The teenager at the register gave my friends and I a decidedly inquisitive look as he held the clear box containing the R-rated cassette tape against the counter. His fingers drummed against the dull plastic, marked with the scratches and dents of a thousand rentals. He eyed us and the tape once again.
This was it. The moment of truth.
Then, he did something not one of us could have possibly anticipated. He shouted.
“GET TO THE CHOPPA!”
He grinned and handed the tape back to my stunned cohort, who retrieved it with an uneasy grip. Aside from the inexplicable outburst, we seemed to be in the clear. The guy laughed as we turned to leave, muttering in uncertain agreeance.
“Sure,” we said, “the chopper… right.”
It wasn’t until that night that we understood. And it wasn’t until several days and even more watches later that we returned to the video store and saw the clerk once again, shouting back at him as though completing the other side of the secret handshake he began some forty-eight hours before: “GET TO THE CHOPPA!”
So it was that my experience renting Predator (1987) was just as memorable as watching it, teaching me a valuable lesson about the movies in general. The great ones become more than the movie itself, the quotes, the situations, the characters, and even the dialogue transforms into a sort of language. A method of communicating with other like-minded acolytes of the film that speaks not only to the movie’s narrative effectiveness but its ability to remain eternally relevant.
Predator is the culmination of over-the-top 80s action, blurring genre lines and bringing together all of the violence, machismo, and creature effects that had been percolating in theaters over the decade which proceeded it. Made up of a group of tight-knit, muscular, sweaty men brimming with testosterone and a drive to destroy, the film is one part jungle siege, one part alien attack, and one part slasher. And, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of the “final girl” set against a killer in the form of a master hunter alien assassin, it stands as one Hell of a satisfying genre hybrid at that.
But ultimately what blew our young minds that summer night was not the self-aware story bending or the phenomenal action set-pieces, rather it was the build-up and execution of another one of Stan Winston’s brilliant creations. It’s one thing to build a story on the promise of a terrible threat, it’s another entirely to welcome that threat onscreen in all its glory and have it completely deliver in the department of shock and awe.
For when Dutch is found out and the Predator finally removes his armor, confronting his prey with his true face, the film reveals its hand to be a winning one. Couple that with Dutch’s hilarious response and the film’s ability to balance dramatic tonal shifts, ever straddling the line between fun and frightening, and it’s clear to see why this film has become the iconic classic that so many adore.
On the page, the scene began as something very different. After setting his trap, Dutch was written to have followed the Hunter’s trail of blood to reveal the alien as a flailing, bloodied foe. The reveal would be one of victory over something frail as opposed to the unveiling of a creature both powerful and terrifying. As it is onscreen, the end result serves the overall narrative in a far more satisfying way, showing the importance of change through adaptation.
Beginning as a somewhat nondescript alien hunter and after a first, abandoned attempt by a different effects artist, Stan Winston entered in and designed a visually iconic, dynamic villain that would go down in history as one of the most memorable creature designs ever put to celluloid. Guided by John McTiernan’s brilliant eye, the Predator’s big reveal is a defining moment in the film and one that more than explains why it’s so damn important that everyone hurry up and, as the guy at the video store put it, get to chopper.
THE SCENE
The Predator pins Dutch and sizes him up, lifting him so that they’re face to face. The Hunter drops him and steps through the water. He turns and carefully unfastens his mask. Air escapes from tubes and he removes pieces of the armor around his head, finally unlocking his mask. With both monstrous hands he removes the covering and reveals large mandibles and two beady eyes. He roars and exposes his long, sharp teeth and pink mouth. Dutch remarks, “You’re one ugly motherfucker” and the Predator moves toward him menacingly.
THE SCRIPT
Excerpt taken from the script ‘Predator’ written by Jim Thomas & John Thomas.
THE SCREEN
In a flash, Schaefer is standing over the Hunter, the bow drawn, poised, the blood from his open wound dripping onto the Hunter’s back.
The script follows Dutch’s (referred to on the page as Schaefer) plan to trap and attack the Predator to its fruition, ultimately finding the alien creature under the mercenary’s thumb. The film, however, takes nearly the opposite approach. Instead of Dutch towering over the Hunter, it’s the Hunter who pins down Dutch, emasculating him and rendering his best-laid plans to waste.
The first shot in their final confrontation finds the Predator’s iconic two-pronged spike tool striking the log on either side of Dutch’s head, trapping him uncomfortably in a tight close-up. The image cuts to a medium shot which follows the tool up the length of the Predator’s arm to the monster’s iconic armored face which seems to have a triumphant air about it despite being unable to convey actual emotion.
The striking difference in approach allows the film to build to a climax that is made up of more than just the ingenuity of our muscular hero. Not only must he outsmart the beast to survive, but he must also manage to defeat it in battle. The script posits a creature that is almost instantly defeated once its wits and technology have been undone whereas the film is more interested in the warrior that lies within the tools and the mind.
The Hunter slowly rolls onto his back, REVEALING his face, his eyes bleached white in shock from the loss of blood.
On the page, the ultimate reveal of the alien’s face is one of pained realization and somewhat pathetic recognition. It’s hurting, losing blood, and all but defeated before any sort of hand-to-hand engagement has even begun. In the film, the creature lifts Dutch and throws him against a tree. A close up shows Dutch’s feet dangling several feet off the ground, as if he were a kid being picked up by a bully on the schoolyard. The Predator moves his face close to Dutch’s, inspecting him before letting him fall to the ground with a boorish motion that betrays just how unimpressive he is in the eyes of the Hunter.
A low angle close up observes the Predator as he carefully unfastens a tube connected to his mask, allowing a shoot of air to escape into the night. He unlatches another tube and yet more air escapes, a small, visible whirlwind of white static wind shooting off into the darkness. The image cuts back to Dutch, watching in unmistakable fear— the creature is purposefully disabling the synthetic defenses Dutch was so keen on dismantling, so confident is it in its victory.
A wide shot shows the Predator standing some distance away from Dutch, positioned as if they were about to engage in a Western-flavored duel. Dutch continues to keep his eyes on the creature, frozen in fear. Finally, the Predator places its amphibious hands on either side of its mask, removing the piece that separates its true face from the world around it. There’s a shot of red vision, Dutch’s look of continued awe, and the mask dropping dully into the water and then we see it.
Mandibles housing long, razor-sharp teeth cross over one another just below a pair of beady, angry little eyes. Its skin is moist and lizard-like, a mixture of pale yellow, orange and brown, framed by thick dreadlocks. Disturbing and horrifying, the monster stares intently at the man before him. Dutch doesn’t move, his look of wonder unchanged from before, as he finally speaks, “You’re one ugly motherfucker.”
Not so much undercutting the tension as it is bolstering the shock, the hilarious line ushers in what is sure to be an intense battle of physicality and will. Both sides are unwilling to give in to fear and more than willing to trade their lives for the honor of victory— the perfect way to head into the film’s final minutes.
The script replaces the intimidating figure of the alien with Dutch. As written, Schaefer’s body, looms over him, MOTTLED and STREAKED from his exposed skin, blood oozing from the shoulder wound, his eyes like black sockets in his almost skull-like face.
The screenplay goes on to note: Seen from this perspective, Schaefer is a frightening, horrible visage.
The Predator cowers before the film’s true threat, said to be GASPING hungrily for air and struggling to speak. While this provides a somewhat satisfying moment for the hero, it is a relatively unsatisfying conclusion to the finale’s build-up. The time, effort, and gumption that went into transforming the forest into a den of traps so elaborate they are scarcely to be believed pays off in immediate victory, certainly, but where’s the fun in that?
A movie built around the unfathomable stealth and prowess of the ultimate hunting machine is best when its titular threat is not so easily conquered. So it is that when the Predator bares its arms and opens its pink, fleshy mouth to release a disturbing, high-pitched roar, the viewer is prepared for the battle that was always going to come. Despite what’s at risk for the protagonist, I think Dutch’s fear coupled with his readiness to take on the challenge is a far more suitable climax than waltzing over to the cowering extra-terrestrial and finishing it with an unenthusiastic thud.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“I met with John McTiernan and Joel Silver and we talked about the Predator,” Stan Winston said in the book The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio by Jody Duncan, “My feeling from reading the script was that the Predator had to be a real character, rather than a generic creature. He needed to be a very specific character— and that’s what we came up with,” (Duncan, 2006, p. 100).
With only six weeks to complete the job, Winston and team had to develop a fully-fledged creature that could operate in the wilderness without the benefit of controlled temperature and environments in the wake of a team that had already failed at doing precisely that. Gathering inspiration from a painting of a Rastafarian warrior in Joel Silver’s office and a conversation about mandibles with his friend James Cameron, Stan Winston set to work designing the now iconic creature.
Of course, I didn’t know any of that when my friends and I first picked up the VHS tape off of the “Action Classics” shelf. All we knew as we tried our damnedest to look old enough to rent it on approach to the front counter was that we were in the mood for something exciting.
And that was all before we were told in no uncertain terms to “GET TO THE CHOPPA!”
We saw the video store clerk quite frequently after that and there was never a time where we didn’t advise him on what to do in regards to choppers and getting into them. Predator had had an effect on us beyond our being entertained and had grown into something more meaningful. Something that stuck in our minds as being special. Something to be shared.
So many elements comprise the various reasons why the film is successful in such a way: direction, performances, locations, script. But when I think about what it was that really sold all of those various components and tied them all together in an explosive, bloody bow, it’s hard not to circle back to the work that Stan Winston and his design team did on the Predator. Not only that, but the way in which that design and character led to the alternate version of the climax, centering on a final battle, rather than a one-note victory.
It boils down to character and story. For what makes a film stick in the minds of many is not any one thing, but an amalgam of fundamental cinematic materials. And I don’t think anything represents that idea more than the work done by people like Stan Winston.
I think Stan Winston said it best:
“No one form of technology defines the characters that we’ve developed over the years. What is it? Is it makeup? Is it special effects? Is it visual effects? Sometimes it is all of the above. Whatever best serves that character, that’s what we use,” (Duncan, 2006, p. 107).
And to the video store clerk who shouted at me about helicopters: thank you. I got to the chopper, I loved it and I’ll be sure to yell it forward. That’s the language of the movies and the legacy of creatives like Stan.
After all, we can take the journey, fight for our lives and battle the Predator for all time… and the chopper will always be there waiting for us.
