Predator Got Another Pass

Case and Sam are joined once more by Leo Goodman to talk about the monstrous Arnold Schwarzenegger lead film, Predator!

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Meeting summary:

●      The Podcast Discussion meeting delved into the behind-the-scenes aspects of the movie Predator, covering topics such as production challenges, cast and crew dynamics, filming challenges in the Mexican jungle, special effects and design innovations, sound design and music impact, post-production struggles, audience reception, and the film's legacy in action and sci-fi genres. The meeting also included anecdotes from cast members, memorable scenes and dialogue analysis, and discussed the film's enduring appeal and impact on pop culture.

Notes:

●      🎬 Introduction and Background (00:00 - 10:00)

●      Podcast episode about the movie Predator

●      Discussion of movie's production challenges and triumphs

●      Jean-Claude Van Damme originally cast as Predator

●      First-time screenwriters and sophomore director involved

●      🎭 Cast and Crew (10:00 - 18:15)

●      Arnold Schwarzenegger as lead actor

●      John McTiernan as director

●      Joel Silver as producer

●      Shane Black cast for potential script rewrites

●      Competitive atmosphere among cast members

●      🌴 Filming Challenges (18:15 - 28:32)

●      Shot in Mexican jungle with extreme heat and difficult conditions

●      Cast and crew faced dehydration, illness, and insect bites

●      Practical effects and set design challenges

●      Redesign of Predator costume and special effects

●      🎨 Special Effects and Design (28:32 - 36:14)

●      Stan Winston brought in for Predator redesign

●      James Cameron suggested mandibles for Predator

●      Red-suit technique for camouflage effect

●      Innovative use of infrared cameras and thermal vision effects

●      🎵 Sound Design and Music (36:14 - 47:25)

●      Alan Silvestri's score creating tension

●      Predator's unique vocalizations and sound effects

●      Use of recorded human speech for Predator's mimicry

●      🎞️ Post-Production and Reception (47:25 - 57:45)

●      Editing challenges and additional footage requirements

●      Positive audience reception despite initial mixed critical reviews

●      Film's influence on action and sci-fi genres

●      🔍 Analysis and Legacy (57:45 - 01:09:29)

●      Subversion of 80s action movie tropes

●      Themes of man vs. nature and technology

●      Film's impact on pop culture and subsequent franchises

●      🗣️ Cast Experiences and Anecdotes (01:09:29 - 01:20:14)

●      Behind-the-scenes stories from cast members

●      Arnold Schwarzenegger's pranks and competitiveness

●      Camaraderie and challenges faced by the actors

●      🎥 Memorable Scenes and Dialogue (01:20:15 - 01:30:56)

●      Iconic lines and moments from the film

●      Discussion of specific scenes and their impact

●      Reflection on the film's enduring appeal

Transcription

00:00
Case
Hey, everyone. This is case coming in on the final editing pass of this episode and noting that there's a point in here where we are talking about the risks of onset stunts and things that involve blanks that might come off as a bit insensitive given the current era of very recent incidents, onsets that is everywhere. And I just want to say that it's not. We recorded this a couple weeks, like two months ago, and it was shortly before the whole rust shooting thing. And we're not. I wouldn't say it crosses any lines, but I did feel like I needed to give a heads up before we actually get into the episode. Jean Claude Van Damme was originally cast to be the predator.

00:54
Case
It is the most insane bit of trivia, like when you think that he was, if he had been in this movie because he got fired on set pretty early on. But if he had been in this movie, think about what that. Like that star studded cast that we'd be talking about here.

01:09
Leo
Welcome to certain point of View's another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com dot.

01:20
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another past podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alasea.

01:27
Sam
Hello.

01:28
Case
And we have a returning guest today because we're going to be talking about an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. And who better to talk about an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with than Leo Goodman? Hello.

01:38
Sam
Yay. Get to the Choppa.

01:42
Leo
Was I supposed to do an Arnold impression there? Is that what were expecting?

01:44
Case
No. No. But last time you were on talking about Terminator three.

01:50
Leo
That's true.

01:50
Case
Which is, I don't think anyone would ever argue the best Terminator movie. In fact, most would argue it is not one of the better Terminator movies.

01:58
Sam
Right.

01:58
Leo
I don't think any of us made that argument.

02:00
Case
No.

02:01
Leo
I don't recall any of us saying it was the best one. No.

02:03
Case
No. And that is the usual format for the show, where we talk about a movie that is not necessarily the best and discuss how we could make it better. But today, this is a fifth episode. This is episode 120 of the show. And that means we are talking about a movie that had adversity and actually overcame it to create a better product as a result. And for that, we are going today be discussing Predator. Yes. So, like, right off the bat, we. All right, I'm going to be honest. When we first started talking about Leo coming back on and we started discussing, well, let's do maybe a fifth movie since you had been on for a regular episode.

02:40
Case
And we had a list of suggestions that people had made and I had Predator on the list, mostly because I knew that Jean Claude Van Damme had been cast as the predator and then had been fired and they had to do a complete redesign and reshoots of that stuff. And then I started doing research for this and, oh, my God, was this a shoot from hell?

02:58
Leo
So much more went wrong. It's beautiful how much crazy stuff there was in this. And there's. And there's. And dear listeners, there is a lot of stuff you can find in this. Like, I just went through YouTube. There's all these behind the scenes stuff detailing how crazy some of it was with also some really, really nice, just cast interviews and them praising each other and saying good stuff. Sounds like in some ways they make it sound like a fun set. And then you go into the stuff that didn't go into some of those official movies behind the scenes stuff they put out. And it's just madness.

03:32
Sam
It's mess. It is so messy.

03:36
Case
And a lot of the factoids we're going to be dropping comes from an article which is guns and shea butter. An oral history of Predator, which is really interesting because when there are conflicting reports, they try to reconcile it, but give each of the different quotes. And some of those are fascinating. So I can't wait for us to get to some of the areas where history and the truth diverge.

03:59
Sam
That's the nicest way of putting it.

04:01
Case
Yeah, but, Sam, before we started recording, you dropped the bombshell that you had never seen this movie before.

04:06
Sam
I have never seen Predator. No. I knew kind of because people had, other people in my life had explained predator to me. You're like, oh, well, this is what happens. And blah, blah, blah. Because, you know, I actually told a friend I had no plan to ever watch this movie. So go ahead, tell me all about it. I'm also one of my friends had. There was a Arnold Schwarzenegger action figure, but it was like giant. This thing was like so big. It was like maybe like 20 inches or something. And she used to use it to play with her barbies. So he was always like the bad guy and he would, like, kidnap us. It was so weird.

04:48
Leo
Did she do the accents?

04:50
Sam
She did. She was very committed and it was something that she stole from her brother and like, just like. But what I remember about him was that all of his clothes came off so that he just had, like, black spandex on. So I guess so the kids could, like, I don't know, reenact the mud scene. I don't know. Because it didn't come with mud. But anyway, so this part of the.

05:14
Leo
Reason why I. Mud kids will find mud.

05:18
Case
Oh, no. Secretly, it was like one of those action figures where if you put water on it will change color, and so it'll be mud.

05:23
Sam
Honestly, if that were true, that would have made it a thousand times cooler. I loved all the change of color toys, but, yeah, no, like, so this is part of the reason why I knew the basic plot, because her brother told me the plot, but I had never seen it. And I have to say that, like, honestly, the movie holds up. I mean, it's like, what, 34 years old? It was 1987, right? And so it's about 34 years old. And I think that it definitely does a good job in terms of. We have definitely talked about this before, case, you know, saving your monster, not necessarily revealing it right up front. Like, it's really good at that and really good at building that tension.

06:05
Sam
And it also has a really lovely build because it kind of goes in, like, you know, something's wrong with this mission and something seems sketchy with it, but they're going in and they're doing it, and it feels like a very standard war, modern warfare action film. Right.

06:22
Case
I.

06:23
Sam
Lots of explosions and lots of stuff. And then all of a sudden, you know, it is, like, subtle in the same way, but it just starts turning, and it starts turning on the crew that is there. Like, they've accomplished their mission, kind of, sort of, but, like, now they're being hunted, and it's. It's really. I think it still holds up really well 34 years later. Really well done.

06:50
Leo
Absolutely. Absolutely.

06:51
Sam
And the music is really good. The score is good, which we already talked about in terminator three. You need a score to build tension.

07:01
Leo
Yep.

07:01
Case
That was.

07:01
Leo
That was a big part of us talking about t three.

07:05
Sam
Yeah.

07:05
Leo
And you're absolutely right. This, like. Cause right from the. Right from the first goddamn shot, that's. It's just this really tense. Like, really intense, like a score going on. Cause there's nothing happening at first, right. There's nothing happening right in the beginning. There's just people talking. Like, no words are being spoken. Helicopters are coming down, and the music right away is just like, don't misunderstand. This is not like. This is all tense. You should already be excited. You should already be nervous about what's going on. That's what that music is saying. Every moment of that just opening right there. And. And it keeps on going throughout with that.

07:47
Case
Yeah, that was Alan Silvestri coming right off of doing back to the future. So definitely a lot of power going into this production. Probably the. The most famous part of the production outside of Schwarzenegger himself, in terms of, like, Hollywood clout, because this movie, I, from start to finish, probably shouldn't have been made. It was first time screenwriters Jim and John Thomas, who all of the anecdotes are like, oh, they. They slip the script under the producer's door. Yeah, it's a little more complicated than that. They knew a script reader who. Who read it and was, like, trying to get people to see it. But, like, proverbially speaking, yes, that is what happened. Like, this was a first time script, which was them being inspired by.

08:30
Case
Inspired by Rocky four in a weird way, where they're like, oh, yeah, let's have someone like a rocky fighting an alien.

08:36
Leo
Well, because, like, it was a joke that people were making or that they made somewhere where people were just like, well, Rocky's beating everybody next. He's got to beat aliens, basically saying, like, there's nowhere else for Rocky to go. He's got to be. He's got to fight an alien now.

08:49
Case
Yep, gotta go to space. So they write this script, and apparently it was kind of rough. Schwarzenegger had a lot of notes and kind of put a lot of effort into sort of making it. Once he actually got a chance to read it was actually so rough that when they went off to go shoot it, they cast Shane Black, the scriptwriter for Lethal Weapon, and has gone on to do so many amazing projects. But they cast him in the movie just so that they could have him on hand to do rewrites, which he declined to do because he was like, no, I got cast to be an actor. And when he found out, it was, like, actually not so much because of his acting. He was kind of frustrated and was like, nope, not gonna do it.

09:23
Case
And they decided, okay, well, you're gonna die first.

09:25
Leo
Then I saw it. Like, there's some sources that are basically just like, oh, he was pissed off. Cause he wanted to be an actor. I saw one that also had him just saying, no. I looked at the script and was like, no, the script is good. Just stop screwing with it. Do the script. Just stop screwing with it so much. Do the script, like, sort of a combination of, I don't want to. I'm here to do the one thing. I'm here to act. And also just, no, you're tinkering too much. This is going to work. Do it like this. And. And he. And he's the guy, if you're wondering if you're not sure who. Who it was. Shane Black is the guy that keeps on trying to make the big dude laugh with jokes about how big his girlfriend's pussy is.

09:57
Sam
Yeah.

09:58
Leo
You remember that? Yeah, yeah. That is the writer of lethal weapon and kiss Bang bang. And then the first member of the crew to get killed because he didn't want to rewrite the script.

10:10
Case
Yeah. And it's an early production for everyone. Joel Silver hadn't done any actual. Hadn't been a producer yet. He had been an executive working on movies like Commando right before this. And then they hired John McTiernan, who is an alum of our fifth movies, because we talked about the original Die harden, like, 40 episodes ago. And that is. And that was also, like, a triumph of work.

10:33
Leo
You know what? Never mind. I definitely. I definitely did listen to that. I definitely did listen to that one. Now that I'm thinking of it. Yeah, yeah.

10:39
Case
McTiernan can handle a tough shoot and can make things work pretty well. But this was his second movie. This is before Die Hard. And when you look at his track record coming off of his first movie, which was, I believe, called Nomads, he goes nomads in 86, Predator in 87, die Hard in 88, the Hunt for Red October in 90. Like, that is a killer run right there.

10:59
Leo
So it's a good few years. That's a good few years right there.

11:03
Case
And he continues to have a great run up until he goes to jail for wiretapping one of his producers.

11:07
Leo
Oh, I didn't know that part. What?

11:12
Case
Wait.

11:13
Leo
For wiretapping one of his producers?

11:15
Sam
Oh, my God.

11:16
Case
Apparently, it was in a fight when they were shooting rollerball. So already at the nadir of his career. But.

11:25
Sam
Wow.

11:27
Leo
Like, as. Like, as any. Tried to plant a bug on him. Like a listening device.

11:31
Case
Yeah, on his, like, phones. Wow.

11:34
Leo
You're not allowed to do that. Okay. I have some stuff to take care of after this. Let's drop it.

11:42
Case
Yeah, yeah.

11:42
Sam
Just move. Matt, cut that out.

11:45
Case
Yeah, yeah.

11:47
Sam
We don't want any, you know, admitted crimes.

11:52
Case
But once Schwarzenegger was behind it, obviously this movie was gonna get made from that point. Like, when you get Arnold Schwarzenegger on a project, it's gonna happen.

12:01
Leo
Can we just going with. Before we lose it, with the thing about it originally being an idea for Sylvester Stallone and then going to Schwarzenegger. Jess, one of the apparently saw in some interviews how there was this rivalry for such a long time in the eighties there between Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Cause each of them is basically just like neck and neck to being called the biggest action star in the world at the time. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, they were the two biggest, and so they were constantly trying to get the biggest one. And did you know about Schwarzenegger tricking stallone into taking the movie?

12:35
Case
Yes.

12:35
Sam
Which one?

12:36
Leo
The movie is stop or my mom will shoot. And it's about. It's about a. I remember seeing this. It's about a cop who, for some reason, has to end up living with his mother, who is. Someone's gonna hurt me for this, but I'm blanking on her name. The mother from the golden girls, I believe it is. No one else knows your name right now.

12:55
Case
Oh, it's Estell Getty.

12:56
Leo
Okay.

12:56
Case
Yeah.

12:57
Leo
And basically. And so, apparently, Schwarzenegger read the script, and I. And hated it. But then the next day, like, he's on the phone. Like, Stallone calls him up and is like, oh, hey, have you heard. Have you heard anything about this? Stop. My mom will shoot movie. And Schwarzenegger goes, oh, yeah, I just read it. I really love it. I think it's brilliant. I think the premise is just genius, and it's gonna be a hit, and then the next. And then finds out that Stallone went and took it and he. And attacked. It was awful. And I just, like, I very much enjoy that.

13:28
Case
Yeah, Schwarzenegger is an evil genius. And, like, I need to emphasize the evil part. We'll talk about one away that he was later. Once we actually get into stuff that happened during the production. Yeah, man. Like, it's just wild. Like, you try to sell this movie, and it's gonna be this, like, crazy adventure of, you know, the. They claim that this is the movie that coined the term manly men.

13:55
Leo
Yeah.

13:56
Case
Which, I mean, shouldn't be that complicated of a term to coin anyway in the first place. But, you know, like, it's like, let's get the biggest guys. Let's, like, we have the iconic, like, two guys with giant biceps, like, arm wrestling, slash, like, handshaking. That has become just a giant meme comes from this movie. When Carl Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger lock arms. Like, this is a movie about, like, let's get the biggest motherfuckers on the planet and then show off how not impressive they actually are. Like, the. The part about it that's really interesting is that it's a subversion of the action movie tropes.

14:29
Case
Like, this comes right off of Commando, and it is a movie that honestly is taking the commando kind of style of, like, look at this over the top character and being like, oh, all that physicality, all this, like, Superman level action movie star ness of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Doesn't matter.

14:47
Sam
Yeah.

14:48
Case
Like, he's totally outclassed in every way by this predator.

14:52
Sam
I want to say, as someone who's never seen this movie but has seen that meme, that moment, I was like, oh, that's where it's from.

15:03
Leo
I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that.

15:06
Case
It.

15:06
Leo
That it makes it look like everything they do, like. Like, doesn't matter. It's so much like, it makes a point in the beginning of showing them just completely demolishing all those other guys. And then again. Yeah. And the point is like, that, yes, these guys are really tough. These guys are really everything. But they're up against someone who just has the tools beyond.

15:28
Case
Right. They're so out, is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Like, these are the toughest of the tough, the manliest of the men. They. They can show up and wipe out a bunch of terrorists and, like, who have taken down CIA agents and, like, are, you know. And. And in that opening, like, firefight when they attack the guerrilla forces, they're making quips. Schwarzenegger has a commando style, like, stick around line right there. Like, those quips only happen at the chunk of the movie because they're trying to play up the action movie tropes of the day. And then when they're like, okay, we have to go through this valley, they're like, well, that sucks. Like, they all are very aware that they're going into a death box if they actually have enemy forces. So it's not like they're caught off guard.

16:12
Case
Like, they're very aware that they're not in a good position. And then just systematically, all of these, like, tough guys are just defeated by this thing that is just so much beyond them.

16:21
Leo
Yeah. The whole thing with, they're going into it going, okay, this is gonna suck. But we are. We can handle any human thing that can possibly be thrown at us. And then we're. There's something in the trees that ain't. No, man, there's there. And it's like, no, there's something that's completely beyond our experience.

16:37
Sam
And there's such a. You can tell there's such a well oiled machine as group. Right. And they start to unravel mentally, honestly, you know, and you watch them unravel, like, just kind of lose it because.

16:54
Leo
You were talking about that opening scene, the opening one where they're taking out that whole enemy encampment.

17:00
Case
Yeah.

17:01
Leo
My one thing with, like, it's. It's an awesome scene. It's a kick ass scene as they're just destroying with it is that they. Short snake breaks a whole big deal about, we're not assassins. We're here to save people. We're only rescue people. And they are not behaving like they are trying to save any. They are. They're blowing up. Like when. When short snaker sends the truck inside, like, uses his environments in a very good way. Like, he's. He knows I've got to take out all those guys. Oh, hey, here's a truck that's just, like, the wheels running. Oh, I'm just going to make the truck roll into them and blows up the building. Okay, fine. But then he just. They start throw in explosives into every other building. They just start mowing down every tent. I'm like, you don't know what those are, dude.

17:43
Leo
Like, you're not acting like you're trying to let anything walk out of here alive. And I thought you were trying to save anyone.

17:49
Sam
It's so funny. Cause I thought the same thing. Like, I was like, wait, was that the last hostage? Like, the guy that was shot? So they just like, is this a revenge miss? And then I kind of was just like, you know what? It's the eighties. Let's not think about this. It's fine.

18:04
Case
I think there is an in universe justification for some of the level of brutality that they inflict, which is that just before that, they actually come across the predator's handiwork. They come across that group of, like, green berets. I think that had all been just, like, skinned. Probably not skinned alive because the predator probably killed them first and then skinned them, but, like, skinned, which is pretty fucked up.

18:21
Leo
Schwarzenegger says they were skinned alive, but he has no way of, I don't know of knowing whether they were alive when he was skinned.

18:27
Case
He says that, yeah, given the predator's mo, he. They. The predator later skins several things and does it. Does it after he's killed them. So I think Schwarzenegger just, it's kind of the parlance of our times and also probably assumed that a human would do that torture a person as opposed to an alien. That would be like, taking home. You know, he would wonder, why would a person do this? And a person would do that. To torture. But an alien would do that because it's like, look how big this fish I got. Washington fair.

18:56
Leo
Okay, you're right. Yeah, you're right. Cause that's the part of the movie where they still think whatever it was people.

19:02
Case
Okay, yeah. And then they come across the camp and they think that these are the people who did that.

19:07
Leo
And. Yes, and that is true. But Schwarzenegger has the moment where he says they killed a hostage. We're going in now. And they take out the first few guys with stealth, but then after that, you don't see them actually going, okay, let's. So we can avoid destroying everything in that one place. They just start shooting all over. Like Jesse Ventura brings out old painless. The friggin Gatling gun, the minigun, which I think, like the same one, like, using t two. And he's. And it's just, I'm looking at that. I'm just like, that is not a weapon that you use for a rescue mission. That is a weapon that you use. Understanding.

19:46
Leo
I know nothing whatsoever of military, but it just seems to me that the way that he's handling it and the way that they're doing everything there, they're not checking to see who's in any building that they're blowing up, which, again.

19:58
Case
As you said, as. No, that is a weapon that is not. That is not a weapon meant for rescue missions. That is not a weapon meant for humans. That is a weapon meant for helicopters. When you're trying to take out a building.

20:09
Leo
Yeah, yeah. That's a weapon. Yeah. That's a weapon that you're supposed to have in a helicopter when you're just like, I have to destroy everything within this particular area and they're carrying it around. They're like, so on our stealth mission to rescue people, we're going to, again, got to stress about this. On a stealth mission, they are bringing this. They are bringing this huge gun that they've got to lug around, which, again, in the behind the scenes stuff, like, all the other casts are talking about how crazy this gun is. And then Jesse Ventura is just like, I don't know what they were all complaining about. It's not that bad. Maybe it's just me. Cause he was a guy that was actually a veteran. Him and the dude that plays blanking on the character's name.

20:53
Case
Yeah. Poncho is his nickname. It's Jorge Poncho Ramirez. It's Richard Chavez as the actor.

20:59
Leo
Chavez. Chavez. Yeah, Chavez. That's what I was going for.

21:02
Case
Yeah, they have possibly one of the most quoted scenes together. Yeah, yeah.

21:06
Leo
You're hit. You're bleeding. I ain't got time to bleed. Those are the two only members of the cast who are actual veterans. And I know, and I know that, like, in an interview later, jet, Ventura talks about, like, how happy he was that scene got into it because it was like, we're the only two veterans. That was, like, the scene that was just us. And it's. Yeah, one of the most quoted lines.

21:25
Case
Yeah. Let's take a moment just to talk about the cast, because there's some interesting hits there, and that's. That's part of it. Originally, they wanted to cast exclusively veterans, knowing that they were getting Schwarzenegger and. But they ended up with Jesse Ventura and with Richard Chavez, who were actual vets. Ventura, who at this point had already started his wrestling career and had been a Navy SeAL when he was in Vietnam, definitely fits the part, apparently. And, Leo, you found this interview. The script called for him to do all the disgusting stuff with the tobacco chew. And they were like, oh, do you know how to chew tobacco? And he, like, took out a can of tobacco chew, and it was like, oh, you are just this character. Okay, perfect.

22:06
Case
We're asking for a six four giant who could hold this thing, and you're an inch taller than that and already fit the bill perfectly. Great. But they fleshed out the cast with Bill Duke, who had been on commando. And here's one I found really fascinating. They cast Sonny Landom as Billy the tracker on the team, and the studio's insurance company required him to have a bodyguard on set to protect him.

22:29
Leo
He needed a bodyguard to protect him, case.

22:30
Case
No, not to protect him, to protect everyone else, because he apparently was a wild man who would get drunk and just randomly start attacking people. This guy is a fucking crazy man.

22:40
Sam
That's insane.

22:41
Case
I looked into him when I read that. I was like, what's going on with this guy? So after 911, he had a. I think it was a congressional run, of course, where the Republican Party would not accept him because he had made too many openly racist claims out in public. Like, this was a crazy dude.

23:00
Leo
Wait, he tried to run for Congress.

23:02
Case
Pardon me, governor. He tried to go for governor of Kentucky, and he was too racist to be governor of Kentucky.

23:08
Leo
But he was actually in the election. He was actually.

23:10
Case
Yeah, he ran as an independent, ultimately.

23:15
Leo
And I guess that's all that's gotta be got. I guess that's all there is to say about political figures.

23:19
Sam
Yeah, there's no other. None. There's no other governors.

23:24
Leo
Two governors.

23:25
Case
Yeah. Two actual governors.

23:27
Leo
Two governors. Two governors that if you went back to 1987 right now and told anyone in the world that I guess hadn't worked with them, hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura are both gonna be governors. They laugh in your face. But like, yeah, but people that were on sets with them are just like, oh, no, they're amazing, charismatic people and actually much smarter than you think.

23:51
Case
And then again, Arnold Schwarzenegger, evil genius.

23:55
Leo
Who speaking of Schwarzenegger. And do we want to talk about Schwarzenegger messing with people on cast or is we waiting for that later?

24:03
Case
Well, we'll get to that in 1 second because just want to call out other people. Obviously, we mentioned Shane Black, right. Arnold's friend Sven ol Thorson, who is just like a buddy of Arnold's who has been in just every movie he's ever done, is just a nice little Easter egg. He is a soviet military advisor in the background at one spot because, you know, you can't do an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie without him. He's literally never in everyone. And then, of course, we've got Carl Weathers, who is wonderful, super charismatic. Everyone knows him from being creed in the rocky movies. And he had a really good story about how apparently on set all of these manly men were really obsessed with topping each other in terms of who was the most in shape. So they would wake up and sneak into gyms at certain times.

24:51
Case
The gym, by the way, was actually the ballroom of the hotel they were all staying at. And Arnold Schwarzenegger had flown down all of his workout equipment and turned the ballroom into this makeshift gym for them to all work out in.

25:03
Leo
Schwarzenegger brought a gym from Los Angeles to Mexico for the set, for the cast to work out so that they could make sure to have top tier muscles every day when cameras were rolling. And, and according to, so that according to Bill Duke, according to dude who plays Mac, basically, Schwarzenegger and Ventura and Sonny and Chavez would get up at 03:00 a.m. Run for an hour or then go work out in the gym for an hour and a half, then have breakfast, then go to set and then go work out again later on before going to bed. And that after, like one week of that, he's like Bill Duke, like after the first week stopped doing it. And they would just call him a wimp and kept going. And Carl Weathers wanted to work.

25:56
Leo
Like, like was very self conscious about, I need to also look good with these guys. So I'm going to work out. But he didn't want to work out with them, and so he would wait for them to leave. He would, like, go get a cup of coffee, wait for them to leave the gym, and then go work out by himself to give nothing, like he says that interview. Give nothing away. Give nothing away. Trying to keep this all close to the best, what I'm doing.

26:16
Case
Yeah, they were all trying to pretend like their muscles were just natural, even though they're all working out like crazy. And they were super competitive about this, because the thing that we keep on wanting to say because it's such a fucking funny story, was that, again, Arnold Schwarzenegger, evil genius.

26:33
Sam
You should write a children's book called Arnold Schwarzenegger, evil Genius.

26:38
Case
Leo, tell the story. Tell the story.

26:40
Leo
So this. And this comes from. You can find this on YouTube if you want. There's this, like 50, 55 minutes long behind the scenes making of that they did back then with all these cast interviews. And there's a part where Jesse Ventura was looking at the camera and he's like, you know, I went into wardrobe and I saw the sizes that they'd taken of everyone's muscles, and I saw that my bicep was an inch bigger than Mister universe, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself. And that made me feel pretty good. And then it cuts to Schwarzenegger in his interview, and he goes, oh, then I guess my joke worked because I told the wardrobe people to do that. And so then. And so he told. He told them to tell Ventura that. That his muscles were smaller.

27:25
Leo
And then later on, when they were in the gym together, Schwarzenegger apparently says to Ventura, hey, let's. Let's compare muscles. Hey, let's. Let's bet a bottle of champagne. I bet a bottle of champagne. I got bigger bicep than you. And they met, and Vettura thought he already had it, and they measured. And Schwarzenegger's a three inches bigger. And so Ventura's gotta give him a final champagne.

27:43
Case
Yeah, yeah. And, like, that's entirely, like, goading him into getting exactly what you want. Because I think actually Ventura was the one who was like, well, you wanna put something on it? And he's like, sure, a bottle of champagne.

27:53
Leo
Oh, yeah.

27:56
Case
Yeah. Cause they were all so fucking competitive. Like the, like, the amount of testosterone on this set. I mean, like, this is a movie that not only fails the Bechdel test, but just pisses on it and just runs away in the opposite direction.

28:09
Leo
There's literally one woman. And her entire role is to be annoying them and being saved by them and then being scared.

28:20
Sam
Yeah. And giving some hints. She has a couple of moments where, with the blood, she's like, by the way, you got him. Which leads to the laugh.

28:29
Leo
Yeah. But she kept it to herself for, like, a few hours.

28:31
Sam
Well, she wasn't sure if she could trust them.

28:34
Case
Yeah. She was their prisoner.

28:36
Sam
Yeah. So. But, I mean, she eventually, like, kind of agrees and, you know, follows through, but, like, you know. You know, if he bleeds, he can be killed. You know that stuff.

28:48
Leo
If it bleeds, we can kill it.

28:49
Sam
Yeah, exactly. And we wouldn't have gotten that line if she hadn't told him that, like, he bled.

28:55
Leo
That's true.

28:56
Case
Yeah.

28:56
Sam
So that's what she was there for, to set up that one line.

28:59
Case
I'm just. Before we move on, I'm just gonna shout out this one. So if you want a good old laugh, go on YouTube and look up predator, the musical.

29:09
Sam
Sounds amazing.

29:10
Leo
No.

29:11
Case
What someone. So it's. It is a musical. It's a musical number set to this. And the main refrain is, if it bleeds, we can kill it.

29:21
Sam
Okay, stop the podcast. I have to go watch this. Goodbye, guys.

29:24
Case
Yeah, it's the guys who wrote Hannibal the musical. Oh, wait.

29:27
Leo
Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

29:29
Case
No, not cannibal the musical or cannibal the musical. Sorry. Silence of the lands the musical.

29:34
Leo
Oh, okay.

29:35
Case
It's just really funny stuff. They do all the Arnold Schwarzenegger ones because, like, they've got a guy who just does a really good singing Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

29:42
Leo
What is. What a great, specific talent.

29:45
Case
I know, right? So it's a musical number that goes through the plot of it. The YouTube channel is called legolams. Like, Lego, like the toy and then lambs. It's fucking amazing. And every time someone says, if it bleeds, we can kill it. I just think, if it bleeds.

29:59
Leo
If it bleeds.

30:01
Case
If it bleeds.

30:02
Sam
If it leads.

30:06
Leo
All right. Yeah, definitely gonna watch that.

30:08
Case
So. Yeah, I gotta get that shot there. But crazy good one liners in this whole thing.

30:13
Leo
Talking about crazy one liners, let's just acknowledge that this is the movie that has the get to the chopper line. Like, the iconic line that everyone uses to make fun of, armed with.

30:23
Case
Yeah. Truly great stuff. Oh, man. But let's actually get into the actual shooting of this movie, because, again, you know. All right, so first time screenwriters, sophomore director, big star. Okay. You see that the movie's gonna get made. Like, the fact that the director goes on to do just amazing work. Just in general, you're like, okay. I'm not surprised that he does well. Okay, cool. You know, like, all right. I did not realize this movie was going to be quite the nightmare it was to film. For one thing, it was over 90 degrees almost the entire time they filmed in Mexico. Like, just super hot, and they're all wearing heavy gear. People kept passing out all the time on this. So just. Just a general, like, terrible condition to be filming in. Not to mention the bugs. Apparently, several people got bitten real bad.

31:10
Case
One person actually sat down in a fire ant nest and was completely covered in very painful bites. And it was Chavez.

31:19
Leo
It was that.

31:20
Case
Yeah, yeah. And so he couldn't even, like, he had been working his arms out and they had to cover his arms because he was so covered in bites that they couldn't have him be part of the gun show for the majority of the film.

31:30
Leo
Can we tell the rest of the. Him getting bitten by ant story?

31:33
Case
Yeah, go for it.

31:35
Leo
So this guy, like, he sit. He lies down somewhere between sets and. And. And lay down on a. On a nest of fire ants, gets bitten over a hundred times. And. And. And it's just like, apparently, just, like, strips himself completely naked, is, like, being, like, dunked into cold water. And then later on, during filming. During filming, Schwarzenegger and gets married and. And, oh, my God. I. Of course, I was just looking at this, and right now I'm blanking on his wife's name.

32:05
Sam
Maria Shriver.

32:06
Leo
Oh, thank you. Thank you. God, I feel stupid about that.

32:09
Case
Yes.

32:09
Leo
Maria Shriver. And she's calling the cast members individually to invite them up to their suite to meet everybody. And she calls Chavez. And he's in the shower, and he gets out and he picks up the phone and she's like, hi. And he basically just like, who is this? I'm picking ticks off my balls. And she's like, oh, this is Maria Shriver. I just. I just wanted to invite everyone up to meet. To meet me.

32:40
Case
Yeah. They had, like, a four day break in filming so that Schwarzenegger could go fly back up to America, marry a kennedy, and take two days off and then come back.

32:49
Leo
Yeah, but they made that for. But they made that break work for them because. Because they. They needed a bunch more money to be able to, like, really finish out the third act. And during. During Schwarzenegger's wedding, during that break that got forced in them, they were able to edit together a bunch of what they had and send it to the studio. And the studio was like, oh, yeah, shit, this is looking good. And send him more money.

33:13
Case
Oh, was that the same gap I thought?

33:15
Leo
Am I mixing up gaps?

33:18
Case
It makes the most sense, like, once you say it, but they, like, talk about it in two different frames. So, yeah, that makes sense because they ran out of shooting days, which we'll get into in a second. But, yeah, they had 58 days and went at or probably 56 days. And when they got to day 48, they only had half the movie shot.

33:34
Leo
So were talking about. Let's get. We were talking about bugs. Let's talk about food and water. They're in the mexican jungle. People were getting sick from the water. People were getting sick from the food. Like, like, if you watch, like, Schwarzenegger's weight is fluctuating throughout. All of it. Because he was, like, getting dehydrated. He's refusing to drink. They're like. They're all refusing. Refusing to drink the water. They were refusing to eat most of the food. Some of the food that they were eating was filled with bugs. I saw an interview with Bill Duke where he just starts talking about how after a couple weeks, they were just eating bugs. They were just eating the bugs for the protein.

34:09
Sam
Yeah. And all of this is not helping the heat situation because they're not drinking water. Like, this is why this movie was needed more shoot days, because people were passing out or getting food poisoning all the time.

34:23
Case
I mean, it didn't help that they. Well, they started with a mexican crew because they couldn't get us people down there for cost and for logistical reasons, who apparently all of them were more people who assisted on film sets as opposed to the primary crew, which led to them, for example, having lots of ceramic lights that exploded on the first day from all the heat.

34:44
Sam
Yeah.

34:44
Leo
Whoa.

34:45
Case
So they scrambled, and they got. Ended up bringing in all these guys from Australia who just happened to have passports that. And could catch the next flight. It was just, like, a real, like, rush job of being like, okay, we can get you guys in. Because customs were just a little bit more forgiving coming from Australia than America, for some reason. Really crazy on that one.

35:03
Leo
And they can handle the heat.

35:04
Case
Yeah, well, but you know what couldn't handle the heat? The actual foliage that they were filming around, like, the plants, because it was so hot, were looking, like, crisp. And in a lot of cases, like, also dehydrated.

35:16
Sam
Yeah.

35:17
Case
So they actually have a nursery that they would bring more lush green vegetation to put in, if you like.

35:25
Leo
And this is. I mean, among the things that I'd never noticed until it was pointed out in one of those interviews. And now I can't not see it. Is that through the whole movie, everywhere they go, there's dead. There's brown, dead leaves all over the ground as though it's fall.

35:42
Sam
Yeah, everywhere.

35:43
Leo
But the trees are covered in green leaves because they brought in leaves. They brought in their, like, the leaves that are on half the trees. There are not the native leaves of that area. Like, they made them look like. Apparently. Apparently one critic at the time, like, made a thing about how, like, about how why are there. There's leaves from New England? I'm looking at. I'm looking at leaves from. From North America all over this mexican jungle. What's that? Which, again, unless you're, like, really looking for it, you might not see it first. But now they see it, they're just crawling over dead autumn leaves all over the place because they just literally, they're in a jungle that they had to make look like a jungle.

36:22
Case
Yeah, well, and part of it also was that the, like, the actual dirt showed off too much of, like, the dragging equipment and footprints and so forth. So to, like, hide that, all, they had to have, like, leaf people. So it's kind of like Halloween where, like, despite shooting in California, but being set in New England, they just had, like, bags of leaves that they would just, like, layer out to sort of disguise their. Yeah, disguise their movements. In this case, I.

36:46
Sam
That's New England, right? Just throw out some broken fall leaves.

36:51
Case
So next up, I mentioned this at the top. So Jean Claude Van Damme was originally cast to be the predator. It is the most insane bit of trivia, like, when you think that he was. If he had been in this movie because he got fired on set pretty early on. But if he had been in this movie, think about what that, like, that star studded cast that we'd be talking about here. As it was, he was fairly early in his career, and they had fitted him for this costume that did not look very good and particularly didn't look good for reasons that we'll talk about in a second when we talk about special effects. But the funny thing is, there are so many conflicting accounts for why he got fired. The most forgiving account is that he kept fainting on set.

37:32
Case
And we know a lot of people were fainting pretty constantly, but he was in a full body monster suit and just kept passing out in the middle of scenes. And so much so that it was, like, screwing up the production in general. That is one of the reasons that they say another is that the costume looked terrible. You guys can look it up online. It is this weird bug kind of. People have described it looking kind of like a dog. It's got, like, the inverted kind of ankles or like.

38:00
Leo
Yeah, like. Yeah, yeah. They wanted it to have, like, those, like, weird, like, goat legs.

38:04
Sam
Yeah.

38:05
Leo
Where it's got the invert ankles. It's got this thin kind of bug. The head looks like either a bug crossed with a kangaroo head.

38:15
Case
Yeah, something like that. And it's like. Yeah, like, I have seen a lot of the one that they were using for the filming, which is the one that was designed to work with the special effects to get the cloaking technology going. Yeah. So I don't think I've actually seen one. I'm not sure if they ever actually made one of the, like, the one that was supposed to be, like, the end of the movie suit of. I'm sure there's designs and I'm sure there's parts of it, but I'm not sure if there was ever a fully assembled suit. And I will say I saw some shots where they actually showed how the. The camouflage was going to look with that suit. And you do see more of the.

38:49
Case
The form, like, the body plan of the predator in those shots because it was more distinctly kind of long and slender with, like, key details, as opposed to the final one, which is a little bit more like person, but chunky in some regards.

39:04
Leo
And by the way, actually, before we continue, we should say that at this point, it wasn't called the Predator. It was the hunter.

39:12
Case
Yes. Yeah. Which there is a line in the movie that is definitely, like one of those, like, they set the title, except they changed the title by the time it came out where it's like. It's like a hunter. Yeah.

39:23
Leo
I want to get back. I want to defend Van Damme a little bit, but let's. Okay.

39:25
Sam
Yeah.

39:26
Leo
We got more to say about the suit.

39:27
Case
Yeah, well, no. So, like, we're going to talk about Van Damme right now.

39:29
Leo
Yeah. There's all these accounts of, like, all of them calling him a complainer and talking about how he was complaining about stuff all the time. You know what? There was a moment where they apparently wanted him to do a particular stunt, which was being in this suit. And to be clear, the way the suit was, because remember how it was supposed to have those inverted goat legs? So it was Jean Claude Van Damme, and attached to his feet were stilts. He was on stilts. He was on, like, little, like, you know, diagonal kind of stilts. So he could have that inverted leg effect. And apparently there was one spot where they wanted him to do a jump, and he basically looked and was like, that's dangerous. I'm not going to do that. Like, I know. I know my limits.

40:10
Leo
I'm going to break my leg if you want me to do that jump. And he refused to do it. And they had a stuntman do it and the stuntman broke his leg.

40:18
Sam
Yeah.

40:18
Leo
So, like, they were asking him, you know, that they were like, so that's. That's bullshit. And that's. And that's him being right. And, and basically, apparently, a lot of the things is that he talks about interviews about how, like, he went in to meet with the studio and in this and in meeting with the producers, and he's doing all his jumps and his kicks, and they haven't run all around until the moment that they put him in that suit. He thought he was going there to do a movie where he got to be where he would. He thought he was going to be kickboxing Arnold Schwarzenegger. He thought he was going to be in some kind of, like, sleek suit where he could show off his martial arts and his gymnastics, but as an alien and fight Arnold Schwarzenegger that way.

41:02
Leo
And they show up and, like the director says in the behind the scenes, oh, yeah, he had no idea he showed up. And were just, and we all figured he knew, and were like, oh, no one told you? No. You're gonna be in this crazy suit and, in fact, you're gonna, like, no one's ever gonna see your face and you're gonna be invisible half the time.

41:19
Sam
Yeah.

41:20
Leo
And he was, and he just hated it, and it was just not what he thought it was gonna be. And he was pissed off the whole time, which.

41:26
Case
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, and that's the thing. Like, there are easily five different accounts when you look at the oral history that are all like, oh, yeah, I saw how this played out. And, like, all of them described the scene where he got fired differently. Like, one was like, he takes the suit or, like, the head of the suit and, like, throws it to the ground because he's angry and it breaks. Like, there's ones where, like, just the producers, like, see the suit and they're like, oh, he doesn't look right. Like, we hate the look.

41:49
Case
And they, like, fired him because he was cast to be in a look that is totally different than what they go with because when they recast it, they get Kevin Peter hall, who is seven foot two and does not need to be on stilts to be towering over everyone. So there's all kinds of different versions. It is probably somewhere in the middle of all this. I don't know. I'm not sure about. Van Damme says someone's leg got broken. Don't see anyone else say it. So, like, it may have happened and they're all just, like, attributing it to something else. It may have been like someone's going to break their leg and then he just, like, sort of made it in his head be like that. It actually happened. I have no idea.

42:30
Sam
To be, to be fair. I'm gonna, I'm gonna back Leo up on here. The people were getting sick on this set. I don't feel like the safety, like, concerns for anyone on this set was very high. So I feel like it's a totally plausible that would have happened and not discussed, like, and, like, not talked about.

42:54
Case
I could believe every single one of these stories. And I'm sure you know what? Like, I, like I'm as much in Van Damme's camp as I am in anyone else's on this one because it's just like, they're all different and I don't know whose is right. But also, we do know that Hollywood has a history of anyone who voices a legitimate complaint getting fired and then being referred to as, like, a complainer or someone who's not a team player. So, yeah, it is true that actors who speak out against safety issues oftentimes get blackballed.

43:21
Sam
I think also specifically, he was a stuntman. Right. Stunt people tend to not be treated terribly well. And so I think that there is a complete and total possibility that this is a story that no one would just tell. Be like, oh, well, that happens sometimes for stunt people.

43:42
Leo
Yeah, but in either case. Oh, I saw one a little bit where Ven Dam's talking about how I, one of them, I think Carl Weathers basically went up to him was like, don't quit. Let them fire you. Like, like, it'll better for you if you let yourself get fired, as opposed to if you quit, which I don't know necessarily why that would be, but I.

44:03
Case
But, but probably with some kind of payout, if I had to guess.

44:06
Leo
Yeah, but, and in either case, he did. What is, what is definitely, what is what all accounts agree on is that he was fired with the director, basically, the producer, basically shouting out at me that you'll never work in this town again. You'll never work in this town again. You're fired. And then a year later, he did Bloodsport.

44:25
Case
Right.

44:26
Leo
And became a household name among action people.

44:28
Case
Yeah. So on that note, let's move on to the predator that we actually got. And I had. I wasn't sure how to, like, kind of categorize this. Normally, when we talk about fifth movies, we sort of talk about pre production, the actual production, and then post. All the things that I have to say about post production were stuff they discovered while they were shooting, a reference that the suit looked weird for the purpose of filming the camouflage effect. Because they were filming entirely in a green jungle, they red screened this situation. So the suit was this bright red initially, this weird, like, bug frog or bug dog looking thing. And then later they got the redesign. But, yeah, it's just this, like, full body red suit that they could then key out.

45:10
Leo
One of the Van Damme stories is the director talking about, how about how Van Damme, how when they first put him in that red suit, he didn't get that wasn't actually what it was gonna look like on film. And he was basically around, like, this is the stupidest looking suit, this bright red suit. And they had to be like, no, no. It's gonna be invisible. That's. It's. No, no, they're gonna cut that out.

45:31
Case
And it's. It's amazing looking in the. At the, like, the behind the scenes documentary where they're trying to explain it because they're talk. They're. These are people working in the eighties trying to explain basically the concept of green screen, which is the thing that we are super familiar with at this point. But this is just so early in that becoming ubiquitous technology that, like, they didn't even have the language for it. Like, no one says keying out, which is exactly what they're doing. They're like, oh, so we could mat. And it's like, that's sort of what you're doing, and. But that's more older style special effects than what we're talking about here. You're actually removing you from the. From the shot.

46:04
Case
And this was actually a really cool way they did it, which is that they would shoot the scene at, like, all the predator's motions, because for the most part, the predator is not in the same shot with anyone, aside from, like, very specific kills. It's usually, like, reaction from person cut to the camouflage figure. So they would shoot the predator's motion with the red, like, the red suit, and then they would shoot the same camera, but with a different lens so that you would end up having a different, like, a different permutation of how all the, like, how the foliage actually looked.

46:35
Case
It would all have this, like, fish eye effect, and that would be inserted behind the main mat or, like, the main screen, and that would, that's how you would get this, like, warping effect as it moved, which I just thought was rather cool. Like, that's pretty rad. I. So the predator design. So I mentioned that it was Kevin Peter hall that they cast. Seven foot two guy, apparently very nice, fortunately passed away not as not that old a guy. It was, like, right after predator two that he died. I think it was, like, 42 or something like that.

47:05
Leo
He was in predator two.

47:06
Case
He was in predator two. Yeah. But then he died shortly after, along.

47:10
Leo
With, side note, do you know who else do you know? Like, do you know the thing about who they got for all the predators at the end of Predator two?

47:17
Case
Oh, yeah. The Lakers.

47:18
Leo
Yeah. Because there's the scene where they need a whole bunch of predators, and they're just like, we're in Los Angeles. We need a whole bunch of seven foot tall people.

47:25
Case
Yeah.

47:25
Sam
We need the tallest people we can find. Cause the Lakers.

47:29
Case
Yeah. Well, that was, Glover was the star of that one, and he was apparently a huge fan. He was like, I would love to meet them all. If we could get that. That'd be great. And they're like, oh, yeah, we could be predators. Cool.

47:40
Leo
And I know we're not talking about that one, but I just want to take one moment to say that I love so much that it went from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Danny Glover as the fighting Predators people, which is, like, not what you think of.

47:51
Case
But anyway, yeah, Predator two is a better movie than I think people remember it being, but it's not the movie people expected to be the follow up to this one. But. So for the redesign. So they. Yeah, they threw out the original design, and they brought in Stan Winston, who had done lots of great stuff, including the Terminator movies. Yep.

48:11
Leo
Yeah. Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger was, like, bringing this guy.

48:13
Case
Yeah. Like, special effects legend. And he's working on this thing and working out some sketches for it. And he was working on it on a flight where he was sitting next to James Cameron, who suggested, hey, you know what would be really cool? If the alien had mandibles? And, like, that became the signature face for this thing because James Cameron made a suggestion like, oh, hey, wouldn't that be cool to do?

48:33
Leo
Moral of the story is if James Cameron gives you a suggestion on a creature design? You should probably go with it.

48:39
Case
I'm just fascinated at the, like, the murderer's row of talent that we ultimately got attached to this movie. Considering that. Again, first time screenwriter, first time producer, second time director, and then just, like, the biggest people on the planet are backing them up on this movie. It's, like, insane. So everyone knows when you talk about the predator movies that there's, like, thermal vision is, like, a very characteristic part of it. When you talk about these movies, everyone remembers, oh, yeah, blue within, like, the infrared stuff. And you would think like, all right, that's, you know, it's probably not too hard of an effect to do in post, but they actually wanted to do it in. In lens. They wanted to do it in the camera while filming.

49:17
Case
But the problem is, if you're filming in 100 degree jungle and you have an infrared camera that picks up heat signatures, the people are actually colder than the jungle around them. And so they actually got infrared cameras, and they tried to do it and then found out it wasn't going to work. And they're like, oh, fuck, how do we do this?

49:37
Leo
And they tried a few awful sounding methods. They tried having the actors stand near heaters and fires to try and heat themselves up a little bit. They tried just hosing down everything else around them to try and make everything around them colder.

49:52
Case
Yeah.

49:53
Sam
I love that people are passing out and not drinking water, and you're like, you know, why don't you stand near this heater?

50:00
Leo
I'm standing near the fire. Yeah.

50:01
Sam
Why don't we dehydrate you more?

50:03
Leo
Amazing. Nobody died on this.

50:05
Sam
It's honest.

50:05
Case
I know.

50:06
Sam
Really amazing. Which is why I still think that maybe that stunt person broke their leg, because, honestly, and also the fact.

50:13
Leo
And let's also not let not, not forget that. That. That they're on hills the whole time.

50:19
Sam
Oh, yeah.

50:19
Leo
There's a couple sources. We're like, they're in mud. Where Schwarzenegger, like, talks about how there were days where you'd basically just be, you know, one leg higher than the other no matter where you were all day long, because they're just on hills. And it's just how awful that was to film on while they're dealing with all the rest of this crap.

50:36
Sam
It's amazing that this film actually turned out as well as it is because there's so many issues with it actually being made.

50:43
Leo
I mean, look, it is a testament to fucking powering through and just believing in a vision and just going for it, which is what they all did. I really enjoyed the helicopter shots.

50:54
Sam
Yeah.

50:56
Leo
In the beginning when there's the two helicopters flying in formation on screen with each other, I was just very impressed because that means that they had three helicopters flying in tight formation through the jungle together.

51:09
Sam
Yeah.

51:10
Leo
I mean, honestly, I know nothing.

51:11
Sam
There's so many good, I know nothing.

51:13
Leo
About flying helicopters, but it seems, like, tough. Seems, seems tough to me.

51:16
Sam
Yeah. There's so many good shots in this, though. Like, honestly, it's really shot well, like, I mean, I think iconic. Right. Is, is just the shot where he sees the predator and he's, like, hiding underneath that tree covered in mud, like, just praying. And then you see it and you kind of, like, they make sure that you're seeing it from his point of view. Right. So it's like sometimes you don't really see him. And it's through that, like, just pathway, and it's just perfect. As he just emerges from the water with, like, the electricity, like, kind of sprouting off of him. Like, it's like, actually, like a very, like, I can't even imagine what that felt like on a large, like, you know, like in the movie theater. Like, that must have been amazing. Says the person who just saw it recently.

52:05
Leo
Speaking of. Speaking of seeing it from his point of view. You know what? I would be interested. Something that I forgot because it had been so long since I'd seen this. What I forgot that you saw the alien ship in the beginning, I sort of assuming, I assumed for some reason I was just coming into this figuring, oh, surely there must be a period of movie where you, the audience don't know what's going on. But no, because they show the ship coming and then they, and then right from the beginning, they're showing you bits of them being watched by this thing. And they make it very clear early on that it is invisible by showing it through the predator's eyes. All the Predator pov shots of how close he's getting to them and they clearly don't see him.

52:58
Leo
And you're like, oh, shit, this is an invisible thing. And I guess I feel like almost anyone else would have tried to make this. I feel like there'd be so much where, at least for a little bit of time, you, the audience are with them and don't know what's going on. And I, and I would actually enjoy seeing a cut of it. And I would be not at all surprised if this existed somewhere. I figure somewhere out there's a film student who's taken predator and removed all the predator pov shots so that there is a cut of the film where the audience gets to experience what's going on along with Arnold and his crew. And until they see the true evidence that there's an invisible alien out there, the audience doesn't get to know it. Like, like, I feel. I feel like.

53:47
Leo
I feel like that is the other way to do it. I'm not saying that's better. I like the way they did it here. I like that. I like that it brings the audience along. They are, these are really big, tough guys being stalked by something outside of their experience. And you are going to see what it is seeing and just. And make sure that. But it would also be. It would also be fun to, I think to see without all that.

54:12
Case
Yeah. In my head, it was always just like a shooting star in the background. And then we. Then you see it. But then. But no, you're right. You actually even see, like, the details of the ship.

54:20
Sam
Yeah.

54:21
Leo
At the beginning, you see that the ship comes. You see that the. You see the pod detached from the ship. You see it burn a little bit on entry into the atmosphere.

54:30
Sam
Yeah.

54:31
Case
Yep. I do want to highlight some cool creativity that came from this, which is that when they tried to shoot with infrared cameras and everything was basically just all red because it was all 100 degrees and the people weren't any warmer than anything else around them. That actually did inspire a cool thing. So when every time you were looking at the predator's vision, his pov, they do this artificially darkened blue kind of look, and then they add highlight colors and posts to get it all to look like it should for kind of a thermal reading. But at the end of the movie, when the predator takes his mask off and he takes it down, everything goes red. Because what that. What they're indicating there is that the predator's mask is actually tuning it so that it's only seeing the heat signatures of living things.

55:16
Case
And that once he doesn't have the mask on, it's not filtering it. And just so he's actually almost blind during that fight.

55:22
Leo
Yeah, it makes no sense why he takes that mask off.

55:25
Case
Oh, it's. Well, it's. He can't also can't breathe without it because it's like, clearly like a breather because, like, at least not for very well. He's toying with him. Like, that's kind of what it's there. It's just like, all right, I took the gun off. I took everything off. Like, like, no tricks now I'm just gonna fuck you up kind of thing.

55:42
Sam
Yeah, it was a, it was a pissing contest. Tough guy move. Like, oh, don't worry, I'll fight. I'll fight you without this. I'll fight you without this. How about that? Come at me now. It was obnoxious and it was wonderful, but I did have a moment where I was like, he can breathe. Like, did he do a breath? Like, did he do a check for our atmosphere? Like, I was like, when he takes.

56:07
Leo
The mask off and there's gas, there's bits of gas coming out of part of it. It was clearly feeding some sort of gas into him.

56:14
Case
Yeah, but it doesn't need it. I think it's supposedly that the atmosphere is not particularly healthy for them, but they, I mean, again, like, we've, this is also a movie we're talking about where then there's been so much lore built out after it.

56:28
Sam
Like, right.

56:29
Case
Trying to have a conversation about some of the things in here that it's like, yeah, all these things have been answered by later writers who were, it's not like some, like, well crafted world. It's all been built upon. It was some sort of, like, filtering system where it's an atmosphere they can survive in for a while, but it's not particularly good. He would need to put his mask on probably in a few minutes. But he just, in this moment was just like, oh, I'm gonna beat you real bad. And part of the reason is just so that we can get that fucking amazing face. Oh, yeah, the crab face.

56:53
Leo
Absolutely. Yeah.

56:54
Sam
Yeah. I mean, again, listen, I'm not, I'm.

56:56
Leo
Not, I'm not disputing that. I I get why the filmmakers wanted it to happen. I just, the nitpicky part of me is just going, why are you taking off your spacesuit while you're on an alien planet?

57:09
Case
Yeah.

57:09
Leo
But I get it.

57:13
Sam
I think maybe there's a little bit something nihilistic about it too. Like, oh, I'm gonna take this shit off, beat the crap out of you and then blow myself up. So, I mean, it's kind of nice. It's kind of nice.

57:25
Leo
And you know what? And I'm realizing now, actually, it does, it, it coincides with what we saw earlier in the movie when Sonny, the big native american dude, the big tracker, throws his gun away and takes off his equipment and takes out his knife and cuts himself from the chest to go, here I am, come at me. And that's what the predator's doing. He's doing that same exact moment. I'm gonna lose all my advantages and just show that I can take you on. Which. Which is, which is the thing that separates this, because the whole thing of it is a hunter with better technology hunting already dangerous prey. But the difference between the analog, between that and the analog, you know, of course, being humans, being, like, what it's like.

58:12
Leo
Like, this is, you know, it's showing a little bit of what it's like for people to be hunted by something more technologically advanced, kind of like when we hunt lions and tigers, which are the difference being that if you throw your gun away to fight a lion or a tiger, you're not going to have a good time after that. Which is why, potentially, the smaller version of the predators, like a smaller, sleeker version of the predator suit, would make more sense if the whole thing is that he needs his technology. But no, they went with. No, even physically, one one without his guns, without his amazing tracking equipment and everything, this thing is also just plain stronger than a human being can be.

58:57
Case
Yeah, this is more the unfairness of it all. I think there is a commentary going on about the nature of safari hunters and the differential in terms of what you're doing when you do those kind of hunts. But I think it would be more equivalent to a thing when you're hunting boar or deer or something where you actually might have a physical chance against them in a fight, maybe even a superior chance if you're. If you have a knife, depending, you know. You know, I'm not gonna get into that one, but I think what they're trying to comment on is that, like, this is, like, this is not a good guy. This is not even, like, an honorable guy. I would argue that the later Predator movies have built up this little, like, honorable warrior culture thing and, like, the comics certainly have.

59:38
Case
But I don't think that is supported by the text of this movie. I think that this movie.

59:41
Leo
There is nothing honorable about setting off that bomb at the end of.

59:45
Sam
No, yeah, no, there's no at all.

59:46
Leo
You've lost the fight.

59:48
Sam
I will say that he honestly does, even though he is actively hunting the group, he actually does not lay a hand on the woman when he could have in that first scene. Right. He actually. She's actually being hunted. So he is a predator that goes after predators in this particular text. Right. Because she's being hunted down. She's their prisoner anyway. And he doesn't understand that context, but he actively strikes down someone who's trying to catch her. So I can see where the kernel of what became this altruistic, kind of, like, classy, warrior type thing could come in. Because you can make an argument that the predator is only interested in other predators to become the apex predator, even in this film.

01:00:44
Leo
Predator versus Dexter. Yep, that's the next one.

01:00:50
Sam
He only is gonna hunt serial killers like they.

01:00:55
Case
They have done quite a few times. We'll talk about that in a second. But. But, yeah, it's, you know, it's just an interesting moment where we get this character just trying to, like, prove its. Its physical superiority in addition to its technological superiority. And then ultimately, Arne is actually the better tactical mind. You know, like, he lures him into a fake trap so that he goes around and steps into the real trap. And that's brilliant. Like, that was fantastic right there.

01:01:19
Sam
Because evil genius.

01:01:21
Case
Yeah, again, evil genius on old Schwarzenegger is the master there is that.

01:01:27
Leo
Oh, I didn't get. Okay, I got that. He avoided one trapdez, but because Arnold had been smart enough to put up two traps, he still had the other one. You think he was deliberately trying to. Trying to not.

01:01:40
Case
I think that's a difference without a distinction. I think that the first trap, if. If the creature was dumb enough to step into it, would have killed him, too. But I think that it was very obvious on purpose, or maybe not on purpose, but I think that the assumption was that were trying to get him into the position he ultimately was in so you could drop the log on him.

01:01:58
Leo
You know what? I like that. I like that. I like that better, because. Because there is the thought that I'm watching Arnold sitting there going, come on. Come on, kill me. And I'm just like, no one's going to fall for that. Why do you think anyone's going to fall for that? You're being too obvious. Okay, I like your explanation then.

01:02:12
Case
Yeah. And it's worth noting that the final confrontation, Arnold Schwarzenegger does not have any of his actual sophisticated human weapons. It is entirely at this point him going off of the stuff that he can make and provide for himself and using, like, mud, which is such a cool component, like flipping the invisibility scenario when the cloak has been sort of broken on the predator. At this point.

01:02:34
Leo
No, at that point, it's been. It's been. Oh, no, you're right. No, no. Only sort of at that point, you're right.

01:02:40
Case
But like, it's such, like, the confrontation, like, the third act is so wonderful, but that's all shot after the break because they. Again, they ran out of time shooting. They cut together this thing. They had this gap. I guess it's because of the Schwarzenegger wedding. But this is the scenario that we always talk about in the main episodes, where it's like, well, you can't just say you would get more money or more time. You have to say how you would do it. And this movie did it by being like, hey, look at this cut that we have of, you know, like, the last eight days. They reshot the mercenary base, like, firefight to make it more dramatic and explosive.

01:03:13
Case
So that actually probably contributes to why were saying, like, hey, there's, like, this weird discontinuity in terms of, like, them saying, like, we want to save the hostages, and it just becomes this huge, explosive firefight. They were trying to sell it as an action movie scene. You know, we get. We probably got more of those, like, one liners in that scene there because they were trying to make it this big dramatic thing that would catch studios eyes. And then we, like, can insert the stuff about them being scared.

01:03:39
Case
They put it all together, and that earned enough attention from studios that they got the budget to finish up, again about half the movie that they hadn't actually shot, which included hiring a famous special effects guy to create a new suit and do all this stuff, like, again, I had no idea when we said, like, hey, let's talk about this movie, that it wasn't just gonna be like, it's pretty weird that they didn't fire John Claude Van Damme, huh? And, like, I thought it was gonna be like, a 30 minutes episode.

01:04:06
Sam
Yeah, it's pretty good. They fired him. It sucks.

01:04:09
Case
Yeah. Cause that third act is fucking brilliant. The whole movie, I think, is really well done. This is one of those, like, I'm a broken record kind of points here. I am a sucker for movies that follow the pattern of the Beowulf epic, and there's a lot to be said about this movie following the Grindel component of that story arc. It's a group of the most badass warriors traveling into a scenario that they think they understand only to find a supernatural threat hiding in the shadows that whittles them down. And it's that. Now, do I think it's as deliberate as with alien? Which alien trilogy is very much the three parts of the Beowulf saga? No, I think that is a more deliberate take on Beowulf in a Sci-Fi setting.

01:04:55
Case
But I think that there are certainly very clear parallels in theme, and that can just be sort of like the monomyth component of our culture. But, hey, this is a pretty good one. Like, if you're looking at this as, like, a take on Beowulf versus Grendel, it works real well. And I enjoy that.

01:05:12
Sam
Nerd.

01:05:13
Case
Yeah. But, yeah. So this movie was a huge success, at least in terms of box office. Critics didn't love it at the time, but it has gone on to be a classic for action movie fans.

01:05:26
Leo
Apparently, critics, there were critics that called it boring and dull and predictable. And it's just like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't know how you could possibly watch this movie and go dull.

01:05:38
Case
I think if you're coming off of, like, the string of Schwarzenegger movies leading up to it and you think that this is just another commando, you could be convinced that, oh, it's just another big action movie thing with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

01:05:50
Leo
In it, but that means he didn't watch it.

01:05:53
Case
Well, what I'm saying is, when you look at it through the lens of it being a subversion of that, where the characters, who are the protagonists and the undefeatable, like Ubermensches that are battling it out in most of the movies of this time, and, oh, this is actually then being like the american military forces that are here. Even if. Even if Dutch is being played by an Austrian, he's supposed to be an american soldier veteran who has gone mercenary.

01:06:17
Leo
All these characters, even if he's an Austrian called Dutch, he's playing in America.

01:06:22
Case
Yes, yes. They are. They are ultimately outmoded by this thing. And that, I think, is a really interesting theme here, where I, we are taking the tropes of the traditional action movie of the era, introducing the supernatural element and showing how they don't stack up to it. I think that's a really cool thing. And why people continue to talk about it.

01:06:44
Sam
Yeah.

01:06:44
Case
And why they continue to do adaptations of it, why they do crossovers of stuff. Why in Predator two, when they have an Easter egg of an alien skull on the predator ship where it's like, oh, fuck, we have to do alien versus Predator now. Okay. Since then, the predator has fought Batman multiple times. They've fought Superman. I think at one point, they fought Tarzan. They have done all kinds of weird crossovers.

01:07:06
Leo
And you know what? And they set up in this movie that he's. That this has been happening for hundreds of years.

01:07:13
Case
Yeah.

01:07:13
Leo
Cause they have the woman. They have that woman say, like old women in the village would tell stories about the demon that makes trophies of men that comes in the hottest years and hunts in the jungle. And they set it up right there.

01:07:30
Case
Yeah, I caught that line on this rewatch and it's like, oh, so this happens all the time in this area. Like, this is where they go to Safari. And I love the safari take. Like, I think, again, that they move away from that more towards, like, honorable hunter society. But I love the idea of this just being an alien world that's probably way too hot. And that's why they only come when it's, like, really hot. And it's, you know, they have a weird atmosphere that they have some kind of rebreather, but they also just like to come and just being like, yeah, we'll kill some fucking people. Like that. That sounds like a good old weekend. Like, and that's what the predator's doing here.

01:08:05
Sam
I mean, honestly, is there like an equivalent of holiday vacations predator? You know, like the Griswolds, but, like, predator and family coming on safari? Because I kind of want to see that.

01:08:18
Leo
It's just like a nice, like, happy kind of comedy movie that involves predators coming and killing a bunch of people on earth.

01:08:24
Sam
Yeah. Yeah.

01:08:25
Case
Like, we're just traveling to, like, his family.

01:08:28
Sam
Yeah.

01:08:28
Case
If it needs to be hot and tropical, they go to Disney World. Like, it's Florida. It's gross, it's humid. They're there. They're just checking out shit.

01:08:36
Sam
Yeah. And, you know, and they can still hunt. They can still be part of it, you know?

01:08:42
Leo
But they're teaching, they're just quietly snapd. They're just quietly snatching people off roller coasters.

01:08:46
Sam
They're actually teaching their children.

01:08:49
Case
After all, it's a small world after.

01:08:53
Sam
And they're teaching their kids how to.

01:08:56
Leo
But it's at Disneyland because adult predators aren't gonna go after kids.

01:09:02
Sam
Right, exactly.

01:09:03
Leo
But the children need to learn.

01:09:05
Sam
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah.

01:09:08
Case
Actually, this is actually working out really well. There's apparently this whole, like, group of, like, youtubers that are, like, young kids who, like, sneak into, like, back areas of, like, Disney world and, like, film sections where they, like, find, like, unused animatronics or like, shut down sets and so forth. Like a bunch of those kids and they're being tailed by a child predator.

01:09:29
Sam
Do it. I want, I want.

01:09:31
Case
Because that sounded wrong. A youth of the predator species.

01:09:40
Sam
Yes. Yeah, that was inappropriate, Case. I don't care if you work too much this week.

01:09:55
Leo
Case. Who would you want to play the child predator? Who do you think? Who do you think would make a good child predator? Praise.

01:10:02
Sam
Yeah.

01:10:04
Case
Well, this is the time to bring back Jean Claude Van Damme, but not have him in stilts.

01:10:08
Sam
Oh, terrible.

01:10:11
Case
It's redemption. Like, they gave Shane black the attempt to do one of the sequels. He wrote and directed. Predator or me? The predator. Sorry. So, yeah, this could be the redemption of Jean Claude Van Damme in the franchise. And the best part is you can tie it in with everyone trying to figure out what happened to buzzy so we can be like, they got our boy. And fans of Ginny Nicholson will know what I just referenced.

01:10:34
Leo
Okay.

01:10:34
Sam
Oh, boy.

01:10:35
Case
I love this idea. Epcot. Like, think about how cool that would be. It's at epcot. There's just kids going missing all around the world.

01:10:45
Sam
I just think that it could be pretty terrible and heartwarming at the same time, earning your dad predator. Oh, my gosh. The father predator's approval. So wrong. But, you know, just. Just, you know, like, go forth, my child. Go forth and hunt. It'd be great. Somebody write it. Somebody make it.

01:11:08
Leo
Look, somebody out there makes some child predators. And now let's talk about.

01:11:15
Case
Well, and now I feel like we've talked a lot about this movie. We've kind of gone through all the steps here. Like, there isn't really that much else to say. It's like, oh, look, the Predator blood was bye taking glowsticks and cracking them open. You know, these aren't the hard ones. Like, these aren't the adversity. The adversity was all the shooting conditions, the crew not knowing what they were doing, having to fly in, people from Australia, having it be a new director, new writers, all of this stuff. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger, evil genius, fucking around with everyone else, apparently to inspire them to better in shape for the shoot, but still, like, just a crazy fucking shoot. But they made also one of the greatest Sci-Fi horror classics of all time in this.

01:11:56
Leo
Can I tell you one of the reasons that I picked this off your list is because. Is because when I think of movies that I'm gonna make my fucking kid watch when he's in his teen years, this is on there. This is a scenario that I have imagined is that is a family night when I'm with Mike kid and some friend of his, and I'm just like, all right. Movie night time. You guys know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is, right? Yeah. Yeah. The politician, you know, who used to be an actor. Right here's your options? Arnold Schwarzenegger as an a. As a robot from the future trying to kill the savior of humanity. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a secret agent on Mars who gets involved with a mutant revolution, or Arnold Schwarzenegger in a jungle fighting an invisible alien? Choose your movie.

01:12:48
Leo
Like, that is a scenario I've envisioned, and I saw this on your list. I was like, yep.

01:12:52
Case
That.

01:12:52
Leo
I want to talk about that.

01:12:53
Case
That just looks like a wonderful glimpse into the future. And I.

01:12:57
Sam
Yes.

01:13:00
Leo
Can we talk a little bit about the scene where they just destroy the jungle?

01:13:05
Case
Oh, yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, I think that holds the record for most gunshots in a scene.

01:13:11
Leo
So Macd, played by Billy Duke, and I forget his name, but played by Jesse Ventura. Let's just call him Jesse Ventura.

01:13:18
Sam
Yeah, that's fine.

01:13:19
Leo
Who clearly have this wonderful friendship that I really enjoy.

01:13:22
Case
Yeah. Unsung great moment there. Yeah. They're like, they were in a unit together in Vietnam, and now they're just best buds.

01:13:29
Leo
Yeah. And who clearly have, like, little inside jokes with each other and inside stuff, and they share their whiskey, their little flask of whiskey. And again, I love the idea that they have a scene together where they're talking about just how thick this jungle is, which is extra funny if you know that the film crew literally had to thicken the jungle.

01:13:47
Sam
Right.

01:13:48
Leo
And then Jesse Ventura gets. Gets shot by the predator. And Bill Duke sees, like, actually sees the predator, sees the glowing eyes, freaks the fuck out, picks up the gatling gun and just starts mowing down the forest, which apparently is a signal to the rest of them. If you see a guy mowing down an area with the Gatling gun, you also mow down that area and every single member of their. Which means they've done that before. Right. And so every single member of the unit goes and just starts firing into a general area, just going, we're going to turn this entire section of jungle into nothing but dead things and destroy everything. And what they had to do when shooting that is they actually. Cause they're. They're firing. They were firing blanks, of course, which.

01:14:42
Leo
Which still had the effect of actual, like, you know, fire kind of barking out of that gun. Like, it still felt to them like they were shooting real stuff.

01:14:49
Case
Yeah. Blanks usually actually have more gunpowder than real bullets. Oh, really? So it's louder.

01:14:54
Leo
Okay. Okay, cool. And they basically just, like, had to outfit that whole section of forest with wires so that as they were shooting the blanks they had set people just, like, pulling down on the wires and pulling down all the bits of jungle. And then they would do a take and then all the actors would like to have to go off and do some other stuff while they spent the next few hours resetting that whole section of jungle so they could do another take of it. But, yeah, like, that whole sequence there is just awesome because, again, it implies that they've done that particular technique before. They're all on board with it. Like, there's never moment where it's like, what are we? Like, oh, no, he's firing the Gatling gun in that direction. That means we destroy that whole direction.

01:15:40
Case
There's, there's actually a foreshadow. So when they encounter the skinned green berets, they observe, it's like, oh, it must have been an ambush because they find all the gun casings from them and they talk about how it must have been an ambush going on there. And so at this point now, like, they've started to get scared. They, they're what, two down at this point or three down? Yeah, with Ventura. And so when they start, they're all freaking out on this in this scenario. And basically, and with the Gatling gun going off, then their location has been established. So they're like, well, we better make sure that anything's around here is dead because we're very clearly sitting ducks if we stop firing. So it's a nice bit there because I didn't notice it on previous watches. And then it's here. It's like, oh, exactly.

01:16:23
Case
What happened to the first crew is happening to them now.

01:16:26
Leo
Yeah, there's the part where the tracker, when they find the first crew and the big tracker, sonny basically just, like, looks at short singers like they were shooting in all directions. Like, whatever it was, they were shooting everywhere because they were beset by an invisible foe. And then, and then Duke and, sorry, Mack. Bill Duke has the moment where he just kind of loses his mind and little and flips out going after the predator and Schwarzenegger and Carl weather. Schwarzenegger starts to go after him. Carl weathers goes, no, I go after him. And then Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers have this really abnormally long moment between them, considering that we just established you've got to run after your guy who's freaking out of.

01:17:18
Leo
And they take like a full minute and a half before he actually goes with moments of, all right, you go do it. Hey, wait, take this. All right, one more one liner. I'll see you around. And then I'm just like, he's getting farther away, dude. Like, go, Sam.

01:17:37
Case
Were there any scenes that jumped out to you that we haven't talked about?

01:17:40
Sam
You know, just because we just mentioned one liners, I felt like one of the one liners, which was clearly a one liner that just rang so freaking true, might be Schwarzenegger's best reading of a line, which is, you're an ugly motherfucker. Because it just rang so true. Like, it's clearly a one liner, and they felt like it needed to be said, but it actually was, like, a real momentous. Like, I was just like, yeah, I could see people really saying that. And the, and the delivery of it was, like, not like a normal, like, kind of one liner. Like, it just felt like, this is a real moment. So I wanted to give props to that because I was like, oh, that felt. I would probably say that you're right.

01:18:31
Leo
His delivery is very genuine. His delivery is very, like, wow. I was not expecting that kind of thing. Can I, can I tell you what's fun about that moment for me is that I'm sure, like, the first time that I saw this, I believe, was on tv, where it was, like, being censored and edited, and. And it was. And Schwarzenegger goes, you are one ugly mother. And then the creature cuts him off by shouting, oh, like, the creature cuts him. And I, the first time that I saw it not censored, I was like, oh, I didn't, I never realized he finished the word. I thought that's just how that it was. You are one ugly mother. Cuts him off. That's how it was on tv.

01:19:16
Sam
That's actually a clever way of doing it.

01:19:18
Case
Like, like, that is the yippee ki yay, motherfucker of this movie and of this franchise. In later movies, they have it. And actually, just like the die hard movies on the ones that are supposed to be a little bit more all ages, like the alien versus predator ones, for example, they do cut it at the mother, and it's like, oh. But that's also what they do for the die hard ones. Like, it's kind of fascinating that in both scenarios, their catchphrases end with motherfucker. And, like, they, the mother allows for them to have a cut that is actually fairly seamless. Like, you know exactly what was supposed to be said. And it still works.

01:19:49
Leo
Yeah, pretty sure. The last time that I actually saw die hard on a channel where they would have to censor it, they just did it in a way. They had them go, yippee ki yay. Melon Farmer. In just a way. In just a way that you saw some editor just being like, you all know what's happening. Like, who cares?

01:20:07
Case
This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps. Yes.

01:20:11
Leo
Yes. Yes. Exactly like that.

01:20:13
Case
Yes. One last thing I want to call attention to is the sound design for the predator, because I realize we haven't mentioned it. I think it's just good. I don't have any notes about it being like, oh, this was like, you know, something that was adversity, and they course corrected. This was just like, oh, this idea of the predator. Like a duck whistle repeating back what people have said to lure them in. Like, he even, like, does the, like here. Like, kind of like lines from. From Bill Duke's character at points and then at the end when he's dying. I don't. I don't know when I finally clicked, but it was like, as an adult, I was like, oh, wait, he's not laughing. He's copying the laugh from Billy the scout.

01:20:50
Sam
Yeah.

01:20:51
Leo
I thought. I thought his copying things was fun. Was. Was fascinating. Because when he first starts to do it, your first thought is, oh, he's learning the language. No, he's not. He's just recording sound specifically to use it to fuck with people.

01:21:04
Sam
Yeah.

01:21:04
Case
Right.

01:21:05
Sam
Also, I want to say about the sound is they. They actually added a very nice, kind of like crackle. Like a kind of crackle when he, like, first comes out of the water. Like. And it's just kind of like. Because it's different enough that it's not in the atmosphere of the jungle. Right. It's so. We've heard different sounds from the jungle, but this is different. It's mechanical, but it's kind of like a clicking kind of crackle to it. And it's just kind of, like, nice to have that because it's this moment where you see this thing emerge and you're kind of close in on it, and there's like, you know, kind of. And then you just hear this sound.

01:21:49
Sam
And even as he turns off the, you know, kind of the electrical power around him and kind of sets his settings so that he's good again. It's still kind of there. And even though it's very light, it adds to the tension because it's one of the few times where the score kind of quiets down. Right. Which is really great, because Arnold is trying to be quiet. Right? He's trying to. He's like, oh, shit. And the score kind of quiets down, and the jungle feels kind of quiet. And it's just this crackling sound from, you know, the predator. And it's a really cool moment, I think, like, the sound. The sound in that way for this film is really well thought out.

01:22:35
Leo
Can I talk about. Just because you made me think of it just now, talking about the predator getting in water and having that happen when after Schwarzenegger has, like, just barely escaped and fallen off the cliff into the water and he's crawling out in the mud and he's catching a breather and he thinks he's escaped, and then something invisible falls into the water behind him. Yeah. And what's great, allowing a moment to see Arnold Schwarzenegger being afraid is just a great moment that not a lot of Schwarzenegger movies are going to have, because he's always, like, he's either stoic or he's just confident in destroying everything. And seeing him crawling away going in this moment, like, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. He's not saying, oh, shit, oh, shit, but he's. But he's got that.

01:23:24
Leo
And I like that it has that in there.

01:23:26
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

01:23:27
Case
Just a really well done movie. And. And again, like, it's. It's so. It's such a good finished product that I was shocked to find out, actually how rocky that whole progression was because it. It does come across so well and, like, so well constructed in its finished form.

01:23:44
Leo
Yeah. I'm finding myself, I just keep on wanted to. Wanting to talk about more and more scenes. Like, I. We could just sit here and just continually talk about how amazing each scene is, which. Yeah, just makes it crazy that the entire cast and crew was just passing out the whole freaking time.

01:24:06
Sam
And for various reasons, not even just for one specific reason, you know, you could pick it. You could. It's like a russian roulette of, like, what's gonna go wrong today?

01:24:15
Case
All kinds of reasons to pass out, but hopefully our audience has not passed out because this has been a great episode. Hey, Leo, great chatting with you. We didn't really give you a chance to shout out your stuff at the beginning, but what do you got going on? Like, you're an actor. Last time we talked on some of the more horrifying stories of acting that you and I have shared, but give your plugs. Tell people who you are and what you got going on.

01:24:42
Leo
Oh, man. This summer, since last we spoke, I shot this short horror film, which is gonna be part of a horror anthology series called Twisted Fiction. It's gonna be streaming on tubi one of those other streaming things. God, I'm gonna. Okay, so this is how I'm gonna describe my character. And I wanna be very clear. I'm the bad guy. I don't like my character here. Suppose if Harvey Weinstein employed Bill Cosby's tactics.

01:25:15
Case
Sounds like a real child predator.

01:25:16
Sam
Yep.

01:25:18
Leo
No, not children, but. And. And basically, yeah. So that's my character. And I run afoul of some witches who spend the rest of the time just completely destroying me in horrible psychological and physical torturous ways. So that's fun. That's something I shot. And which I think they're still in post production, but hopefully that'll be streaming up soon. There's two episodes of twisted fiction currently that can be found, and this is going to be episode three. I shot one of those half, like, half documentary kind of things. Like, it's, part of it is actors who playing people who actually lived, and part of it is going to be historians talking about stuff about the history of Wall Street. I play some dude who got arrested for insider training in the eighties. And that's going to be streaming on Curiositystream, which is new service.

01:26:13
Leo
That's all educational stuff. And, yeah, those are the two things that I shot since last we spoke.

01:26:21
Case
Yeah. Awesome. So this will be dropping in, but behind the scenes for everyone. We tend to sometime in the future. Yeah, we tend to record these fairly far in advance of when they actually come out. So this will actually be about eight weeks from now, when this comes out. So if they're out, we'll definitely link to it.

01:26:39
Leo
We recorded this before that other crazy storm that you know about. Yep, that's me being very cynical about the near future.

01:26:49
Case
The world. But, yeah, we'll obviously, like, put any links to any plugs you've got going on when this comes out. And thank you again for coming on.

01:26:57
Sam
Yeah, thank you, Leo.

01:26:58
Leo
Thank you very much for having me.

01:26:59
Case
Yeah, this was a really fun.

01:27:00
Leo
This is fun. Yeah.

01:27:01
Case
As for us, you can find more episodes of the show over@certainpov.com dot. You can also find a link to our discord server there where you can engage with all of us directly. We're doing this call on Discord right now, so come chat with us. But if you don't want to chat with us in as one to one or on, like, such a small community and you prefer the anonymity of the vaster Internet, you can find the podcast on Twitter anotherpass. You can find me acase Aiken. Sam, where can people find you here.

01:27:28
Sam
Just tweet at case. If you have a problem with something I said, just tweet at case. He'll tell me.

01:27:33
Case
Because you're camouflaged like some sort of hunter stealthing around.

01:27:38
Sam
Yes, but not, but absolutely not a child predator.

01:27:42
Case
No, not a child predator.

01:27:46
Leo
She only predates adults.

01:27:48
Case
Okay, but please check out our discord. Or check out our website. You can find tons of great shows. We've added a whole bunch of new ones recently, like Circling Searcy, which is a great book club podcast. On Madeline Miller's Searcy. We added fables and reflections just recently, which is a great Neil Gaiman podcast. So check those out. Those are@certainpov.com Sam, what do we have on the docket?

01:28:11
Sam
Next time on another pass, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.

01:28:25
Leo
Thanks for listening to certain point of View's another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com dot.

01:28:53
Case
And Craig survived this whole time.

01:28:55
Sam
Well, Craig, this is what you get for talking shit about him. You tell him, Craig. You show him.

01:29:01
Case
Video games are a unique medium.

01:29:02
Leo
They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality.

01:29:10
Case
But at the end of the day.

01:29:11
Leo
Video games are fun.

01:29:13
Case
Whatever fun is to you.

01:29:14
Leo
I'm Jeff Moonan. And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon. And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games.

01:29:23
Case
It's a celebration of all the games.

01:29:24
Leo
We play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us.

01:29:32
Case
Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you.

01:29:36
Leo
Get your podcasts and happy gaming.

01:29:39
Sam
I have the chat open and so I'm just watching this ewok gif dance. I'm like, what propelled me? Like, what compelled me to put this on there?

01:29:54
Case
No, that was perfect. Yeah, it's awesome at the time. It is mesmerizing watching that ewok.

01:30:00
Sam
Yeah, it's definitely. I mean, and what better to represent the caravan of courage than disco?

01:30:10
Leo
WickeThe join geek elites Jessica and John as they open the VHS gems treasure box of nostalgia. Rediscover the movies from the time of auxiliary cables, blockbuster rentals, and automatic rewind machines. See if these gemstone movies still hold.

01:30:30
Sam
Their luster or if they should be.

01:30:32
Leo
Polished and recut for more modern appeal, or even if it's time to let them turn to dust. New episodes of vhs gems are released.

01:30:40
Sam
Thursdays at noon Arizona time on Geek.

01:30:43
Leo
Elitemedia.Com, and a podcatcher near you.

01:30:52
Case
Cpov certainpov.com.