predator and it’s one liners still stand the test of time. It’s watchable because it starts out as a bit of a mystery and it isn’t just the same old, same old, monster movie crap because the monster is actually intelligent, more canny than the people he’s hunting. There’s also no stupidity involved in terms of “Don’t go in there” type of blunders performed by every character in every single horror or sci-fi flick involving a creature which makes it a little more believable (in a sense). The guys are trying to get away, the villain is just too smart and equipped. This is what makes Predator original. Instead of the cast hunting the alien and getting killed for their efforts, the alien is hunting them. At the end, there’s still a showdown but the alien kinds of wins after all of it because he/she has tallied up so many of them and ends up getting the last laugh. Indeed, the ending is bittersweet. We see Dutch, Arnies character, covered in ash after barely (somehow) surviving a nuclear explosion. The look on his face, however, says that he’ll be scarred by this experience his entire life. And that, my friends, is what the studios should do. Write up a Predator movie where we see the retired Dutch now in his 70s, living on the street, riddled with PTSD, and still so plagued by the whole experience that he thinks a Predator lurks on every street corner.

Anyway, years later Predator remains a good watch. It really does. I’m sure it has to do with my nostalgia addled brain but the movie speeds along at a great pace and has enough panache and originality to make it still relevant after all these years, hence its moniker as a classic. Probably Arnie’s best movie aside from The Terminator, Terminator II, and True Lies.

Your AI generated image for this post, #407