"Predator": everything you need to know before watching a new movie

Predator

In fact, the first Predator movie was born out of a joke. In the eighties, films about tough, pumped up guys were at the peak of popularity. And after the triumph of "Rocky 4" with Sylvester Stallone in Hollywood, they joked that now the main character of the franchise had only to defeat the alien.

The Thomas brothers, aspiring screenwriters, liked this idea, and they came up with a story about the confrontation between a hero and an alien in the jungle.

At first they wanted to take Danny Glover for the main role, but he refused. And then the authors invited the star of "Commando" and "Terminator" Arnold Schwarzenegger. To avoid analogies with "Rambo", the hero was made not a loner, but part of a special forces team.

In the story, a group of soldiers are thrown into the jungle to rescue hostages taken by local rebels. But there they encounter an unknown alien hunter who may be invisible. The whole team dies, only the hero of Schwarzenegger remains alive.

Interestingly, Jean-Claude Van Damme was invited to play the Predator (originally, by the way, he was called a hunter). But he was not satisfied with a too heavy suit and a role where his face would not be visible. And the filmmakers did not like Van Damme's small stature.

And another interesting fact about the cast. For all the main roles, they were looking for large and pumped-up men. Only one character is knocked out of the team - a thin prankster-radio operator Rick Hawkins. The thing is, this is the famous screenwriter Shane Black. The film was filmed by aspiring director John McTiernan, and the producers asked Black to play in "Predator", and at the same time help with the work on the film.

The film "Predator" immediately won public recognition. Primarily due to realistic filming and advanced special effects. Most of the picture was really filmed on location, and the actors had to go out of their way to play everything at the proper level: they constantly ran over rough terrain, fell into dirty water and carried heavy weapons.

In addition, some of the dialogues were not written in the script. So the heroes came up with a lot on the go.

Predator 2

According to the original idea, the new Predator was supposed to open the hunt for the hero of Schwarzenegger. There was also an option to postpone the action during the Second World War and force American and German soldiers to fight together with the aliens.

But in the end, the second part turned out to be simpler. The authors decided to talk about the confrontation between another Predator and a brave police officer, played by Danny Glover. He was attracted by the success of the first film.

Events unfold in Los Angeles, where the Colombian and Jamaican are fighting for influence. Glover's hero, investigating crimes, finds victims whose skin was flayed - this is how the Predator killed some victims in the first film.

Then the police officer confronts an alien who uses his technology to hunt people. And here it becomes clear that the Predator kills only the armed, without touching the civilian population. Government agents are trying to track down and catch the Predator in order to take possession of his technologies, but he destroys the entire capture group and is left alone with the main character.

At the box office, the picture collected little, and the critics disliked it.

Perhaps the secondary idea played a role. Or the film itself was not as exciting and dynamic as the first part, in which there was simply no time to think about the illogicality of some scenes. Be that as it may, the sequel was praised only for the performance of Danny Glover, and the rest of the film flopped.

But the ending of the picture created a good groundwork for an almost endless number of sequels. Firstly, the new predators who came to pick up the wounded fellow, left the 1715 pistol as a gift to the hero. This means that hunters have been appearing on Earth since ancient times.

And secondly, in one of the scenes, the skull of an Alien from another famous franchise flashes in the background. The thing is that the same studio worked on the special effects of the second "Predator" that created "Alien". But this suggested that races exist in the same fictional world.

Alien vs. Predator

It was this idea that was used more than 10 years later by the authors of the next film, which combined two stories about aliens at once. Among the heroes of Alien vs. Predator, for example, Charles Bishop Weiland (Lance Henriksen), the founder of Weiland Industries (later part of Weiland-Yutani, which sent ships into space in Aliens), as well as the prototype of robots type "Bishop".

Weiland organizes an expedition to an ice-covered uninhabited island where heat activity is discovered in an ancient pyramid. There are alien eggs in the pyramid, and people become infected. And at the same time, a ship of predators arrives on Earth.

It turns out that predators have bred xenomorphs since ancient times to practice hunting. And people worshiped the hunters who taught them how to build, and made sacrifices. Human meat was used as food for strangers.

Director Paul W. S. Anderson picked up a seemingly great idea after the release of Resident Evil: every franchise in the world has millions of fans. But it didn't work out successfully to combine the two stories. The film has a very vague plot, most of the characters here look just unnecessary. In this case, the special effects are shown blurry, and the picture is often too dark.

For this "Alien vs. Predator" received several anti-awards, including one "Golden Raspberry". However, the popularity of the two franchises still attracted enough audiences to the theaters. And the box office allowed the sequel to go into production.

Aliens vs. Predator. Requiem

In the final of the previous film, the audience was shown for the first time a mutant - Alien, who was born in the body of a Predator. Fans later called this hybrid Outlander and Predalien. They decided to make him the central character of the new part.

According to the plot, this mutant captures the ship of predators and returns to Earth, where it becomes the womb of strangers and begins to reproduce, laying eggs in humans (here, by the way, the authors move away from the idea of reproduction of xenomorphs with the help of face-hunters).

A cleaner is sent from the home planet of the predators to Earth, who must destroy the monster and hide the traces of its existence. But by his arrival, strangers already have time to multiply. So the hunter is faced with the whole colony, and then with the mutant himself.

The filmmakers were unable to show anything interesting.

First of all, because all human characters seem to be just extras or cannon fodder, they have no history of their own. They decided to focus on blood and cruelty, while again hiding all the interesting scenes in the dark.

The film, like the previous one, paid off at the box office, but received very low ratings and extremely negative reviews.

Predators

Robert Rodriguez, a famous director and friend of Quentin Tarantino, has wanted to make a film about the Predator for many years. He offered his scripts to studios even after the first part was released. But then the ideas of the novice director did not interest anyone.

However, in 2010, the movie "Predators" was released, continuing the ideas of the first films. True, Rodriguez did not direct it and acted only as a producer and screenwriter.

The atmosphere of "Predators" returns to the first part. The action again takes place in the jungle, and in the center of the plot is a team of trained people. But now they are on another planet and do not know how they got there. Moreover, the heroes do not know each other.

But then everything happens about the same: people are trying to survive, and predators hunt them.

Love and respect for the original is felt in this film.

Perhaps Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal complicated the relationship between the characters a little. Now among them are military men from different countries (including a Russian, played by Oleg Taktarov), fugitive criminals, drug dealers and yakuza. And the hunters themselves have become more ambiguous: they fight with each other, and one is held captive.

This film was received much better than the previous ones, thanks in large part to the good cast. The main role was played by Adrian Brody. Danny Trejo, Mahershala Ali, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne and many others also starred in the film.

But nostalgia also played a role. "Predators" are atmospheric very similar to the classic action films of the 80s and 90s. At the moment, according to critics, the film loses only to the very first.

Predator

Work on a new part of the franchise has been going on since 2014. A year later, it was announced that Shane Black, the same radio operator who appeared in the first film, would be the director. Black, like Rodriguez, is a big fan of predator history. He even planned to invite the main characters of the first films to continue, but they all refused.

According to the director, the new film does not restart, but continues the franchise, while ignoring the events of Alien vs. Predator.

In the story, the boy accidentally launches a mechanism that returns the aliens to Earth. They have become even stronger and more dangerous thanks to genetic engineering. And now a group of military and scientists will have to find ways to stop them.