Predator – 1987
The special effects for this sci-fi super-action film were actually pretty good. They certainly gave us things that we had never seen before. And the alien creature effects were definitely creative and perfectly executed. There were a group of commandoes who carried massive amounts of guns and other firearms which they used to obliterate both men and jungle vegetation, though none of the weapons were able to fatally wound… the Predator! And no, Arnold’s biceps cannot be counted as a special effect.
Still, the alien’s stealth and tracking technology were very unique, and its destructive weaponry, its gun and its claw-like arm blades, were pretty cool. Then there were its actual claws and its fantastically designed expandable face mandibles for Schwarzenegger to contend with. All that and its strange cat-like movements combined to make an awesome alien. It was one frightening piece of work!
So for the first act of the movie, it was a plain shoot-em-up, in which our heroes are supposed to go into the jungle and rescue a cabinet minister and his aide from a bunch of South American guerillas. That was your standard text book operation with nameless men getting blown away by giant guns and grenade launchers. There were plenty of things that got blown up, both men and machines.
But as they find that they had been lied to about the rescue, they try to make their escape from the jungle. In the second act of the movie, they find that they are all being hunted by a powerful enemy that begins picking them off one by one. It was very cool when we got to see and hear things through the Predator’s alien senses. He sees the world through heat-sensitive eyes, and hears sounds as high-pitched.
But I think it was his light-bending stealth technology that was the most memorable effect. You could see the outline of the creature, but if it stood still, it was very difficult to spot. How do you make something invisible, and yet visible at the same time? Well, the effects artists at R/Greenberg Associates figured it out. Wikipedia explained the effect perfectly, saying “The invisibility effect was achieved by having someone wearing a bright red suit (because it was the farthest opposite of the green of the jungle and the blue of the sky) the size of the Predator. The red was removed with chroma key techniques, leaving an empty area. The take was then repeated without the actors using a 30% wider lens on the camera. When the two takes were combined optically, the jungle from the second take filled in the empty area. Because the second take was filmed with a wider lens, a vague outline of the alien could be seen with the background scenery bending around its shape.”
I also have to make mention of a really cool quick shot in which Carl Weathers gets his arm shot off by the predator’s gun. Very cool, and very violent and bloody! The way his severed arm kept squeezing the trigger even after it hit the ground was awesome! Yeah, who doesn’t like a little blood and gore every now and then in their action flicks?