Predator: how a Van Damme alien became a sci-fi classic

What if the Predator wasn't the towering hunter with mandibles we know today, but Jean-Claude Van Damme in a rubber suit that looked like a giant kickboxing ant? What if the film wasn't called Predator at all, but Hunter, and featured aliens coming to Earth to hunt several different species? Believe it or not, all of that nearly happened.

Predator (1987), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, went through a chaotic production before it became the film we got. Here is how it went from a martial arts alien to a classic, and what could have been.

Predator began as a Rocky joke and a script called Hunter

In 1985, a joke started circulating around Hollywood that Rocky Balboa had run out of earthly opponents. After he defeated the Russian super soldier Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, the punchline went, any further Rocky movie would have to see him fight an alien. Most people laughed. A pair of screenwriting brothers took the idea seriously and used that questionable gag as the inspiration for a screenplay initially titled Hunter.

With no track record and no credibility in Hollywood, the Thomas brothers couldn't get anyone to read their script. Out of options, they slid it under the door of Fox producer Michael Levy. Levy brought it to producer Joel Silver, who was fresh off Commando and recognized the pulpy science fiction premise as the foundation for a large scale studio blockbuster.

In that original draft, the alien looked nothing like the icon we know today. It didn't wear a helmet, and it bled orange blood instead of glowing green. The story was also much more convoluted. The original concept was a study of what it meant to be hunted, with a band of aliens coming to Earth to hunt several different species.

The writers eventually realized that concept was far too complex for an action movie. They stripped it down to the most dangerous creature of all, man, and then to the most dangerous man, a combat soldier. They set the film in Central America, where the US was heavily involved in operations at the time. Even the title had to change, because there was already a popular TV series called Hunter, so the name became Predator.

Schwarzenegger turned a one on one duel into a squad being picked off

The dynamic of the squad was also completely different in the early script. It featured only the hero, Major Alan Schaefer, facing off against the alien alone. When Schwarzenegger read the script, he felt the Predator needed to seem more lethal. He suggested that instead of a one on one duel, the creature should pick off an elite team of highly trained commandos one by one.

The opening of the movie was originally much more intense, too. Director John McTiernan wanted the team to arrive in the jungle by parachuting from a plane rather than by helicopter. The scene would have shown the team's plane coming under fire from an enemy MiG. As the pilot tried to flee the combat zone, Dutch would have held a gun to the pilot's head, forcing him to fly over the landing zone, before leaping out of the back ramp and grabbing a parachute in midair.

John McTiernan wasn't the first choice to direct Predator

McTiernan wasn't the studio's first choice. The first person approached was a different filmmaker. A few years earlier, that filmmaker had interviewed for a job directing a Conan the Barbarian sequel. During that interview with Schwarzenegger, he made the fatal mistake of making a joke about the character's name. Arnold didn't find it funny, so that director was out.

Producer John Davis then remembered a low budget film he had seen called Nomads, directed by McTiernan. McTiernan's atmospheric direction and his ability to make a film on a cheap budget are what won him the job.

Even with the director locked in, the script still needed work. The producers were running out of money for a professional polish, so they hired Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black as an actor, hoping he would do double duty and rewrite the script on location. Once he arrived, Black refused to touch the script, insisting he had been hired as an actor, not a writer. Since he wouldn't do the rewrite, the filmmakers decided he was expendable and killed his character first in order to send him home.

How Jean-Claude Van Damme was cast as the Predator

The biggest problem of the production was the creature itself, and it began with the casting of a then unknown Jean-Claude Van Damme. At the time, Van Damme was desperate for work. He kept coming into casting director Jackie Burch's office and jumping in the air to show off his moves. Burch eventually recommended him to Joel Silver, telling him Van Damme would be great as the Predator because nobody moved like him.

When Van Damme met Silver at a hotel, he reportedly walked up to the producer, jumped into the air and did a split with his crotch at eye level. The move impressed Silver enough to land him the role.

Van Damme had a fundamental misunderstanding of what he was signing up for. He thought he would be the star of the film, showcasing his martial arts abilities to the world with his face clearly visible. He didn't realize he was essentially a stuntman inside a suit.

The first Predator suit looked like a rubber chicken, and one version was bright red

Designed by Boss Film Studios, the first version of the Predator costume looked nothing like the terrifying hunter we now know. It was a disproportionate, ungainly creature with large yellow eyes and a doglike head, which the crew described as looking like a giant rubber chicken or an ant. After trying it on for the first time, Van Damme was so angry that his face wouldn't be seen that he took off the 20,000 dollar head and threw it to the ground, damaging it.

He had to be convinced to stay aboard, and eventually he reluctantly agreed. His working conditions were brutal. He was forced to wear a thick felt suit that covered his whole body in temperatures reaching 100 degrees, and he passed out from dehydration twice. Joel Silver warned him that if he passed out one more time he'd be fired. Van Damme replied, "I'm not doing it on purpose."

To make matters worse, one version of the suit was bright red. That was a specific technical choice: red is the opposite of green on the color wheel, which the special effects team needed to create the optical illusion of the cloaking device against the jungle background. So instead of being a cool science fiction warrior, Van Damme found himself running around the jungle in a bright red lobster suit that made him feel ridiculous.

Van Damme was too short, kept kickboxing and walked off Predator

Once Van Damme got into the costume and stood next to his costars, the filmmakers realized he was the wrong height. At under six feet tall, he wasn't imposing enough. The Predator needed greater stature to look threatening against costars on bodybuilding regimens like Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers.

The filmmakers also wanted him to move like an alien and hop around like a frog. Van Damme insisted on kickboxing to show off his moves, convinced that was the only way people would know it was him. The situation reached a boiling point in Joel Silver's trailer, when the producer told him to stop kickboxing because the Predator isn't a kickboxer. Van Damme refused to back down. When Silver told him he was fired, Van Damme shouted a crude insult and walked out.

Even if he hadn't quit, his days were numbered. When the studio saw the dailies of a short stuntman in a red suit, they hated it, thinking it looked like a rat, and demanded he be replaced. Fox even shut down the production after seeing that material. But after the editors cut together the scenes of the commandos, the studio realized it had a potential hit on its hands, if only it could fix the alien.

Stan Winston, James Cameron and Kevin Peter Hall created the Predator we know

Schwarzenegger recommended his friend Stan Winston, the creature wizard behind The Terminator, to design a new Predator. The inspiration for the new look came from a painting of a Rastafarian warrior in Joel Silver's office, which led Winston to give the creature quills that looked like dreadlocks. Later, while sketching ideas on a plane ride next to James Cameron, the Aliens director told him he had always wanted to see a creature with mandibles. Winston added them, creating the iconic face we know today.

To replace Van Damme, the filmmakers hired Kevin Peter Hall, the 7 foot 2 giant who had just finished playing the Sasquatch in Harry and the Hendersons. Winston and his team had only six weeks to build the new suit. That near impossible deadline caused a mini revolt among his crew, but they pulled it off as a favor to Arnold.

Hall had his own issues with the new costume. The mask left him virtually blind, forcing him to rehearse without it and commit every movement and step to memory.

The shutdown helped, and Predator's ending was almost completely different

The production hiatus ultimately proved to be a major advantage. It gave the filmmakers two full months, rather than the planned two weeks, to refine the film's nail biting climax, a man versus monster showdown free of dialogue in which Dutch, the lone surviving commando, attempts to outwit the intergalactic hunter.

That ending was almost completely different. In the original script, Dutch physically bested the alien while camouflaged in mud, leaving the Predator to drop its weapon and flee for its ship. Dutch would then pick up the alien's otherworldly weapon and chase it down, firing at the spacecraft as the Predator tried to escape, blowing it up and killing the hunter. The film would have ended with the chopper seeing the explosion and coming down to pick up Dutch.

A bodyguard for Sonny Landham and a rigged bet over Arnold's arms

While the creature was a mess, the human side of the production was just as chaotic, fueled by a cast of massive egos and dangerous personalities. One of the most bizarre safety measures on set involved Sonny Landham, who played the stoic tracker Billy. Landham was known for having a short temper and getting into bar fights, so the insurance company refused to bond the film unless the studio hired a bodyguard for him. The twist was that the bodyguard wasn't there to protect Landham from other people. He was hired specifically to protect the cast and crew from Landham.

The crew had other problems, too. Most of them suffered from traveler's diarrhea because of the water at the hotel where they were staying.

The testosterone fueled atmosphere extended to the rest of the cast, leading to a secret war over who had the biggest muscles. Jesse Ventura learned from the wardrobe department that his arms measured one inch larger than Arnold's. Ecstatic, Ventura bet Arnold a bottle of champagne that his arms were bigger, and Arnold accepted instantly. When they measured, Arnold won easily. It turned out Arnold had rigged the whole thing, telling the wardrobe department to lie to Ventura about the measurements to bait him into the bet so he could beat him publicly.

Arnold also had his gym equipment shipped over so he could train every day, while many of his costars secretly woke up as early as 3 a.m. to work out before filming. Carl Weathers would pretend his physique was effortless and purely genetic, timing his workouts so none of the other actors would catch him training.

Predator's heat vision only worked after the trees were sprayed with ice water

The Predator's famous heat vision was another high tech idea that failed on set. Because the jungle was over 90 degrees, the thermal cameras couldn't distinguish the actors' body heat from the hot trees, rendering everyone invisible on the camera used for the Predator's point of view.

To fix it, the filmmakers had to create a temperature contrast artificially. They sprayed the trees in the background with ice water to cool them down so the actors would register on the camera.

It's hard to imagine that one of the greatest science fiction action movies of all time came so close to failing, with a kickboxing red lizard that looks straight out of a B movie. Instead, thanks to a midproduction pivot, Stan Winston's genius and the removal of the Muscles from Brussels, Predator became a genre defining classic. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a movie is for everything to go wrong.