Transcript

Dutch (Predator)

Yesterday. What did you see?

Dillon (Predator)

You're wasting your time.

Dutch (Predator)

No more games.

Anna (Predator)

I don't know what it was. It's...

Dutch (Predator)

Go on.

Anna (Predator)

It changed colors. Like the chameleon. It uses the jungle.

Dillon (Predator)

You saying that Blaine and Hawkins were killed by a fucking lizard? It's a bullshit psych job. There's two or three men out there at the most, fucking lizard.

Dutch (Predator)

What's your name?

Anna (Predator)

Anna.

Dutch (Predator)

Anna, this thing is hunting us. All of us. You know that.

Dillon (Predator)

What the hell do you think you're doing?

Dutch (Predator)

You're gonna need everyone.

Dillon (Predator)

I'm taking her back. We're out of here in five minutes.

Dutch (Predator)

We're not going yet.

Dillon (Predator)

Look, the rendezvous is 10 to 12 miles away from here. You think the chopper's gonna wait?

Dutch (Predator)

Dillon, we make a stand now. Well, there would be nobody left to go to the chopper.

Anna (Predator)

There is something else. When the big man was killed, you must have wounded it. Its blood was on the leaves.

Dutch (Predator)

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

Steve

It's Two Dads, One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle-aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And today we are kicking off the month of January, the month of Janu Arnie, with our first Arnold Schwarzenegger feature, 1987's Predator.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Oh, I love this movie. This was my pick for us. And honestly, this is one of my favorite movies of all time. I don't even remember the first time I saw it, probably high school, maybe like 14 years old. It would have been obviously several years after it came out. But just the combination of basically one of the coolest creature creations in like action sci-fi, certainly of the era. Just a very unique take on why an alien is coming to Earth to do X, Y, and Z. Like is very cool. Obviously, Schwarzenegger's fantastic. And at the time, you know, who wasn't loving watching Schwarzenegger in action movies in the, late 80s and early 90s. And the whole cast is like a lot of fun, but it's just, there are great one-liners and there's just a ton of action and it's like brutally gruesome in parts. It's sci-fi, it's this, that, it's got so much going on.

Nic

Oh, yeah.

Steve

Doesn't pass the Bechdel test as only one woman actually appears in the movie, but hey, nothing, no movie is perfect. So, Nic, what's your history with Predator?

Nic

So, yeah, I mean, probably the same as you. And I don't recall exactly when I first saw it, but I think I first started getting into it around high school, like when your friends would have VHS tapes or when people would record things off movie chairs and you end up with a predator tape. But oh my God, I mean, what a great like guys guys movie. And not that I'm this like all time guys guy, but I certainly was never around a lot of girls. So I think that makes me by default a guy's guy. And best movie to be chugging beers and high fiving your buds with full of one liners, full of cool looking guns.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

I mean, it's just it really has everything. If you just need to like just live that you know, vicariously through these like testosterone come to life characters.

Steve

It is a testosterone fest, that's for sure. I mean, any movie with Jesse Ventura in it is going to be pretty much a testosterone fest. But yeah, he and everybody else is great in this. So let's jump into the facts on Predator and we'll get chatting about the movie. The movie Predator came out on June 12, 1987 with an R rating and a running time of 107 minutes. Directed by John McTiernan, who also did Die Hard, which we've already seen, and written by the screenwriting duo brothers Jim John Thomas, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and as the Predator, Kevin Peter Hall. Scores on Rotten Tomatoes, 65%, a decently solid, not super high, but a solid fresh score. On IMDb though, 7.8, actually much higher than I kind of expected. Yeah, very strong score on IMDb, which is great. We get a thumbs down from Gene Siskel and a thumbs up from Roger Ebert.

Nic

Yay, Raj.

Steve

Yeah, I don't know. These guys, I can't read them.

Nic

Yeah, I want to read the underlying article and stuff.

Steve

I just want to see if at some point I feel like we do enough of these with Siskel and Ebert that it's like, I should start seeing a pattern where it's like, oh, I tend to agree with Roger Moore, I tend to agree with Gene Moore, and I'm not seeing a pattern. It's like every once in a while I go, Siskel, you idiot, Ebert, you idiot. Like, I just can't seem to agree with either of them. Awards worth mentioning, it did get an Oscar nomination, which I was a little surprised by, but not so much for the category when you realize for best visual effects in 1988, and it did not-- Did not win, it just got the nomination. At the 1988 Saturn Awards, which is a sort of sci-fi fantasy focused film awards, I did win Best Music for Alan Silvestri, the composer. And I absolutely agree with that.

Nic

Great music in this film.

Steve

It's so good. There's like a theme that sort of repeats throughout in different forms and it's just very tension building and dark and it's really fantastic. On a budget of $15 million, which kudos for doing this for $15 million. Very impressive, frankly. It pulled in 98 million at the box office for six and a half times what it cost, by all measures, a bona fide blockbuster. So fantastic success at the box office for Arnie. Not surprising. The dude had, you know, a couple of hits in the 80s.

Nic

Yeah, he was ascendant at this point. And John McTiernan, oh my God, was Die Hard also '87?

Steve

'88. So it was the next year, yeah. So I mean, it was, yeah, he had a very nice run. He's back there. Also, just like all of the terrorists in Die Hard, Many of the characters in this movie carry MP5s, which were a choice of McTiernans for both movies, but not super common in movies, not directed by John McTiernan until a couple years later, where they were every terrorist in every movie in the 90s carried an MP5.

Nic

Interesting.

Steve

And that was one of the many different sort of common guns you see in this movie as well.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So yeah, okay. Let's jump into Predator, man.

Nic

Yeah, we're starting off. How are we kicking off in Predator Universe?

Steve

We're up in space. So you start off with the stars and space and a spaceship, actually reasonably good looking special effects spaceship flies by. But we only see it momentarily because it sort of shoots out a little like drop ship or some kind of like essentially like a landing pod that leaves the ship. The ship flies off out of screen and that little landing pod is clearly headed straight for Earth. So it gives us the indication that, hey, there is an alien presence as part of this movie. That's obviously an important piece. We cut then to the beach. Looks I mean, we're in South America. I don't know how clear that is initially until you start seeing the map that they're looking at with Spanish written all over it. It becomes more clear that it's South America. But we have a few, a helicopter flying up to a beach where they're already helicopter pads and different things, lots going on, and they land and there are a few people in there. So what we see is we see on the beach already, there's a building, and we see a guy with-- it's clearly a general, he's got two stars on his uniform, so he's a general. He's looking at them arrive and sitting in the building, kind of reading a newspaper or something, reading something is Carl Weathers. So that is our character, Dillon. We'll be introduced to him in a second. Coming out of the helicopter after it lands are a handful of army soldiers. We are introduced to these guys. So there is Blaine, who is played by Jesse Ventura. There is Poncho, who is the kind of skinny guy without the glasses. Hawkins, the skinny guy with the glasses. Billy, who is a Native American character. Mac, who is the one African American member of the squad. And then Dutch, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who we later referred to as Major. That's his rank. I don't think we get a rank for everybody, but they're all, you know, this group that works together basically on special missions.

Nic

And when it shows, when we're first introduced to Schwarzenegger as Dutch, because all the other guys kind of get out of the helicopter first and he's left behind in there. And then of course he has to light up like the cigar that Max Katy smokes in Problem Child and Cape Fear. This enormous, like nine foot cigar. And oh my God, it makes me laugh so much, like this tough guy stuff. Are you a cigar guy? Have you ever been a cigar guy?

Steve

I kind of briefly flirted with it in my mid-20s. In fact, my bachelor party. I got married at 27, and my bachelor party included a stop. It was an A's game, lunch at Kell's out in the city, like an Irish place, and then a cigar bar. That was kind of what we did for my bachelor party. So we did that. And so there was a time when, yeah, I had an affinity for Macanudos for a little while, but it lasted about two or three years, and then I kind of just fell out of it. It's an expense, plus you got to give the time to it. If you're actually going to sit there and spend the time. Yeah.

Nic

That's the thing about it. So I never got into cigars, and whenever I I see them, I wonder, like when I was watching this, I wonder, like, why am I so like averse to them? And I think it's just that I fundamentally don't like having to carry something around. Same thing with umbrellas. I never use umbrellas. I would rather get rained on forever. I hate giving up a hand for no fucking reason. So when he has the cigar, I'm like, what do you do with that? You just have to like, he has nowhere to put it down. You can't tech it behind your ear.

Steve

Right.

Nic

So yeah, I think he does eventually.

Steve

Like put it out and shove it into his like pocket 'cause he pulls out a half smoked cigar later in the movie.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

I think he must just, so he's.

Nic

Got a spot for it.

Steve

Push it out. Clip the end and you basically have the cigars like new again, essentially. Yeah, that's true.

Nic

But I do love that as just establishing like, oh, these are some men's men, you know, these are some badasses. Cigars having muscles.

Steve

Big muscles, big cigars, the whole nine yards.

Nic

Oh, and also real quick, Schwarzenegger is Dutch. When he gets out of here, he is dressed like he works at Target. He is wearing a red polo shirt and khaki pants. That's right. He's cool as hell.

Steve

Yeah. So they jump out and they get into a series of jeeps, two or three jeeps to be driven 100 yards down the beach. It's really not very far, but they just they can't walk. Because it would be wet and sandy and that would get your boots dirty. They can't get their boots dirty and also maybe it gets in the boots and it gets all irritated. Like these guys don't like that. Yeah, so they get driven safely down the beach, 100 yards, to meet the general. Dutch walks in, the guy's kind of away from him, he walks into this hut and starts talking to the general and oh, it's good to see you, Dutch, and all this stuff. And that's when Dutch notices Dillon, Carl Weathers' character, and he's like, Dillon! And he runs over. And this is one of the things I realized, gonna we're need this as a tag on the website. This movie contains a meme. Because we've seen it with the Naked Gun, the Naked Gun and now this, because the Dillon and Dutch handshake, the sort of arm wrestling pose handshake, has become an animated GIF in every Slack workspace in my job that I've been at in years.

Nic

100%. And it hits every time, the Dillon.

Steve

You son of a bitch, and you.

Nic

Get the clap of the hands. I mean, it's so funny. This movie is, choc full of bicep porn.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

If you're a bicep fetish person, I think this is probably where you want to be existing.

Steve

Good point.

Nic

Choc full of it. But oh my God, such a funny way to kick it off. And also the way that Dillon is explaining, he's like, oh, why do you have us doing this here? And he's like, some son of a bitch accused you of being the best. The different ways that they approach telling somebody because you're the best, I think is so good.

Steve

It's the standard sort of, I mean, frankly, we've, I think, rightly come to recognize this as a bit of a toxic sort of nature, natural behavior, toxic masculinity thing. But back then it was just, it was bravado, right? It was all just about machismo and bravado and like, well, I could tell you you're awesome, but I'm not going to tell you. Yeah, yeah. That make me a, like, or whatever, you know? So, yeah, so there's a little back and forth. Basically what they find out is like a chopper went down. Chopper went into the jungle, went down on the wrong side of the border. The general tells Dutch, hey, you know, Dillon says that it's contained a cabinet minister from whatever country they're in. I think the idea here is that they never say any of these country names, so it's hard to be specific. But essentially they're in South America inside the borders of a country that is friendly to the United States, and that across the border is either a country totally run by cartels, or there's some kind of a coup going on, and there's guerrilla fighters, or there's something that's bad for the US and bad for the country that they're in. So I don't know enough about mid-80s South American geopolitics to guess, but that seems to be what it is. So the idea is like, oh, this chopper got on the wrong side of the airspace of the wrong side of the border. Must have got shot down. Now you need to go in and rescue them. And that's what Dutch says. Like, Dillon asks him something, like, hey, why didn't you do Libya? Why'd you pass on Libya? And he's like, it's not the kind of work we do. We're a rescue team. We're not assassins. Yeah. And so he's like, that's what they do. They do rescue. So he's like, all right, that's what we're here for.

Nic

That's why they have so many rescue guns on their.

Steve

Yes. Rescue M16s.

Nic

They rescue so many people.

Steve

I love the Blaine's rescue minigun. It's like the jaws of life, except the opposite. Yeah, so. So they agree to do the job that they're here to do. And the next thing we see are choppers flying towards the jungle.

Nic

And what a scene this is, man, with the music playing. So the thing in all the 80s movies is, you got the 50s music, the 60s music playing, and they're all getting down. And we got Jesse the Mind Ventura handing, chewing tobacco, offering it to everybody, a la John Candy, offering a clarinet in the back of the U-Haul truck. And just a great scene of just dudes being dudes, like trying to tell you as much about each individual's personality without them having almost any lines in a lot of cases. And it's just so effective. And this gets me fired up for.

Steve

What'S about to happen. And I will say Blaine has a couple of good lines and some really bad ones. He uses a slur that I'm glad has kind of fallen out of favor, so I won't repeat that line.

Nic

Tyrannosaurus that fell out of favor 65 million years ago.

Steve

There you go. No, but he does say, you know, all these people aren't taking his chew and he goes, this stuff will turn you into a sexual Tyrannosaurus like me. I just love that shit, man. That's fucking classic. Anyway, so yeah, they're flying notoriously.

Nic

You want to have a really short arm, sexually? That's the move.

Steve

Sexual Tyrannosaurus. I'm not even sure. Is it a mantis eating the head of your partner thing? I'm not even sure what we're going with that, but that's okay. It's okay.

Nic

It's vaguely, vaguely, it sounds cool.

Steve

It sounds vaguely powerful.

Nic

It sounds like a prompt someone would put into AI. Sexual Tyrannosaurus.

Steve

Don't do it.

Nic

No, don't do it.

Steve

Don't waste your time with that.

Nic

But God, so he's established himself though as like he's kind of the bust your balls out of a crew that's already like that. He's the most like, you know, masculine out of all of them.

Steve

One of the other things that happens on the chopper, form eventually, maybe. Right, exactly. Is Hawkins, who's the one guy with big eyeglasses, he leans over to Billy, who's Native American, and clearly they talk about him being sort of like the best tracker, you know, of their group, whatever, and he leans up to Billy and tells him a joke and he says, Billy, I told my girlfriend, I'd like a little pussy, and she says, oh yeah, so would I. Mine's as big as a house. It's not a very good joke, and Billy doesn't laugh, and Hawkins explains to him, no, no, no, 'cause big as a house, you know, he tries to get him to laugh, and Billy is just like stone-faced about it. The reason I mention it though is that it does come back, and there's a kind of a, there's a funny and good thing later that happens because of Hawkins and his joke telling, but this one does not land. He clearly does not get Billy to laugh.

Nic

I like Hawkins trying to get everyone a little chuckle that's good for him.

Steve

So, and so he, there's that. And then I think basically the only other thing that may be really worth mentioning is Mac. He's the one black member of the crew.

Nic

Played by the great Bill Duke.

Steve

That's who it is.

Nic

We love Bill Duke.

Steve

Thank you. Yes. And he's got like a Bic razor with him almost at all times. And it's just constantly shaving his face and his neck. And I just like, that would just be irritating. And all the sweating and like, I don't know why he would do that, but that's apparently his, either it's like a calming thing for him or it's like, I don't know what it is, but he's always got this Bic razor with him. And he's shaving on the chopper.

Nic

Yeah, it's an interesting little trait to have, but I guess they're probably thinking ahead. They're like, Look, at some point, we're gonna be selling action figures. And in addition to the minigun, he needs something else. He can have a little razor.

Steve

Yeah, he's got that sort of tripod-mounted M60. He's got a big gun.

Nic

Yeah, he's-- oh, man.

Steve

But, yeah.

Nic

So we land in the jungle, and they're kind of told that their rescue mission is for some type of politician or ambassador type.

Steve

Cabinet minister is what they term him. Of the country that they're friendly with. Not a US cabinet minister.

Nic

Yeah. So it's like the neighboring country that the US is friendly with is being held in this hostile country over the border.

Steve

That's the idea.

Nic

Yeah. So when they get there, they see this chopper that had previously been sent and never got back to them. It's like crashed in the tree and it's all messed up and stuff. And they're trying to investigate the chopper and see what's happening up there.

Steve

There's a handful of things that seem weird right off the bat. They noticed that the two pilots who were still in the chopper were clearly killed not by the crash, but by being shot in the head, each of them. One shot in the head. So that's interesting. And then when Billy is done sort of tracking around, he goes, you know, he talks to Dutch. He goes, Major, this is strange. I see the gorillas and I see the, the two people from the chopper, and then I see six, like, us issued pairs of boots. And so it's basically, he's able to notice Billy voice. I like that.

Nic

That's very good.

Steve

I tried. That's, again, one of my favorite movies. But, yeah, but basically, Billy has noticed not only does he see extra tracks that maybe wouldn't be explained by the story they've been told, those tracks are wearing us issued equipment. Now, there are ways, obviously, for gorilla Fighters to get us issued equipment by killing U.S. soldiers. So it's not like a done deal that there's something squirrely going on, but it puts everybody on edge. And Dutch is already looking sideways at Dillon at this point.

Nic

Yeah, and Billy, one of the things I love that Billy does, 'cause he's such a great character, and he's going out and tracking, and he's walking through the jungle, and then he just grabs this vine.

Steve

Oh, yeah.

Nic

And slashes it open with his-- it's not a machete.

Steve

It's a really long machete. I know, it's like halfway between a machete and a combat knife. It is big, yeah.

Nic

Wild. And then he chops it open and then he drinks from the vine. There's so many scenes in this movie where a little Photoshop could make certain actors look pretty bad. And this is definitely one of them. Some kind of a milky water that he's drinking from a vine, clutching right over his head with his mouth open. But yeah, so they come across some gruesome shapes.

Steve

Well, yeah, so Billy hears something and he's not really sure what it is. And so he's kind of looking, and what's really interesting, if you listen closely and you know what to listen for, what you're hearing is flapping wings. And it's pretty clear you're hearing flapping wings. Then if you listen at this moment while Billy is looking in the trees and walking towards it, you can hear the little, there's a predator croaking sound. The little, like, I can't do it, but whatever, it's like the clicking noise the predator makes. It's in there momentarily. So we do get a sense that something's nearby, and if you've seen the movie multiple times, you recognize that sound. You can listen for it. But really, he's hearing these flapping wings and he's not sure, so he kind of climbs a part of this tree and looks, and when he spreads this sort of canopy apart to see, yeah, there are three bodies that are hanging from their feet and have been skinned alive, and the flapping he heard was vultures. They were all over the place and so they kind of go crazy. It scares them half to death, it seems like. But that's, you know, they find this gruesome, you know, sort of effigy with these bodies hanging in the trees and skinned alive. Well, I mean, I guess we don't know they were skinned alive, but they're skinned. Yeah. And it's bad and they're gutted and that's a whole horrible scene.

Nic

Yeah, it's super gnarly. And then there's like, under them, is there just kind of piles of like guts and their clothes and everything, right?

Steve

'Cause they've been all torn open too. Like you see they're missing their intestines and there's just stuff everywhere, yeah.

Nic

One thing I love that's gonna go in the category of Dr. Dan throwing the Halloween mask onto and Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is whoever was investigating the pile of guts and shit at the bottom.

Steve

Poncho.

Nic

Poncho picks up a dog tag with his knife to look at it, and then he just flings it off of his knife. And then Dutch catches it so easily, like it's a small joke book on Kill Tony. Just this perfect catch, but I just love that kind of shit.

Steve

Yeah, absolutely. Also, by the way, I very much appreciate that every time you reference that, you mention the entire name of the film, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

Nic

I think it's important because there's so many witches.

Steve

There's so many Halloween 3s. No, anyway, so yeah, so we get the dog tag-- oh, yeah, sorry, yeah. Yeah, so the dog just Dutch checks the dog tag and he recognizes the names, Jay Hopper. And he talks to Dillon, he's just like, I know this man, this green beret is out of Fort Bragg. What are they doing here? And so Dillon's kind of like, oh, I don't know, he's still playing dumb, but it's clear that Dutch is suspicious of Dillon. He doesn't think that this is all in the up and up. He doesn't think he can trust Dillon, but he doesn't know yet for sure what's going on. But it's not looking good. There's pieces that aren't lining up here. And in another way, Dutch is also pissed because this is apparently someone that he served with. This is someone he's known for years. He knew, you know, in his, throughout his time in the army. And so he's like, fuck this guy that I knew, like, who's a great soldier. Like, he's dead. Yeah, these are his dog tags. Like, shit, that sucks.

Nic

And also he got sent on this mission where they probably lied to him too. Like, they lied to us. Like, you know, what the hell's going on here?

Steve

They believe gorillas did this, right? Like, some soldiers nearby, we'll get him. So Blaine pulls out who he calls old painless, which is the minigun. It's a big freaking belt loaded, you know, the rotary whatever the hell it's called. I don't know. It's crazy huge.

Nic

Really cool looking.

Steve

Really cool looking gun. So he's running over payback time.

Nic

He's really portable.

Steve

Not easy to carry, but he'll do it. And then this is also where we get the very first Predator vision moments. We now see, we're gonna see this a lot through the movie. It's clearly when we are seeing the scene from the Predator's viewpoint, we see it in his thermo, sort of IR infrared vision, right? It really is a scene heat. So it's a lot of cold sort of jungle, right? It doesn't seem like it would be that cold, but whatever, like things that are not themselves emanating.

Nic

It's not going to have like human body.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. And then, and then the humans walking around. So the predator is stalking them.

Nic

This effect, I mean, is so good. Like it's not visually impressive, but the way that they layer the different sounds and they give it such atmosphere that you're just like, this is completely believable. It doesn't look, it doesn't look 40 years old.

Steve

And that's the thing is, I feel like the way they did it, it'll never look dated. Yeah, it's because it's meant to be it, what we're seeing is that, and we get this a little bit. We'll talk when we get to the point where the Predator does take its helmet off near the end of the movie, where the vision shifts. It's kind of like this is a species with just terrible vision. So they've invented this technology where it's like, well, we can't make ourselves see better, but we can make ourselves recognize these heat signatures and that helps us hunt. I mean, that seems like sort of the technology, the purpose behind the technology in their world, right? The species world. And so it's really interesting and deliberately looks bad. And by having it deliberately, quote, look bad, It never actually looks bad. It always just kind of looks like the way it is. And it never dates itself. It's not like Last Starfighter with the computer generated real space base or whatever the fuck it was, right? So it's fantastic. So as they're walking through the jungle, they're continuing towards, they know they need to head towards this like gorilla camp to find this cabin administrator. They're still on the same path. As they're going, there's a great little moment where Dillon slips.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

And like kind of slides down this hill, makes a ton of noise, a lot of leaves crinkling, whatever. And I love that Mac comes and gets him and he gets him to safety. He goes, you give our position away again, I'll bleed you real quiet, leave you here. God, I love that guy. He's so good.

Nic

Bill Duke is really, really incredible. And yeah, I love the friction between him and Dillon here.

Steve

Yeah, absolutely.

Nic

And they're doing really some good sneaking here. I love the sneaking happening. Dutch looks into the village with his binoculars and the second thing he looks at is a guy getting executed.

Steve

Clearly an American, so he's speaking plain English, whatever, and just getting shot in the head.

Nic

And he's just like, all right. And he does a cool like crawl down a hill, which looks really fun.

Steve

Yeah. Little belly crawl.

Nic

And then so then this thing, so they're at the edge of this encampment.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And it's very loud because they have a generator running, which is just, you know, an 18 wheeler with the back tires taken off.

Steve

It's not a pickup truck. It's not even an 18 wheeler. It's just like a pickup truck, I think.

Nic

Oh, I thought it was. Okay.

Steve

Yeah. It's not a pickup truck.

Nic

Anyway, this truck with the back tires taken off and it just has the rims there that are hooked to a belt and like that's their generator is the engine of this vehicle or whatever. And what Dutch does to create a distraction, which is so fucking cool, is he comes in and slickly cuts the belt there. And then he lifts this truck just to show how strong he is. Cause he's not a normal guy. He's a strong guy.

Steve

He's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Nic

And he places the truck down with front tires and back rims and it just sets like perfectly off towards the most concentrated group of the bad guys.

Steve

Where he's also put like some like bag in the back of the truck bed that's clearly a bomb. That he like sets on, you know, with a little switch before he goes. And yeah, sure enough.

Nic

So we get just chaos here.

Steve

Mad chaos, bomb explodes, killing a bunch of guys, but that was also then the signal for everybody else in the crew to start shooting and killing people, whatever. And we get an attack and we get like a full, it's like a three or four minute, at least five minute attack on this can. Oh my, it takes a long time, but it's, there's a lot that goes on.

Nic

There's a lot of, there's a lot of death. And I was trying to keep track of the numbers. Of killed on screen during this, and I lost track, but I looked it up. Somebody has done the homework, thankfully. 72 on-screen deaths during this sequence of Just here.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Which is like...

Steve

Does that include the hostage that gets.

Nic

Shot at the beginning? It might, it might count him. But man, is this fun. And this is just classic Arnie. And again, you've got Blaine, Jesse Ventura with the minigun just mowing shit down and all these different kinds of weapons and it's just guys flying all over the place.

Steve

And just like we talked about when there was a minigun in Terminator 2, when Schwarzenegger uses it in the office building itself, Cyberdyne, the sound it makes that whirring high pitch is so good. And it does it here too. And it's just a very like unique sound that only that kind of weapon makes. And yeah, most of the guys are like Dutch has got like a M16 with a grenade launcher. Poncho's actually got this like, it's like a drum magazine grenade launcher where he can probably carry like 40 grenades at a time. He's just launching them into people. Couple of fun things that happened during this is, going inside one of the buildings, somebody tries to sneak up on Dutch instead of just shooting him, like you do in a movie when you're an idiot henchman. He turns around, throws his machete knife thing, which is huge, right? And I swear to God, just like in the Rock, I'm pretty sure it goes, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew. Like that little noise, that little Looney Tunes wiggle noise. But he goes and he gets a guy in the chest and actually pins him to a post he's behind, and Schwarzenegger turns and goes, Stick around.

Nic

He's so efficient with his language in this movie here.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And so there's all this chaos and stuff, and they're finding out during this that they're like, oh, this doesn't look like Central Americans. This is some kind of, like, there's Russians, there's CIA people. Like, this goes all the way to the White House, you know? Goes all the way to the top kind of thing.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And at some point, Blaine is there with one or the other, with Poncho, maybe. And Poncho points out, he's like, hey, you're bleeding.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And then Blaine says, I ain't got time to bleed, which is a really funny line. But the funniest thing is the look that the other guy gives him. He's just He's just like, you fucking dipshit.

Steve

But he literally goes like, Oh, right? Yeah. Like, he literally-- so it's so great because it is a great line, but it's a great line 'cause it's a cheesy movie line. So in the universe of the movie, it's a stupid thing to say, and Pancho looks at him like, and then he's so-- basically, Blaine is like a guy up there stuck, dug in like an Alabama tech. You know? And he's gotta like get this guy out of this, like, the hidey hole he's in. And so Pancho, when he tells Pancho he doesn't have time to bleed, Pancho goes, okay. And he goes, he fires three grenades up into the guy's like, you know, like a hidey hole. And he goes, you got time to duck? Cuz it starts exploding and dirts raining down on them and stuff. Very funny.

Nic

That adds so much to the movie, though, that these guys, like, know that all the other guys are full of.

Steve

Yeah. Yeah.

Nic

Let's see here.

Steve

Yeah. So basically what happens after they've killed everybody, there's a girl, a woman actually tries to attack Dutch and he turns on just, like, you know, rifle butt to the head to knock her down. Goes. And he goes, oh, like, if he He doesn't expect a woman to be there at all. There's that. And then kind of as they clear up and all the baddies are dead or whatever, Mack is the one that tells Dutch, sort of like, yeah, if these are Central Americans, I think he says, I don't remember what he says. I'm a Chinaman, I think he says.

Nic

Yeah, yeah.

Steve

Which we know is not the preferred nomenclature. But basically it's like, yeah, there's Russians. He's like, there's some CIA guys. Like, what is going on? This is crazy.

Nic

And Dutch is pissed at Dillon.

Steve

Because Dillon now has found a bunch of papers and he's like, oh, we got them. This is what we came for, all this stuff. So Dutch realizes, yeah, they were sent in here to wipe this encampment clean. Not about a rescue at all. It was about, like, a hit job, basically. And it was just so the CIA could get, like, hands on these, like, plans and stuff. And he's pissed. He's like, you set this up. You set us in six of us into a meat grinder. Like, you know, he's, like, super pissed about it, which, like, makes sense. I'd be pissed, too.

Nic

Oh, yeah.

Steve

And so now they're kind of like, we got to get out because now they're on the wrong side of the Border. This is the thing right now. They gotta. They gotta get back.

Nic

Our chopper can't pick us up. We gotta.

Steve

Exactly. And it's not like where they were dropped off. The chopper landed. They have to go to, like, a clearing or something where they can actually land to get on the chopper. They all repelled down when they originally and so we get as the sort of team is moving through the camp with all the damage, we get more predator vision because it's clear that the predator is watching them. And a handful of really important things happen here. One, it looks like Max spots something and he talks to Dillon. He's kind of like, hey, over here, you know, and he's kind of like whatever. And he goes to put a knife on his shoulder. We realize there was actually a scorpion on Dillon's shoulder. Max just saved him. So that's interesting. But then the, the, the Predator is, like, watching and listening. And you can hear this really cool effect when we've got the Predator's point of view, where he's hearing their voices, and then it's like he's refining his hearing of them. So it's repeating over and over again and getting clearer and clearer. Then Hawkins tells another joke or whatever, and he said, hey, it's a Billy. He goes, hey, Billy, I was going down on my girlfriend the other day, and I said, boy, you've got a big boy. You've got a big boy. And she said, why'd you say that twice? And I said, I didn't. And there's a pause. And then Billy erupts in laughter.

Nic

He thinks it's the funniest thing. Not a bad joke, by the way. That's a much better joke than the.

Steve

Big as a House one. It's a much better joke. But he laughs his ass off. It's a huge, and the Predator hears this, and it's clear that he's refining his hearing. He's internalizing Billy's laugh. Very important. That'll come back later.

Nic

It's almost like the Predator is doing the thing from Face Off where he was like, I can eat a peach for hours.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

Like just trying to repeat it so that he could replicate it for hunting purposes or whatever. Oh, man. Yeah. Really good. At this point in the movie, my wife says, Not a lot of dialogue, just a lot of big puss jokes. And I think that's correct.

Steve

That is accurate. Yeah, yeah. Certainly most of Hawkins lines have literally been telling those jokes. We haven't heard much of anything else from Hawkins. That's pretty much his existence there.

Nic

Anna, so the hostage that they have now, she starts to take off like she is trying to escape. Escape a few times here. And in the meantime, Billy is kind of like off away from the group, like staring off into the woods. And the way that they deal with Billy, I mean, this is very racially coded. I don't love it or whatever. And 'cause Billy's the tracker and he's the Native American, and they're treating him like he's their dog.

Steve

Like a bloodhound.

Nic

'Cause Billy's out there looking, they're like, what's got Billy so spooked? It's.

Steve

Not good. It's not great. But they obviously respect the guy.

Nic

But yeah, he's amazingly good at what he does, too.

Steve

The sort of dog whistling terminology is not great for sure.

Nic

So Billy's gesturing, he's just like, There's something in those trees.

Steve

Something in those trees. And that's when the girl tries to run and Hawkins chases her down and is trying to chase her through things. And as he catches her, she looks past him and we get this crazy moment of this shimmering, something's not actually there, but lunges at Hawkins, splattering blood all over. And then, you know, sort of Hawkins being dragged away into the jungle. And by the time, I think the next person to catch up is either Dillon or Poncho. The two of them show up similarly timed to find Anna, and she is just, like, in shock. And she's literally shaking, and she's covered in blood. And when Dutch sees her, he goes, this is not her blood. Like, what happened? Yeah.

Nic

He discovered that so quickly.

Steve

Yeah, I guess he's just looking at it going, like, there's no blood.

Nic

There's no blood. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve

It's that here. Like, you have, like, blood all over your face and, and and upper body, but there's no cut anywhere. So where'd this come from? And that's like, so now they find--.

Nic

And where they send, they're like, they send somebody off to look for Hawkins.

Steve

They send Poncho off to look for Hawkins. And he comes back because all he finds is-- the pile of guts. Oh, a pile of guts.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Throws up.

Nic

You find Hawkins? I can't tell.

Steve

I can't tell. Yeah. So, yeah, so Hawkins is gone. So of the original crew, we've gone from seven to six now because Hawkins is down. But yeah, so.

Nic

Oh, so Poncho the translator, he's the only one who can communicate with Anna. And they're like, ask her what she saw. What did you do? And he's like, she said the jungle just came alive and took him. And they're like, your translation sucks. There's no way she said that. Or that doesn't make any sense.

Steve

Dillon says something even more interesting. He says, that's not what she said. What she said doesn't make any sense. And so it's almost like he's He is maybe at least, I mean, he speaks a lot of Spanish to Anna before we realize a little bit later that she actually speaks English. Dillon obviously knows Spanish, and it's almost like, is he translating her words differently than Poncho is? He doesn't actually tell us what he heard her say, but he does make a comment about, like, that's not what she said. What she said doesn't make sense. Kind of reminds me of Tombstone, you know, when, oh, what's the Michael Bean character? Johnny Ringo has to correct some of the other, one of the other actual, like, Mexican Banditos Spanish because it's like, you know, your Spanish is worse than your English, that kind of thing. But, yeah, so, so he, we don't know exactly what's going on, but that's, she does her best to explain and it doesn't work. So they are both now they're all looking around for Hawkins body because Dutch is like, I want Hawkins body found. We're not just gonna leave here without finding it. So he sends her 50 meters, like, look around. And as Blaine is kind of looking through the jungle looking for what, you know, somebody he can shoot or whatever. He turns around and he hears a sound. He turns around and a laser rocket thing that we later learn is from the Predator's shoulder cannon.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Blows through his chest and just absolutely explodes his chest.

Nic

And that thing is crazy.

Steve

Crazy.

Nic

Turns him into a donut.

Steve

Absolutely wild.

Nic

Really brutal. And when they go and see Blaine's body, I mean, his ribcage is like, yeah, it looks like, you know, and I, there's a lot of things in this movie that are very similar to John Carpenter's the Thing.

Steve

Okay. Oh, yeah.

Nic

And, and I think the effect of his, like, ribs coming up looks so much like some of the scenes in that where the thing burst up. But I mean, like, the alien crash landing on the Earth and this crew of guys who are in this isolated situation that they're kind of, even if this thing wasn't there and all this, yeah. I mean, the effects in it, I think, were pretty cool.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Jesse Ventura. I mean, very, very entertaining in this movie. And it sad to see him go, but I think he served his purpose. He gave a sexual tyrannosaurus.

Steve

There you go. Tyrannosaurus. So then Mac, his best friend, comes and sees the Predator kind of moving away from Blaine's body. He's cloaked still, but, like, there's movement. So he picks up the minigun and just starts shooting after him. And we see that actually he does, like, Nic the Predator somehow because he bleeds and he. This, like, glowing green blood on a leaf, but none of the crew see it. Only Anna sees it. And for whatever reason, she kind of, like, touches it with her fingers, which, to me, it looks like acid. I don't know why anyone would touch it. Yeah. And then, like, rubs it on her pants to, like, keep some of it or something. I don't know. But she does sort of, like, see this and. And see. But nobody else sees that he bleeds.

Nic

And this is great that everyone comes up and they see, like, this is what you do when you're in one of those Crews. You see your buddy mini gunning down an entire. Jungle, just stand next to him and fire whatever you have. And there's a great sequence of them just unloading their shit.

Steve

Yeah, absolutely doing massively in very inefficient landscaping all through the jungle. It's a massive waste of ammo. I'm really actually glad that ammo capacity doesn't come up really at any point in the movie, because that would have been irritating. But it is like, Jesus, because the minigun that Blaine had and the Mac is now using, Blaine had to wear a backpack full of the belt-fed ammo for that gun. And obviously it's shooting a lot of rounds per second. He goes through the entire backpack. That gun is now useless. It is out of ammo, and I don't think they've got another ammo backpack lying around. Nobody else was carrying one, so there's that.

Nic

He was just tired of holding it. He was like, he doesn't like cigars or umbrellas or miniguns. Yeah. So let's see. Yeah. So it seemed like after that, you know, is there any. And I, and I love when the minigun finishes fire. Yeah, you just have the barrel spinning.

Steve

And that's the whole other trick.

Nic

Sound is that.

Steve

Yes. Yep, exactly. And so Poncho runs off to see like what they hit if anything and he finds no evidence of any blood, any bodies, any anything which I don't know how he missed whatever the girl saw, whatever Anna found.

Nic

And how did Billy not find that?

Steve

There's that too.

Nic

He can smell the air and know what kind of plane is flying overhead, you know.

Steve

But so he comes back, he goes nothing. We hit nothing. There's no bodies, there's no blood, there's nothing. That was crazy. Crazy. We then cut to another scene where we're up in the Treetops and the Predator turns off his little cloaking device so that we actually get our first good look at the actual Predator costume, which is unbelievably cool. I mean, just incredible look. And he's got a bunch of, he's got a medic kit. He's got like a first aid kit. And he is, he was clipped in the leg, it looks like, I think, like in the thigh by one of the rounds of Mac's, you know, mini gun Fest. And he's got us several different things that are like basically sewing it up and shooting himself with probably some kind of antibiotic or something. I don't know, whatever. It's a very complicated. It's a very like complete first aid.

Nic

It's like a Batman utility belt level of stuff that he have. It's really cool. One thing that was cracking me up watching that scene because it's showing the predator's hands kind of repairing itself and dealing with these tools and stuff in the actual production. It wasn't the guy in the full suit. So I like the idea of just an actor wearing like predator like sleeves doing that shot.

Steve

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there's a little bit later as they're trying to figure out what the hell's going on, like, because nobody saw anything. And it's like, well, now Blaine's dead. They then somebody, I think Poncho says to Billy, like, what do you think, Billy? And Billy goes, I'm scared. It's like, oh, bullshit, Billy, you're not scared of any man. And he goes, there's something out there waiting for us. And it ain't no man. We're all gonna die. And it's like, Billy's fucking right. They're basically gonna all die.

Nic

So when Blaine, you know, Blaine and Max, Mac was Blaine's buddy, and Mac went to kind of say goodbye to Blaine and cover his body up and stuff. And, you know, it was this whole, like, emotional thing, but it just ends with.

Steve

Goodbye, bro.

Nic

That's as. That's as emotionally vulnerable as we're allowed to get, which is fine, which is all right. That's where we need to be.

Steve

We'll live with it. But, yeah, but they basically set up sort of a defensive position, and they, like, put a bunch of flares around and a bunch of, like, trip wires for bombs, whatever the ideas. That they will either, you know, attack or be alerted to anything getting near them.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And then, and then night falls. And so now Mac is apparently on watch. We see a few people asleep, like Billy and Dutch are both sleeping, and Mac is, like, sort of watching out. And there is a bunch of rustling suddenly in the trees or whatever, you know, in the bushes nearby. And, and Mac is attacked and makes a ton of noise and is, like, firing his gun a couple times, whatever. And, like, and everybody else wakes up and it's coming. They got flashlights, whatever, and it turns. Out, Mack was attacked by the biggest goddamn wild boar I've ever seen in my life. That thing was huge. Looked like a rodent of unusual size from the fire swamp.

Nic

Holy shit. That is exactly what it looked like. Yeah. And when Mack was out, it appeared he was definitely drunk. He was probably the wettest I've ever seen. And we just watched Rocky IV.

Steve

Yeah. Sweating in his face.

Nic

At this point, he's not shaving his face. He's squeegeeing his face with the disposable razors.

Steve

Anyway. Gross.

Nic

So. So, you know, he does that. They all get a good chuckle and. And then they find out, like, Blaine's body is gone.

Steve

Yeah. And nothing else.

Nic

They had booby trapped this entire perimeter.

Steve

And they know that some of the, like, flares things went off because the boar set them off, and they can kind of. I think Poncho mentions, like, hey, the boar came in here. But where else did anything, like, how did anybody else get in here? Like, where'd the body go?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

To get in and then to get the body out, like, what's going on? And then this is when Anna starts speaking English. And it talks about how, you know, she found the blood of the thing or whatever on a leaf the last time that you guys all shot at it. And this is one of Arnold's then best lines in the movie. He goes, if it bleeds, we can kill it. Yeah, that's true.

Nic

And it starts speaking English because somebody grabs her shoulders and shakes her and says, what did you see? So this is a lesson for anybody out there. If you speak, if you ask somebody a question, they don't seem to speak your language. Just ask it louder in your own language. They'll get you at something.

Steve

That definitely helps, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they decide, yeah, hey, if it bleeds and we can kill it, then let's, again, figure out how to- We're not gonna leave here without killing this thing. And this is also, I think, when they realized because they didn't trip the wires that it's been getting to them through the trees.

Nic

Right.

Steve

And so Dutch just like starts setting traps.

Nic

And we get a good montage here.

Steve

Yeah, a lot of good trap setting.

Nic

Again, for the bicep fans out there. Again, they're just We're just like, Look, we cast all these buff guys in the movies. We're gonna show off, and they're pulling ropes. And there's certain scenes where he's just like, made a Bowflex machine out of bamboo for some reason. I don't understand. But it's really, really fun.

Steve

I also love Dillon's not helping them very much at one point, and Dutch is like, maybe you should get the whole crew to help us, you know, kind of thing. In order to help them pull the rope, he has to take his shirt off. Yeah. Right. So it's not good enough that his arms are bare. He has to actually fully take his shirt off in order to strain properly. Oh, for sure. To get the rope to pull. Yeah. Gotta get that Carl Weathers torso out there.

Nic

So, so yeah, they have all these traps set and it's really good. At this point, you know, Mac squeegeeing his face still and he presses so hard with the razor that it breaks.

Steve

Which is so unsettling.

Nic

And just thinking of that as a beard guy, you know, it's like, I don't fuck with getting anything that close to my face that's that sharp. I need a layer of hair, you know? The Anna said, In her conversation, she's like, yeah, we've kind of know about this thing. And what we call it is the demon who makes trophies of men.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

Ooh, that is dark.

Steve

That's really... She says it in Spanish and it sounded better. I don't remember now exactly, but obviously something about Diablo, something, something ombre. It sounds really good when she says it, but she mentions it only happens the summers when it's really hot. That happened when she was a little girl. All the ladies of the old women of the village were trying to say prayers. And like whatever, but their men would start disappearing and then when they would find them, they'd be skinned or worse, she said. Right. And that this summer, you know, it's this year it gets very hot. Right. So it's reiterating one of the reasons all these people are sweating so damn bad is it is an unseasonably hot summer in the Amazon. Right. So and that's what they have found in the past. Apparently this is not the first time that this or another member of this predator species has come here to do this hunting in the jungle. Apparently it is it's like going on safari for them. It's like a vacation So they are big game hunting out here.

Nic

Really creepy.

Steve

So they set up a pretty crazy trap that is meant to be like one of those like a net trap, like in Return of the Jedi that'll.

Nic

Just capture you and pull you up in a net.

Steve

The whole sling thing.

Nic

Where Arnie says, like, he's gonna be the bait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Dillon's like, what are you gonna try next? Cheese.

Steve

But sure enough, the predator comes cloaked and springs the trap and gets caught up in it, but then is immediately shot. Shooting Wildey with its shoulder rocket cannon thing and ends up breaking out of the net fairly easily and escapes. But Dillon spots it and Dillon starts chasing it down. Unfortunately, also part of the trap was this log, sort of again, very, very Return of the Jedi, very Ewoks fighting the Empire, but a log swinging down from the tree to hit the center of the trap. And unfortunately, Poncho was standing there and catches it straight in the chest.

Nic

Right in the chest, dude. Like the world's thickest Home Alone paint can. Yeah, right to the Sternum. Yeah. So no good for Poncho.

Steve

Yeah. And so Mac actually spots the Predator and he chases after it. Dillon follows after Mac, and then Dillon is stopped by Mac. He whispers. And it's really great moment because this is one of the things I want to bring up. We, one of the things we know the Predator has heard said is, hey, come here, that kind of thing, right, from Mac. So we hear that. And I, I know. I even haven't seen this movie. I always think to myself, wait a minute, is that the Predator saying that, or is that actually, oh, this time it's Mac.

Nic

Yeah. Yeah.

Steve

Sure enough, it's Mac getting Dillon to come over. Because he is like hidden underneath a branch log thing. And he says, Look out there, just beyond those trees, you know, and it's like, and sure enough, we can see the sort of cloaked, but that that shimmering look, right, that the predator has when it's up in the trees. And so they've spotted him. And so Mack and Dillon think, man, this is their chance. They're going to they're going to get them. So Dillon says, like, you know, you go this way, I'm going to go down there and we're going to come at him, you know, two sides, we're going to get this guy, we're going to kill him. And Mack, I love this whole thing where Mack is sneaking here sneaking super, like real quietly is underneath the brush. He's underneath logs. But at one point he like reaches his arm up to like pull himself into a certain direction and three little red dots in a triangle formation show up on his arm and he kind of looks at it and then he moves his head to look at where it's coming from and there's the predator.

Nic

Just blasts through the top of his head I think because we see his face later. But at that point it almost looks like his entire head explodes.

Steve

It looks like it kind of goes like through his forehead basically.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

It's because we can't see the exit.

Nic

Wound came out the back and and stuff.

Steve

Brutal. Brutal.

Nic

Really gnarly there. And RIP to Mac, another entertaining character there.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Yeah. So Dillon sees this and he starts shooting. He's firing his gun up. And the Predator charges him and we get a great scene of Dillon's flexed bicep detached from his body. Two dads, one movie, hashtag, baby. We got another limb missing limb here. The arms detached from his his body still firing on the ground, which is such a good scene. And he still tries to fight it.

Steve

Well, he's got two MP5s when that happens. He's shooting them both. So, yeah, his arm gets blown off by another shoulder rocket from the Predator. And that's the one that, yeah, lands and it's still firing as the finger must have been, like, you know, held. The muscle holds on to the trigger. Right. But he tries to fight with the other one.

Nic

Trigger mortise, folks.

Steve

Boom. I like that trigger mortise. But, yeah, the, it, it, it, yeah. Dillon gets his shoulder, but he gets his arm blown. Off. And then the Predator finishes him off close quarters with his, like, claw knife.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Crazy thing on his wrist. In the meantime, though, Dutch, while. While. While, you know, Mac and Dillon were off trying to hunt down the Predator, Dutch was with Poncho, who's really wounded with this thing. And Billy and Anna, and they're all trying to continue on to the chopper Rendezvous point because that's kind of their only hope to get out of here, especially now that Poncho is injured. Like, they just don't have that much. Choice. And so as they're, as they're running off and as we hear Dillon screams off in the distance as he is killed by the Predator, Billy, then they all cross a big log, almost like that's across a Ravine, like as a bridge. And Billy stops and he turns around and he takes off his vest and he drops his weapons and he gets his big machete knife out and for whatever reason, kind of cuts himself, obviously very lightly, but cuts himself across his chest and upper stomach. And it's just like, come get me.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And that doesn't take very long.

Nic

No, not at all. We hear Billy's scream off in the distance. I don't know if we talked about this yet, but this is kind of an important point to introduce is I think at this point or a little bit before Dutch has realized like it didn't hurt you because you didn't have a weapon.

Steve

That's right. There was a moment.

Nic

He said that to Anna. Let's keep a weapon out of your hands. Like this thing is coming, you know, they're kind of starting to understand a little bit what its motivation is.

Steve

It's not about It won't kill you with another weapon. It's not sporting.

Nic

So then, you know, very quickly after that, Billy, you know, we hear Billy die off screen. Poncho gets capped as well.

Steve

Another shoulder rocket.

Nic

And it's just, now it's just Arnie and Anna.

Steve

Right. And then Arnold actually takes a shot from the shoulder rocket, but it just grazes his arm and kind of knocks him down. At which point he yells another great line from the movie to Anna. It's like, Go, run. Get to the chopper. Anyway, hopefully that'll come through.

Nic

Nice get to the shot, but I like that one.

Steve

But yeah, apparently Dutch is partly made of steel, because even a grazing shot doesn't seem to really phase him at all.

Nic

Right. And he gets shot, and then he does 500-foot the Richard Kimball waterfall.

Steve

Well, he kind of slips almost. He slides down this embankment, and then it's so crazy when he crests the cliff, the camera shows us what's beneath him, which is rocks, the shoreline. But somehow he's able, his momentum, I guess, carries him far enough. And he lands in the river.

Nic

And then he goes over another waterfall. I mean, it's really gnarly.

Steve

He should be dead several times during this river scene. Oh, for sure, for sure.

Nic

And so he's in this cold water and he comes crawling out into the mud, and you see that the predator dips into the water right behind him.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And it doesn't, you know, it ends up going by him. It doesn't creep up on him.

Steve

He doesn't have a weapon on him, but he also is like, he's like tucked up into like this like fallen tree or whatever, and he's covered in this mud from the riverbank. And the predator, you know, spots like a little animal and shoots at it because that's the thermal signature it can see. Yeah, but it can't see Dutch at all. And he even says it out loud. He's like, he didn't see me. Like he gets it right away that, you know, basically when he's covered in this mud, the predator editor couldn't see him. And so, yeah, so now we cut to Dutch. Now, basically, like, let's just take stock quickly of what's going on.

Nic

Yes, sir.

Steve

Anna and Poncho's dead. He's been shot. Billy's dead. Dillon's dead. Max's dead. Blaine's dead. Okay. And Hawkins was the first to go. And then. So Anna has supposedly run off towards the chopper. She couldn't possibly know where she's going. Yeah. Okay. So she's doing that. And Dutch is now setting up. We cut to him, like, setting up. Traps, basically. And he's, like, trying to create this, like, pinch point where he could, like, attract the Predator to and kill it, because now he knows it bleeds. Yeah. And he knows how to stay hidden from it, essentially. And so he's got a plan. He's got a plan of attack. And we get a great little Montage again of more trap setting and, you know, creating.

Nic

Oh, this was actually where, where he was doing his, making his own bow Flex machine bending Vines over his shoulder.

Steve

He was making a bow and arrow. Right. That's, that's literally like he creates a bow and arrow for himself. He doesn't have Weapons anymore.

Nic

I love it. I love the ingenuity of it, but also just the gratuity of these scenes where we're like, Hey, we gotta get the muscle guy looking muscley on the screen.

Steve

And then we do, while he's doing these traps that we do cut to the predator who's got Billy's body and he reaches into Billy's back basically and grabs L4 from his spine and rips the whole spine and skull out. And then we see him spray it with this thing that clearly cleans it because he adds Billy's skull to a set of other skulls that he has, all human skulls.

Nic

I do like how clean the skulls were. That was pleasing to me. If it was like bloody, Gross skulls. I love that.

Steve

That he wants it. He wants it clean, you know? So, yeah, this guy's collecting his trophies, but, yeah, so Dutch makes himself a set of bow and arrows, covers himself in more mud. We get a lot of just very, like, muddy, whatever. And then he lights a huge torch and gets up on a bridge, you know, like the, like, another Fallen Tree log, and he just does a war cry. He just yells like nothing intelligent.

Nic

It's a great Roar.

Steve

Great Roar. The Predator does. Does get its attention. And then what he does is he tosses that torch into what he's created, like a bonfire. So now there's this huge fire that obviously the Predator's gonna be able to see. He's figured out the whole mud thing is a heat thing. It's like he's cold when he's in the mud. So, you know, it's like he can't be seen, but the fire will. Will attract the Predator and probably make it fairly hard for it to see other stuff. I think that's kind of part of it. And then we'll see it again, like, what his exact plan is. He goes up into the trees to. Hide. And it's like the predator walks right by him. And it's hard to tell how close. Almost looks like the predator touches him.

Nic

It looks like he goes over him.

Steve

Yeah, it's just because we're seeing through it.

Nic

It's like he's on the underside of a branch and the predator is right there. But yeah, that's very tense there. And I do really love his vine swinging between trees. Like, let me get your attention over here. It starts to come over there and he swings on the vine. And like, and then what a great setup.

Steve

Hugs the tree. As soon as he gets the other side, he hugs the tree and stays still. And he knows if he's covered in mud and cold and up against the tree trunk, he's going to look like part of the tree. Sure enough, the Predator, you know, reacts to the sound, but then doesn't really do anything else, doesn't see anything. So continues on down towards the bonfire to investigate that. And this is where we see what the real plan of the fire was, is that he had taken Dutch had during the Montage taken apart some of, like, the grenade shells or something, right, from his RPG or his grenade launcher. Rifle and dumped out the gunpowder.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And wrapped it up in like a big banana leaf or whatever, and then turned that into a tip of an arrow. So he made this bone arrow. So he's able to shoot that into the bonfire, which then makes it explode, which clearly does fair amount of damage to the predator. It screws up his like some of his equipment. Like it blows up his little wrist computer.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Cloaking thing doesn't work anymore. So no more cloaked predator for the rest of the movie. We get a good look at him from here on out.

Nic

Out. The computer stuff is funny because there's a few scenes where it'll show the Predator and it has this kind of like blue lightning static looking effect on the outside of its computer system and then it pushes the button to make it stop doing that.

Steve

Yeah, I think it turns it off. I think the idea is it's like it's on but it's shorting out and so if he just turns it off, it'll stop.

Nic

Turn it off, turn it back on again.

Steve

Yeah, you know, it's a good idea.

Nic

I'm a tech guy now.

Steve

It's the three R's. Retry, retry, retry. I reboot, reinstall. There you go. Yeah.

Nic

This is funny. So when the Predator is coming after him.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

'Cause it's moving so like stealthily to this point. And then when it starts coming after him, it's like stomping, lumbering. Like the worst upstairs neighbors you've ever had in your life. You know, it's like stomping hard at him, which gives us a great sense too of how large this thing is.

Steve

Yeah. And I think also too, it shows that it adapts to its own situation. So when it has its cloaking device, it moves in a stealthy way. Once that's gone, what's the point?

Nic

Yeah. Who cares?

Steve

Just beat. Just be. Just Barrel through it. Like, go get the guy, you know? So I think that's kind of on the topic of this particular species of alien being a particularly Adept Soldier, Hunter, whatever, you know, it really adapts to what it has. The Predator jumps in front of Dutch at one point. Now, he's still covered in mud, but he knows that, like, I mean, the thing will see me eventually if I'm too close to it kind of thing. But he is able to kind of, like, get underneath the loggies on and hang on to the Vines as the Predator walks by, which gives him a little more time. He's able to retrieve a couple of other weapons he made for himself, including a spear with another one of those exploding heads on it. And let's see.

Nic

And the Predator, in the meantime, has left a trail of glowing blood.

Steve

That's right. Because that first explosion from the bonfire really did damage it. So he's now following these little green glowing drops of blood, and he gets kind of under-- I don't know if it's a cave or underneath the roots of a tree or something, but he's in this little underground kind of kind of part. And that's when we hear the Predator showing up behind him. And it's kind of hard to tell what the Predator sees here because it does sort of follow him and shoot after him as he runs away. But he jumps and I think goes to grab a branch that breaks.

Nic

It breaks immediately. It's the most pointless branch grab ever.

Steve

But he lands in the water, which we got to remember now, this is going to wipe all that, this is going to wash all the mud off him. It's like his one sort of defensive mechanism. Is this mud and the water is going to wash it all off.

Nic

And the Predator's got him now up out of the water and you can see the Predator is absolutely enormous next to this guy who's already enormous. His whole career is built on being enormous, right?

Steve

Yeah, he's like 6'3 or something. Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And the Predator is choking him, a la Ivan Drago, choking his manager, just holding him up against the tree by his throat. Very intense. Intimidating. Very crazy.

Steve

And we see from the Predator vision through his helmet, he's really examining the skull. He's really looking at Dutch's skull and comparing it, I guess, right, to the other trophies he already has. And, and, you know, it's interesting. He could kill him right now, but instead he drops him.

Nic

But does Dutch has, he doesn't have a weapon at that point. That's why he drops him.

Steve

Maybe that's right. Yeah, I guess, because there's a point where the, the Predator takes off his helmet and takes off his shoulder cannon and is basically like, do this hand to hand. And I guess you're right. It probably is because he sees Dutch as a valuable trophy and a worthy opponent, and Dutch currently does not have any kind of weapon on him. So we'll just fight then. Yeah. And that's, that's, you know, I guess, like, respectable. I don't know how to think if that's how I should think about it, but that it does seem to be what happens.

Nic

So when the Predator takes its mask off, really creepy looking. I mean, they managed to just. Model these after the absolute weirdest looking of real life things and combine them in such a cool way. My wife did say, she said, that's a dark crystal ass looking face.

Steve

That's good. That's good.

Nic

So that's the only effect that didn't.

Steve

Quite, I mean, something out of labyrinth.

Nic

It's still cool, but that's where you see a little bit of limitation of practical effect from looking super cool. But still, great. And we get Dutch saying, you,'re one ugly motherfucker.

Steve

Yeah, which it really is.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

So the Predator and Dutch start fighting hand to hand, and the Predator is just beating Dutch's ass.

Nic

Oh my God.

Steve

This is Ivandrago and Rocky Balboa all over again. But Dutch is kind of able to continue leading the Predator towards those traps that he set, right? He's got this spike thing that's gonna collapse on him, and he's got this other log thing. And so he is able to crawl under to where if the Predator follows him, he's gonna be in his trap. But the Predator stops. Now we know he can't see very well. That's what the helmet came off. Everything had been blue and then the heat signatures would be red. But when the helmet comes off, it's like that dude's vision is basically all red.

Nic

There's very little difference. He's blinded by whatever.

Steve

And I think maybe it's the heat around or something. It's got that. So it's a less specific ability to detect the differences in heat signatures. And that's what the helmet gives him, is his ability to understand and like, you know, sort of more mammalian, you know, like kind of heat signatures versus vegetation.

Nic

Oh, totally.

Steve

And I think now it's just the whole area is so hot, that's just his unaided vision is just terrible.

Nic

Right, 'cause if it's like 92 degrees, you know, yeah, that's gonna be all messed up.

Steve

So yeah, so the predator is trying to follow him, but like feels the spikes. You can't even necessarily see him. He feels him. And Dutch starts with like, you know, come get me, I'm right here, you can kill me, come on, come on, get me, get me, you can kill me. And it's like, Bro, it's clearly not that dumb. If it sees you sitting there just asking it to come at you, it's not gonna. It's just not like this isn't like an idiot creature. And sure enough, the Predator does not follow under the sort of spiked trap. It goes another way and it's got its claw blades back out, little gauntlet blades ready to just finish it with Dutch.

Nic

So Dutch is kind of like Kevin McCallister in the treehouse, hoping that the wet bandits will chase him in a certain way. But there's two reasons for that.

Steve

Luckily, there was a backup trap.

Nic

There was a backup trap.

Steve

And it turns out to be a good one, because he has a huge log that we saw him sort of have to hoist into the tree.

Nic

I want to know the estimate of how much that weighs. What are we telling people that he's able to hoist?

Steve

Yeah, it was crazy. Without a pulley, it's, I'm sure he put the vine over a branch, but it's not the same as having a real pulley. And yeah, 300 pounds. It has to be enough to kill from a height and kill an extra. Way more than that. Right?

Nic

So, yeah, so this giant log drops down to crush the Predator. Alá, two things that we've seen in our film so far. Number one, go ahead. Cyrus the Virus.

Steve

That's right, that was one I thought of. Con Air.

Nic

His face getting crushed by the face crushing machine. And number two, Rob Lowe's character in Tommy Boy, where he gets put onto one of the chairs that they're testing for durability. And the sandbag that they repeatedly drop on the chair just drops right on his nut sack. So it's kind of like a halfway between both of those.

Steve

Send him a bottle of wine. Say sorry about your marbles. Yeah, so yeah, in other words, I wrote down here, got him. So yeah, we got the predator, but not necessarily. There's still movement and sound coming. So Dutch goes and checks it out and he realizes the predator's not dead, so he lifts this rock up. He's gonna crush the predator's head, which he really should have done, because as it turns out, Predator, you know, is bleeding all over, is choking out its last breaths. It's, it is dead. It is not a threat to anymore. So he thinks it, like, opens the little wrist computer and hits a bunch of buttons or whatever on it, and it starts making little, I guess they kind of look like a countdown. They just don't look like any numbers we would use. Yeah. But there is an increasing frequency of a tone. Beep, beep, beep.

Nic

Yeah. So you can figure it out.

Steve

And it's kind of like, well, that doesn't sound good. So Dutch hauls He just hauls off in the other direction. And I'm pretty sure this is a nuclear explosion that occurs.

Nic

From the effect of it, right? Because there's a helicopter that's on its.

Steve

Way- With the general and Anna, yeah.

Nic

Right, yeah. And that feels the effect of it. I mean, that thing gets rocked and it doesn't get actually touched by any of the debris. So, and the Predator, as it's about to self-destruct, is recreating the laugh that Billy did to the big pussy joke. So it's like, like the predator finally got the joke.

Steve

Yes. It finally took him that long to get the joke.

Nic

It's like, oh, I get that. I have a feeling that's on our planet.

Steve

I have a feeling that's not a sexual act that a creature with that kind of mouth teeth would do. But, you know, maybe I'm wrong. I don't understand the sexual proclivities of the predator species.

Nic

So the chopper, the chopper feels this blast, but Dutch is able to, like, dive, you know, get low at the last minute and he gets picked up by the chopper.

Steve

He hides behind a tree, which is what you're supposed to do in a nuclear explosion. Yeah, hide behind a tree. You're fine. Trees gonna protect you. Exactly. But they do when they get. But there's also. I love it, too. That explosion creates the clearing needed for the helicopter to land to get him, because otherwise there would be too many trees in the way. But it's, like, created this almost crater-like situation, and it created a clearing. And so it lands and it gets him. And Dutch is rescued by the chopper.

Nic

The chopper.

Steve

And that's pretty much where the movie ends.

Nic

That's. Yeah, there's no. He doesn't get married to Anna. There's no epilogue here.

Steve

He's also the only survivor. I'm assuming he's retiring because his entire crew is dead. So it's not like his team is rescuing anybody anymore.

Nic

Yeah, or he just, you know, that helicopter gets shot down because the implications of him getting the word out about what's going on are too dark.

Steve

I don't think it's that. I think he retires. He goes back to that bar in Alabama where his wife works and they're gonna expect their first child. That's probably what's gonna happen there.

Nic

Oh my God, Predator.

Steve

Predator.

Nic

How fun was that?

Steve

Oh boy.

Nic

Yeah. Well, what a great way to kick off January. Steve, this was your wonderful selection. Do you want to you want to give it a rating for us first?

Steve

I this is so everyone will we'll do movies on this show and it'll be something, you know, maybe that I haven't seen in a while or or have really fond memories of. But then I watch it and it's like, God, it just didn't quite hold up. It just didn't quite hit for me. There's been several examples of that over the time. This is not one of those. This hit on every level that it always has. For me. I reconfirmed itself as literally one of my like, I mean, look, I put it, I guess I put it on Letterboxd as like a top four, partly for the shock value. It is easily, though, I think one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. Easily. I am a five out of five on Predator every single time I watch it. There is no doubt in my mind that nothing I could ask for of this movie, I could not ask for anything other than what it gives me. It is amazing. The effects hold up for the most part. I know that the, the puppeteering on the Predator face is, yeah, it's maybe a little dated, but it's, it really looks great. And it's the only thing in it that's even a tiny bit that way. The Predator Vision stuff is so, was so Innovative. Just the Predator character creation or character design was incredibly cool and new and unique at the time. And, you know, the fact that there have been 20 other Predator involved movies over the years kind of, you know, Bears that out. It's a really fantastic as a Sci-Fi it's fantastic as an action. Movie. It's got a bunch of great lines. Yeah. Five out of five. No notes for Predator. I'm a huge fan.

Nic

Excellent. Yeah. I mean, again, I kind of thought the same. Like, what am I going to think of this as a. As a professional film analyst? No, but, like, it is just like it delivers everything that you would want from it. It's perfect. Kind of, like, Mindless, Arnie action. You don't have to read too much into any of it. The guns look cool. The guys are cool. They're saying cool stuff. I think that, yeah, I mean, oh, I did, this is an interesting fact, is two interesting facts. Number one, if you went back in time to 1987 to this movie in the theater, the movie ends, you stand up and you say, this movie stars two future governors of U.S. states and then just poofed back into the present. That would be a weird ass experience for people, right? I did know that the actor who was in the Predator suit was actually also in the movie Harry and the Hendersons. Oh, is he?

Steve

Yeah, he was Harry.

Nic

No, it was, it was Harry, though. It was like the, you know, the Sasquatch and Harry and the Hendersons.

Steve

So Kevin Peter Hall, big, big guy.

Nic

You definitely got to make a movie that your kids are allowed to see. So I understand why he did that. But, yeah, man, this movie is so much fun, and I think it's one one that gets, like, any guy of our, like, cohort really fired up. If you just start talking about it. The Predator vision is something that's carried forward. You can just mention Predator Vision. Right. I don't even call it night vision.

Steve

No, no, it's.

Nic

That's thermal vision.

Steve

Whatever. No, no.

Nic

Like the Predator. That's what it is. It's super fun. And I really not allowed to pick a part about this one. I'm gonna give this one a four and a half out of five. This is so much fun. I recommend everyone see it if they haven't. I know now we're getting to the that these movies are so old, they're kind of falling out with new generations.

Steve

For sure.

Nic

Like I was talking to a friend of mine who was like 30, and the action movies to them are like Fast and Furious, Marvel, John Wick and stuff. Which is a good-- I mean, in its right, its own generation of action movies. But I really do recommend that people go back and check these out, because there's something about them that makes them so endearing and just such a blast to watch.

Steve

There's something about the '80s and '90s action movies that just isn't duplicated in the 2000s and 2010s. And as good as the Fast and Furious, some of those movies, of the Fast and Furious movies are as good as all the John Wick movies are, whatever. And I was always a huge fan of the MCU. It's just very different. It really does feel like action movies have been taken over by comic book movies. Right. In the more recent decades. And so, yeah, it really is a special breed to go back and watch a movie like Predator. And I think a nine and a half out of 10 is perfect. I love that score from us. Like I said, I knew I was going to be a five out of five on this. It's just the way I am with Predator. It is just one of my favorite movies of all time. So, all right, that was the first movie of Januwarrie. And Nic, you get to tell us what the next little trip down memory lane we get to take with the former governor of California.

Nic

Yeah. Yeah. Gray Davis was in the 1982. This is, I'm so glad that we're doing this. Like, this is the whole, I'm so psyched about this. I love Arnie. I love talking Arnie. So, yeah, and the, there's not a lot of variation in what I want to do with Arnie and what I want from him. Sure. So we're gonna go a couple years later and we're gonna go many years into the future. And we're gonna go to 1990 and we're potentially gonna get our ass to Mars. We're gonna see Arnie. We're gonna see Sharon Stone. We're gonna see some Paul Verhoeven. We're gonna see some Michael Ironsides. We might see a limb disappear in this one, folks. And we are gonna watch 1990s classic Total Recall.

Steve

Perfect. I love Total Recall. We've talked about Paul Verhoeven before, and this is one of the many Verhoeven I hope we do get to it at some point. I think next in priority list for me might be Robocop, but Total Recall is fantastic. It really is a lot of fun. I can't wait to watch it with you and talk about it because yeah, it's great and we don't have to talk about this remake either. We can pretend it doesn't exist.

Nic

No, nothing exists past 1999.

Steve

There you go. They're redoing the Running Man now. Why? Anyway, all right, so yeah, next week, next week, Total Recall, be there. Second week of January. It's gonna be great. That's a wrap. So if you like what you hear and we hope you do, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a five-star review. It really helps new folks find the show. Be sure to check out our website@2dads1movie.com that's the number two and the number one. There you can contact us directly, find out all kinds of info about our episodes and the films we discuss, search through transcripts of the show, and much more. We'd also love it if you followed us on Instagram@2dads1movie. Once again, this has been Predator, another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

Thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

Nic

Thanks, everyone.