Predator

Could this be the best action movie ever made?

Jul 18, 2025

Directed By: John McTiernan
Other Notable Films From McTiernan: Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, Basic1
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, a jungle, some mud
Screenplay By: Jim and John Thomas
Movie Synopsis: A paramilitary rescue team encounters a very aggressive alien while conducting a mission in a Central American jungle.
Signature Line: “If it bleeds, we can kill it.”

THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context

Predator was a goodbye of sorts. And what I mean is:

From 1982 to 1989, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone combined to release 19 big budget action movies. It was a wildly influential (and hugely successful) run. So much so, in fact, that the two shifted the action genre away from what it had been2 and advanced it into a new world; a bigger world; a world where guys were ultra muscled-up special ops soldiers who jumped out of airplanes without sustaining injuries3 and indefatigable boxers who beat up giant Russians and lifted horse carriages full of people for workouts.4 For a number of years, that’s what action movies were, and how they were defined.

But then Die Hard came out in the summer of 1988, and everything changed. Suddenly, there was not only a new template for action movies (take a man, drop him into a contained location, and then have him go to battle against a group of bad guys), but also a new template for action movie heroes. Audiences became less interested in the pain-impervious he-man, and more interested in John Everyman, an ordinary-looking guy who just so happened to find himself in an extraordinary situation.

But so that's why Predator was a goodbye of sorts.

It came out the summer before Die Hard, meaning it represents really the final time that the Big Hulking Muscle Man was the default setting for action heroes in Hollywood.

And how fitting it is that a marquee character brought to life by Schwarzenegger is the coda for an era of film he helped define.

THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Predator

0:45: We’re less than one minute into this movie and I am already fucking PUMPED. There's just something magical about it. I feel like I’m 10-years-old every time I watch it, which is my second favorite feeling to get from a movie.

0:46: My first favorite feeling to get from a movie, by the way, is “extremely aroused.” I love being extremely aroused.

0:47: Just kidding. How weird would it be if I suddenly pivoted from ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT MOVIES guy to ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT SEX guy? Like, I just start using words like “lust” and “moist” and “engorged” all the time. You look up one day and realize we’ve done seven erotic thrillers in a row at GOOD MOVIE. Every podcast I show up on I do four or five minutes unprompted on the power of the orgasm or whatever, lol.

[ed. note: Whatever the newsletter version of jail is, that's where I would send Shea if he tried this. —Hannah]

1:31: The premise of Predator—an alien comes down to Earth and begins hunting a team of highly-trained soldiers in the jungle—is one of the cleanest premises of any action movie ever. It also begs a question:

Is the Predator alien the best hunter from his home planet? Like, is that why he’s sent to Earth? Because he’s their number one guy? Or is he visiting Earth purely in a recreational capacity? Like, maybe he’s had a tough couple of months on his home planet and just needs to blow some steam off. His boss has been giving him shit at work, and his marriage is falling apart, and he’s behind on his mortgage, and so he’s like, “You know what? I think I’m gonna take the weekend for myself. Go to Earth, kill some dudes, just unwind.”

2:21: Sonny Landham and Jesse “The Body” Ventura are here. Landham plays Billy, an expert tracker, and Ventura plays Blain, a guy who’s like if one of those Calvin Pissing On A Chevy Logo stickers was a human. They’re both members of the rescue team that's gonna get sent into the jungle. And to that point…

2:28: The other guys on the team: Mac (played by Bill Duke), who’s really good at killing people; Poncho (played Richard Chaves), who’s really good at explosives; Hawkins (played by Shane Black), who, best I can figure, is there to tell jokes about the size of his girlfriend’s vagina; and Dutch (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), their leader, a contemplative Vietnam War veteran with arms as thick as tree trunks and a jawline like the Appalachian Mountains.5

3:50: A dorky thing I like to pay attention when I’m watching a movie is the point at which the director decides it’s time for his or her name to show up on the screen. I feel like, intentional or not, it tells you a little bit about who they are and how they see themselves. Here, McTiernan holds off on showing his name until we get our first good look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is scowling as he smokes a cigar while military helicopters fly in and out of the shot behind him. The subtext seems clear: I, John McTiernan, am a GODDAMN MAN, and I’m about to show you 107 minutes of the MANLIEST SHIT you’ve ever seen in your life.

4:33: Carl Weathers is here. He plays Dillon, a former soldier who has since transitioned to a post in the CIA. He attaches himself to Dutch’s team for their trip into the jungle. I really love this performance from Weathers. In pretty much all of his other movies, he’s really smart, and really capable, and really in control. Here, though, he plays against that type. He might look the part of a hero, but he’s rendered basically useless as soon as the team hits the jungle. It’s a slick little trick from McTiernan.

4:47: Two things about this moment: (1) “Dillon, you son of a bitch.” What a line. (2) I feel like Schwarzenegger and Weathers definitely had a conversation in earnest before shooting this scene where they talked about how if they could just dap each other up with enough strength and pure love they could single-handedly end racism forever.

5:31: Dillon is asking Dutch why he passed on a mission in Libya that got pitched to his crew recently. Dutch’s response: “We’re a rescue team, not assassins.” The distinction between those two things is an important one, and it’s a big part of what makes Dutch such an interesting figure in the catalog of Schwarzenegger characters. Typically, his action movie creations have no issue taking someone’s life (John Matrix, for example, is positively gleeful as he kills 81 different people in Commando). Dutch, though, is more complicated (and thus, more compelling). The T-800 from the Terminator franchise will always be the most iconic character Schwarzenegger has ever played, but Dutch is closer than a lot of people realize.

8:51: Okay, the team is headed out to the jungle. Dillon told Dutch the mission was to rescue some local cabinet minister whose helicopter got shot down over rebel territory. The real thing he wants them to do, though, is kill a bunch of bad guys so as to thwart an eventual Soviet-sponsored invasion. But none of that matters. The only thing that matters right now is the fact that Mac is fucking DRY SHAVING HIMSELF IN THE HELICOPTER. What a maniac.

14:13: Billy (the expert tracker) was able to look at a set of footprints in the jungle and determine that six men wearing U.S.-issued Army boots were in pursuit of a group of rebels. That’s really good foot awareness from Billy. One time—and I swore to God this is true—but one time a couple of years ago I wore my slides on the wrong feet for, like, four minutes before I noticed.

14:14: P.S. I always loved whenever Sonny Landham would show up in a movie. You never forgot when he was on the screen, which is a very impressive thing when you factor in how often he was shoulder to shoulder with some of the most electric people on the planet (Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours, Schwarzenegger in Predator, Stallone in Lock Up, etc).

16:01: Gah. Billy just found three bodies strung up in the trees, each with their skin peeled off and their intestines yanked out. Right here is where I would’ve been like, “You know what? Go ahead and bring that helicopter back. I’m going home.”

20:54: Dutch and the others found the guerrilla camp where they believe the cabinet minister is being held. They’re sneaking their way around the exterior of the compound, covertly killing off the guerilla members standing lookout. That means it’s time to meet my favorite dude in the whole movie. It’s this guy…

I don’t mean Mac, mind you. I’m talking about the guy in the white bandana. What’s happening here is: Mac snuck up on the guy’s perch and then started making small whistling sounds like he was a bird. The white bandana guy—who, again, IS SUPPOSED TO BE STANDING LOOKOUT AT A GUERILLA STRONGHOLD—got curious and wanted to see what type of bird it was that was making the noises, so he poked his head over the edge of his perch. He didn’t find a bird, though. He found a 6-foot-4 mercenary waiting to jam a hunting knife into his trachea.

20:55: P.S. Imagine when that guy shows up to Henchmen Heaven and someone asks him how he died and he’s like, “Man, listen. So you know how I really like birds, right…”

24:15: Dutch just snuck up behind another of the lookouts and picked up the back of a truck OFF THE GROUND without the guy noticing. Do you know how fucking bad you gotta be at your job as the lookout for someone to be able to sneak up behind you and PICK UP A WHOLE FUCKING TRUCK without you noticing?

24:43: BANG. WE GOT OURSELVES A SHOOTOUT. It’s Dutch’s team versus a guerilla army of about 20 or so. We’re just a couple minutes away now from Dutch giving one of the funniest, most absurd post-death one-liners of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career…

27:19: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand there it is. Dutch threw a knife at a guy so hard that the knife went through the guy’s solar plexus and pinned him to the wall, at which point Schwarzenegger, the fucking Rembrandt-level artist that he is, made this face…

…then said…

…

“Stick around.”

This is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life.

27:34: P.S. Here’s the ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER ABSURD POST-DEATH ONE-LINERS podium:

Honorable mention: When he throws a pipe through a guy’s chest that pins the guy to a water cooler in Commando and a bunch of steam starts coming out of the pipe and he says, “Let off some steam, Bennett.”
Bronze medal: When he shoots an alligator in Eraser and then says, “You’re luggage.” (This movie made $242 million at the box office.)
Silver medal: This “stick around” one here from Predator.
Gold meal: When he shoots an ice cream truck in Last Action Hero and the ice cream truck explodes, sending a pointy ice cream cone directly through the back of a guy’s skull, which Schwarzenegger highlights by saying, “Iced that guy… to cone a phrase.” (I know that technically this one shouldn't count because the whole point of Last Action Hero is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is making fun of himself, but I’m including it because part of me believes he was being 100 percent sincere when shot that movie.)

28:39: A fun little conversation between Blain and Poncho that happens as Blain tries to figure out how to kill a couple of guerillas who have the higher ground on them:

Blain: Son of a bitch is dug in like an Alabama tick.
Poncho: You’re hit! You’re bleeding, man!
Blain: I ain’t got time to bleed.

Blain has three incredible lines in Predator. There’s this one about not having time to bleed, there’s one where he comments on the harshness of the jungle by saying, “If you lose it here, you’re in a world of hurt,” and there’s one where he calls himself a “goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus.” And let me tell you: I’m not gonna be excited about seeing a new Jurassic movie again until they work up the courage to finally include a sexual tyrannosaurus on their roster of hybrid dinosaurs.

29:26: Dutch figured out that there was no good guy who needed to be rescued, only a bunch of bad guys who needed to be killed. Dillon says he lied because Dutch’s team was the only one skilled enough to do it but he knew Dutch would never take the assignment if Dillon told the truth about it. Now they’re all stranded in the jungle, a dozen or so miles away from an extraction point.

42:12: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we’re off. The predator is here. He just killed his first soldier. Shit’s gonna get real messy now.

42:13: You know what just occurred to me? The movie is (obviously) called Predator, and (obviously) it has that name because the alien is a predator. But I don’t wanna refer to the predator as “The Predator” throughout this essay because there's a chance it gets confusing, what with the character and the movie sharing the same name. So, as a solve, I’m just gonna give the predator a name and refer to him as that. And I think I’m gonna go with… umm… let’s go with “Dennis.” From here forward, that's his name. We’ve got Dutch (Schwarzenegger), we’ve got Dillon (Carl Weathers), and we’ve got Dennis (the predator). I like the alliteration.

42:14: By the way, the first 42 minutes of this movie are a great deal of fun, and also really good. But this last hour or so that we’re getting into now… fucking high art. It’s legitimately in contention for the greatest action movie hour of all time.

43:20: Here’s a much less fun conversation that Poncho has, this time with Dutch, after he finds a pile of fresh intestines on the jungle floor:

Poncho: Major, you better take a look at this.
Dutch: You find Hawkins?
Poncho: I… I can’t tell.
[cut to Poncho and Dutch staring at the intestines together]
Dutch (terrified): What in God’s name?
Poncho (terrified): I think it’s Hawkins.
Dutch (terrified): Where the hell is his body?
Poncho (terrified): There's no sign of it.

46:52: So much of this movie is just big guys with big muscles carrying big guns in the jungle, and you know what? I am extremely aroused right now.

[ed note: This is strike number two. —Hannah]

47:09: BLAIN IS DOWN. I REPEAT: BLAIN IS DOWN. Dennis hit Blain with some sort of light-based blaster weapon that blew a volleyball-sized hole through his torso. He turned that man’s chest into a hula hoop. Tough way to go.

47:10: P.S. I wanna point out that we are 47 minutes into this movie and still haven't actually seen Dennis. Like, not once. We’ve gotten some vague outlines of his silhouette, but that's it. Just really smart filmmaking. It’s the Jaws trick. You hide that monster as long as you can. It’s so much more terrifying that way.

47:28:Mac ran up on Blain’s body, got a glimpse of SOMETHING, yelled for backup, and then started firing blindly into the jungle as Dennis disappeared into the brush. As soon as the others arrived, they started firing blindly into the jungle, too. Nobody said anything to anybody. There were no explanations or gestures or even eye contact; they just saw one of their guys shooting and so they started shooting, too. That's the kind of friend I aspire to be. I wanna be a SHOOT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER friend.

47:29: P.S. These guys shoot into the jungle for 45 SECONDS STRAIGHT. It’s hundreds and hundreds of rounds that get fired. They cut a whole section of the jungle in half. It’s incredible. Let’s do this scene for this week’s FOOTNOTES so we can all watch this mayhem together:

And so I say again: high art.

53:35: Our first actual look at the predator is him suturing a leg wound he suffered. Three things about this:

The whole sequence—which takes about 40 seconds—is made up almost entirely of shots of the creature’s hands. McTiernan made so many great decisions while shooting this movie.
I’m so happy they chose to go with full-on practical effects rather than trying to do something digital (like the spaceship at the start of the movie). It gives Dennis a texture that he otherwise wouldn’t have had.
The first guy cast to play Dennis, if you can even believe this, was Jean-Claude Van Damme. When that didn’t quite work out (I assume because he kept dropping down into the splits while they were filming), the team brought in Kevin Peter Hall, a 7-foot-2 actor who’d just finished starring as Harry in the bigfoot comedy Harry and the Hendersons.

56:26: Billy, who has begun to sense that the group is being hunted by something truly horrible, tells Poncho that he’s afraid. Poncho responds with, “Bullshit, you ain’t afraid of no man.” Billy, terror in his eyes, stares off into the jungle, then grumbles, “There’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man. …We’re all gonna die.” Incidentally, that's the same thing I used to say to my sisters when my mom would tell us to leave our report cards on the kitchen table for her to see when she got home from work.

59:02: For the second time in the past 15 or so minutes, somebody has said “Major, you better take a look at this” to Dutch. I love the YOU BETTER TAKE A LOOK AT THIS action movie trope. It’s one of my favorites, up there with the ONE LAST JOB trope and the ONE MAN ARMY trope.

1:01:04: Dutch has had enough. He knows if they don’t try and make a stand against whatever it is that's hunting them, they’re all gonna be killed off one at a time. And that leads us to the coldest, hardest, most LET’S FUCKING GO thing that has ever been said in an action movie.

After Dutch tells Dillon that the team is gonna try and kill whatever’s been hunting them, Anna, a hostage they kidnapped after defeating the guerillas earlier, calls to Dutch. “There is something else,” she says. “When [Blain] was killed, you must’ve wounded it. Its blood was on the leaves.” Dutch hears this, then turns toward her and says…

…

“If it bleeds, we can kill it.”

1:04:04: The team set up a bunch of booby traps to try and catch Dennis. Now they’re all just sort of waiting for something to happen. There's a good, probably, 14 or so total minutes in Predator where NOTHING AT ALL is happening, and every single one of those minutes is RIVETING. McTiernan is incredible at creating tension in this movie. He just aims the camera at someone’s face, or pans it slowly across the jungle, or lets the score be the star for a few moments and you start to feel the dread creep its way into your bones.

1:04:05: P.S. I haven’t said his name yet, so let me go ahead and say it right here: The music in this movie was done by Alan Silvestri. It’s a perfect movie score.

1:04:34: As the team waits, Anna recalls a harrowing detail from her childhood: When men from her village went missing, they would sometimes later be found in the jungle—killed and skinned, much like what’s been happening to Dutch’s crew. This definitely seems like information that should’ve come up way earlier.

1:06:49: The gang briefly ensnared Dennis in a makeshift net, but he shot his way out of it and escaped. Mac, who’s still very upset about Dennis killing Blain, just chased Dennis into the brush. Dillon, who’s still feeling guilty about having lied to Dutch, tells Dutch that he’ll go bring Mac back. To this point, Dillon has (a) tripped while sneaking through the jungle, nearly giving away the team’s location; (b) lost the hostage he’s supposed to be keeping track of multiple times; and (c) somehow misinterpreted Anna’s eyewitness account of Dennis killing one of the soldiers to mean that the soldier was killed by a giant lizard. This is for sure gonna get real bad, real quick.

1:10:36: Mac has eyes on Dennis, who is camouflaged up in a distant tree. Dillon tells Mac that the two of them should kill Dennis themselves, then relays his plan: He’s gonna funnel Dennis toward Mac, who can then pop up out of hiding and surprise Dennis with a thousand rounds of bullets to the head and chest. Were I Mac here, I don’t think I’d trust a plan that (a) put me in the direct path of Dennis, and also (b) was pitched by the same guy who I’ve been watching fuck up over and over again in the jungle.

1:11:38: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Mac’s dead. Dennis just blasted a hole through his head. Turns out, Dillon’s plan for Mac to directly confront the ultra-advanced alien who hunts humans for sport wasn’t that great of an idea.

1:13:48: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Dillon’s dead, too. First, he got his arm blown off, then Dennis ran up on Dillon and impaled him with a dual-bladed knife, stabbing him with so much force that Dillon was lifted several feet up off the ground. (The manner in which Dennis kills Dillon is how you know Dennis doesn’t respect Dillon. With Blain and Mac, Dennis opted for quick, sneak-attack deaths. He did it that way because he saw those guys as threats. He knew if he offered either of them even an ounce of airspace, there was a chance they could do some damage to him. With Dillon, though, he played with his food a bit. He knew there was no threat there. Rest in peace, Apollo Creed.)

1:14:39: If I could change one piece of the Predator, it’d be this part (where Billy decides he’s done running and tries to fight Dennis one-on-one). It’s just a real shame that a character as cool as Billy has to suffer the indignity of being killed off-screen. I need that fight footage. I wanna see it real bad. Not being able to see it is like the action movie version of how there's no footage of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game.

1:16:07: : “GET TO DA CHOPPAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

1:19:03: Predator has an incredible number of ONE OF THE ALL-TIME GREAT… designations in it. For example, it has one of the all-time great premises. And it has one of the all-time great handshakes. And it has one of the all-time great lines. And it has one of the all-time great alien builds. So on and so forth. This part right here is one of the all-time great twists: Dutch accidents his way into figuring out he can use mud to camouflage himself against Dennis after falling off a cliff into a lake and then crawling up a muddy bank during his escape. I still remember the way it felt seeing it play out the first time and being like, “OH FUCK. HE CAN CAMOUFLAGE TOO NOW. IT’S A FAIR FIGHT NOW!”

1:21:34: Here we fucking go. Blain’s dead. Mac’s dead. Dillon’s dead. Hawkins is dead. And Poncho’s dead. Dutch is completely on his own. But for the first time since Dennis started hunting him, he has some hope because he can finally match Dennis’s camouflaging with some camouflaging of his own. It’s war time, baby. Dutch vs. Dennis. A no-holds-barred battle to the death. I’ve seen this movie easily 50 times in my life, and I still get giddy here.

1:24:18: Dillon, Blain, and Mac. ☹️☹️☹️

1:25:43: Dutch is letting Dennis know it’s time to fucking dance. (I started boxing in November of last year. My plan is to have one official fight and then retire from the sport forever. When I do finally have my fight, rather than there being some kind of pre-fight music or whatever, I’m just gonna recreate this moment for my walkout. Everybody’s gonna be looking toward the tunnel I’m supposed to walk out of, but then after a few seconds of nothing happening, I’m gonna pop up on the other side of the arena covered in mud, holding a torch, screaming like Dutch does right here. It’s gonna be fucking awesome.)6

1:31:15: Okay, this is gonna sound like hyperbole or a joke or whatever, but I promise you it’s not: Everybody makes a big fuss about Tom Hanks’s one-man performance in Cast Away (and rightfully so, given that he’s outstanding in it). But I just wanna point out that Arnold Schwarzenegger does basically the same thing here, and to nearly equal emotional effect. There are literally 12-straight minutes here DURING THE FUCKING CLIMAX OF AN ACTION MOVIE where he doesn’t say a single word and never once does the sequence feel lifeless or stilted.

1:33:28: This is a wonderful shot.

1:33:50: Oh no. Dutch was able to land a few shots on Dennis while cloaked in his mud camouflage, but it all just got washed off after Dutch fell into some water. Dennis can see him again. Which means…

1:33:58: It’s time for an actual one-on-one fight now. No weapons, no camouflage, no protective masks. Just pure combat now. On one side, a 6-foot-2, 235-pound, highly-trained weapon of military destruction, and perhaps Earth’s greatest warrior. On the other side, an 8-foot-tall, 520-pound alien from some unknown planet who is possibly his home planet’s greatest warrior but also he could just be a dude on vacation.

1:34:12: Another great shot from McTiernan. For Schwarzenegger’s whole career, he’s been billed as the “big guy.” Seeing him suspended here for the first time was a real HOLY FUCKING SHIT moment.

1:34:48: Yet another delightful twist: Rather than simply choking Dutch to death (which Dennis easily could’ve done) or slicing Dutch’s head off or whatever (which Dennis could’ve done even more easily), he drops Dutch, walks a few feet away, then takes off his mask and all his weapons. THIS MOTHERFUCKER WANTS TO FIST FIGHT TO DEATH.

1:34:49: Incidentally, one of my three sisters was really wild growing up. She was always getting into trouble at school and into fights and shit. And anytime I’d see her get into a fight, there was always a pre-fight prep stage where she’d take off her jewelry (and occasionally her shoes, if she happened to be wearing something like jelly sandals). And I mention that right now because as I’m watching Dennis take his stuff off, I suddenly can’t help but wonder: I’ve spent this entire essay referring to the predator as a dude. But what if he’s not a dude? What if he’s a she? What if Dennis is actually Denise??????

1:35:37: It takes all the way up to this moment—one hour and 37 minutes into the movie—for us to see Denise’s face. And it was absolutely worth the wait. Truly genius-level creature design from the iconic Stan Winston (The Thing! Jurassic Park! The Terminator! Aliens! Congo! Lake Placid! Iron Man! Avatar!).

1:39:04: Here’s the craziest part of the fight, and the whole movie, and potentially of any action movie that's ever been made. After getting absolutely pummeled by Denise, Dutch is able to trick her into stepping into one of the traps he set earlier (he suspended a giant log 50 feet in the air; when she walked under it, he kicked a trip wire, dropping the log onto her). That's not the crazy part, though. The crazy part is that after Denise gets crushed, Dutch decides…

…

TO TAKE A FUCKING NAP.

Like, he doesn’t even check to see if Denise is dead. He just assumes that she is, then literally closes his eyes and goes to sleep. Nobody has ever made a worse decision in a movie. Not the mayor in Jaws who decided to ignore Brody’s warning about potential shark attacks, not Lee walking to the corner store without making sure the fireplace gate was secure in Manchester by the Sea, not even the little girl in Hereditary who stuck her head out of the car window to get some fresh air.

1:40:00: After Denise has been incapacitated by the log, Dutch stands over her as she coughs up blood, looks at Denise, winces, then says, “What the hell are you?” Denise takes a beat, looks back at Dutch, then, in an extremely guttural, reptilian voice, says back, “What the hell are you?” You can see on Dutch’s face that, for the very first time, he considers the idea that he is an alien to the alien. Great moment.

1:40:12: Denise, in keeping with the nobility with which she’s shown throughout the movie, decides that the only honorable response to having been so soundly defeated by Dutch in combat is to initiate a self-destruct bomb she has attached to her arm. Dutch officially wins the fight. Humans: 1, Aliens: 0.7

1:41:53: Dutch made it to da choppa. He survived. Sort of. Because, I mean, look at this guy:

He is not okay.

1:42:46: The movie’s over. Good movie.

UNEXPECTED SIMILARITIES
Things that last week’s movie (New Jack City) has in common with this week’s movie

Both movies feature interracial buddy cop duos. (Dutch and Dillon in Predator, Scotty and Peretti in New Jack City.)
Both movies have scenes where someone tries to trap an enemy. (Dutch tries several times to catch Denise; Scotty tries to catch Nino in a sting operation.)
Both movies have scenes where someone goes swimming after nearly dying. (Dutch swims in the lake after the predator attacks him the first time; Nino swims in his pool after a failed assassination attempt).
Both movies have scenes where someone shoots someone or something in a showboat-y way (the predator shoots Dillon’s arm just for fun; Peretti shoots a smiley face into the wall of Scotty’s apartment).
Both movies have scenes where someone conducts a mission under false pretenses (Dillon lies about the Soviet-invasion mission; Pookie lies about being an informant when he starts working at the drug emporium).

THE LAST BITS
Things that I Googled while watching Predator

Is the predator from Predator male or female? There's no definitive answer.
How tall is Arnold Schwarzenegger? Turns out, there's a vigorous debate online about this. He has always maintained that he’s 6-foot-2. However, many places argue that he’s closer to 5-foot-10. My guess is that he’s 5-foot-10, because if he was really 6-foot-2, he’d say that he’s 6-foot-4, which is how tall I tell people on the Internet that I am, despite the fact that I’m really actually only 6-foot-2.
Where did they shoot Predator? It was in Mexico, mainly.
Which jungle is the most dangerous in the world? It’s something called The Darien Gap, which spans the border between Panama and Columbia.
What movies did Shane Black write? Black (who plays Hawkins) wrote Lethal Weapon, Last Action Hero, and The Nice Guys, among others.

Next week’s movie: Arrival

You can watch it for free on Tubi or rent it anywhere you rent movies from.

This essay was edited by Hannah Giorgis Yohannes. The FOOTNOTES video was produced by Richie Bozek.

I like this movie, I don’t care.

Speaking generally, it was Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson (and, shortly thereafter, Chuck Norris) who defined what action movies looked like and felt like in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Commando.

Rocky IV.

It’s important to me that you know that I spelled “Appalachian” right on the first try. I typed it in, thought to myself, “No chance,” then clicked the space bar and waited for the little squiggly red line of shame to show up, but nope. It never came. The pride I have in me right now… you’d have thought I’d cured Alzeheimmers. (OH FUCK, I SPELLED THAT RIGHT ON THE FIRST TRY, TOO. I’M THE SMARTEST MAN WHO’S EVER LIVED.)

It would be so funny to do this and then immediately get knocked out in the first round.

This “0” is me ignoring all the people Denise killed.

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