Fifteen years ago this week,Predatorsdropped into theaterslike its cast of Earth’s deadliest misfits—uninvited, unexpected, and fully armed.Directed byNimród Antaland produced byRobert Rodriguez, the film was a gritty throwback to stripped-down action horror, released with a modest $40 million budget and going on to make $52 million domestically and $127.2 million worldwide. Not a bomb, but hardly the monster hit it deserved to be, especially for a then-newPredatorfilm.
Let’s be honest: the premise rules. Eight of the most dangerous people on Earth — soldiers, killers, mercs, and one suspiciously soft-spoken doctor — wake up in freefall, dropped onto a lush, alien jungle planet. Surprise! They’re not alone, and they’re not the hunters this time.
It’s basicallyThe Most Dangerous GamemeetsPredator, with a littleBattle Royaletossed in for good measure. “I’ve always loved the concept of some of the most dangerous people on earth being dropped on an alien planet and being forced to work together while being hunted by something far more dangerous and deadly than all of them,” one fan noted this week in a retrospectiveRedditthread. “Honestly, such an underrated film.”
There’s no winking, no metacommentary, and certainly no attempt to sell Happy Meal toys. This is a lean, R-rated jungle slugfest where the characters are mostly archetypes — the cartel enforcer, the death row inmate, the Spetsnaz sniper, the Yakuza with akatana— and the movie is brutally honest about what it is: survival horror with a high-caliber body count. With the variety of characters, it’s also hard to imaginePredatorsdidn’t somewhat inspire the recently releasedPredator: Killer of Killers.
The fight betweenLouis Ozawa Changchien’s Yakuza warrior and a Predator with just a samurai sword is still, to this day, one of the coolest sequences in the franchise. “A guy fights a Predator with a samurai sword. It doesn’t get more peak,” another fan wrote. Honestly, it really doesn’t.
Who’s In ‘Predators’?
Adrien Brodyas a jacked, gravel-voiced mercenary might sound like a weird choice, but he’s a smart one. He doesn’t play it like a ‘roided-out action cliché — he plays it like a tactician. He looks like a man who wins because he thinks, not just because he shoots.Topher Graceis also unexpectedly effective as the odd man out, andLaurence Fishburnesteals scenes as a deranged survivor who’s been hiding from the Predators for far too long. For many fans,Predatorshas become the third-best installment in the franchise — behind the originalPredatorand the more recentPrey. It might not have the legacy of Arnold’s jungle showdown or the elegant subversion ofPrey, but it’s a banger in its own right.
