(Sound) Do you know what today is?
It's Predator day which may or may not be a day that I just made up.
It also may or may not be a very different holiday than I'm using it for here.
The point is Predator celebrates the 30th anniversary of its theatrical
release today assuming you're watching this episode the day we uploaded it which
you should be.
So this is the perfect opportunity for us to do this episode.
Here are seven things you didn't know about Predator probably.
- (Sound) - Go, get to the chopper!
- Jane Black is co-writing and directing next year's,
The Predator, which is pretty cool since he plays Hawkins in the original.
Funny enough, the original film was also called The Predator before they decided to
drop the article.
But before that, it had another title, Hunter.
- This thing is hunting us, all of us.
- They changed the title from Hunter to The Predator about halfway through filming
and then dropped the The shortly after that.
But I gotta say, all those are pretty badass title options.
So well done, Hunter, The Predator,
Hunter slash The Predator slash Predator team.
(Music)
The heat vision of the Predator's point of view is a key aspect of the film.
But Predator was made in the 80s, so achieving these special effects took a lot
more than just downloading a new plugin for after effects.
- (Laugh) - (Laugh)
- They used a thermographic
camera to do it, but that had its own set of problems.
The camera couldn't really distinguish between a human body and
its surroundings above 93 degrees.
Well they were shooting predator in the Mexican jungle where it was regularly over
100 degrees.
Even with housing the heat vision camera in a cooling unit and
spraying the foliage with ice water to cool it down,
they couldn't get the bodies to read in the jungle.
In the end, they had blend the thermal camera footage with footage from
an optical camera.
It was a long tedious process and they didn't have Command Z for it.
If you (Sound) it up you had to start all over.
And speaking of starting over, there was a massive do over in the making of
Predator that probably saved the film from complete disaster.
Wow that's a (Bleep) segway.
(Sound) - A lot of people don't know that
production on Predator had to shut down for a while,
and the shutdown was after most of the movie was shot.
In fact, the only stuff left to shoot was the monster.
And what prompted the shut down?
This shot right here.
See the first version of this shot with Hawkins being dragged into the jungle
featured the original predator costume design which was legendarily bad.
Stan Winston's school has clips of it right here on YouTube if you wanna
check it out.
The only thing that was kind of awesome about the first Predator costume was that
Jean Claude Van Damme was inside of it.
- But he was famously miserable about not getting to show off his martial arts and
the fact that he was going to be invisible the entire time once they did
the camouflage effect on the red suit.
Production had run out of money, so Director John McTiernan filmed only two
shots with the lobster on stilts version of the Predator and sent it to the studio.
(Sound).
- What the (Bleep)?
- Once they saw how unintentionally funny it looked and
how good the otherwise completed movie was, they agreed to stop production and
pony up the cash for a character redesign and a second round of shoots.
Stan Winston was brought in and
he designed the Predator that we all know today.
But, he did it with a pretty famous collaborator.
(Sound) - There's something out there waiting for
us and it ain't no man.
- When the Predator removes his mask and we finally see his face toward the end of
the film, it's one of the most iconic and memorable scenes in movies, period.
- You're one ugly mother (Bleep).
- (Sound) - Which is all thanks to Stan Winston,
except it isn't.
Because it's partially thanks to James Cameron.
On a long-haul flight to Japan, Stan Winston and
James Cameron were sitting next to each other.
Winston was sketching concepts for the predator and
Cameron happened to throw out the idea of adding mandibles to the creature,
mainly because it was just something he'd always wanted to see on a monster.
Winston ran with the idea and created the super unique,
super gross mouth situation that the Predators got going on.
So thanks James Cameron, I guess.
(Sound) Once JCVD quit and the Predator was redesigned, they had to find a really,
really big guy to play opposite Dutch for the final showdown.
The late Kevin Peter Hall was up to the task and at 7 foot 6,
he was one of the few people on Earth who could make Arnold look small.
You probably didn't know that you also get to see Hall looking like his normal
self in the film.
Here he is piloting the helicopter, a bit part that McTiernan gave him as a way of
thanking him for the hours upon hours he spent in sweltering jungle conditions
wearing an extremely hot Predator costume.
Hall was a real trooper though because he agreed to don the costume
all over again for Predator 2.
- Okay, pussy face.
It's your move.
- (Bleep) happens.
(Sound) - You're hit.
You're bleeding men.
- I ain't got time to bleed.
- It's no secret that the commandos in Predator are in really good shape.
They weren't exactly subtle about letting us know throughout the film.
- You son of a bitch.
(Music)
What's the matter?
The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?
- And despite extremely harsh shooting conditions on location, Arnold and some of
the other guys still worked out to a somewhat insane degree during production.
They'd wake up to run for an hour in the surrounding hills at 5:30 AM, and
come back afterward to lift weights.
They'd eat breakfast, shoot a 12 to 15 hour day in oppressive heat, and
then run for another hour in the hills at night, lift again, have dinner, and
then do it all again the next day.
If that weren't enough,
Arnold was smoking cigars pretty much constantly between shots.
He probably didn't even have enough time to bone all the women who happened to be
in the vicinity.
(Laugh) I'm just kidding.
I'm sure he boned all the women.
(Music)
Let's go out with a bang, and talk about the mow down sequence.
Obviously they wouldn't be using live ammo on a movie set, so
what's actually cutting down the trees down here is 100 grain primer cord,
which burns 25,000 feet per second.
They paired with the biggest charges you could find at the time to create the chaos
and barrage of gunfire for this sequence.
In fact, the propane and blanks that the guys' guns fire for the onscreen visual
was in the neighborhood of 400 rounds per minutes, which really sounds like a lot.
Meanwhile, Blain's gattling fired somewhere between 3,000 and
5,000 rounds a minute, which really sounds like a lot more in the best possible way.
(Sound) Honestly, this episode was more of a gift to ourselves
than anything, but we hope you guys learned a thing or seven.
And if you want a part two, be sure to hit the thumbs up or leave us a comment.
We have a crap ton more things on Blaine's ridiculous gattling gun alone.
Thanks for watching and subscribe to CineFix for
more true-ish things about movies, and sometimes Arnold Schwarzenegger
boning ladies in the Mexican jungle right here on things you didn't know.
(Music)
(Sound) - Stick around.