Guns, Muscles & Monsters - The Quintessential 80s Film

Rating: 9/10 (2 April 2018)

Along with first two Terminator films, Predator can definitely be considered the pinnacle of Schwarzenegger's carreer. It has everything one needs from a 80s action film - impossibly powerful musclebound heroes, excessive gunfire, lots of explosions, Reagan-era gung-ho interventionism, and a cool villain. What makes Predator good is not just that it has these things, but that it also manages to execute them in a way that elevates the material.
Due to countless crossovers in the expanded universe, culminating in two films, Predator is often compared to Alien (or, more specifically, fellow 80s actioner Aliens). While this is understandable, Predator really is a very different kind of beast. Besides the obvious differences- the Predator creature is no mere animal, but a technologically advanced trophy hunter - it is first and foremost an action film, and not a horror film. It is essentially the template of any action movie from the 80s starring Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme or Norris, with the big difference of having an alien monster as its villain instead of your usual drug dealer, Soviet assassin or South American warlord. This also means that the Predator is a far more interesting opponent than any Schwarzenegger faced before - whereas Schwarzenegger usually bests his filmic opponents through superior strength or firepower, Predator drives home the point that this won't be business as usual for Arnold. Early action scenes of Schwarzenegger and fellow strongmen Jesse Ventura, Sonny Landham, Bill Weathers and more easily dispatching human guerillas are contrasted by the ease with which these superhuman mercenaries are killed one by one by the Predator, which has tech that makes their weapons look primitive by comparison. They can't see it as it can cloak itself, and it can see them all the better because it sees in infra-red. Ultimately, Schwarzenegger has to use strategy rather than strength to defeat it. And even in defeat, the creature nearly takes him with it.
A very story of muscular mercenaries being targeted by a big game hunter from outer space is elevated by gorgeous location shooting that perfectly captures the thick, inhospitable jungle they are traversing ('badass bush'), steady nuts-and-bolts camera work that lets the actors and environment speak for themselves and a briljant score by the always great Alan Silvestri. While the score is at times delightfully cheesy and oh-so 80s (though not nearly as much as, say, Chuck Norris's Delta Force), it does capture the tension well and helps create the film's giddy cat-and-mouse atmosphere.
Predator was never meant to be its own Alien-esque franchise, starting out as just another Schwarzenegger vehicle (only with an alien twist). In the end, it has managed to escape from Schwarzenegger's Olympian shadow to become a long-running series in its own right. But no installment - either the stand-alone sequels or the Alien crossovers - has managed to recapture the unique spirit of the original.