Predator (film)

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Movie
German title Predator
Original title Predator
Predator Logo.gif
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1987
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director John McTiernan
script Jim Thomas
John Thomas
production Joel Silver
Jim Thomas
Lawrence Gordon
music Alan Silvestri
camera Donald M. McAlpine
cut Mark Helfrich
John F. Link
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Predator 2

Predator [ ˈpredətəʳ ] ( English for predator ) is an American film directed by John McTiernan from 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role. The action film combines elements of horror , science fiction and war films .

The film was indexed in November 1988 by the federal inspection agency for media harmful to minors ; Since then, German TV stations have only been allowed to show cut versions. After an application by 20th Century Fox for deletion from the index was granted, the FSK re-examined the uncut version and approved it on May 12, 2010 for people aged 16 and over. Since the amendment to the Youth Protection Act in 2003, such an FSK approval has protected against re-indexing. The film was shown in German cinemas on August 27, 1987.

action

An unknown spaceship throws an object above the earth, which enters the earth's atmosphere with a tail of fire.

A six-man mercenary squad arrives in the jungles of Central America . Its leader, Major "Dutch" Schaefer, Vietnam veteran and former head of a US special unit , is informed by General Phillips of the upcoming mission: It is a mission to rescue a minister whose helicopter was shot down by rebels and who is now being held prisoner. Dutch's uneasy feeling intensifies when the general tells him that Major George Dillon, a former comrade in arms of Schaefer and now a CIA agent, will lead the operation. In conversations between Dutch and Dillon, it becomes clear that they both know each other from the Vietnam War and that Dutch's team's code of honor forbids them from carrying out government-ordered murder assignments.

Shortly after the men were dropped by helicopters across the border, they stumble upon the downed helicopter and find traces of rebels who must have been followed by some men with American equipment. Then they find three men who have been skinned and are hanging upside down from trees. Based on a recognition mark Dutch identifies it as Green Berets .

As the troop approaches the rebel camp, they are observed by an almost invisible being, who perceives their surroundings through thermal vision. The men reach the camp, which is also home to Soviet intelligence officers. From a safe distance, Dutch observes the shooting of a hostage with binoculars , whereupon he orders the camp to be attacked. In the firefight that follows, all opponents are killed except for a woman named Anna. The team also finds that all of the hostages are dead and that they appear to have belonged to the CIA. The firearms in the camp were intended for a Soviet -led rebel operation, which Dillon confirms when Dutch confronts him. The "rescue mission" was just a pretext, as Dillon knew that Dutch would otherwise never have accepted the job of eliminating the camp.

When contacting the operations control center, it turns out that evacuation by air is impossible and the only way to the border is through a narrow valley. Dillon insists on taking Anna as a prisoner.

Shortly thereafter, Anna tries to escape and is pursued by Hawkins. When he catches up with her, she has to watch with horror as he is killed by the invisible being and dragged into the jungle. Hawkins' entrails and equipment were left behind. First the squad tries to find Hawkins' body, but Blain is also killed by the attacker.

For the night, the troops set up a defensive position mined within 50 meters. Nevertheless, the invisible hunter manages to get Blain's body by jumping from branch to branch in the trees. The attempt the next day to catch the creature ends in a disaster in which Ramirez is seriously injured. Finally, Anna tells the men that these events have been happening for years: when it is the hottest of the year, a demonic-looking hunter demands bloody and cruelly bruised victims among the male population and collects their skeleton skulls as trophies.

Dutch realizes that the enemy is alien and that their chances of survival are slim. The team splits up: Dutch and Billy try to bring the seriously injured Ramirez and Anna to the helicopter rendezvous, while Dillon and Mac try to kill the alien. In addition to his camouflage device, the superhumanly powerful hunter also has a plasma cannon with a laser attachment on his suit, with which he kills Dillon and Mac. Dutch sends Anna alone to the agreed landing zone. It is of no interest to the alien, since he does not kill unarmed people. On the run from the hunter, Dutch falls into a jungle river. Completely exhausted, he makes it to the bank. The hunter chases him, but cannot track him down, as Dutch covers his whole body with cold mud, which strongly dampens his heat radiation.

After the hunter disappears into the jungle, Dutch builds traps and improvised weapons. When night falls, he lures the hunter with a fire, fights with him and can bring him into distress, whereby the hunter's cloaking device is destroyed. He confronts Dutch, gets rid of his plasma cannon and takes off his helmet to defeat Dutch face-to-face. Dutch is beaten up by the alien, but can lure him into one of the traps and seriously injure him. The dying alien activates a self-destruct mechanism on his suit, but Dutch takes cover at the last second before the explosion. Finally, he and Anna are flown out of the jungle by General Phillips in a helicopter.

background

Arnold Schwarzenegger already looked back on a remarkable career in 1987 . Films like Conan the Barbarian , Conan the Destroyer , Phantom Command and, above all, Terminator had made him an icon of the action film of the 1980s. In his films, whether good or bad, he usually competed as a taciturn one-man army against his opponents. Predator, on the other hand, does not fit into this pattern - if you disregard the fact that towards the end the film turns into a one-man show by Schwarzenegger.

The entire plot, except for the brief beginning and the scenes in the rebel camp, was moved by the director into just one set, the untouched jungle. The film was shot exclusively in Mexico: in Puerto Vallarta , Jalisco , and in Palenque , Chiapas .

Essential ideas for the appearance of the Predator, for example the design of the face, come from James Cameron . The legendary doll maker Stan Winston radically redesigned the original (one-eyed) creature because the producers didn't like it. This first creation looked nothing like the “end product”: it had a dog-like head, a skeletal torso, and gray-black-spotted skin.

Initially, the Predator was played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, who is 1.78 m tall . During the shooting, however, the design of the Predator was fundamentally revised, among other things, it should be significantly larger, since the other actors were not exactly small either. Thus, the role was filled with Kevin Peter Hall , who towered over Van Damme by 42 cm at 2.20 m. The pilot who flies out the survivors at the end of the film is also played by him. In the second part he also embodies the Predator.

The poison green, apparently fluorescent blood of the Predator is liquid from commercially available glow sticks that has been mixed with lubricant. In the scene in which the prisoner Anna, played by actress Elpidia Carrillo, describes the eerie creature losing green blood from an inflicted wound, Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Major "Dutch" Schaefer utters a sentence that went down in film history as a famous quote : "If it bleeds, we can kill it."

The film is dedicated to Agustin Ytuarte and Federico Ysunza .

In the action film Terminator 2 - Day of Reckoning from 1991, which appeared four years later and in which actor Arnold Schwarzenegger also played the leading role, the humanoid robot T-800 used the same machine gun with rotating barrel of the model Minigun M134 as the mercenary troops at an advanced point in the plot by leader Major "Dutch" Schaefer, obviously as a motivic cross-reference to the film Predator .

With Ventura and Schwarzenegger, who also stood in front of the camera in Running Man , two actors involved later became governors of a US state. This fact is alluded to in the episode No Strings of the TV series Standoff when the team examines a warehouse with thermal imaging cameras. Sonny Landham failed his candidacy for governor of Kentucky in 2003.

In the 2010 sequel, Predators , the plot of this film is briefly discussed. After the first encounter with a Predator, the deuteragonist tells about Dutch Schaefer's report and explains that at that time only one marine survived the confrontation with a Predator, but his entire team was killed in the process.

In the book Aliens Vs. Predator: Prey , the first edition of which appeared in 1994, is called the extraterrestrial Predator species "Yautja".

Awards

Academy Awards 1988 :

Saturn Award ceremony 1988 :

BMI Film & TV Awards 1988 :

  • Presentation of the BMI Film Music Award to Alan Silvestri

Hugo Award 1988 :

Golden Reel Award 1988 :

  • Won: Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects and Foley in a Feature Film (Richard Shorr)

Reviews

The film received mostly positive reviews. The film review portal Rotten Tomatoes gives 81% positive reviews for the film and it has a Metascore of 45 out of 100 on Metacritic .

"... Predator is at least typologically more differentiated than the role models Aliens and Rambo."

- Encyclopedia of Fantastic Films

“On the face of it, the $ 35 million spectacle, filmed mainly in the Mexican jungle, is 'just' a virtuoso, effective action thriller. Behind it, however, is a sophisticated parable of the American trauma Vietnam. "

- Cinema

"What begins as a militaristic mercenary adventure develops into an effective and professionally staged, but also very brutal horror film with clear allusions to the Vietnam War."

- Lexicon of international film

Sequels and offshoots

The film was successful enough to in 1990, the continuation of two Predator to entail. In 2004, a crossover was made between the Predator and Alien films entitled Alien vs. Predator produces. 2007 followed with Aliens vs. Predator 2 another crossover.

In July 2010, Predators was released , a sequel to the first part, directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez . In September 2018 the film The Predator started in German cinemas under the title Predator - Upgrade .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schnittberichte.de
  2. ↑ http://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=2053
  3. ↑ Release certificate for Predator . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2010 (PDF; test number: 58 307 V).
  4. ^ Robley, Les Paul: Predator: Special Visual Effects , Cinefantastique , December 1987
  5. ↑ Predator: Ten Alien Facts You Didn't Know About Arnie's Toughest Fight From Sassan Niasseri at www.rollingstone.de ( Rolling Stone ), December 23, 2018, accessed on February 18, 2020
  6. ↑ Predator at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  7. ↑ Predator at Metacritic (English)
  8. ↑ Predator on cinema.de
  9. ↑ Predator. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
Predator film series
Main series

Predator (1987) | Predator 2 (1990) | Predators (2010) | Predator - Upgrade (2018)

Crossover with alien

Alien vs. Predator (2004) | Aliens vs. Predator 2 (2007)