The Original ‘Predator’ Has a Great Cast, But 2010’s ‘Predators’ Might Have an Even Better One

Part of what makes the 1987 sci-fi-action-horror classic Predator so beloved is its cast. Notice I didn’t say its acting. That’s not to say that the performances in the movie are a problem. But part of the fun of Predator, apart from the baseline fun of watching a team of badass mercenaries stalked and killed in the jungle by a hulking alien being here to hunt worthy humans, is the personalities and physicalities that make up the team of  prey.

There’s Arnold Schwarzeneggar, of course, in what at the time was easily his best movie since The Terminator and still remains a top-tier vehicle. He’s joined by Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, Richard Chaves, and Shane Black. You may notice that not many of these folks went on to Arnold-sized careers, at least not in acting. But part of the weird fun of Predator is how the cast’s future in other areas only makes the movie seem more eclectic. Not only did some of them become more notable as filmmakers – Bill Duke directed Deep Cover, Sister Act 2, and many others, while Shane Black would go on to write and direct plenty of fun movies, including a later Predator sequel – but two more ascended to the governor’s office. Schwarzeneggar and Ventura really should have consulted with the late, great Weathers to see where he could get elected next.

None of the other Predator sequels, including the new Predator: Badlands, have yet produced a single governor, let alone two. But a less-loved installment from 2010 actually deserves to snatch the dubious title of best acting in a Predator movie. 2010’s Predators was the first Predator-only entry in 20 years (the Alien vs. Predator films had come out in the meantime), and greeted with kind of a shrug that I still find mystifying. It opened well enough as a summer movie, then dropped off hard and was ultimately considered kind of a disappointment. The next Predator movie – the one Black made; also good! – didn’t have much of anything to do with it, while still shouting out the 1987 original.

Maybe part of the problem was that the Predators ensemble was ahead of its time. In the summer of 2010, it did boast Oscar winner Adrien Brody, alongside some extremely-to-vaguely familiar character actors. 15 years later, this is more obviously a movie with two double Oscar winners in Brody and Mahershala Ali; multiple Emmy nominee and generally beloved Justified/White Lotus actor Walton Goggins; Oscar nominee and multiple-time Emmy-winner Laurence Fishburne; beloved character actor Danny Trejo; and reliable staples Topher Grace and Alice Braga. They all play predators.

No, not the monstrous Predators who hunt them, but the human predators who are all nabbed from their Earthly lives and transported to a planet essentially used as a game preserve for a group of competing Predators who want to hunt the best. Predators may have suffered from the perception that it was diluting the original movie’s concept, where the bad guys were hunting down a bunch of burly, hardy, tough-to-kill types. But Predators has a more varied take on this idea, with a variety of criminals, soldiers, assassins, and serial killers considered the most Predator-like humans possible. The actors all have different ways into this assignment: Brody goes intense, Goggins affects a sleazy drawl, Fishburne riffs on Apocalypse Now as a guy who’s been stuck on this planet a long time, and Grace seems to be playing the comic relief until he turns genuinely scary late in the film. All of them present a more interesting challenge than wonder if they’ll be muscular enough, or wield heavy enough guns, to beat the alien warrior in their midst. That’s what the first movie wound up doing anyway: Figuring out ways for Arnold’s Dutch to outmaneuver his foe without relying sheerly on brute strength.

Predators isn’t as quotable as the original; there’s no “get to the choppah” or “stick around” or “if it bleeds, we can kill it” (though several of these lines have been recited and repurposed in various Predator sequels). That’s one more reason that it’s less iconic than the men and monsters of 1987. But as a clever inversion of that movie’s premise, it’s pretty damn good – and inarguably has the best overall actors of any Predator movie. In fact, after the fun stupidity of Alien vs. Predator, Predators does an admirable job of reorienting the series toward more human concerns, with a very monster-movie interest in whether the humans are any better than the freaky beasts chasing them down. Subsequent Predator movies have been similarly human-focused (though not focusing on the same themes), and they haven’t ever gone back to the cartoonish machismo of the first movie.

Which definitely has its place! The first Predator is, as mentioned, a classic. But it’s also been rewatched half to death over the past four decades. Predators, on the other hand, probably isn’t in that same rotation. This means that if you haven’t seen it in a while, or at all, now’s a good time to get reacquainted and wonder if, hey, maybe this might be the best one of the bunch.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.