Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here and in this video I'm revealing how the ending
to Shane Black's The Predator was completely changed plus all the other deleted scenes
you never got to see.
Of course, I'll be talking spoilers, so take care if you haven't seen the movie yet.
Let's kick things off with the scrapped ending that would have featured Arnold Schwarznegger's
Dutch making a surprise comeback to set up The Predator's sequel in a completely different
way to what we saw in the final film.
In Black's original 2016 screenplay, after McKenna, Rory and Casey's final fight with
the Ultimate Predator, a chopper turns up.
As it lands, we discover it's none other than Schwarzenegger's Dutch who's described in
the script as having a face that's "haunted [and] etched by pain."
Dutch asks them to come with him and McKenna's son Rory asks if he should go too.
Dutch smiles and replies "especially you", then the screen cuts to black.
In this alternate ending, Dutch would also have revealed that a war has started.
It's not stated explicitly but it's heavily implied that there's some kind of secret war
going on between humanity and the Predators.
I think we can see a remnant of this idea in this next scene which shows McKenna looking
up and saying "come get us mother*******".
However, although that scene was shot it was deleted from the final film.
Now, I suspect many fans of the original movie would have loved a Schwarzenegger cameo, but
he turned down the role because he said that after reading the script he didn't like it
and the part was too small.
Schwarzenegger also seemed more interested in being available for James Cameron's Terminator
6 where he does have a significant role.
Shane Black has said he understands why Schwarzenegger rejected the role, but added that the studio
didn't want the new movie to be centred around the actor's return to the franchise and instead
wanted to introduce a new cast.
The script's alternate ending would have been stronger in my opinion than the Predator Killer
suit reveal which felt tacked on and tonally didn't fit the rest of the movie.
In fact, that moment in the final film felt more like a Marvel post-credits scene for
an Iron Man movie because the way the tech wrapped itself around the scientist's body
screamed Tony Stark's nanotech suit to me.
Also, I have to wonder why the studio didn't think of simply replacing Schwarzenegger's
cameo with say Danny Glover from Predator 2.
Black's original script also reveals another deleted section from the last act of the film
that we never got to see.
In the original story, there was a group of friendly Predators hidden away in Area 52
who'd been working with the secret government organisation to help defend the Earth against
the incoming wave of Upgrade Predators.
In fact, they were actually going to fight alongside McKenna's team and you can see these
friendly Predators decked out in military camouflage uniform in on-set photos.
Trailers also show footage from those tank scenes which never made it into the final
movie.
And in the original script, the Upgrade Predator had also been tasked with tracking down and
killing those friendly Predators.
Tied in with the original story about Predators working with the government was Edward James
Olmos's character who ended up getting chopped out of the movie.
Olmos played a four-star general above Sterling K Brown's character and it seems like he was
going to be the real big villain of the movie.
According to Shane Black, Olmos's character "was trying to recruit the first Predator
that arrived on Earth, and it communicated with him."
The actor was due to appear in two scenes, but they were both deleted when Black decided
he had one bad guy too many in the story and so Sterling K Brown took over as the chief
human antagonist.
By the way, one of the movies Olmos is well known for is Blade Runner where his character
is known for making little origami unicorns.
So, I wonder if Black included that little tinfoil unicorn in The Predator as a kind
of easter egg to Blade Runner as Olmos was originally supposed to be in this movie.
The Upgrade Predator was also going to unleash even more Predator hybrids than the Predator
dogs we saw in the film.
We could have ended up seeing Predators with multiple arms which to date have only appeared
in comics.
And there were even going to be hybrid Predator spiders!
The Predator Killer ending in the final movie is also part of a huge story change that was
made when Shane Black decided to go back and almost completely reshoot the entire third
act.
The Predator Killer suit is revealed to be a piece of technology that the first predator
we see in the movie brought to Earth as a gift to help humanity defend itself against
the Upgrade Predators who want to move in and colonise the planet because it's getting
warmer.
The problem with this new ending is that it doesn't match up very well with what happened
earlier in the film.
If the fugitive predator came to Earth to help humans out, then why was it slaughtering
anyone it could lay its hands on right from the moment it landed on Earth?
Another reason why Shane Black says he reshot almost the entire third act is that while
reviewing footage he thought the fight scenes with the Predator in daylight didn't look
very good.
Black explained that when they "started to do [their] effects work, […] it looked kind
of cheap in a way.
It didn't really feel like a big expensive movie when the predators [were] just running
around in daylight like that."
So, Black managed to convince Fox to reshoot much of the final act in the dark, which must
have been pretty expensive, and is likely why the film's release was put back from February
to September 2018.
Although I can see Black's point, I have to wonder whether this was really a good idea
because many people have complained about it being really hard to figure out what was
going on in the fight scenes at the end.
The geography of the action as it cut between characters was very confusing and the darkness
of the footage definitely didn't help that.
Funnily enough this isn't the first time similar complaints have surfaced in the Predator franchise.
One of the many criticisms levelled at Alien vs Predator Requiem is that much of the action
happens in the dark after a power outage, making it incredibly difficult to distinguish
what's going on in the action scenes.
One very widely publicised deleted scene happened when Olivia Munn discovered one her co-actors,
Steven Wilder Striegel, was a convicted sex offender.
The scene in question cast Striegel in the part of a stranger who tries to chat up Munn's
character Casey in a dog park.
It was certainly a sensible move to delete the scene in question.
What was lost with the cut was a longer scene introducing Munn's character as someone who
doesn't take any nonsense from anyone and it also would have foreshadowed a little more
her later connection with one of the Predator dogs.
So, I'm guessing the scene may have been reshot if the issue had come to light earlier.
Whether these alternate endings, stories and deleted scenes would have made the movie any
better is debatable.
Although I've enjoyed some of Black's movies in the past, I think his approach to this
Predator movie was flawed.
It's on record that when Black came on board the project as writer and director, one of
his conditions was that everything had to be bigger; a bigger budget, a bigger scope,
more characters, more Predators, more of everything.
And I think that led to too much being crammed into the story.
On top of that, because there were huge story changes and extensive reshoots, some crucial
aspects just don't make real sense any more, such as the motives and actions of the first
Predator we see in the film.
And then maybe because the whole thing is such a hodge-podge of original and reshot
footage, combined with editing that feels too fast and frenetic, it means that moments
like the death of Sterling K. Brown's character happened so quickly that if you blinked you
probably missed it.
So, would you have preferred the original ending to The Predator?
And would you like to have seen any of these deleted scenes in the final film?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below and let me know whether you enjoyed the movie.
Tap left to check out my recent Nun videos with a review of the ending plus deleted scenes
or tap right for my full deleted scenes playlist.
If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to leave a thumbs-up, and a share would be hugely
appreciated too.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!