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I appreciate you checking out. Hello everyone, I'm Robby Dorman, and this is the serial fanaticist, the podcast for fans of everything. Welcome. Today I am joined by Andrew Bloom from the Andrew blog.net and discuss the 1987 action movie Predator.
The best action movie ever made, and Andrew had never seen it, so I mean to watch it. And now I want you to sit down and you really like it. So we discuss why I love it so so much and why Andrew did it. We also cover how Jean Claude Van Dam almost became the Predator under the discussion.
I'm here once again with Andrew Bloom with the Andrew blog.net to talk about what we're talking about. Predator. I believe we're talking about the famed 1950s and 60s director, Otto Preninger. I don't know who that is.
You should, Robby. In addition to being a very excellent director, he was Mr. Freeze in Batman 66. Oh, okay.
Well, I know what Batman 66 is. So that's good. We're talking about Predator today, the 1980s. We are.
Sorry, Andrew. We're not prepared. Well, he's good. I don't know.
It's going away. Well, now I'll be the next podcast. Well, there's some auto. I'll dig into the filmography of auto predator.
Is there any movies that he's directed that I would know? Fallen Angel. Nope. It's he needed a lot of controversial films for his time.
We're talking about 1987 action film Predator, sorry, Arnold Schwarzenegger directed by John McTearnan. If you haven't got, I'm going to say this right now. If you haven't seen, like, this is what I said to Andrew that basically started, that's the recording of his podcast. It's like, if you have watched Predator, go watch Predator, like, stop what you're doing.
Like you're cooking dinner. Stop cooking dinner. Go find a way to watch Predator. And then after you're done, watch Predator.
You can eat. That's how important it is. From my standpoint, I would please encourage the listeners to turn off any ovens and make sure that any open flames are extinguished before starting to watch Predator. If you can do both at once, that's okay.
See, I guess. I love Predator. I mean, that's my first, my first, my first statement would make it very clear. I love Predator.
It is my, it is my favorite action movie. I think it is the best action movie of all time. I've watched it many times, dozens of times, I've seen Predator and probably dozens more than that. Predator has been on while I'm around it, you know, not directly paying attention to Predator, but it is there for me.
If I want to sit down and watch a particular scene, oh, this is, this is where he says if it bleeds, we can kill it. I need to see this again. It's very important. I capture this one moment for the thousandth time.
So even if you've not been watching Predator, you've been Predator at Jason. Exactly. Predator Jason for a lot of, a lot of stuff. Uh, Andrew, you sent me, I sent you, and I, we, we were talking about this for a while before we actually record this podcast for months now.
I think I've been like, hey, I should watch Predator. It's important. It's important. You watch Predator.
Uh, I think you finally did. And you sent me a sad, very sad text message. Actually, and I was actually thinking, like, I was just, I was just thinking, like, actually, I'm like, right around when you sent me. I'm like, I wonder if you just watched Predator yet.
And then you sent me a text message. You're like, around me. I, I don't know your exact words, uh, paraphrase. I'm afraid to inform you that I don't love Predator.
I'd say it's always a very, a very difficult thing when somebody encourages you excitingly to watch a movie that they love and if they think you'll really like it or they think it's excellent. And then you kind of have to come back and, you know, say to them, this isn't my favorite thing in the world. When you were hoping to have the, oh my God, this part was great. And you have arms.
Great. Did you see that part? I didn't even think about that part. Instead, you have like, no, that part was good conversation, which is never as fun of a conversation to have.
I mean, for a podcast, it might actually be better for someone to have a contrasting opinion because I think, you know, has interesting discussion and arguments about what things mean versus us just going nodding our heads and saying, man, that's great. That's great. We don't want to have the Chris Farley podcast. But, but at the same time, you know, it's, it's probably makes for less good copy.
Probably more enjoyable for the individuals to get to both mutually rave about whatever the thing is. That's true. I mean, I say watch better now because I don't, I wouldn't say watch better because it's my favorite, one of my favorite movies and my favorite action movie. I just generally think it's great.
Like, I just, you know, I recommend if I think a film or something is great, I'm probably going to say, hey, you should watch it or read it or whatever. I thought of, I thought of the best way to explain, I think why it's my favorite action movie and why I think it is the best action movie. All right. Late on.
Convinced me, Robbie. I best, I can hope you understand my argument. That's really what I'm hoping for. You understand what I mean.
I think Predator is the best action movie in the same way that I think Homer's enemy is the best Simpsons episode. I'm intrigued, but confused. So please go on. I think, and it's, I was thinking about this where you yourself told me, like when I was talking like, I think Predator is the best action movie and you're like better than die hard.
And I was like, yeah, I think I said die hard is number two to me and I agree. I think I stand by that. I think die hard is number two. Die hard is great.
They're both directed by John McTyran. I was just saying, it's just seemed like the closest competitor and I, they're both something that could be compared as an 80s movie, same director, same like that, a action star. It is, it is. They're both directed by John McTyran and they came out 1987, 1988, year one year after each other, but they're very different.
They couldn't be, they are, they are both action movies, but they are very, very, very different action movies. And I think it kind of looking at the catalog of John McTyran and where he would made a lot of movies in the 80s and early 90s and then made roller ball and basic. Starting Paul Heyman, right? Yeah.
Paul Heyman is in that movie. I forgot. He was in for perjury, so I don't, apparently is hated by most of Hollywood now, so I don't know if we're ever going to see John McTyran direct again. I did some, I did movie jail, he, uh, he hired people to spot, he hired a private detective to spy on a movie producer and record him without his knowledge and then lied about it to judge what end.
It was about, I think it was about roller ball. I think he was, he wanted to prove that the producer wanted to roller ball to fail or something. Like he thought that the producer of roller ball had some nefarious purpose for the film and didn't really care if it succeeded or failed and was kind of like throwing me turn into the lobes or something. He apparently also has a lot of, he also used the same private detective to spy on his wife at the time and then lied about that as well to a judge and the judge did not take kindly to any of these, this stuff he went to prison for a year, a year, I believe, uh, and then the guy that fell for bankruptcy.
So not Johnny Turner struggling, I guess, um, as much as I enjoyed die hard, like, it sounds like it's probably best for this guy if he is not in positions of power over people. Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I only know is that he is apparently not like my most Hollywood at this point because he likes trying to spy on them. So I doubt we're ever going to see Johnny Turner movie again.
And that's okay. He's done enough for the genre and for films, I think he's made a lot of good movies when he was directing, but you look at his movies, he's made and like, he made predator and die hard back to the back years, both considered top of the top action movies by most people. Like you ask people, what's the best action movie? Like a lot of people, their answer is going to be die hard or predator.
And you know, there's other people say, you know, Robocop, which also came out in 1987, the same year as predator, which also was the same year as the 11 film, the Dallas by the way, Rebecca straight number three on my list, by the way, door anyway, I'll keep it tracking home. Um, he directed those new movies. And then, and then you look at his filmography, as it goes on, and he directed after that, hunt for a October, which is not really an action movie. I mean, you can argue it, I guess.
I don't consider it one. Um, and then he did the last action hero in die hard with the vengeance. I've never seen the last action hero, but I've heard good things about it. But it enters.
It enters. They're very different. That's a thing. And I think in those three movies, the looking back at that discovery, I'm thinking about it, what you wrote in your piece about predator and how you feel about die hard, it in what, you know, thinking about what predator is and what die hard is and what the last action hero is, that they're, they feel like a trilogy to me, an unofficial weird trilogy.
All of them deconstruct the action movie genre in different ways. I'm going to go with intrigued, but confused, I mean, I totally get die hard as a deconstruction of it. And from what I know of last action hero, it makes sense to me that it's a deconstruction. I'm going to need some persuading that predator is deconstruction of the action movie.
Okay. Have you seen commando? I have not seen commando. I mean, you've seen Terminator, right?
You've seen Terminator, obviously. Yes, I have seen. Everyone on a scene. I think you come out of the womb.
The first thing they do is make you watch Terminator and Terminator two, probably. But we want you to know what it's like emerging into a new world completely naked. Give me your boots, your jacket. So you know, you look back at the action movie genre and it starts, like, I don't know, you asked, I looked it up online to see if there's like a consensus on what is an action movie and what is not.
Of course, there is not a consensus because I asked the internet a question. Why would it give me one answer? I'm going to give me thousands of answers. There's an old chestnut about rabbis or if you ask for rabbis a question, you'll get five opinions.
Like the internet is that magnified? Yeah. There's many rabbis on the internet. But my thoughts after reading everything and what I, you know, from my experience watching film, I would say action movies really started in the 50s or 60s with Westerns and movies like The Wild Bunch with Peck and Paul and spy movies with Bond movies are a, I think, a kind of proto action movie, at least action movie as we understand it in the modern day.
You know, it's like one man army kind of stuff, you know, where you have either one man or a small group of men fighting for something, you know, and shooting and killing and there's in violence. And sometimes there's wits, you know, wits and smart wick, I bring their way to problems and everything like that, but using guns like technology and with action scenes with a lot of stuff happening, explosions, it doesn't have to be complicated. That's good. I mean, I think that's what I think of action movies.
Like they started in the 50s and 60s with kind of the more progressive Westerns and spy movies. And then you get a lot of genre movies like, you know, Kung Fu movies, some black exploitation movies in the 70s, along with like urban crime dramas that, you know, were sort of action movies, you know, like in the, or like movies like Bullet or French Connection. I think if you want to consider those action movies, both have to be in the top 10 of the genre. They're both very good.
I think it's a little bit of a stretch to call them action movies. I think they contain DNA there. I think there's DNA that is like, you know, there, but I don't wouldn't call them whole cloth action movies. They contain action movies within them.
They contain multitudes. But they're both very good movies. I'm not going to argue that. But I, when I think action movies, I can see the origins and all those, all those films.
When I think action movies, I think big guns, big muscles, hundreds of deaths, machine guns and armies and one liners, because that's the 80s action movies were the ones I was raised on. It's the ones I watched a lot when I was a kid. And I don't know if that means that that, to me, that's what I think of when I think of action movies and everything else like spawns from that is kind of reaction to it. It is a deconstruction of it.
Like, die art is, and it certainly doesn't make die art bad. It makes that great because of how smart it is about deconstructing that stuff, like, and then you see them depart from those things like with movies like The Matrix and John Wick and Taken. Things like that. Um, I did.
Do you think the superhero movies are actually movies they qualify? I do. I do. It tends to be singularly focused on individuals that tends to have lots of explosion and tends to have lots of combat, at least as has been traditionally adapted in feature films.
I definitely think that superhero stories on the big screen count as action movies. I think they don't have to be. I think there's a lot of ways you can do superhero movies and have them not be that. But let's put it this way.
Not every superhero movie has to be an action movie, but most of them are. I mean, I agree. I'm just, I think that's the same conclusion I came to, but I was just thinking about this in long legacy of what an action movie is. It came to like with the modern day action movie is I think it's a little bit more broad now because it was superhero movies.
It also includes John Wick or Mad Max Harry Road, the raid movies like that, which are some are ultra violent while you look at superhero movies and they're not as, there's not much blood in them and things like that. And yeah, they still somehow, I don't mind it, you know, usually, you know, when I look at 80s, actually movies, almost all of them are rated are almost all of them have extraordinarily explicit levels of violence. People get their arms ripped off, people getting paled, blown up, all kinds of stuff. But I think of getting back to my result point, big muscles, big guns, explosions, combat, one liners.
And this is 1987 when this comes out. This is all established at this point. These are tropes by 1987, like Commando came out in 1984, Terminator came out in 1982, Arnold was a became a star because of Terminator, he was already the Conan movies, he was already known then, Commando made him a bigger star after Terminator, Rambo was a thing at this point. The first blood came out, which was the first blood is like an actual movie film, it's not really an action movie.
I don't know. I was the same trajectory of Stallone's path with the Rocky movies where it starts out as an actual sort of down-to-earth exploration of one man going through a difficult time and finding a way through it with some serious hardships. And then with each successive installment, it gets bigger, hand louder, and darker. Yes.
I mean, I'm looking forward to Rambo, Farmer Rambo, Home Alone 5 or whatever it is. Have you seen the trailer for the new Rambo movie? I have not. I'm not sure my weak heart could take it.
He's a farmer. He's a farmer and he sets up Home Alone style traps for some sort of bad local American bad guys. I'm not sure I buy it, so that's just alone with no out of farm. I mean, he's on a farm.
Maybe Rambo can. Rambo's on a farm. I'm not going to say he's a farmer. All I've seen from the trailer, he's on a farm.
One man is impaled with a pitchfork, spring-loaded pitchfork, hits a guy in the chest. I saw that in the trailer. It's a spring-load? Oh, because it's his trap.
He's just lying around the search. No, no, no, no, no, no. Some bad guy steps on a thing and the pitchfork gets up. But that's where Rambo is.
Now, Rambo has gone progressively and progressively or progressively insane as it goes along. But that, by 1987, I know part two would come out. I'm not even sure if Rambo is running as Rambo 3. I didn't know Rambo 3 come out.
That's the question. I want to say afterwards. 88. Okay, so Rambo 3 is absolutely insane.
It goes to Afghanistan and Rambo 3. He helps those brave soldiers in Afghanistan who would never turn on America again in gratitude. Yeah, Rambo 3 and Charlie Wilson's war. Those are surprisingly effective double feature.
Exactly. Those 48 hours would come out, which is the other kind of, I guess, the split in the genre where you have the buddy cop action movie, where it becomes basically, that's perfected in Leaf 11, which comes out in the same way. Perfected. We can use that word again.
What's, okay, what is the best buddy cop movie? I don't know, but it ain't that, brother. I like Leaf 11. Whoa, whoa.
I don't want it to rail us a lot of that kind of different 80s movie, so package might be the weapon. Okay. I don't know. I just, when I think of, like, I'm not saying it's a perfect movie.
I'm just saying that as a buddy cop movie, Leaf 11 does what I want a buddy cop movie to do, better than any other buddy cop movie. I don't, 48 hours is not as good, even though it's basically started in the genre. I, like, there's men, there's so many of them that have come out, and most of them are just like, Hey, what if it was Leaf 11, but instead one of them is Jackie Chan? I've heard worse premises for me.
I mean, I like Jackie Chan. So he'll see Jackie. And it's great. Also makes you're telling me that I get to sub out.
Mel Gibson and insert Jackie Chan. It's hard for me to think of a movie where I'm not happy to see that happen. I mean, what about if we just, like, it's not like there's not racism in the Jackie Chan movie's either bad, fake, Asian accents going on. I'm not saying it's perfect.
I'm saying it's preferable. Okay. All right. Okay.
I mean, we're talking about action movies. We can, we can want any tension we want to. All right. I've already made the investment.
This predator is wide. The topic of predator encompasses a lot of things. This is my long-winded way of saying all the things that happen in predator are, like, predator operates on multiple levels. Like there is, there is a surface level of just like plain, like, Hey, a bunch of macho dudes go into the jungle as soldiers get ambushed by a creature.
They don't know what it is. And it ends with Dutch, Arnold Schwarzenegger, fighting it and killing it and winning. And like, it works. I think it works on that level, but there's another level.
There's another level below it where it is, it's satire. This is taking every trope. Is it? Is it?
Yes. Yes, it is. They, every, they, there's a bunch of men, a bunch of, like, okay, think about who's in this movie, Andrew. Okay.
We have Arnold Schwarzenegger. Biggest action star that's ever existed. The rock might be on by the end of his career, but for now I'm going to say Arnold's still number one. He's like way better movies than the rock has.
There is Carl Weathers, who at this point is Apollo Creed, right? I think muscles Apollo Creed. They ever stop being Apollo Creed? I mean, in four, he gets, he dies.
So yeah, then that's what he's doing. Wait a minute. My wife is listening. Don't listen to this podcast.
He doesn't see Rocky four. She has not. She wants to see Creed and I'm trying to make her watch at least some of the Rocky movies before we do. Oh God.
Rocky four is hilarious. You have to watch Rocky four if you watch. I like Rocky four. I'm just saying Rocky four is a funny movie because it's insane.
It doesn't make it, it doesn't. He wins over. He defeats communism in a boxing match. The one thing the predator is missing is after Carl Weathers character passes away when he's getting blown away by the predator.
It's just dull, flung and leaning out from behind a tree and going, if he dies, he dies. Oh, it's, I mean, I love Rocky four is great. But Carl Weathers, he's known as, hey, Apollo Creed, he is, and by God, he was not afraid of working out before he got into this. I want to think of Carl Weathers.
I don't think I'm like a rich dude, but he is absolutely ripped in this movie. All the backstage stories are behind the scenes stories that I have read about Predator. I have read about how the actors were constantly trying to one other one another in terms of when they got to the gym, how much workouts they did, what time they got to do it. It sounds like there was quite a bit of a competition, shall we say, among them too, to see who could pump their muscles the fastest.
Let's use the machine. I'm sure using entirely legal substances. Oh, absolutely. No one would definitely not use arrows.
It was the 80s. Everybody was clean and so over the entire time. Yes, exactly. So you have those two guys.
You have Jesse Ventura, professional wrestler. Up into this point. Second future governor in the cast. Exactly.
That is another thing I love about this movie. Two governors in this movie. Oh, so silly. So Jesse Ventura, professional wrestler at this point, he had done not much, basically nothing else.
He goes on to be in big parts in a lot of other movies, including The Right Man, which also came out in 1987, which also starts Arnold Schwarzenegger, which also a fantastic movie. Totally different from the Stephen King book, but also good in its own right. We have Bill Duke, who is in commando, also with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Big guy.
You have Sonny Lanham, who's in 48 hours, another action movie. Then you have Richard James, who plays Pancho, who is like, there's two guys, and that's the interesting thing. There's like two dudes on the team that are like normal looking, that are massively muscled ripped guys. You mean the cannon fire?
Pancho lives until the end. He's the second, he's the second, second last one to die, or the first one to die. I have to admit, the non-Arnold, non-Carol Wethers, non-Jesse Ventura contingent, I like Pancho. I like Mac, but the rest of them become very quickly interchangeable to me.
I like Pancho a lot. He's the one, I mean, they're all chewing scenery, which kind of actually is part of my argument here. But him, and then there's Shane Black, who is a screenwriter, who apparently they had him punch up the script. He wrote Leaf 11, for example.
He also wrote the recent... And it shows. He also wrote the recent The Predator, which I've not watched because I heard it was miserable, and I don't need to sully my memories. I've seen enough of the miscellaneous Predator-related movies to know when to not watch them.
But Shane Black literally has two lines, and they're both dirty jokes. I'm shocked. I know. I know.
I know. It's not crazy. I think Shane Black's a good writer for the most part. You've seen Kiss Kiss being there?
I have not. It's being on my Christmas movie list, and I keep having to carve the powers that be into it. It's very good. I think it's maybe my favorite Shane Black movie.
Maybe it's because Robert Downey Jr. is there, and he has charm, and he can sell a lot of the stuff. I might have something to do with it. You mean he's a better actor than Arnold Schwarzenegger?
I find that hard to believe. I... No, Andrew. No one...
I don't think anyone is on the... Hey, Arnold, is a good actor. I don't think... Is anyone ever said that?
I'm sure some people in the throes of the various substances that were flowing freely during the 1980s may have had that thought passed through their mind in some way, shape, or form. Okay. I'm not defending. I'm not saying...
I don't think any of the acting quote unquote in this movie is good. I... You're not making that argument. But I don't...
Action movies have a good acting. Not important to me. It does not enter into the equation. I don't need my action movies to have great acting, but I do need them to, if they're not going to have good acting, not try to command a number of scenes where acting is necessary.
Why in the world? McTearing and Gibbs Arnold so many lines. I don't know. Who sees this guy who's like, okay, Arnold, I want you to, you know, order a sandwich at this restaurant.
I even have one song to beige. All right. Let's give this guy a lot of meaty monologues in this movie, and have him say faux profound things. The first two thirds of this damn thing, like I just, I play to your strengths, play to the fact that you're just gonna have these guys, you know, beat stuff up and shoot things and make things explode and say stupid action would be lines rather than trying to get them to a moat.
And every once in a while, graze profundity with their very important statement about the nature of soldiers and the tops of each other world that we live in. I mean, that's... Okay. Let's get back to...
I was talking about the castes. Sorry, I'm doing it. No, you're fine. You're fine.
That's the nature of the beast. So aside from Pancho, who is just, you know, the skinny guy, who actually, I think actually does have the most lines in this movie, you say, there's really not that much dialogue in this movie. Most of it is people walking through a jungle and then stopping, something happens, they talk a little bit and then they keep walking through a jungle. There's not really that much dialogue in it.
But I think Pancho actually has most of it, Arnold probably, because he, they aren't only him probably at the most because they lived the longest, so it's a product that they have the most time to talk. I'm surprised that Mac is a higher on that list, because it's like he, I thought he was one of the few characters in the movie who, at least one of the few performers they'll do who got a lot of lines and I felt like made a lot out of it, who put layers into the performance and kind of delivered something a little bit more than the, you know, Maria, my light, hot leaves kind of stuff. If I was going to pick an actor among all these people, Bill Digg is probably the best one. Uh, Jessica, Tera, Tera, I mean, I'm not going to say, like, I think Arnold is very charismatic.
I don't really, he's not a good actor, but he's very charismatic. And that's ultimately why people love him so much and it's the same with the rock. I don't think the rock took a really great actor either, but he's very charismatic. I mean, a separate apart from the rock, I don't disagree with you.
I do think that Arnold has a great on-screen presence and, you know, I, I'm a line him as a verbal actor, but I will say I do think he does things with body language that make a lot of sense for his characters and convey the physicality of his situations in significant ways. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the movie improves dramatically when basically everybody else is gone. So Arnold can't talk to anybody and he has nothing to do, fuck, convey his situation through his physicality and through his on-screen presence. I mean, he does talk to the predator.
He calls him an ugly motherfucker. Okay. He talks in three words snippets rather than thudding monologues about the nature of Laura. We're, you know, rescuers, not assassin.
Now watch us blow up this compound of people we just met. That's the point, Andrew. That's what I'm saying. Yes.
That's what John McTearning literally John McTearning has said that. He says like, yeah, it's deconstructing guns in action movies because all these dudes, like literally the predator only attacks people with guns. All these dudes have guns. Aren't effective.
Guns don't do anything. They don't hurt the predator. They do. They hurt him a little bit.
And then the only way the way Arnold kills the predator is with a bow and arrow and he drops a log on him. Like the most primitive primal, like it's Kate and Abel at the end. He's a rock. He's about to smash the, the, the, the predator's head in.
And that's, that is what, like, okay, break the, how is that a deconstruction? Okay. Give me some rope. Give me some rope.
Give me some rope. Dang myself with. All right. Like, yeah.
It's a rope to string your log up with. Yeah. Exactly. I need to set up that trap.
And you're going to wisely look and say, Oh, no, there's spikes under this log. I'm going to go around and then boom, double trick. Log on your head. You lose.
And then I will destroy the fact that I am an alien creature of some sort. Just go. Hey, that's, that's just, that's a Billy's laughter. He does that.
That's a recurring goatee throughout the film, right? He's constantly replaying back what the soldiers are saying, which is way more credit than I am. It's, I think somebody went, yeah, we need our evil alien villain to laugh in the final second. I don't think predators evil.
I don't think predators evil. I don't get said or predator evil. He's just, he's just, he's like the, we need our antagonist. Yeah.
I don't think it's predator's evil. Um, I have feelings. I'm a predator. Andrew, I don't know if you're aware of that or not.
It's only the show. Yeah. Um, but the movie starts off. And that's the thing.
One, I said, I don't know, I think we, I didn't record this, but before I started, I said predators a nearly perfect movie to me and I say nearly perfect. Mostly my biggest complaint about it is the very, very, very beginning, which is literally the same opening as the thing, which is my favorite movie of all time. And it is also my only problem with the thing is the very, very beginning, which features a spaceship crashing at earth. I know this movie is just randos wandering around in the jungle and getting picked off.
And here's this little bit of spacecraft that we're doing. Well, I think that's the thing like to, and I, and I like, I didn't seek this out. It's just happened upon my Twitter feed the other day. Um, it probably speaks more about the people I follow on Twitter than anything, but it was a random tweet from a comic book writer who was talking about the movies he quotes the most and he listed predator at one of them, which I, I also quote predator all the time.
It's very quotable movie, which is one of the other, it's like one of the hallmarks of action movies as well. To me, like if I can't quote it really a lot, then it's not a great action movie die hard, super quotable, predator, super quotable, commando, super quotable, terminator, super quotable. I think if you firmly identify the reason that the artist will never be considered one of the great action movies. Whew, there it is.
It's good, but it's not great. No, no, no, but it's a comic writer, you're talking about a predator and someone, I think, replied to him about, yeah, I also also about predator, blah, blah, blah, and then he's, he was older than us and he went and saw a predator as a teenager with his dad. And he said, when they went to see this movie, they thought it was just another commando. They didn't know there was an alien in it.
They thought, oh, it's another commando action movie, you know, bunch of mercenaries in the jungle shooting stuff. And then they watched this movie and it folds, it folds in front of them with, hey, actually, it's more than just a commando action movie because it's not like parillas or terrorists they're fighting. They're fighting some alien. It's a monster.
It's a monster movie. It's a horror movie in a lot of ways. It's probably also speaks to why I like it a lot. I can totally buy that critique in a vacuum coming at this film 30 plus years later.
I just, who in the western hemisphere does not know that predator is some, if not alien creature, then certainly some kind of crazy monster. It's just, it has permeated the culture too much for me to understand, I can't understand it at a gut level, I can understand it conceptually, but, you know, like, oh, we get a little bit of detail as to how the predator got there. I appreciate that set up as opposed to, I totally get the idea that it would be an awesome surprise. You know, we were briefly talking about the prestige and sort of how that movie does some nice set up of things that you're not expecting necessarily.
I can see how this would be a cool version of that, but I also, it's hard for me 30 years later when having never seen predator, I knew a lot about predator already just through cultural osmosis to have strong feelings about the spaceship that spoils this twist that has been spoiled by, you know, what counts as western civilization in the 80s and 90s. All I'm saying is that when I watch this movie conceptually, I don't want, have you seen Dark City? I have not seen Dark City. Okay.
You need to see the director's cut. That's the next podcast. I think that it might be. I'll probably give you something if you want to pitch something to me, but frankly, no Dark City is amazing.
I love Dark City, but it also has a very similar, I think it's like a pet peeve of mine, largely where, you know, Dark City, the original theatrical cut does the same thing this does, where it spoils a big plot point because of, like, it happened in the thing, and it happened in this movie, and it happened in Dark City, and it's happened in, I'm sure a lot of other sci-fi slash action slash genre movies, whatever, where the studio went, people aren't going to get what this is. We need to make sure they understand. We need to make sure they understand, throw more information at them that doesn't really need to be there, and it ruins a central reveal, even though, like, yeah, predator, I don't even know when the first time I watched a predator, if I went, oh, it's, there's an alien. But it doesn't matter, you know, conceptually, man, I go, oh, I can appreciate a film that is so confident in itself and what it is, and wanting to generally just how it portrays itself.
Like, and it's the same thing with the thing, which I love the thing, it's my favorite movie, but it is not perfect because of that same showing a spaceship crashing into Earth, and then boom, we're in Antarctica, when, if it was just us in Antarctica to begin with, with these dudes, and then, oh no, they discovered something in the ice, and then the monster comes out, and it's a dog, whatever. That's more fascinating on a conceptual level because it is kind of a display of confidence in a film and in how they demonstrate, how they show, and don't tell, basically, and like, I don't, like, yeah, I don't, I just don't like, I don't, don't show me a spaceship, I don't want to see a spaceship, I just want to, I want to be, I want to come into the predator, I want to come into the thing, I want to come in just like I'm one of these dudes. I think that's really, I want to be, like, I'm, I'm presented this information the exact same way that Dutch is. It's impossible, like you said, because, especially with a predator, because it's so well known, and because there's been, there hasn't been like, you know, they did make that thing in 2010, the prequel, which is very, not, not good, but it wasn't successful.
They made predator two, and aliens were spreadeter, and predator, aliens were spreadeter two, and predators, and the predator, like, well, yeah, everyone knows what the predator is, even if you've never seen a predator moving out. And there's action figures and spoofs and a billion of it. Todd McFarland, Tisvall. Everything's talking about.
But I mean, the upshot is that I think, Robert, you have a good opportunity to turn around, start offering your own director's cuts of these films to chop off the opening two minutes, and you can upload them to YouTube or, you know, piracy or whatever, the director cut of the dark city is it actually does chop off the revealing bit of the beginning of the movie and makes it, like, in that case, that movie really hinges on this twist, twist, quote, unquote reveal, I would call it, and it makes that movie way better. But then back to side, I can totally see how that would be a thing that could improve the movie conceptually. It's about maybe like, 73rd on my own statistics with it. Okay.
Oh, yeah, that one minute spaceship scene is, is, well, okay, I don't change the other things. I will finish my pitch, and then we'll, well, one by line item, we'll get through those bullet points, Andrew. Okay, all right. My pitch is satire is, this is presented, despite the fact, yeah, I mean, obviously, the film is not responsible for the 30 plus years of pop culture is like ice that came after it.
You know, I, as presented in 1987, it, when you first watch this movie, sit down and watch it, it's presented as a bunch of soldiers, big muscles, all famous to some Tiberian degrees for being in action movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger, chief among them, um, you, you get, you get, you see, it has all the action movie tropes. It has, it literally starts with him smoking a cigar in a helicopter in their weird, late 80s clothing. I really like their casual wear at the very beginning of the movie.
And, and, and Dylan's tie, his, I tie is really bad. That's a very bad tie. It's, it's so hard when you're watching an 80s movie to know if something is, at least in terms of clothing meant to be weird or signify that the character has poor fashion sense or if it's just the 80s and that's how people booked. Yeah.
And you're just like, is that tie supposed to be terrible or is it just like, oh, that's how people, that people were ties like that in 1987. But like immediately the first thing we get is, uh, hit Arnold Schwarzenegger, muscle dude who literally has men on his team that they were bidding that all they, that all they talk about, the entire movie, like while they're alive, I should say, is like, oh yeah, the time in Cambodia, that time in Berlin, like they talk about all these things. These operations they've been in on. And it's like, obviously I'm like, uh, Max, like little soliloquy talking about them going through a meat grinder, him in a plane and they're the only ones alive and they talk about old painless that literally they're carrying a mini gun with them.
Mini guns are mounted to helicopters. Men don't carry mini guns. You can't carry it. It doesn't mean men are not capable.
It is, it is sheer, it is, it is ludicrous, all that is ludicrous and Arnold going, oh, we're not assassins. We're a rescue team. And Carl Wethers rolls his eyes. He rolls his eyes and looks at the general and he's like, eh, let him, let him believe it.
It's fine. And then what do they do? Like you said, you're so sad. What do they do?
The first thing that happens in the movie, after they discover the bodies, uh, in helicopter and they discover the skin bodies of the second rescue, the first thing that was sent in to, to do this, I guess, they, they have the big action scene of the movie, like, which would be in a regular action movie would be the final set piece. It would end the movie. Like in commando, that is literally what happens. This is like the ending of commando, except Arnold has a team in commando.
It's just Arnold killing all hundred people with machine guns and various other weapons. And here it starts the movie and it's 15 minutes in. And it's more than that. I guess it's like the climax, the first action, I want to say.
Yeah, you're probably right. 30 minutes in. Oh, like that. And that, it's typically this with the, the final action scene, they rescue the, the fugitives and the movies over, but it doesn't, that doesn't happen.
Instead the, the, the fugitives, the refugees or whatever they are, the hostages, uh, it doesn't matter. It's not important. It's not important. It's not important.
It doesn't matter. Really. It's what they are. The victims, uh, the dudes, whoever, they got you, they're killed and Arnold and his buddy's murder, what?
50 dudes at least. Probably more. A lot of people. A lot of people.
A lot of people have no names and barely have faces, but not being exploded with bullets. Yes. And they've paled on sticks and the having cars heaved at them. That is, yes.
Yes. Arnold Schwarzenegger straps a palm to a truck that only has two front wheels and lifts it and it drives us into a camp and explodes and then they can murder everyone and they themselves are barely injured. A blame gets a flesh wound. He doesn't have time to bleed.
But doesn't. He's your governor of Minnesota. Does he have time to duck? Andrew.
Um, and then, and like that's, but that's what would be the final set piece of a normal action movie of the time period of a commando is just the end of the first act and really is the only real big action set piece in the movie aside from maybe, like if you want to consider the showdown Arnold has at the end, but I don't really think of an action set piece because it's him like hitting a alien with a blog. I think the Carl Wethers scene counts as an action set piece. I think there's a lot of action set pieces there. They're smaller scale than that, but I think they are pretty clearly like they're, they're definitely sequences.
Like, nope. This is where the action happens. We're going to pause whatever else is going on. Here's the action.
Let me adjust. Let me clarify, meaning a stereotypical action set piece of movies of that ilk include with lots of gun violence and lots of explosions and lots of death. After that initial set piece, there's only seven people left. I mean, again, I would count the big Carl Wethers scene in that category.
When his arm is blown off and he continues to shoot on the ground? Yes. I love it. I love it so much.
I love it less. It's so silly. How could you not like it? I mean, honestly, I feel a little bit about this argument the same way I do the argument that Starship troopers is a satire.
It is. I mean, I look, I'm not denying it entirely. I think there's definitely over the top elements, but I think the movie and the people behind it are playing a little coy about it. I think they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Even if McTearnan is feeling satirical about this, I don't know that the people writing the script were. I don't know that Arnold and company were... Well, that's... I think it's funny you mention Starship Troopers because Starship Troopers functions literally the exact same level where Paul Verhoeven made that movie with bad actors on purpose, I think.
But aside from Neil Patrick Harris, aside from Neil Patrick Harris, who I think is a decent actor for the most part. And Clancy Brown is in that. That's true. Well, I mean, those are small parts.
The Chewyo... And the Hank Schrader. Sorry. Hank Schrader is only...
Hank Schrader is only... I think there's an interesting... I was watching the video about it. I think Hank Schrader at that point is only four years older than the lead.
Then what's the space? Oh my God. The terrible actor man? Forget his name.
But he's... Just count Jason Priestley. Yeah, but he was only four years older than yet he looks 20 years older than him because he's perpetually middle age. She has the Gene Hackman syndrome.
But you can't wink and nod at the camera. It won't work. You have to have bad actors. I think in Starship Troopers it's more pronounced because they don't have the charisma of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
No one does. Or Carl Weathers for that matter. Or Jesse Ventura. Any of these guys.
All these dudes in this movie are way more charismatic naturally. You're physically. Like you were talking about earlier. Arnold.
They are naturally... Like Jesse Ventura is a professional wrestler. That's what he did. You know?
He'd be naturally charismatic with his movement. And they're like... The people in Starship Troopers don't have any charisma. And that's the point.
I guess. But it doesn't make sense for that big-budget action movie, but that's how it's presented. I can't. Starship Troopers.
Like you're a point that this is not, like it's kind of cheating. I guess. I think the Lady Doth protest too much on the satire. But I mean, Starship Troopers.
You can't. I don't think Starship Troopers is cheating. Starship Troopers. Like...
I mean literally like Denise Richards is one of your leads as like, she is sorry Denise Richards. You're not doing it. You're not doing it. I'm sorry.
You're all bad. You're all... All this... Like Nick was a...
Nickel T. Son. No. He's Son.
He plays like a supporting character. I think it's Nick Ucy. I want to... That's why I say Nick Nolte first.
I think it's Nick Ucy. But he looks like Eric Ucy. So, but like they're all... They're not.
He played... Like he was in... He played like a killer in The Frightners and he played some terrorist in contact and then not much else. He's got in The Frightners but doesn't have to do much in The Frightners.
But that's what I think... That's what this is. Like it starts off with us. Like we're in a normal action movie.
And then we're not anymore. And yet these are characters from a normal action movie. And then they're put into a movie that's not an action movie. Like it starts off at first 30 minutes.
You're like, oh we're in an action movie. This is normal. They kill everyone. They're barely touched.
They're fine. It sets them up as invincible action men. And then they all get killed. One by one.
It's like it's an action movie. You know? Jason. It's just the predator instead of Jason.
Instead of Mike Myers. That's my pitch. Okay Andrew? That's what I'm saying.
And I... Hey, I love cheesy action movies. Commando is a... Not a good movie.
I still really like it. I can appreciate the... I can appreciate Predator on that level alone. That's a cheesy action movie that turns into a horror movie.
But why I think it's the best action movie ever has... It's more about that... There's another... That second layer.
You know? Like I love The Simpsons and I think Homer's enemy functions perfectly well as The Simpsons episode. But I think it's the best Simpsons episode because it has that second layer or maybe the third layer of meta narrative of us exploring what this genre is. If it bleeds we can kill it.
I ain't got time to bleed. I love Predator. I'm not saying there's nothing more to it is, but I think that Predator has layers in the way that a frozen pizza comes on a circular cardboard disk. What you're getting is very cheesy and what is underneath it is very thin and can't really support it.
The... Predator takes itself more seriously than you're giving it credit for. I know there is stuff in it that is over the top. I am skeptical as to how much that is intentionally there to comment on the tropes of the action movie genre and how much that stuff is there to thrill that action movie audience.
Because they do the horror movie stuff at the same time they're doing the action movie stuff. And even when they're doing action movie stuff, I feel like they are very sincerely trying to make important statement to that something. I just... I don't buy it.
I can imagine there is some over the top for over the top sake, but I don't know that that is meant to be a commentary so much as it is meant to be a feature. To the extent it is operating on multiple levels, I don't know how much of it makes it into the film itself. I don't know how many other people working on the film knew that the film was supposed to work at multiple levels, but I don't think it comes out. Is that...
Are those things mutually exclusive? In what way? The people have to know that they're in a circle movie in the entire... Exactly.
No, I don't think that's the case. But I think you need everybody rowing in the right direction, rowing their oars in the right direction. I think there's too many signifiers that point in the direction of sincerity and earnestness, or at least what passes for it in the context of an 80s action movie to fully excuse those very exaggerated elements as satire in a way that you're willing to do, and I just... I don't think I can, or at least I don't think it's communicated well if it's the intention, which I'm not even kidding itself.
I mean, I think it is... You bring up Star Trekkers. I think that's exactly what it is. I think that you don't tell them.
You tell them, no, this is playing like an earnest action movie. I think there's ways you can play something straight and have it come off like satire, but I also think there's ways in which you can go too far into that to where at some point you are just making the thing that you are supposedly satirizing. But I... Okay.
I'm gonna ask you here. Why can you tell me why Die Hard is the best action movie? I think Die Hard is a better action movie. I'm not saying it's the best action movie.
What's the best action movie? I don't know. I mean, it's a pretty... I'm gonna say it's an important question, but it's a question I would like to give.