Action movie master John McTiernan. What is the nightmarish scene that made “Predator” a masterpiece?

Special effects using monkeys

Director McTiernan faced the problem of how to express the abilities of the extraterrestrial creature Predator in film.

What bothered me the most was the subjective image of the Predator. The Predator detects enemies using a thermograph that detects the body temperature of living things. Therefore, we brought a real thermograph to the site to take pictures, but it did not work at all. The temperature in Mexico, where the film was filmed, is always over 30 degrees Celsius, and there is almost no difference in temperature between the surrounding temperature and the human body, making it difficult to photograph properly. At the suggestion of the staff, ice water was placed around the actors, and just before filming, the actors were exposed to a fire to create a temperature difference. However, with this method, it would take a week to take one or two shots. It was an absolute nightmare.

Frustrated, McTiernan rushed to the commercial's visual effects company and turned the entire negative footage blue, leaving only the human parts colored. Most of the subjective cuts of Predator were made that way.

“Predator” (C)2018 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Another major problem was the weight of the Predator's suit. The suits that the actors wore weighed over 90 kg and were 2 meters and 30 centimeters high, so the actors could barely move while wearing them. However, since the Predator is set to fly quickly through the trees of the jungle, this had to be visualized somehow. The staff made their own bungee-jumping device and tried to hoist the actors up and jump between the trees, but it didn't work.

At a loss, I finally found a monkey. They dressed a monkey in a red suit, filmed it jumping between trees, and later composited it to make it look like a Predator. However, once the shooting began, the monkey wearing the red suit ran away somewhere... In the end, it was decided that the now transparent Predator would be drawn using CG, and some of the parts were composited with footage shot of gymnasts in red suits.

Even Schwarzenegger lost a lot of weight!