This would be epic.
With 75 Oscars to its name (maybe), Predator is widely regarded as the greatest film of all time and rightfully so.
Citizen Kane, The Shawshank Redemption and 2001: A Space Odyssey might be more popular in critical circles, but none of those films featured lines like “I ain’t got time to bleed”, “What’s the matter, Dillon? C.I.A. got you pushing too many pencils?” or the iconic “Get to the chopppppa!”
John McTiernan’s 1987 sci-fi action flick is a bloody brilliant film and while the sequel has some very enjoyable moments, it just doesn’t match the original. That being said, the moment when Danny Glover’s Lieutenant Mike Harrigan finds all those gang members hanging from the rafters after being skinned alive is a gory delight.
We also have a lot of love for the final scene when we see that the Predator has been collecting various alien skulls.
Fast-forwarding into the future – and forgetting the existence of those horrendous Alien vs Predator films – we’re delighted to see that Shane Black has a new reboot being released soon, but things could have been so much different for the beloved franchise.
Jim Thomas and John Thomas, the writers of Predator, were speaking at an anniversary event and they outlined a few different ideas that they had for a sequel and one of them involved the return of Arnie’s character, Dutch.
“We had an idea where at the end [of Predator], with the burned up clearing where the explosion happens… [Predator 2] opens there. Predator’s invisible feet come into view and a hand plunges down into the dust, into the ashes, and brings up the Predator’s arm and then activates the computer and get’s a readout to see everything that had happened up to that time, focusing on Arnold, and “this is my target.” We went from there and we had to think of how to bring Arnold back into it,” he said.
While this idea is intriguing, we were far more impressed by another idea that they were interested in developing – the Predator on the hunt during World War II.
“We also had an idea about doing a World War II version in the Battle of the Bulge, in the middle of the winter. A German foot platoon and an American platoon separated and had a stalemate fighting each other off when the Predator shows up. They have to join together to defeat it. We thought the snow Predator effect would be quite different,” they said.
Given the fact that the Predator has visited, hunted and killed human beings for thousands of years, we would be pumped to see a version of this film being made. Well, like all things in Hollywood, if Shane Black’s reboot does well at the box-office, this idea might be dusted off.
Now that we’ve got time for!
Here’s the interview in full.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
