FAQ

It is never said if he attacked anyone from the camp. The Predator also likes to kill foes when they are by themselves. However, Anna does say "We began finding our men; sometimes we find them without their skin. Only in the hottest years this happens. And this year it grows hot."

It's likely she was referring to some of the Guerrillas being killed by the predator.

Alternatively, it may have found by observing and scanning them, they weren't a challenging enough hunt, which is why the Predator sets its sights on Dutch's team after witnessing them taking out dozens of the guerrillas.

In the shots where we can see what the Predator sees, sometimes when he is focusing on someone or something, we hear a kind of flash noise as he zooms in on the object. When we see the Predator's eyes flashing/glowing, that is when he is zooming in on what he's looking at. It's also possible the predator was switching vision modes.

Also, it serves two purposes for the viewer: 1) it makes it easier to see the Predator in the scenes where his cloaking device is activated, and 2) purely dramatic effect.

It's the jungle: thermal goggles would have too much interference due to the high ambient temperature and sensitive listening devices would have picked up too much ambient noise from the wildlife. When filming the movie they had to hose the area down with ice water just to cool it off enough to get the footage for the Predator's heat vision. Presumably, his technology is more advanced than our own, so the high jungle temps didn't interfere. Plus of course, their original mission was meant to be very straightforward, with no need for high-tech equipment. As Dillon says "We jump in, grab our missing men and bounce back across the border before anyone knows we were there.".

It's called "mimicry". The Predator uses samples of voices to lure potential prey to an ambush spot or to distract them while it lines up its shot. Similar to hunters using duck calls or elk calls.

The Predator may also be recording and analysing the voices to learn the language.

Poncho is fluent in Spanish, whereas Dillon's grasp of the language is more rudimentary.

It's possible. Alternatively, the ship could be dropping off one Predator while picking up others.

Dillon was a CIA liaison that essentially forced himself into the mission and to take charge. Dutch's team is used to working by themselves as a unit and don't appreciate Dillon's presence. Blain wanted to make sure Dillon knew that.

Initially the movie debuted at #1 but it never broke even. According to the "Making of," the movie did finally break even around 2001 (after numerous re-releases, TV deals, and merchandise). John MacTiernan joked in that making of, that he had just received his first residual cheque from the movie a few months prior. As it finally turned a profit. The film's production was notoriously troubled, with production halted to do a complete redesign of the creature. Not to mention, you can typically double the production budget of a film when you include marketing costs. So while the movie was a critical success, it was not, initially a financial one.

The Predator vision becomes saturated when he removes his mask (turns entirely red), so we can presume the mask has optics adjusting to environment.

As Anna mentions, the Predator prefers to hunt in the hottest times of the year. It would make sense that the Predator's IR tech is calibrated to optimally detect their preferred prey (and fire) while ignoring all other irrelevant or non-threatening heat signatures in hot and humid environments.

Because the creators did a total redesign on the Predator, making him in to a 7-foot tall creature. Clearly a 7-foot tall actor needed to be put in the suit, which Van Damme is not. Van Damme allegedly also complained constantly about being in the big rubber suit in the middle of the jungle.

A team of elite commandos, led by Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), are dispatched into the Central American jungle, supposedly to rescue a Cabinet Minster presumed captured when his helicopter went down over enemy territory. Accompanied by CIA operative George Dillon (Carl Weathers), what they find is much more terrifying than any group of ruthless rebel guerrillas. Something invisible has been skinning the bodies of the Green Berets sent in previously as a covert surveillance team, and now the alien predator has begun to hunt Dutch's team.

Predator is based on a script by screenwriters Jim and John Thomas. The story goes that the Thomases wrote the screenplay after hearing a joke that Rocky Balboa had run out of earthly opponents and would need to fight an alien if a Rocky V movie was going to be made. Hence, they came up with a script for Predator. Two sequels, Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010), have followed. A spinoff movie, Alien vs. Predator (2004), that unites the Predator with the creature from Alien (1979), was released in 2004, followed by a sequel, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), in 2007.

Going with simple labels for their roles in the team, not including Dutch or CIA liaison Dillon, there are five members on Dutch's Search-and-Rescue team: (1) Billy (Sonny Landham), Scout and Tracker; (2) Mac (Bill Duke), Sergeant, 2nd in command/Assault; (3) Poncho (Richard Chaves), Demolitions Engineer/Translator (possibly medic); (4) Hawkins (Shane Black), Radio Operator (possible medic); and (5) Blain (Jesse Ventura), Heavy Weapon Support.

The Predator's reasons for skinning his victims and hanging them from trees are not explained in the movie. Dutch realizes that the Predator is a "hunter", and hunters will often gut and dress their prey while still in the field. Hunters are also known to cut off body parts, e.g., antlers, claws, fur, heads, etc., as trophies. Another reason that's been suggested is that the skinned bodies were deliberately left hanging as a warning to other humans in the area, either taunting them or letting them know that they are also being hunted. Another theory is that they do this to prey they consider unworthy to be trophies. As we see that when they actually take trophies, they simply rip the spinal cord out with the skull attached. But they leave the skinned bodies hanging upside down for others to find.

It is never explained in this movie but it clearly shows that it is dependent upon the Predator's wrist-computer, because when Dutch fired his arrow, he damaged the computer disabling the Predators invisibility. However, in Predator 2, it is explained that the Predators possess technology that allows them to bend light around themselves, making near "perfect camouflage" in the form of active camouflage. The camouflage renders the object nearly transparent, just like a glass, and it works best when light passes straight through the object; as is the case with a glass, there is significant breaking of light near the edges of the object, and the camouflage works less optimally there. Furthermore, like glass, the object camouflaged by this technology is more noticeable as it moves than when it is motionless.

In the very beginning of the movie, we see an alien ship fly past Earth with a smaller ship departing from it and then descending into our atmosphere. As such, we must conclude that the Predator is an alien being from another world. When exactly this arrival occurred is not established, but we do know that it was either many years ago and the Predator has been living here ever since, or various Predators have come and gone over the years, e.g., the jungle Predator may have visited the particular jungle in the past and perhaps returned to find new game in the same location, since Predators often visits places where there is intense heat and conflict. This is evidenced when Anna (Elpidia Carrillo) states that when she was young, men in her village would turn up missing, and they would sometimes find them butchered, without their skins, or much much worse. They would refer to the unknown perpetrator of these killings as the "demon who makes trophies of man" and she also added that it would only happen during the hottest of summers. This statement implies that either the Predator, or various other Predators, would come to Earth off and on over the years to hunt for a limited period of time, or there has only been a single Predator alone on Earth over the years. If there was a single Predator, the absence of people from Anna's village being continuously killed, all year around, including every summer, very hot or not, is likely due to him moving around to hunt in different areas so it does not attract too much attention in a single area. But it is likely that the Predator was only there for a limited time, as the more time it spends on Earth, the increased risk it would be discovered and his technology captured and exploited. Future films and stories show that the Predators come to hunt as part of a ritual but then return to their clan.

It's reasonable to assume that while Dutch was making preparations, so was the Predator. The laser designator is part of the creature's mask, so its a fair assumption what we see is some form of laser used to sharpen (or prime, charge, poison or alter in some way) the blades which at the time were exposed from their sheath and glow red in response. The ability of the blades to widen is unrelated, and they wouldn't be much of a hunting tool/weapon if they were not adaptable to varying size of prey.

The creature may also have been tempering the blades to make them harder: tempering involves heating metal until it is red hot and cooling it rapidly, making it harder: metal is actually a fibrous substance and the rapid heating and cooling draws the microscopic fibers closer together, making the metal harder. Tempering is a common practice among blacksmiths who make knives or swords or axe heads. The creature may have thought that it needed to do this for it's final showdown with Dutch, and it adds to the menace the creature has.

In the films, the official name of the characters are simply the "Predators". However, in the spinoff expanded universe consisting of comics, novels, video games and other media, the names "Yautja" and "Hish" are alternatively used.

Dillon, Dutch and his team assumed that the guerilla rebels disemboweled and skinned Jim Hopper and his men, when in fact it was the Predator.

Simply put, yes, they can. In every Predator film, the Predators all have their masks removed for extended periods of time and seem to have no difficulty breathing, not to mention being able to howl, growl and roar. The Predator in Predator 2 was without its mask for almost the entire third act of the film, but it was also shown to have a small device it put over its mouth and took three or four deep breaths. After this, the device is never used again. It was likely because this Predator was severely wounded (after Harrigan shoots him with a shotgun several times) and was either having difficulty breathing or the mask held a sort of stimulant to keep him going until he was able to treat his wounds. Another point is when Harrigan is on board the Predator's ship at the end of Predator 2, he is able to breathe perfectly fine and the elder Predator didn't have its mask on. Therefore they were both breathing oxygen.

It seems to be a common misconception that the Predator's mask is used for breathing, yet no other part of their equipment shows to be air tanks (though this doesn't rule out the possibility that the mask uses some sort of air-filtration unit, seeing as how it appears to be airtight). The mask is part of the overall weapons unit and is connected to the plasma cannon, the targeting lasers (the three dots) and the forearm console (weapons, final bomb and the invisibility camouflage), and it is a head-worn control mechanism, similar to Iron Man's helmet controlling his weapons and flight, complete with a head-up display (HUD), which in the Predator's case, also entails imaging for alternative bands of electromagnetic radiation (including "light"). The mask has all kinds of additional features oriented around sensory enhancement.

According to different sources like Melonfarmers and the Online-Filmdatenbank (OFDb), the first UK DVD releases of Predator feature the old German VHS version of the movie which had been cut in several scenes. As per Melonfarmers, this concerns the UK DVD releases from 2001 and 2003. All other UK DVD releases are uncensored, including the Blu-ray release. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has nothing to do with the cuts, because the old 18-rated UK VHS had been released uncut without any censorship. Most likely it was a mistake by 20th Century Fox whereby they may have taken the wrong master. Approximately 37 seconds are missing in this release.