Hey guys, I’m Kya, and I ain’t got time to bleed.
Oh. Okay.
The clan of killer aliens that lives for the hunt has been called by many names,
the Yautja, the Hish, the demons who make trophies of men,
but most of us simply know them as Predators,
That's not a Predator, that's a sports hunter.
Well, we took a vote, Predator's cooler, right?
And once they set their sights on you, you’re pretty much toast.
Still, we’ve seen a few rare examples of the hunter becoming hunted,
so if you’re sick and tired of being prey,
take a nice mud bath,
sharpen your spears,
and get to da choppah!
because this is
How to Kill the Predator
Now, there are hundreds of awesome Predator novels, comics and games in the expanded universe,
they’ve hunted everyone from Tarzan to Batman,
but for the purposes of this video, we’re sticking to the movies,
starting with the stone cold classic directed by John McTiernan,
1987’s ‘Predator.’
It’s one of the cornerstones of the action movie canon,
introducing the world to a hunter with a fatal case of
Sportsmanship
The Predator is one of the all-time great aliens,
but if it wasn’t for the spaceship in the opening scene,
you’d have no idea ‘Predator’ was a sci-fi film until halfway through the movie.
Major “Dutch” Schaefer leads a group of commandos on a rescue mission into the jungles of Central America,
leading to one of the most gratuitously violent cinematic shootouts ever.
A few minutes later...
Stick around.
50 dead guerillas later,
the movie really begins.
Arnie’s army is stalked by a killer they can’t see,
who slowly picks them off as they trek through the jungle.
This movie has the most impressive roster of ‘80s badasses ever assembled,
but none of them can withstand the alien onslaught.
Apollo Creed is impaled,
Bill Duke gets his head blown off,
and Arnold’s fellow governor / WWE Hall of Famer Jesse Ventura has a massive hole punched through his chest.
As the sole survivor, Arnold realizes two things:
1.) By cooling his body with mud, he won’t show up on the hunter’s thermal imaging,
He couldn't see me!
and
2.) The Predator has its own twisted code of honor,
so it won’t use its alien arsenal on prey that can’t fight back.
Big mistake.
Arnold strips down, slathers himself in mud,
and crafts an array of primitive weapons and traps that would make Kevin McCallister proud.
You guys give up? Or are you thirsty for more?
In response, the creature unmasks,
willingly drops his massively powerful shoulder cannon,
and engages his worthy foe in hand to hand combat.
Arnold gets his ass thoroughly kicked,
and the alien is too smart to fall for his spike trap,
but it doesn’t notice the massive log he’s using as a counterweight.
The fatally crushed Predator has one last trick up its sleeve,
or gauntlet, rather.
It sets off a massive self destruct device that obliterates 300 city blocks worth of jungle in the blink of an eye.
[CREEPY ALIEN LAUGHTER]
My god...
I wish the alien version of laughing was some other sound...
Like "I'm amused, so EEEEEEEEEHHHH!"
And that's me laughing.
Definitely a sore loser,
but let this be a lesson to you, kids:
There’s no such thing as a fair fight,
so if you can BS the Predator into throwing down his laser cannons and spiky discs,
you might just have a chance.
There’s no shame in it,
I mean, Arnold freakin’ Schwarzenegger had to rely on trickery to put a stop to his Predator.
How could anyone possibly stand up to one mano a mano?
What superpowered action icon could accomplish what the Terminator couldn’t?
Who is bad enough to defeat the Predator in a close quarters deathmatch?
Danny Glover,
duh.
Don't worry, butthead, you'll get another chance.
‘Predator 2’ leaves the rainforest behind for the concrete jungle of ‘90s L.A.,
where a turf war between two rival drug cartels has the entire city on edge.
Who the hell's in charge down here? The cops? They're outmanned, outgunned, and incompetent!
Mr. Mayor! On vacation, you're home in Lake Tahoe, get off your butt, get down here and declare martial law!
Glover plays an LAPD cop named Harrigan,
you know the type:
A loose cannon who doesn’t follow the rules but always gets his man,
and his only weakness is a crippling fear of heights.
When a bunch of skinned bodies start appearing on the scene,
Glover suspects that there’s a third party involved.
Enter the Predator.
With a ‘hip’ new redesign, the “City Hunter” seems a little cooler and more collected than the one who attacked Arnold.
He won’t attack a kid with a toy gun,
or a pregnant woman,
but he’ll still rip out your damn spine if he catches you.
What do they do with the skin after? That's what I always think about. Pelts and stuff?
The feds get involved, and as usual,
they mess everything up trying to capture the creature for their own sinister uses.
They set a trap for it in a slaughterhouse,
but the Predator does most of the butchering.
Glover blasts the City Hunter with a shotgun,
and after a rooftop showdown the two wind up dangling from a teeny ledge.
Oh wait, is he okay, because he's scared of heights?
This is where we learn about this Predator’s cowardly side.
Crap happens.
Instead of battling back,
or escaping to fight another day,
the monster immediately tries to activate its killswitch.
But before LA gets nuked into oblivion,
Glover slices its arm off.
The Predator escapes,
turns a bunch of drywall into magic blue space goo,
and uses it to heal his wounds before he gets the hell off of Earth.
That’s right, the Predator, the most feared hunter in the galaxy,
is in full blown retreat from Danny Glover,
a man who was getting too old for this stuff in 1987.
It's allright, I'm a cop!
I don't think he cares!
Glover chases him back to his spaceship,
where he discovers an Alien easter egg that kicked off a beloved multimedia franchise.
Are we saying "beloved" sarcastically?
Everything except the movies are cool.
Then he confronts the monster,
they duke it out,
and the golden Glover stabs him to death with his own Smart Blade.
CRAP HAPPENS!
Not only that, his fighting spirit was so impressive that the other Predators secretly watching their battle give him a trophy as a sign of respect.
Take. It.
It’s just a old gun, though.
I would have preferred like, a laser cannon or a Xenomorph egg or something but it’s still good... For Danny.
One hunter was no match for Danny Glover,
but the next film in the franchise finally gave us plural Predators,
and if you want to kill them,
you’d better
Chop ‘Til They Drop
For 2010’s ‘Predators,’
instead of coming to Earth,
the Yautja bring their prey closer to home.
They stock a planetary game reserve with Earth’s most lethal mercenaries, mobsters, murderers,
and Adrien Brody.
Once again, sportsmanship is the downfall of the Yautja species.
They could have kidnapped dentists, or bakers, or data entry clerks,
and had a nice, fun, easy hunt,
but their stubborn pursuit of fair play backfires on them big time.
The movie introduces us to three “Superpredators” with cool gimmicks.
There’s the “Tracker,” who controls an army of CGI dog monsters.
He gets blown to smithereens in a nice reversal of the classic self destruct trick.
The ‘Falconer,’ who controls a killer drone,
dies in a Samurai duel with a Yakuza hitman named Hanzo.
We also see some Predator on Predator violence,
when the honorless Berzerker decapitates a member of a rival clan as punishment for helping the humans.
He deserved it.
It takes a lot to put this powerful Predator down.
First, our hero uses secret serial killer Topher Grace as bait,
rigging his paralyzed body with explosives.
Then, after a sniper shot saps its strength,
Brody goes berzerk on the Berzerker with a space ax,
chopping it to pieces and slicing its head off.
That’s the last we’d see of the canonical Predators until Shane Black’s upcoming film,
but this is 2018, so we’ve got to talk about the cinematic crossover that exploded 14 years before ‘Infinity War:’
'Alien Vs. Predator'
Now, the canon status of the AVP series is debatable,
since they’re basically incompatible with every single sequel that came after them.
Also, the first one is rated PG-13,
which immediately disqualifies it as worthy of the ‘Predator’ franchise.
But completely makes it worthy of my movie watching at home when I was 13. Thank you.
You're one ugly mother...
Still, it’s nice to see the Yautja up against a target who can give them some real trouble,
even though the Aliens suffer way more casualties.
See our ‘How to Kill Xenomorphs’ video for more on that.
Only three Predators are killed in the first film.
Two of them get their brains punched in by the Xeno’s inner jaw,
and the heroic leader Scar is impaled on the tail of the massive Alien Queen,
but not before he’s impregnated with a chestburster that produces the hideously powerful Predalien.
This hybrid creature is the star of the second AVP movie, ‘Requiem,’
which opens on the newborn slaughtering an entire ship of Predators.
The predalien unleashes an army of Xenomorphs on a small Colorado town,
with only a lone Wolf Predator trying to contain the carnage.
My babies! It made its own family. The Predators are ruining their family reunion.
The two Yautja have a midnight battle in the rain,
and mortally wound each other with their spiky appendages.
Then a military jet drops a nuke on the whole town,
ending the menace once and for all.
With a brutal 11% on the ol’ Tomatometer,
the appropriately titled ‘Requiem’ might be the death knell for AVP on screen,
but the hunt goes on.
In the upcoming movie ‘The Predator,’
director Shane Black is finally getting revenge on the creature who killed him 31 years ago.
He really holds a grudge.
The Yautja are genetically upgrading themselves with all kinds of crazy DNA,
leading to all new uglies like Preda-Dogs and the Ultimate Predator.
Time will tell if the new and improved Predators will be any tougher to take down than their predecessors,
but no matter how hard the hunt is,
if it bleeds, we can kill it.