Every Movie With The Predator - CRAM IT

It's almost time for a new Predator movie, which means we're going to cram your head full of useful background about this intergalactic species of outdoor enthusiast. But let's not get lost in the weeds this time. You don't need to know which drug lords get picked off in what order in Predator 2, so we're going to keep this to vital information about Predatordom only. The 1987 original Predator opens with this shot of a spacecraft landing on Earth. So fact number one, these Predators are from space. See how easy this is? Next, we meet a team of human mercenaries entering the Central American jungle on a supposed rescue mission. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the group's leader called Dutch. He's not Dutch though. He's Austrian-American still, I think. Soon after entering the jungle, the team finds another group of commandos all dead, and the bodies have been hung up and skinned. Dutch and his men don't know it yet, but they're being stalked by a member of an alien species, one that's obsessed with the most dangerous game, laser tag. No, sorry, it's humans. The most dangerous game is hunting humans. He's killing us one at a time. This Predator is one hell of a hunter too. He can follow humans easily using heat vision. He's got a powerful pulse cannon on his shoulder that can rip through a human body like a tree-ripened papaya. He can even record human voices, just like Kevin McAllister. But perhaps most terrifying of all, the Predator has a cloaking device. It turns out that Dutch's squad's rescue mission is actually a destroy an entire guerrilla base for the CIA mission, which does not go over well with Dutch. This probably won't come up again in any future sequels. We just love the relationship between Dutch and Dylan. Oh, the tension. And a million Dutchland shippers are born. Before they can bail, the Predator starts picking off Dutch's men one by one. It basically becomes a slasher film, only the slasher is a lizard man from space in a kinky fishnet Iron Man suit. Besides a love for killing, Predators are also keen collectors. But of course Dutch doesn't scare so easily. Turns out that Dutch's team is very good at bleeding because pretty soon the Predator kills all of them except for him and their prisoner Anna. Realizing that the Predator will only kill people who are armed and can fight back, Dutch memorably sends Anna to the rendezvous point and prepares to do one-on-one battle with the beast as only Mr. Universe could. He pulls a Rambo and covers himself in mud to elude the Predator's heat vision, makes a series of elaborate traps in almost no time at all, also like Rambo, and even verbally taunts the Predator. Dutch and the Predator engage in some epic jungle warfare, ending in Dutch getting the best of his alien foe. But in a true show of terrible space sportsmanship, would that be spacemanship? The Predator detonates a bomb using a console on his wrist, even giving a chuckle as he does it. Dutch manages to dive out of the way just in time and he and Anna get to the choppa and leave the jungle in one piece. And now we move on to Predator 2, which came out in 1990 but is set in the near future of 1997 Los Angeles. See, it turns out Predators have been coming to Earth for years because they're attracted to hot climates and violence. So a downtown LA that's being ripped apart by gang turf wars sounds downright irresistible, especially at the height of summer. So the Predator is cutting his way through the local gangs, behaving much as he did with the gorillas in the jungle. He selects targets, skins them, hangs the bodies upside down, and recovers his trophies. Danny Glover stars as Harrigan, the very sweaty LAPD detective who's investigating these mysterious new Predator killings. He's pretty tough. So of course the new Predator takes an interest in him right away. Gary Busey plays a government agent named Keyes who's been covertly tracking Predators. We are two thirds of the way to a lethal weapon reunion here. The feds have learned about the incident from the first Predator movie and want to capture a Predator alive to dissect it and steal its technology. That plan does not go well. The Predator also has a new weapon, a sharp flying smart disc he uses to kill Keyes. Of course Harrigan survives and faces off against the Predator one on one. Eventually Harrigan finds his way into the Predator's underground ship. Inside the ship there's a trophy collection which includes some human and alien skulls. Now eagle-eyed viewers will note that one of the skulls resembles a xenomorph from the Alien films, an early clue as to where this franchise was unfortunately going to take us 14 years later. The Predator returns to the ship still alive but Harrigan kills it with its own smart disc. Keyes we can only assume is getting too old for this. Then some more Predators appear but rather than attacking they take away the body of their fallen comrade and reward Harrigan with a trophy of his own, a vintage gun that confirms they've been coming to earth for centuries. Just a side note here there's a comic called Predator 1718 that tells the story of how our Predator got this pistol, by fighting pirates. Now there are rumors that this was supposed to be the third Predator movie and I think we can all agree that Predator using Jack Sparrow's spine as a jump rope would be a much cooler movie than the one we're doing next, Alien vs Predator. Now there's still some disagreement among fans about whether or not the Alien vs Predator films are canonical in either franchise but nothing here directly contradicts what we've already learned in the first two Predator films so we're counting them. According to AVP Predators had been coming to earth since long before the 1700s. In fact they visited a primitive human civilization that predated even ancient Egypt. They taught humans how to build and were worshipped as gods. These ancient Predators would come to earth every 100 years for a good old xenomorph hunt with humans being the lucky hosts and the people that get to kick the whole thing off. Humans were used to breed the ultimate prey. Okay cut to present day 2004. Wealthy industrious Charles Weyland as in Weyland-Yutani from the Alien franchise but that's a whole other kramat has discovered an ancient hidden temple beneath the ice on an Antarctic island and hired a team to explore it. It's a pyramid containing hundreds of rooms. But uh-oh they were actually lured there by three Predators who hope to use them to breed some more aliens which they can then hunt. It's like a training thing or a ritual thing or something it doesn't matter. Now you may notice that Weyland is played by Lance Henriksen who also played Bishop the android and James Cameron's aliens. It's a clever little callback implying that Weyland designed the company's androids in his own image or that they created Bishop as a tribute to him. It also has nothing to do with Predators. Sorry about that. The humans accidentally trigger the start of the hunt when they enter the temple and steal these Predator shoulder blasters which causes the Predators to chase after them. These poor Predators just want their guns back. This is all a wacky misunderstanding. Most of the human team gets killed including Weyland and then of course as the title promised a Predator versus an alien. The Predator's high-tech outer space armor is still affected by the Xenomorph's acid blood but less than human skin or clothing would be. Finally only the humans plucky guide Alexa and one Predator remain to fight off all the surviving Xenomorphs including an alien queen. In a first for the series Alexa and her new pal bond and develop a mutual respect. See they're friends now. Sadly before falling to her death the alien queen kills this last Predator. As we saw in Predator 2 more Predators appear to take away their dead and reward Alexa for her survival skills. But in a shocking twist it turns out the dead Predator had an alien growing inside of it which means this new alien is going to have mandibles. That's right mandibles! The next aliens versus Predator movie is called Requiem because why not that sounds dramatic and it opens right where the first AVP left off. The alien Predator hybrid baby yeah I said it grows up and kills all the regular Predators on board. Kids these days am I right? The alien Predator hybrid jumps in a ship and rockets back toward Earth. Oh man he was already at Saturn too they were making such good time. Eventually the ship crashes down in the Colorado wilderness. Now this releases not only the alien Predator mashup but a number of face huggers that the Predators were keeping on board as conversation pieces I guess. They start doing their thing and impregnating humans with Xenomorph chest buster babies you know pretty standard and we cut to our first ever shot of the actual Predator home planet. An unnamed Predator and aren't they all unnamed receives some kind of distress call from the downed ship and discovers that Xenomorphs are on the loose. Now in past entries Predators have not cared at all if humans discovered what they've been up to. In fact they're big fans of leaving evidence of their activities in the form of the freshly skinned corpses of your best pals. But AVP colon R introduces a new wrinkle. What if we forgot about established continuity? So we meet this one Predator who's basically a one alien fixer slash cleanup crew. He's Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fiction but with mandibles. I'm Winston Wolf I solve problems. In fact on set they apparently nicknamed this character Wolf after Harvey Keitel's character so that's what I'm going to call him from now on. Wolf uses a glowing blue liquid to dissolve the bodies of aliens and any humans that they might have killed. He also has some new gadgets. These little charges he plants on the sewer walls create deadly laser grids into which he can fling his enemies. He's also got an indie style whip and a pulse blaster he fires with his hands like a shotgun. Okay so Xenomorphs and the Alien Predator remix get loose and run amok through the town killing lots of people. I think. This movie is shot so relentlessly dark it's honestly hard to tell what's happening. No seriously they actually made a shootout at the power station, a major plot point as an excuse to keep all of the lights off the entire time. But if you're in the market for a film about the outlines of famous monsters possibly hitting each other in the rain this is the film for you. Eventually a guy named Dallas references the first movie and Wolf and the Predator alien hybrid kill one another. It really doesn't matter though because moments later the government drops a nuclear bomb on the town instantly killing almost everyone we just spent 90 minutes straining our eyes so hard to see. Aliens versus Predator it's not just dark it's also grim. In the final scene a government official delivers a briefcase containing the Predator shotgun weapon to a stern looking businesswoman. The world isn't ready for this technology. And it turns out her name is... This isn't for our world. Wait for it? Is it Miss Yutani? Get it? Like the Weyland-Yutani corporation? They probably had some grand plan to tie this whole thing together in a third bad movie but now we'll never know. We just have to live with our current still vague knowledge of this fictional future corporate merger if you even want to call that living. Whatever. Let's move on. Okay enough Predators hunting aliens we want to see Predators hunting people again and also apparently aliens as well again. 2010's Predators opens with a bunch of badasses from all around the earth and even some other planets waking up in mid-air. Parachutes open automatically and they find themselves deposited in a strange and unfamiliar jungle. I've never seen this jungle and I've seen most. That's Royce a mercenary and Isabelle a sniper with the Israeli defense force. They're joined by a bunch of other soldiers criminals and killers and also Topher Grace who's apparently just a mild-mannered doctor. The group soon realizes they're on an alien planet and and I think this is going to sound familiar to you by now they are being hunted for sport. This planet is a game preserve. I'm ready to game. It turns out Isabelle has read a summary of the first movie which really helps fill in some of the backstory for everybody else. Six men plus a CIA liaison only one made it out he said they was really handy. But there are still a few new wrinkles this time out that no one's prepared for mainly that the planet is occupied by two different warring tribes of Predators. The larger ones hunt the smaller ones. There are the classic Predators we've all grown to know and love including this one who's been captured and tied to a totem and then there are bigger Predators who wear all black and have better more advanced armor helmets and weapons because we just can't leave well enough alone. One of these new Predators has a fancy drone and they all have new and more elaborate scanners and imaging displays in their helmets. Plus the new Predators use these horned creatures the way hunters on Earth use dogs to flush out their prey. So they do the Predator thing and start picking off Earth's mightiest killers one by one. Also they claim their disgusting trophies. Do you think high schools on Predator World have trophy cases? Anyway soon enough there's only one Predator and three humans left. Royce, Isabelle and Spider-Man Origins Venom who turns out to not be a regular doctor at all but the secret serial killer kind of doctor. It's neurotoxin. He tries to kill Isabelle but Royce intervenes paralyzes him and uses him as a trap as one does. Royce lights the surrounding area on fire to disguise his heat signature from the beast but it doesn't really work right because of the fancy new tech. Still he and Isabelle win the day. Only to see more humans and aliens being dropped onto the Game Preserve planet. Plot twist! A new hunt appears ready to begin starting Friday September 14th with the release of Shane Black's The Predator. See what I did there? They didn't even pay us for this. We do it just to arm you with all the Predator knowledge you'll need to know to learn the most valuable lesson of all. That the choppa you need to get to was inside of you all along. Thanks for watching the Kramadon Predator. Let us know what you thought and as always we'll see you next time.