Show Notes and Transcript
Aaron and Steve discuss the 1987 film that kicked off a never-ending franchise, Predator. A highly lethal team of special operations soldiers are duped by the CIA into roaming the jungles of Central America. Unbeknownst to them but knownst to us, they are being watched by a hunter from another planet who proceeds to shoot ducks in a barrel until he comes face to face with the Governator.
Movie: Predator
Director: John McTiernan
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, and Shane Black
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Cinema Decon Ranking
Aaron: 8.8 Steve: 9 IMDB: 7.8 Composite: 8.53
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Cinema Decon Recommends
Aaron - Shoresy on Hulu
Steve - Tick, Tick, Boom on Netflix
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Muppet Recast
| Aaron | Steve |
Dutch | Human | Kermit |
Dillon | Dr. Teeth | Piggy |
Mac | Ralph | Gonzo |
Blain | Sam Eagle | Fozzy |
Billy | Floyd | Beaker |
Poncho | Gonzo | Human |
Hawkins | Beaker | Sam Eagle |
The General | Statler & Waldorf | Statler & Waldorf |
Anna | Janice | Janice |
The Predator | Animal | Pepe |
Transcript as follows:
Participant #1:
Hello, and welcome to the 14th episode of Cinema Decon deconstructing and overthinking the movies of our younger years. My name is Steve, and on this podcast, we will revisit the movies that we keep in the back part of our minds as flawless masterpieces, untouchable by any criticism. And hopefully they stay that way. Join us as we rewatch a randomly selected movie from our list of 300 plus from the. With me on this journey is my co host, a man who will air arm wrestle you anytime, anywhere, Erin. How are you tonight, Aaron? I am hanging in there, Steve. Z. I've been a busy couple of days around here. I'm just glad to be back on the mic for some more Movie Mischief. Yeah, absolutely. Also kind of thrilled for this episode, we're joined by our very own producer, Bud. Hello. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Yeah, that's what they always say. He's invisible. Bud has graciously accepted the role as a producer in the booth to help us out with the editing and get more episodes out to all of our eager listeners. So what we do here at Cinnamon Con is a rewatch of an old movie with the hopes they're still as good as we remember them. Then Steve and I meet up, talk about it, point out our high and low parts, and give it a rank and place on our mega list. Before we watch our target movie, we first record our memories and recollections of it, then proceed to go and watch that movie. So far, our memories have been both perfect and completely wrong at the same time. Today's movie is the 1987 film Predator, directed by John McTernan, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura and Shane Black. Thank you. It goes out to Jamal Milton for sponsoring this episode. With a generous donation, you can request a movie yourself. Just go to www dot cinema dcon.com and click on the cut in line movie request to get your movie in there. All right, Aaron, what do you remember about Predator? All I remember is it was damn near a perfect movie. It is very quotable, obviously. Get to the chopper. Get to go now. Do this now. If it bleeds, we can kill it. Yeah. Gold. Carl Weathers. Jesse The Body Ventura. Obviously the governor himself. Technically, there's two governors in this movie. Yes. Or, well, two future governors. Future governors and a future bounty hunter. It was an interesting movie. It's one of those ones where it's Sci-Fi. That doesn't feel Sci-Fi to me. This one was big in the barracks for obvious reasons. Lots of testosterone in that environment. Just that gatling gun, man. Yeah. The whole crew just lights up the section of the forest. I remember that clearly. But it's a great movie as far as hunter to prey and just it shifts to where they realize that they are the prey. They're not the nice twist as far as, like, you got all these muscle bound, hardcore guys, but actually they are on the defensive. And that was, from what I remember, very well written movie and pretty awesome from front to back. I'm looking forward to this one. Oh, yeah. Now, Predator Two, on the other hand, again, I haven't seen that in so long. I just remember it's kind of like Predator Takes Manhattan kind of thing. Because it's in the city. It's like, no longer in the jungle. We're in the city now. Yeah. That's when they started to get into, like, the canon of the Predator character. And he's a hunter, and they kind of go across the galaxy hunting, I guess. Which, of course, has led to spawn the greatest of all time, alien versus Predator. Which that's something I remember from Predator, too, because at the end of the movie in the Predator ship is the Xenomorph skull on the wall. Yeah. So. I do remember that. That was my first tie in right there. So that was a great one to kick off the whole Predator genre, for lack of a better word. I have no idea the plot, though. I don't know how or why Danny Glover is involved or anything. I don't really remember. I just remember Danny Glover's in it. Yeah. I do remember one scene where the predators, like, hurt and he has to patch himself up and he screams. That's all I really remember. That and the end scene. Was that in Predator? I remember that scene. Was that predator two? Or is that predator one? I am 99% sure that was Predator Two. Okay. Because I do remember that he's got, like, something on his arm or something. He has to pull out these things that he stabs himself with. Then he pulls another one and cater eyes is it it's a very humanizing scene for him. Yeah. And I think Predator One was more of a you don't see it as much. Yeah, you don't see them until the end. Yeah. The heat vision is about the closest you get to them. And that sound that it grows up whenever you get to the heat vision, that's just like an iconic sound now. Oh, yeah. Because he never had to cover himself with mud to stop his heat vision. He figured that out. That's right. Forgot about that. All right, we will go off and watch Predator. We have to go now.
Participant #1:
Motherfucker. I don't care who you are back in the world. You give up with this one one more time, I'll bleed. You be quiet. Leave you here. Got that?
Participant #1:
And we're back. We have watched Predator. Aaron initial thoughts, basically well, 90% of it is exactly how I remember it. One thing I did realize is I'm fairly certain I have never seen the beginning of this movie until this recent rewatch. Like, the first ten minutes looked completely foreign. I don't think I've seen I think I've come in ten minutes late to this movie my entire life, which is a weird feeling. It is one of those movies that when you think about it, you remember the jungle. Yeah. So all of the beginning stuff, I remember it, but every time you catch it on any sort of TV, it's always the jungle page. Yeah. It kind of throws you other than that, no, it was pretty much exactly like I remember it, other than that first part. And then I got to say that I have a much better appreciation for the soundtrack score for this movie a lot more than when I did growing up. Did you see who did the score? No, I did not. I didn't catch that. It's Alan, sorvestry okay. Back to the Future, my friend. Roger Rabbit, Avengers. It was fairly typical Arnold Schwarzenegger ism it reminded me a lot of his eighty s. Ninety s movies from, like, Running Man and a bunch of other ones. Terrible. This one was right in his ascension. I mean, this is pure, unadulterated Arnold in that he's in perfect form. Yeah. Say Terminator was 84. Commando is 85, predator, 87, running man, 87. Total recall, I think, was 90. And then Judgment Day was 91. So this is just like straight in that skyrocket of his stardom. Yeah, right in the middle. Yeah. He was awesome in this. This movie is almost perfect to me. I loved it. Just fucking awesome. A tight story, a great cast, and it spans, like, three genres all within one really tightly cut movie. All it needed was a little, like, Romcom in there, perfectly well rounded, and who knows, maybe him and Anna. Final Girl, you mentioned at the beginning. The opening scene is actually my really only complaint about this movie is why have that alien landing scene? It gives away so much. I literally do not remember that at all. We're watching this like, oh, crap, did we get the wrong movie? Is this Enemy mine or something else? They do the same thing in the Thing, John Carpenter's, the thing where at the beginning, you've got this alien moment. Why? I would have raised this a whole point higher if I could. If they would just not have anybody else, it would have added a lot more suspense. The audience would have been in the same mindset as Arnold's crew. Exactly. Because other than that, as you're watching it, watching it for the first time, of course, if you've seen it before, you know, but watching it for the first time when it came out, aside from that scene, you have no idea that this is an alien. You think they're being hunted by some kind of animal or something. Exactly. For all we know, it would have added a lot to this, to the story, to the lasers. They could be sharks with freaking laser beans attached to their heads, though they had to have come from the studio with just we don't understand what's going on. You need to add something at the beginning so dumboys can understand the plot. Yeah. They're worried that people are going to be getting up and walking out of the theater or something. So like, we need to make this dumber so people understand it. Typical Hollywoodism. Yeah, but other than that, movie kicks off great. You've got this arrival at base camp with say, you got the Alan Syvestri kind of military militaristic music going and the choppers are landing. You got all kinds of all kinds of guys just looking serious. That chopper was coming in really low, too. It was pretty aggressive. I liked it. Which, again, surprised me for when the movie was done because they usually wouldn't do back then. They didn't do it as dangerous of things, so I'll give them that. Maybe that's not nearly as dangerous as it looks. Hone in that low and fast and tilted. Yeah, maybe. Was this after the twilight zone helicopter mishap with john Landis. I do not know. Same types of helicopters, same types of environment. They could have had an impact there. But we get a nice nonspoken scene with each of the crew kind of exiting the helicopters. And when that's when we first meet Dutch, who stays in the helicopter. Dutch is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just a darkened silhouette, light a cigar. Just beautiful. I loved it. Yeah. I also love Jesse Ventura, who plays shit, I lost him. He's Blaine. Blaine, yeah, plays Blaine in this nice pink MTV shirt, which of course, also dates the movie pretty well. I did make a note of the MTV shirt. Yeah. Complete with the moon man and everything, I think. Well, every single person had a different style of civilian clothes. So it was a nice contrast in a few scenes later when they're back on the helicopter heading out on the mission. But they're each unique personas without even saying a word yet. That's just good writing. So Dutch and crew, they go into the general's hut and they meet Dylan, who is Carl Weathers. Carl Weathers is an old teammate of Dutch who works for the CIA now. And we get the origin of one of the greatest memes on the Internet. Yeah, the hair. Arm wrestle. You son of a bitch. Boom. Snapshot. Yeah, there's people out there that know that meme, but I've never seen the movie, I'm sure. And hopefully we're describing it well enough so people know what we're talking about. You don't know what we're talking about. Watch the movie. Yeah, they kind of do this air like handshake arm wrestle thing and then they hold it in the air, comparing each other's strength as just a full testosterone who's more of a man between the Terminator and Apollo Creed. So it's at this point that we start to get like a semblance of what the plot of this movie is going to be. The Duchess team has been brought in at the request the generals team to help track down a cabinet member who is helicopter went down in the jungle of they never did name the country. Are we to assume it's supposed to be like Columbia? It's Central America. Yeah. Because there's a brief map and it just kind of shows, I think, Central America. Yeah. So there's a cabinet member air quotes that they basically lost. I don't recall if he actually said that the helicopter went down at this point or if they just got lost. I think they said they lost contact with the chopper that had that diplomat on board because it's hostile territory and they can't legally be in there. So he's pitching it to them as a rescue mission. Yeah, because Dutch and his crew of elite soldiers, they apparently have morals and they say, we are a rescue team, we're not assassins. But you could tell Dutch is already kind of suspicious. Yeah. But the fact that Dylan is there and Dylan is the one selling it to him and he's an old friend, I think that kind of smoothed it over a bit, at least for now. And I think it's when Dylan says, I'll be out there with you, that his suspicions are, like, perked up. Something's off here. Yeah. Because Dylan at this point is known CIA, right? Well, he used to be wherever well, they came up together in whatever outfits previously, but he's now been behind a desk for a while. But that's the thing. He's been behind the desk for the CIA. Correct? Yes. And what I can't remember is if they make a note that Dutch knows he's with CIA, you know what they do with CIA? They do. Because he makes fun of his ties. Like, this is what the CIA has got you dressed as. Okay. Yeah, I couldn't remember that. Yeah, they just throw it out there real quick. So, yeah, when he comes in and says, I'll be out there with you, that does kind of trigger a bit because you don't do this anymore and you're a desk guy. Why? I kind of understand from Barnolds perspective yes. I can see him being here as liaison to introduce the general and whatnot, but not to actually participate. And from a military perspective, he has every right to be apprehensive about it. Because when you've got a crew of that nature that trains together and knows each other and they can work silently together, throwing an untrained, but just a new variable in that well tuned machine can throw off everything, which that point exactly comes back to bite him a little bit down the road. It does, yes. So that was good that they factor that they brought that into it, but they do accept the mission. And then we get to the next scene, which is then back on the chopper with a big ass 80s boom box strapped to the wall, blasting out some longtail Sally. Richard, I mean, all it's missing at this point is John Cusack holding it up. There you go. He would have been up. It's a poster. John Cusack taped underneath. This is where we get the first comedy act or attempted comedy act from Hawkins. Yeah. Because we get to meet all the people in the crew now. Yeah. I think we first meet kind of Blaine Jesse Ventura, who's got a big old thing of dip in spitting all over the place and spinning on car Weather shoes. And he's offered it to people and no one's accepting it. He has a great line. This should have turned you into a sexual tyrannosaurus. Yeah. We got a Mac played by Bill Duke in the background. He's quiet. Yeah, he's the quiet guy that you don't want to piss off. He just got that look that he will snap your neck without thinking about it. Yeah. I mean, Bill Duke has these eyes. He just looks crazy. Hawkins, played by Shane Black, the comms guy. And he's the one making the jokes. The attempted jokes. Yeah. He makes an attempted jokes. Yeah. He has a specific genre he focuses on, specifically pussy jokes. Pussy jokes.
Participant #1:
Right. I said, you know, I'd like a little pussy. She said, Me too.
Participant #1:
He tries making this really terrible pussy joke to Billy, the Native American, who just stares at very stoic. That's the first trope that I have listed for this movie, is having the Native American Tracker. True? Yeah. That is definitely a stereotype trope. And I think they treat it well. Yeah. I don't have any issues with it. It is a trope because they don't exploit it. They use it as a that is his skill, and they treat him with reverence for it. He's very well respected for his truth. Yeah. They all trust him very well. When he hears a twig snap and he stops, everybody stops. And it's just wait. And then we have other guy, which we've discovered. His name is Poncho. Sorry, I still can't hear it without thinking. Rick and Mortya.
Participant #1:
I feel bad. I have this other guy like five times in my notes because I kept forgetting his name. But I love this scene because it really shows that the team is they're getting into show mode and they all have their ways and they all respect each other. And you could tell that these guys have worked together before. And then again, Dylan, carl Weather is the outside man. He's not in the group, like you mentioned. Jesse Venurt spits a big hawk of dip. Kind of sets the mood of, yes, you shouldn't be here kind of thing. Get out of our turf. Because none of them know him. Schwarzenegger is the only one. Dutch is the only one who knows him, and they have no reason to trust him. It also does a really good dynamic of them being kind of semi laid back. Laid back for that crew. Obviously, pocket super laidback, telling puzzle jokes. And then to the next scene after the chopper comes into a hover and they'll rappel down, and then they're in game mode, flanking through the jungle without a word, just the hand signals and everything, just like full on game mode, ready to go. I personally geeked out at the Repelling. That's a perfect aerosol drop. I loved it. Reminded me of mild training that I never actually did in real time, but lots of training. But yeah, it is fun to jump out of helicopters. Yes. Once they hit the ground, though, they each had their specialty. They knew exactly what to do. Very clockwork. Those guys all work like clockwork. This is where my original memories of the movie start. As they're going through the jungle right after Repelling Inn, and they come across the wrecked, upside down chopper up in the trees. Yes, they find the helicopter, but no survivors, no casual. So this helicopter is stuck in vines and tree limbs and everything upside down, and they're climbing up these vines and touching ropes and climbing up onto it. Like, how did you guys think that this was not going to fall while you guys are up there? It's one of those do they just assume the risk or do you think they actually checked it out and thought it was good? If it's going to hold the helicopter, then it's going to hold them kind of thing. I would kind of lean towards combination. They have to check it out. I mean, that's their mission. They got up there somehow. In that respect, I can definitely see having one person do it because that's a risk limitation. Having two guys up there, though, seems a little excessive. Buddy system can't go solar. Yeah, but that's twice the weight on a helicopter that could fall out of the trees at any moment and kill anyone. These are very thin guys. These guys aren't muscular at all. They don't work out. No, of course not. No. Thin is a rail. This is where they noticed that when they come back down that it's a surveillance helicopter. It was not the right kind of helicopter that they were told. This is one of the first ticks. So again, if they didn't have the pod landing seen in the beginning, you start to think, okay, maybe this is like a spy thing or just straight CIA thing. You have no idea what's really going on. I have no head. They find six rangers with us. Army boots, and of course, Dylan has no idea what that's all about. Must have been another crew. Yeah, must have been another crew. Yeah. Way to sell it there, bud. So the initial helicopter had Rangers with this surveillance mission. There was no diplomat. Then. As they continue on now, they find bodies. Oh, yeah. Boy, do they find bodies. And this is kind of the military thing of the progression of the mission. It was the rangers first, then they send in Green Berets to rescue the Rangers and then Dutch's special Ops team on the back end. But it's kind of interesting. Rangers first, then the Green Berets, then the rescue team. But yeah. So several Green Berets were found hanging and skinned. And Dutch knows them. Oh, yeah, because they find their dog tags, their naked skin hanging upside down in the trees, which Billy had to climb up this tree to even see because it was hidden from leaves and stuff. And he heard the vultures that were pecking around him as he does. The typical he's walking through, cutting a vine in half and drinking from it. That's right. As we all do when we're out in the jungle. Yes. And then Dutch confronts Dylan. Dylan is saying, well, you think you guys were the first ones we sent in? This was my crew. These were my guys that I sent in to find that helicopter first. So now they don't have a clue what's going on yet. But Billy does make a good note that there was a firefight there and they fired off in all directions, which is weird. And there's no tracks anywhere. And this is when old Painless gets pulled out of the coffin. Oh, the blank vinegun. All Painless. As they start to move on, we get one of my favorite lines of the movie, which is from Bill Duke where he creeps back to Carl Weathers and he goes in a whisper you're ghosting us, motherfucker, I'll bleed you real slow. Leave you right here. He's like my favorite character in the movie, really? So this is about the time when we get our first view of Predator vision. You get that deep vision sound and then pretty good for, I think. Oh, no. I'm sure the newer Predator movies have done it much better. But I want to Terminator vision, which was about that same sound with a red whenever you watch, like Terminator or Terminator Two. This was it in heat vision mode, which was cool. I'm curious as to our next movies we do if the heat vision point of view gets a little more crisp, a little clearly upgrades. They're on the warranty plan. Next up, we get a fantastic scene of the enemy camp is found. And again, we don't really know the enemy. It's just local rebels, whatever, stereotypical, sandinista, something. But it's really a great scene. It's all explosions and everything army guy like me loves. And I like the precision and execution of the team. Even Carl Weather, he's a participant in it. And he knows the hand signals. He knows the proper way to take this base, even if it doesn't necessarily go as planned. Arnold kind of improvises a bit. Yeah, that was a little weird. But Blaine and they come across some Claymore's very silently, and they take those out and then they take out a couple of guards and give hands signals back. Dutch creeps down in a low crawl and gets up there, sees everything from the ground level and decides to call an audible and lifts a truck. Yeah, they had this truck operating as their generator that was up on stacks, had no back wheels. The rear wheel was replaced with a pulley to generate electricity. Yeah, so he throws some explosives on it and then goes all full Arnold with the muscles and just lifts it up off the ground, picks it up, walks it a little bit forward off the toast and just drops it. So the wheels catching will just send it flying toward one of the buildings. Shocking awe, just like they did in Desert Storm. I need to clip that scene and just put the Team America song over it. America.
Participant #1:
This is where we get our first couple of Arnoldisms, where he's like, stick around and knock, knock. So they take the space through explosions, firepower, and just all around Americanism. Pretty awesome. But they leave one alive who just so happens to be an attractive woman, of course. Yeah. This is our first look at the gal at the minigun in use, too, which was just a beautiful thing. Yeah, you can tell Jesse Mature was to have a phone with that. Oh, yeah. Some of the guys try to get away in the chopper and that does not end up very well for them. One thing I've noted is pretty typical for action movies in this genre, is they're not holding their weapons right at all. Arnold's basically firing an M 16 from the hip. I think all of them were maybe one or two of them were firing them properly, but, yeah, they're all firing from the hip. And I got this note for the awesome scene in the jungle, but weapons don't jam in this world. No, the amount of ammo they expend without any jams is just a damn miracle. The amount of ammo they have as well, also true. We do see them reload, but the amount of excess ammo that they have available is unlimited. Maybe they found a video game crate there at the yeah, I'm thinking it's the same people that made the warthog, because that gun never ran out. We get a great line from Blaine, though. The ain't got time to bleed. Yeah. And then the appropriate response, do you have time to duck? And then he flows up the shelf right above them.
Participant #1:
Mac comes out to Dutch and says that they found a trove of intel and they stumbled onto something big with Russians and locals and the CIA. So that leads Dutch to be pissed at Dylan again. And Dylan finally comes clean with what they are doing, in that he pretty much lied to them. So this was an assassination meeting mission to clear out this what's the word I'm looking for? Cell, I guess you could say. Yeah. Gorillas. Yeah. This sell of gorillas to prevent something big and that if he had told them the truth, they wouldn't have done it. Yeah, which is probably right. And he's like, well, we could have been killed. You're all an expendable asset throughout all this. The Predator is just watching from a distance. You get the heat fusion sprinkled in. He definitely needs an upgrade on the resolution for that head piece because it's very blurry. So maybe get them some one thousand and eighty p.
Participant #1:
Yeah. It was hard to tell the outline sometimes of who was supposed to be being watched. You could tell it was supposed to be heat vision, but you couldn't tell the angles knowing that he was in the trees. Now you can tell that it's kind of overhead, but if you had no frame of reference on what you were even looking at, you'd know it was heat vision, but you wouldn't know it was a guy up in the trees. Yeah, because the resolution wasn't there. He watches the exchange first between Hawkins and Billy because Hawkins tells another pussy joke. And this time Billy laughs and he laughs like overly laughing. And then he stops because he senses something that's off and looks up in the trees. He can feel that he's being watched. And then we get a good scene with Dylan and Mack with the knife in the back. Yeah, it's a stabbing of scorpion. Yeah. Literally. It looks like he's flat out going to stab him over this whole thing and he snaps a scorpion right off his shoulder with a knife in a stabbing motion. He wasn't ice or anything, he's just come here and then as he gets there, he's like, check that out. Just to get him to turn around. And as he starts to turn around, that's when Mac pulls out the night. Yeah. He's just look over there and immediately like, I'm going to stand you. That was well done, because as the viewer, you honestly thought that he was about to stab him. Probably because Dylan brought them into this situation and false pretenses because he lied to him. So it was done very well. It also freaked Dylan out, like, oh, shit, I screwed up, kind of thing. It had a good payoff, too, with the Predator, too, because when they vacate the compound and head off in the jungle, he goes down to see what they were looking at and he picks up the scorpion as it's dying. Yeah, because you see the outline of the scorpion in his hand and then the scorpion, which leads me to think that it's not 100% true heat vision, because it wouldn't go dark that quickly from dying. I don't know the internal temperature of arachnids, but this is the first view that we actually see a part of the Predator you actually see. That's true. The hand, pretty big hand with pointy fingernails, and the way the scorpion disappears into his hand, it's good foreshadowing as far as things that he can't. See. So the team has to find a safe place for extraction, which that area is too hot. So they have to walk a long way through the jungle. I don't remember how many miles they had to walk. Yeah, they were basically they were cut off. They tried radioing in for support, and we're told that the area was too hot. They were surrounded, so they have to hike out. And there's only one path that they could get out per Billy, and that was through this valley. This is about the time where the girl who Anna, which we don't learn her name yet, but she fakes falling down as she's being carried through the jungle. And then as Dylan, the one escorting her, tries to help her up, she like, throws a bunch of leaves and rocks into his face and starts booking. It is literally immediately caught. I actually have that girl tries to escape quickly. Stop. Yeah, I like that. We get a nice side conversation with Lane and Mack. It shows that they've got a close friendship. They've got a very good buddy buddy friendship, which comes into play here in the near future. And then Billy, who is still sensing that something is off, this is where he gets that moment where he stops in the middle of the single file trek. That something's in the trees. Yeah, he's actually staring right at it, but he can't see. And at this point, we can't see either. We haven't seen that yet. At this point, Dylan leaves Anna with one of the other guys. I honestly can't remember who it was. Was it Poncho? Poncho. Yeah. I have girl gives other guy the sexy eyes. Yeah. As she's doing that, she picks up a log and Maxim with it starts running. Of course, it's Hawkins. Hawkins tackle, sir. Actually up in my notes. Hawkins. So I had the wrong name. But Ponzo runs after and catches him. Meanwhile, we see no, you're right. Hawkins races to recapture his Ponzo. He's down. Hawkins. Shane Black is the one that runs after her and tackles her. Okay. While the chase is happening, we get little peppered shots of the predator watching this chase. So he's following them. He's actually watching two armed guys, one unarmed girl, and watching it go down and seizes on his moment to start his takedown of the one by one and drags Hawkins out into the jungle and kills them. Yeah. This is the first shot of the active camouflage yes. Which for was really cool. Yeah, I liked it. Like I said, for 87, they did it very well. I thought that they did that well. That kind of set the tone for what active camo looks like in every other scifi. It does. Yeah. Because I think this is like one of the first, if not the first, to have something like this. I read how they did it with the different shots, but I forget the technical details. Of it. It went above my head as I'm not a filmmaker. The girls in shock, though. She says the jungle came alive and took him which doesn't make sense to anyone. This is when they yeah. They start going after them and they find entrails. Yeah. And it's like, I found something or someone. Is it Hawkins? I can't tell. That's kind of chilling. I don't know. Yeah, because they say this doesn't fit the Mo of a normal enemy kill that they're fighting. This is all odd to them. I have a note here is that I feel for these guys in the jungle in 87. They're using the same tactical gear that I was issued in 98 to 2006. Sucks. It's bulky, it's hot. It's all just terrible. But they're all wearing it. They're all using it, so it does work. So this point, this is when the team splits up to try to find the rest of Hawkins'body. And while they're doing that, the camera pans up and shows Hawkins strung up like the other bodies. Not skin like the other bodies, but strung up. Because this was a quick. You had to get them strung up and then leave. Didn't have the time to do the full skin. Yeah, that's right. It's a long tracking shot. It follows the blood trail all the way up the leaves, up the vines till you get to the body. Now we have Blaine venturing into the scene with his MTV shirt there in plain view. And what did he name the guns? Old Painless. Old Painless. That's right. Poor Governor Ventura. He gets shot in the back with a laser. Quick death for him. But Mac is there quickly and he sees the outline of the predator and he starts firing just blindly into the jungle. The rest of the squad hears that. They come running and they all just start firing blindly in the same direction. Mac runs out of ammo, picks up stainless, he starts firing with the minigun. Yeah, they pretty much emptied the entirety of an ammunition depot. This week's episode is brought to you by Gary's Freedom Emporium and Bait Shop. Come on down to Gary's where we've got 3500 pure, unadulterated liberty and justice for all. Free night scopes and sound surfs for the first 100 customers. Each day carries Freedom Emporium and Bay Shop where you are guaranteed to run out of targets before you run out of ammo into that one section of the jungle really fast. It's a great scene and it lasts a good minute. Yeah. Nothing but fire. And they're reloading too because those days they got, like, eight round clips on the M 16s. They just fired off just eight rounds and boom. It's funny just how much firepower they shoot into that jungle. It's crazy. So after that's all done, this is when they finally check out Jesse and notice that the shot wound is cauterized and there's no shrapnel in it. Which, of course, because it's freaking laser beams or lasers, plasma, something. The blaster. So the girl also sees the dayglow blood on the leaves around there. Yeah, that bright green blood. Was she like, wipe it on herself or something? I think she like, keeps touched it with her hands and brought up her face, but that was about it. Within a matter of minutes, they lost two key members of their team. And it hits them hard, especially Mac. Nothing on this earth could have lived through that. You've got Dutch saying lines like, I guess we're all expendable and then Good old Billy, we're all going to die. That night at camp, Mac is losing his mind in grief. He's like talking to the moon. He sets up trip wires with the claymores and then sits there swinging from Cantina morning blame. Yeah. He's like kind of drinking to his friend. It really hit him hard. They were old friends. Yeah. Definitely shoots in the fact that they were real good buddies. We then get to the first scene without the active camo on Predator. We show him doing his repairs. That's right. Yeah. So he comes in, he disengages the camo and then starts pulling out tools from this little kit. His wound that he's still bleeding from. Is that where he yells? Does he do like as he's healing himself? I don't have that in the notes. I remember there was part when he finally stabbed his help with something and then just really loud. That was it. I think that might be when Billy says, we're all going to die. That night, though, all the alarms and trip wires go off and Mac goes nuts, attacks the intruder. Turns out it was just a gigantic boar. Oh, yeah. He goes to town on that thing. Yeah, he's off the deep end at that point. With him doing that. The whole crew basically left Anna in the camp alone that's right. To come out and find him. When they finally come back, they realize, holy shit, she's probably gone, but she's still sitting there, which kind of gives an idea that she is scared to death, whatever happened. Yeah. She's terrified. And Blaine's body is gone. Yeah. So the predator without a sound ended up taking Jesse the body Ventura out of there. Yeah. They're not seeing any tracks or anything. And this is when they realize how this happened, that he's not coming on the ground. He's coming in from the trees. Yeah. Dutch Speaks Out Loud they are now the ones being hunted. It's what I'm saying, that the movie kind of has several different genres. It starts off as a military action flick, and then it changes to a horror survival before it eventually kind of takes a leap into Sci-Fi. And it does this seamlessly. All very well cut, but this is where we also get the girl. Dutch says, no more games. Tell us what you know. And she speaks clear English, which means she's smart. Yeah. She reveals that she knows it's wounded because of the blood, which triggers the wonderful Arnold Catchphrase. If it bleeds, we can kill it. Great. Instead of just trying to get away, though, now they decide to make a stand to trap and kill what's hunting them. Yeah, we have the montage of setting up the claim wars and the mines, because you got to have a montage. I literally have that in my notes. And they're even doing old school, like hunter traps. Yeah. Shaving down sticks. All it was missing was a cardboard box with a stick and a string. I mean, I would have paid good money just to see that. Human ingenuity. Yes. As they're sitting there waiting, mac is doing this very weird stoic. Dry shave things. Yeah. Dry shaving with a BIC. And he, like, stops halfway down his cheek and just purposely cuts himself by pushing really hard into it. It's such a great character note on it, though. It's really oh, yeah. It works for him. It does. Dutch steps out to use himself as bait, and the predator eventually trips one of the traps, does some crazy gymnastics to get out of it, and his camo starts to fault out. Yeah, I was going to say he gets tripped by a net. Yes. The net pulls him up in trees. You can see him. He starts firing out of the net, drag it away, and finally, like four or five shots, I think, finally breaks through. But yeah, that's when we see the camels start failing. Poncho gets hit with a great big log. How he survived that gigantic log hitting him, I don't know. But now they've got the trope of the one injured guy and the crew that they got to take care of. But Mac in his craziness. He runs after the predator. He just takes off solo. Oh, yeah, he's on. Dylan runs after him. Matt appears to be having a nervous breakdown. Dylan basically sits up and tries to find him and basically gets grabbed from behind by Mac just to keep him from making a sound, because Mac is already laying there staring through the trees, watching. Yeah, he's hitting. He's like he's right there. So then Dylan and Mac can both see the outline against the tree. He's out on a branch. They can actually see the predator, so they devised a half ass plan to try and flank him and draw them out. But the predator is all over this one. Yeah. So Max starts crawling, crawling through, and then all of a sudden, he sees three red dots on his arm. That classic predator target system. Now. Oh, yeah, that's a trademark. Now he turns over. The three had moved to his forehead and it's good night, Irene. Yeah, that's a gruesome death scene for Mac, too. That plan failed spectacularly. Oh, yes. At this point, Anna basically tries to go for a gun, thinking, oh, crap, I need to defend myself. And then this is when Dutch realizes she wasn't harmed because she was the only one that wasn't armed. Oh, yeah. So he kicks it out of her hand kind of thing and explains it to her. That's right. And Dylan, Carl Weather, he decides to hang back and self sacrifice to buy them some time so that they can get to the helicopter. And he has a pretty good death scene. This one was weird because this goes back I forgot to mention there was a scene earlier where the predator is sitting around, like, going over replay of recorded audio from the team. So he's got a couple of lines from Mac that he was playing over and over again. And you're thinking, okay, he's trying to learn about his prayer. It was the word anytime. I remember from when he stabbed the scorpion, he was like, Dylan says thanks. Anytime. Anytime. Anytime. He keeps repeating that one. Yeah, but yeah. As Dylan gets ready to attack after Mac gets blown, all the fuck predator starts playing Max voice back to him during that thing. So Carl Weather gets his arm shot off. Oh, yeah. And then impaled, he gets shot off. It's still shooting. He's still pulling the trigger on the ground. I don't know about the medical action of that being plausible. Would that be a trope? I don't know, because I can't think of anything else where that specifically happens. Nothing comes to mind. But it's got to be somewhere else. I mean, the trope would be getting shot and firing straight up in the air as you fall backwards kind of thing. Not too many of them literally blowing off arms. Yes, but then he gets impaled. Yeah. The biggest thing is now here he is with no arm. He's got an arm blown off. So he literally grabs his other gun with his other hand and tries to swing around, continue fighting. So I'll give him that. He redeemed himself, though. I mean, he brought them out there under false pretenses, but he gave them time to get away. So now all we got left is Dutch, Anna, Billy, and the injured Poncho. I will say that for a missing limb scene for Dylan, that was very good. For the agents, that looked very good. So props on that one. So now they get to a big kind of a creek crossing with a big log over it. And Billy decides it's his turn to make a stand. Yes, I'm done running. Fuck. This basically takes off a shirt, draws his knife out, slices his own chest, which you then see predator vision scene of it, where the wound on his chest shows up differently, which is cool. Nice touch. But then Billy's killed off screen, you just hear a loud scream. Oh. And this is when Anna tries to pick up a gun again and Arnold kicks it out of her hand. And we get the get to the chopper. Classic scene here. Yeah. Get to the chopper. We have to go now. Good. Dutch actually gets shot. He gets shot in his gun. His gun gets shot off his hand. He gets blown back. He's on the ground. And that's when he yells to Anna and Pancho. Get to the chapa chapa. Yeah. And he starts running through the jungle because now he's on arm, relatively. He gets away and falls into the river. Yes. He slips and goes over a cliff into the water. He falls in the water. And then you see him swimming out of it. And as he gets in the end, you see a splash. That was cool. That was cool. That splash was really neat because I had forgotten about it. Yeah. So it kind of comes out of nowhere and you get that sinking oh, shit feeling. Yeah, that just happens. And again, very good effects for the 80s pre CGI. So this freaks Dutch right out. So he starts crawling out of the water as quick as he can. He just happens to be in the buddy section of the shore and basically cakes himself in that mud. He hides, like, some tree roots and stuff and just hopes for the best. Yeah. I think he's honestly expecting that this is it. And this is when he realizes the creditor just ignores him. And he puts two and two together. He picks up the mud, looks at his fingers like he didn't see me. Is this the first kind of, like, extended time we see the Predator? Because it's always fighting scenes before, but when he gets out of the water and his Camo zaps out aside from the repair scene. Yeah. I think it's kind of the first time we see him kind of standing and just looking all bad ass in his armor. Yeah. Other than the repair scene, that was not in the vein of Jaws and other things. It's cool when they have a great villain that you really don't see them in full like that until the final battle. Yeah. I mean, we're now in the end game. I mean, if it were me, I would put in a complaint to the active Camo department about waterproofing because obviously that's a big problem. I'm assuming he wouldn't have gone in if he had known that he would have gone around. Maybe. Well, he did go to a rain forest. Yeah. Which never rained, thankfully. Maybe if it rained, that would have literally kept killing his Camo. That'd be interesting. That'd be make for a funny scene with him sitting under a poncho, pondering light. Yeah. Predator with an umbrella. Did you just see the floating umbrella? Bright yellow umbrella, too. That's what I want to see. Hunting in the rain. I'm hunting in the rain. So now we get the set up for the final battle. We get another montage of Dutch creating more traps. And he creates his own bow and arrow. Some spears, all these things. We get a shot. And I don't know if you took this the same way we get a shot of the predator looking at his skull trophies. Yeah. And I think that he knows that the only one left is the alpha. These trophies aren't enough. He wants the final one for sport. Got to catch them all. And we basically also see him get that skin by ripping the skull and spine out of one of the bodies. Very subzero style. Oh, yeah, that's true. As I was watching, I literally yelled, finished him. So when Dutch is ready for his battle, he covers himself with mud again. I have a quick note. One thing we pointed out was you're going through this montage of Dutch going through completely caked in mud, building a bow and arrow set, sitting right next to a giant campfire. That's a small campfire. He doesn't build the big one until he's ready. It's small. It's small and he's still painting a giant target. Here I am. Once he's ready though, he makes a big bonfire and then he lights a torch and he gives us big guttural yell. Yeah. And to this point I'm thinking maybe the reasoning behind that is he understands that the predator couldn't see him with the mud on, but maybe he hasn't put two and two together, that it's heat vision. It could be. And maybe it's something else. And that's highly possible that he just didn't realize it was he vision. But if that were the case, then why would he have created the big bonfire to draw? Man. I did like to see though, where the predator crawls right past him without noticing him as he's sitting there in the ambush. Oh, you're talking about the second yeah. Waiting for the predator to come to his ambush. He's on a tree and he was like hugging a tree or something. And the predator literally crawls right past him and he notices the camo offset. You see his eyes shift to the predator being right behind him. Yeah. So the whites of his eyes with Arnold, that's what you notice. And it's a cool scene. And then Arnold gets a couple of shots on them and predator fires blindly. But now the predator's camo no longer works, so they got almost uneven ground. One thing. Another note I have right before this I totally forgot was the little scene where right before he lights the fire to get predator's attention, we see him taking his laser sights and heating up his arm blades. Oh, yeah. Like they start getting bright red, which is interesting because they weren't heating up Mac when he was setting up. This must be a different setting. He turned it up to eleven set phases to stun or kill. I knew like the scene where explosions in the background and you got the predator standing out on that tree limb and it's just a great wide silhouette shot, kind of slow motion, too. They drag out the cat and mouse game quite a bit. Lots of explosions, back and forth, shots. I think at one point, Dutch is like throwing sounds elsewhere so that the predator will fire and he can trace his location back from the shot trail. But eventually, Dutch falls in the water and the mud washes off. And now the predator can see him, but doesn't kill him. The predator knows you can see him scanning Arnold Schwarzenegger, realizing that this is the ultimate human. Yeah. He's sitting there basically wanting to play with his food at this point. Yeah. He takes off all of his armor, takes off his helmet, which is just awesome. Yeah. Beautifully done. Basically, given this. I can take you without all this. He sees you have no weapons anymore. I don't need mine. I can still take you even with, you could say, some janky camo and heat vision, special effects radius. Their predator. The make of effects. The armor flawless. Yeah. The moving tendrils and everything. That was very well done. So he wants to go one on one with Arnold. Now. It goes into the Captain America. I can do this all day. Ego trip and just start kicking Arnold. He does. He just punishes him. He's obviously physically superior. Super strength, everything. Dutch tries going under, basically crawling away. He goes under the trap log and then stops, basically waiting for the predator to follow him underneath the log so he can trigger it and follow them. And Preddy, as I've got them written in there, I just call him Freddy. He goes right up to the end of the log and stops, because he's putting two together, starts looking at the log and everything. Not entirely sure if he actually realizes it's a trap he does, or if he just doesn't want to take the chance. He thinks this might be a trap. Well, he had already gotten caught in one trap before, so he knows that they can do this. And that's a good point. He knows they can make traps. So he stops, examines the log and everything, and then walks around it. And you're thinking like, oh, well, there went your entire plan. Yeah. But Dutch, being the Mart American he is, has a second trap set up. Yeah, plan B pretty much gets a log dropped on him, more or less. Yeah. Don't know how Schwarzenegger had the time or the resources to set that one up. It was a big log. That must be in the extended edition montage. Director Scott got all those montages. You're able to do that kind of thing. If you're going to storm Kim Jongo's palace single handed, we have to make you a complete soldier in very little time. How are we going to do that? I think I know just what we need.
Participant #1:
Pretty still kicking at this point, but not doing so well. Dutch literally picks up a rock and is about to just slam into him when he basically stops and sees, yeah, it's over. Yeah, there's no point in doing that. What the hell are you with the Predator saying that back to him? What the hell are you? Which has so many layers to it. Yes. Did you look up who did the voice for the Predator? I thought they were just played back recordings. Well, they actually have an uncredited voice actor doing the Predator voice, and it was Peter Cullen, A-K-A Optimist Prime. Okay. One thing is something I never knew until watching this and seeing it in that list. It's not JeanClaude Van Dan. So, Predator, instead of just dying, he decides to go out with a bank and sets off his armor. Self destruct mechanism. So Arnold looks down and sees the alien letters that appear to be counting down and not just the countdown. What adds to it is the prerecorded laugh from Billy. That was a nice morbid touch to that self destruction. Big explosion. Smoke clears. Dutch is alive. Chopper approaches. And it's the general and Anna and I'm assuming Poncho. I don't remember if we see Poncho. I don't remember if we see him or not. We do see Anna, CNN and the general. Why in the hell would the General be on that helicopter? No. Because he had it in his contract. In two scenes. I just lost a helicopter of Rangers, a helicopter of Green Berets, and a specialized search and rescue team. I'm going to take the next helicopter out there myself. Yeah, dumbass. So, my ending thoughts. This was a fantastic film. I could go watch it again right now. No, absolutely. This was great. My only complaint is that opening scene. Yeah, that and their liberal use of unlimited ammo. And that's again, something that didn't really happen much in the action movies. Everybody just gave that's a creative license. At least they reloaded it. Did that minigun did run out of ammo after expending about ten ammo boxes worth now, at least they showed that he was carrying an ammo box and then it was actually feeding it. I fully expected to see no ammo going into the gun and it's just shooting anyway. Allah warthog. There's no coming into that. Looks like a puma. Kind of like a big cat. You're just making up animals. They did a great job. Just from a military perspective with the bonding of that crew. And you could tell that they were a great team. The shift in the genre, the acting, arnold at his most. Arnold, it is. My favorite Arnold movie is still probably Total Recall, but then this one Running Man and Grant. I haven't seen Running Man with a critical eye. I don't know. That one might not hold up, but yeah, I have. I think it does. This one hits all of Arnold's strong points just perfectly. Yeah, it really does. He's not trying too hard. He's not over the top he's a crew leader first, a warrior second, and he's just flawless in it. Credit to him. Yeah, I agree. This is one of my favorite movies from that genre, that era. While again. Just like you. It's not my favorite Arnold movie. It's definitely up there. It would be my top three Arnold movies, definitely. Along with Running Man. Total recall. I'm agreeing with you. Total Recall, man. That's a great movie. Such a good movie. And then I'll even throw as a potential one in there. I really enjoy last Action Hero. Yes. Which is also a John McTernan Phil. That movie gets a lot of crap. Does that one make our list? Oh, it's on there, absolutely. It's totally underrated everyone. If you haven't seen Last Action Hero, please watch it because as a great soundtrack, too. It does. Yeah, there's Macy DC stuff on there. But as a satire send up of these types of movies, Arnold, it is done very well. Meta, before Meta was popular, a couple of bits of trivia to throw at you for this. Apparently while filming these testosterone heavy dudes where they would one up each other each morning, one would get up before the other to be like, I've been working out for hours while you were asleep, pussy. So then they kept waking up. They would try to top each other, each one getting up earlier next day. So they ended up having insomnia. They weren't getting enough sleep because they kept trying to wake up too early to work out and talk to other people. And this is crazy. I had no idea. So John McTernan, right? Die Hard, last section here on this known director. Did you know he was convicted in 2006 and went to prison for a year? For what? Oh, this would be good for illegally wiretapping the producer on Rollerball.
Participant #1:
What? He thought the producer was trying to undermine them and make a different type of movie than he wanted to make, and so he was illegally wiretapping him, and eventually he pled guilty and all the stuff. But then it went through several appeals, got all the Supreme Court, and he ended up serving twelve months in prison. And apparently since he got out, no one's like the plague in Hollywood. Wow. Damn. Well, yeah, nobody wants to be tapped. We're tapped by him. I was like I like john maternity. I like his movies. I love Diehard. What else has he done? And then I started reading like, oh, he's done time. That's what he's done. Apparently in prison, he wrote a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair, but no one would make it. Are we sure it wasn't just his own thoughts and dreams? How to get out of his minor security camp? He was reading instruction books on how to get him out of jail. John McTern an Affair. Why is Pierce Browsing breaking into a minor security camp in South Dakota? You don't question James Bond. Dammit. All right, so where we are here got our open questions. So, problem questions. Does this movie hold up today? Absolutely. I would totally agree with you. There was really nothing other the only thing to me that was really dated or overtly dated was the MTV Tshirt and retro has come back in style. So maybe that's not out of places that might have been in the early two thousand s. Yeah. If this movie had never been made and this franchise didn't exist and you made this movie today, you could set this in any disputed area. Absolutely. Where the US military almost any disputed area. I have that as an alternate version. Okay. But the whole thing still works. Yes, you're there. The plot line is classic and is not going to be outdated. And I'm curious where Predator Two takes it because I remember zero of that particular plot. Yeah, I literally just remember the ending. Yeah, that's right. The relatable references of stuff say it's all valid. The hunter to prey. The military action, like we just said. Yeah, it all holds up. Cultural sensitivity. Aside from the Indian tracker or Native American tracker? Trope. You could probably throw something in there about Central American stereotypes. Stereotype on that. I'll agree with that. And then maybe Hawkins being the bad comedian with the pussy jokes. Yeah, it's always the como guys. Yeah, right. That's what I'm saying. That's not, to me a non PC thing. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's a product of the characters. Yeah, that's more realistic. It may not be PC, but it's realistic. Yeah. I mean, you heard much worse jokes on the line. Yeah, that was pretty game. And better jokes. Better and worse at the same time. Right. So we usually look to see if this movie was told from the antagonist perspective. And this is kind of unique because this one is partially told from the antagonist perspective as the way it flashes back and forth. We don't get dialogue or background or anything at this point, but we get first person view a lot from Freddie and from a different alter perspective. I wouldn't mind seeing a version that's strictly from the girl. Yeah, she's just at that little compound. Then the Americans come in, blast it up, she gets taken and then she tries to escape and all of a sudden the jungle comes alive and she's terrified. I may have missed this. Was she a prisoner of them or was she with them? I think she was with them. Okay. And that's what I thought too. I couldn't remember. So yeah, she's just hanging out with the gorillas whether she and then all of a sudden everybody that she's with gets killed and then she gets pulled into the jungle by a bunch of beefy Americans wearing MTV gear. Yes, I wouldn't mind seeing that. Maybe not 2 hours worth, but worth a couple of web videos. Yeah, that would be good. Who would you say this movie is for? I would say just like last action hero. US. Any meat eating American male that loves a good meat potatoes type. Yeah. Explosions. Booms. But not like over the top Michael Bay explosions. It was more realistic. Explosions. Did Tropic Thunder have any throws to this movie? I don't remember. Or not. I don't recall either, because I haven't seen that since it came out. I haven't seen a long time either, but obviously, same sort of setting. And I could just picture those characters. If they didn't, then I could just still picture them in my head firing off into the jungle at nothing. The main thing I remember from that movie is Tom Cruise dancing. Robert Downey, Jr. That, too. Just a dude playing a dude. What do you mean, you people?
Participant #1:
All right, now we got to watch that one. I want to watch this again. Speaking of not being PC. Holy crap. So let's see. Where do you think these characters are going to be in six months of the year? You think Arnold is retired from the military at this point? Is open up a bed and breakfast in Vermont with Anna. He's in therapy. He's just sitting in a bathroom somewhere. 762 millimeter or he's in a room, full metal jacket. He's in a room staring at Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. I swear, it was like a seven foot monster. Yeah, he's sitting there. He's in a padded room in a straight check and saying he came out of the trees, man. Out of the trees. Because, of course, nobody believes him. Ask the girl. And I was like, I don't know what he's talking about. I didn't come with this guy. He kidding. Yeah, I'm just a translator for the army. I was just doing my thing, working, and then all of a sudden, these guys came in. All right, if you were to recast one of the leads, I had an initial thought on that. And then you made a comment that made me almost rethink it. My first thought was to get an entirely different type of over the top action hero. So I was thinking Steven Segal instead of Arnold. He's a different Arnold. He's a special level. Because if you think about it, like Sylvester Stallone and other guys that are the muscle bound action heroes. But then you've got Arnold, who number one. He's got the accent, which I don't know how, but it works. It's just something you accept with every Schwarzenegger movie that this American hero was not raised in America. I don't know how. It's right up there with John Connery having a Scottish accent no matter what character he plays, the Spaniard, the Spaniard from Egypt or the Russian submarine commander. But I'm just picturing Steven Segal full ponytail and all being out there, and I can see that kind of working. But then you mention John Clinton Bandam, and now I'm like, well, he was the original Predator, which is where that joke came from. John Clan Bandam. He was. And apparently some of the gymnastics you see are still him, but he did not get along with the crew and didn't like the costume and you couldn't see his face, so he left the project. This is a tough one. As far as Arnold Ventura and Billy Do, those guys are, to me, hard to replace in this movie. The rest are replaceable. Completely replaceable by anybody, any actor. I almost saw Carl Weather's in there, too, just from an standpoint. Yeah, you're right. But from a character standpoint, I'll agree. You're right. Yeah. Carl Weathers needs to be in that short list of really kind of key people. I can't think of anybody that could take up Arnold's role in this movie. I really can't. I think that if you put Stallone in there yeah, I don't think Stallone would work. My only other thought was to go completely different. And so when I started thinking of Stallone, I was thinking Tango and cast. I'm like, well, what about Russell? Russell? Kurt Russell. Like Allah soldier. Remember his moody soldier might have been John McTernan. Don't quote me on that one. It might have been So him. Or like Stargate Colonel. Not necessarily overboard, but or Cash.
Participant #1:
That was right around Tango and Cash. I don't know. I'm questioning my 80s. If only we had a magical box that I could type these questions into. Tango Cash is 89. So this is free Tango cash. Okay. So if I were to look up and see what Kurt Russell was doing while this was being filmed, see what movie kept Kurt wrestled from being Dutch, my first thought is it was overboard. Our big trouble in Little China was 86 overboard. 87. Tequila Sunrise, 88. Okay. He literally has a movie a year getting all the way back to 80. Not bad, but I digress. Well, what would you like to see? A different version of this movie. So my thought was it goes back to where you were saying you could almost drop this in today's zone into any conflict area, except it has to be a conflict area with trees for it to work really well for the Predator. I don't see him dropping into middle of Afghanistan and being able to work that well. That's a good point. That's a good point. But you could throw it in anywhere. South America. Central America. Africa? Well, Europe, the Balkans. Obviously, Ukraine is going on right now. But when you get into Afghanistan, you got a lot of mountains, you got a lot of ruins. You've also got a lot of landmines already there that you have to walk around. Drop me into North Korea. That would be interesting. Into the DMZ. There you go. I'd watch that. Yeah. It'd be like his own American Gladiator type show to see if he can dodge all that well. And it goes in with the next question. With today's technology changed, they've tried all the remakes and all the different attempts. We probably would have gotten a little higher, deaf, heat vision. And then I took a different approach to this. I took a non metal one with what if the army or what if Dutch's crew had today's technology such as NVGs and stuff like that. I don't know if they would have brought them with them. That's what makes this movie great. Especially towards the second half where you've got he's fighting with homemade bow and arrow, fire and sticks. It's man against alien without the technology. And that's part of what makes the movie really good. So the technology, I could see them having it, but it needs to be ruined somehow. Like, somehow the active camo also covers up his heat signature kind of thing. I can imagine, like, how it should have ended if it was today. On predator. You got Hawkins with a UAV handheld. I see the problem. Hold on a second, boss. Yeah, that's crew. We're all in San Diego running UAVs and just bombing the entire place. Yes. Hawkins be like, I see him. Wait a minute. Write it down, pussy. Roll credits. All right, now, would this be appropriate for your own kids? Send the hate mail. But my son and I watched this together and he loved it. He had tons of questions, both about the army and aliens, and I love his questions. They're great. Did you write any of them down? No, it was a bit ago, but he enjoyed it. It's not like a three hour Lord of the Rings marathon or anything. So this is an hour and a half or so. He was able to sit through it and it kept his attention. The death and everything didn't bother him. It was all within context of the show. And he loved it. Cool. Which was nice. Good to watch a movie with my son. He's getting into the good movies. All right, so now we have a new segment on our show that we discussed for a while and decided to kick that off on this movie. And this is a recast of the movie with the muppets. Rules for this segment are going to be there must be one human is rule number one. Rule number two, beaker must be in every cast. Absolutely. We'll just go down the cast list and we'll say each one, see who we've got. We'll tweak this as it goes along. First show and see the best format. But right now, what do you want to start with? I mean, let's start with Dutch. For Dutch, I have him picked as you don't replace Arnold. Arnold is the one person. Now, see, I picked Kermit. You have Kermit. Kermit. All right. I'm just picturing Kermit as Arnold. We can kill it saying those lines. Firing the M 16. And also, and this goes into my Dylan. I have Dylan as miss Piggy so that when they do the handshake, it's those two. I have Dylan as Dr. Teeth. Okay. I could see that. What about Blaine? Good old Jesse The Body Ventura. I have Fozzy. I have Sam the eagle. I think I did at one point, but I picked a better one for Sam Eagle, I think. Okay. But yeah, I just picture Fuzzy holding that mini gun with a hat.
Participant #1:
To me, it's just Jesse Ventura's blank stare throughout the entire movie matches so perfectly with Sam. To me, if you were going to replace him in anything, he would be Sam. If he was turned into a bucket, that's what he would look like. What about Mac? Who you got from Mac. I have Ralph. That fits. And I think I did at one point, too. I changed that out with Gonzo. See, I have gonezo somewhere else.
Participant #1:
I could just picture Dylan, aka Doctor Teeth, being grabbed from behind by Ralph, who's already laying in the bushes. Now. I was picturing Gonzo going to miss Piggy. You make any more noise, I'll cut you. I'll make you bleed. All right, so for Billy is Billy the tracker? Beaker, that's where you have Baker. All right. I actually have Floyd. Oh, from the band? From the mayhem. Yeah. That would work. For Billy. I have Baker because Beaker, you think the meeps, right? But he's stoic the whole time. Yeah, the only time you hear him really yell is when Billy gets killed off screen. You hear me?
Participant #1:
I like that. So I had Beaker as Hawkins, I just picked a baker trying to tell all his jokes, and instead of them being bad jokes, it's just that nobody else can understand him. That is good. So for Hawkins. That's where I had Sam Eagle. Okay. Delivering those pussy jokes as Sam Eagle, that also would be hilarious. Completely dead face. Yeah, exactly. We may end up having, like, two of the same. Then. At this point, for Poncho, that's where I went with Gonzo. That does work. I originally had Rizzo, but I swapped out Rizzo for the human. So you got Poncho as the human. That's just kind of an idiot in the middle, basically. At the end, you have a bunch of buffets helping an injured human. Yes. Okay. What about the General? I think we're the same on this one. It's played by both Statler and Waldorf. Yes, that's an easy one, but I literally have Styler and or Waldorf. I could see them as two generals giving the off order with those jokes. And then for the predator, Pepe the Prawn. Yeah, Pepe. I went with Animal. Animal does work very well. Pepe works so good, too. Holy shit. I want to see these now. We need to contact the Henson, and I think we can get this done. We both had Janice as Anna yes.
Participant #1:
Jungle came live, man.
Participant #1:
Yeah. I want to see both versions of this now. So we need to talk to the Henson people. If you guys enjoyed that new segment, let us know and we will maybe go in reverse and do some mini episodes and Muppet cast our past episodes as well. Oh, yeah, it'd be interesting. All right, let's see. Any final movie thoughts you want to partake before we go into our ratings? I would say this is a stable that everyone should see regardless of whether unless you really don't like any type of action movie whatsoever, that would be the only reason not to see this. If you hate action movies and I don't know anybody like that, thankfully, everybody should see this movie. It's just a great movie. Yeah. And it starts off a really good not only genre, but universe, as well as ties into other universes, as we find out in the sequel. This is true. Spoiler alert. Yeah, you're right. If someone says, oh, I don't like military movies, or I don't like action movies, it's multiple genres. And there's really to find someone that doesn't like action, horror, survival, or military movies, all of them, they can go watch the Lifetime Channel. As far as I'm concerned, if you like any of those genres, you should watch this movie because it just kicks ass. It's a great movie. Agreed. So who did you recommend for the cinema? Decon hall of Fame. For my vote for Cinema Decon, I have to go with Bill Duke. I went with Arnold. You went with Arnold? I went with Arnold. I think this is just him in peak form, and he's really just solid. He made the movie, and I can go with that. Bill Duke, to me, like I said, Mac was my favorite character. But I will concede with you that this was Arnold at his Arnold. I don't think this movie happens without Arnold. Bill Duke is great. I did love that character. But I don't think this movie happens without Arnold at this point in time with him just being yeah. As much as I kind of want to see Stephen Segal version of it at this point, I kind of agree with you. I don't think it would have either happened or been as well received if it wasn't for Arnold. It's like that difference between an actor and a movie star. And Arnold was a star in this, and it set him off towards yeah. The governor. Two future governors in this movie we did. And this might be the first movie that they're both in. It's not the last movie they're both in. They were both in honeyman. Yeah. Running man comes a couple of years later. Yeah. Where was it before? I think actually, it's in my notes. How long? It's the same year. They're both in 87. They both happen to be living they're probably in the same week. I'm going to be in town for a couple of weeks. Let's make a few movies. Sneak Carl Weather's to run for office. Now we got a governor.
Participant #1:
Well, congratulations to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the latest inductee to the cinema decon hall of fame. All right, now is the time in our show where we rank the movie based on our fan review while also adding in the IMDb rating. This is a ten point scale, and the average will put the movie in our mega list. All right, Steve, one to ten, where would you put this movie? I rank Predator at a solid nine. I'm right up there with you. I have it at an 8.8. Perfectly valid. We factor in the IMDb rating, which wow. IMDb is not as happy with it as we were, which is surprising. They have it at a 7.8. That's pretty surprising. The popularity is going up. That's because we told our listeners we were doing this one. So everybody very good. Very true. Yeah. The power of marketing. So by our powers combined, the composite score is 8.53, which puts this solidly as the number one show for Cinema Decon, which we kind of expected going in here. Yeah. Well earned. Three Amigos in Idiocracy. We're tied at 7.83. So 8.53 yes. No commanding lead. That's going to be tough to beat. We're going to need an equally good movie plus an equally good IMDb score, which is going to be tough. We haven't done any that have gotten above. This is the highest rated IMDb score we've done. Okay, now that I'm looking at it, we're still trending same. We're just off by a little bit of a scale. So out of all the other movies we've done, what was the highest IMDb score, do you think? Would it have been Independence Day? No. All right. I don't know, honestly. Good night and good luck. I actually was about to say that, too. Damn. It was a 7.4 to the guest. Do you remember the lowest critters? Coneheads. Coneheads, Seriously?. Coneheads was a 5.3. I would have assumed critters. Wow. I would assume hackers. No, hackers was a staple. Terrible. Without Hackers, we have no Angelina Jolie hall of famer. All right, so, media pitch. Do you have anything you want to recommend to our listeners that you are watching, listening or whatever these days? I don't know how to put it. It's very unique and kind of specific, so I don't know if that many people really get into it. But I had previously pitched a show that I've been watching called Leonard Kenny, which was basically Canadian humor about the Hicks hockey players skids and all the shenanigans that happen on in a small Canadian town. And very recently they just made a spin off of it off of one of the loud mouth hockey player main characters called Shoresy. It's played by the same guy who plays the main character in Letter, Kenny. But it's basically a spin off that's completely centered around the shores of character and hockey. So it's the same kind of humor, but it's a lot of hockey. And it was a short run. I think it was like six episodes for the season, but it was still the same level of humor. It's just hilarious. Did Letter K end? I think no, they're still coming back, I think, but they've done ten seasons. What's the name of it? Shoresy. You kind of need to watch Letter, Kenny to understand where Shores he comes from, but I think even non hockey people would like it. What platform is that on? Which channel? I think it's Hulu. Hulu. I think. Cannot remember Hulu or Crave. So mine is going to be a movie on Netflix right now. Netflix original movie called Tick Tick Boom, starring Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson. And I don't know if you're familiar with the musical theater realm with Rent. And the guy that made rent was Jonathan Larson. He was a very talented man and he died young. He actually died the day before Rent was scheduled to go on Broadway. So this is called tick, tick, boom. That is an actual play that he did in a workshop. And then they eventually made a move for all the musical theater fans out there. If there are any listings, this, please watch it. Andrew Garfield does phenomenal in it. He was nominated for an Oscar, which he should have won. I was blown away. Yeah, don't get me started on Oscars, but I was blown away by this movie. And he really does knock it out of the park. And Tick Tick Boom, great movie, especially for anyone that's a fan of Rent. And this is a fairly recent one, too. Yeah, it is. I've got the soundtrack. Soundtrack's, great. Really good. All right. Excellent. All right. So normally here's where we would be spinning, but we've actually got a run of sponsored movies thanks to our dedicated listeners. And our next movie is already known of view. It is the uniquely named predator two. Yeah, it's a bold strategy on that name part to do. Yeah. Joining us for Predator Two will be friend of the show and sponsor Jamal Milton provided all the schedules, clear the planets line and the windshields out in the east should be happening fairly soon. I am personally looking forward to this because like I said earlier, I don't remember much and should be fun. Well, that's all for this episode. Thank you for listening and we hope you stay with us through this little experiment. What did you think of printed her? Let us know on our socials and we'll be sure to tell you how wrong you are. Please don't forget to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen. Check out our website in the show notes to see the full list of our movies and what we'll be covering in our rankings thus far. Be sure to give a list to our sister podcast, Music Rewind, which has season two airing now. We'll see you next time on on Cinema Decom
Participant #1:
Insert previous pre-watch segment repeat last line of quote.
Participant #1:
Fuck you, San Diego. Damn it. Who put that on the teleprompter?
Participant #1:
A podcast from the Sidereal Media Group. Vaccine anchors.
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