Predator, 1987

Hot on the heels of 1986’s Aliens, John McTiernan’s Predator again gave us a bunch of badasses who find themselves being slaughtered by a nigh-unstoppable alien threat, albeit in a scenario that takes place much closer to home. McTiernan lays on the intoxicating atmosphere wonderfully thick; I can practically feel the sweltering heat in that early scene that gave us the most memeified handclasp of all time. Predator also sees Schwarzenegger really coming into his own as an action hero. I won’t say he gives a rich, nuanced performance, but he’s clearly learning how to leverage his charisma and screen presence to great effect.

Like Aliens, however, this is an ensemble film, elevated tremendously by the variety of personalities that Schwarzenegger’s Alan “Dutch” Schaefer has at his command. It’s a wonderfully quotable popcorn flick, too, giving us lines like Jesse Ventura’s classic, “I ain’t got time to bleed.” Many viewers, however, misread this moment, and the film as a whole, as an uncritical, uncomplicated celebration of alpha male bravado, never mind that the heroes find themselves slaughtered one by one. But consider how Ventura’s line is followed up by another, as Richard Chavez’s Poncho replies with a skeptical but resigned, “oh, okay.” Predator gives us more than just a superficial creature feature, though it certainly delivers on that level, with phenomenal creature design and special effects that, for the time, were state of the art. At every turn, it uses its high-concept tale of a trophy-hunting alien to nod to the futility and the terrible cost of American imperialism and overreach in ways that deepen the film’s richness without interfering with the fun.— Carolyn Petit