Spoilers ahead.
Shane Black’sThe Predator, now out on Blu-ray, was a bit of a mishmash of mythology and movie tropes, making it really interesting to dig into just what happened during the 20th Century Fox production process. One of those points of interest is the fact that the Fox film underwent reshoots to change up the third act and the ending. While we’ve yet to hear a good explanation for why the ending they chose ended up being completely nutzo, we now have a look at some shots of the alternate endings, specifically referencing the Predator Killer masks.
Now, originally, the movie didn’t even have this Predator Killer aspect at all, though they may have been saving the idea for a future film. Black andFred Dekker’s original script forThe Predatorfeatured a very different ending.Birth.Movies.Deathgot their hands on a copy, described as follows:
Instead [of the Predator Killer scene], McKenna, his son, Rory (played by Jacob Tremblay) and Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) have all just survived the final attack of the Super Predator (referred to as “The Upgrade” in the script) when a helicopter lands. Out climbs…Dutch Schaeffer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), his “face haunted; etched by pain.” Dutch tells the trio to come with him, and when Rory asks, “Uh…me, too?”, the franchise’s second-most iconic badass smiles and says “Especially you.”
So the final version swapped Schwarzenegger with the Predator Killer, or at least eliminated Dutch as the middle man between Quinn, Rory, and Casey, and the alien tech. And to get you all caught up on what this means, essentially there’s a bit of a civil war brewing between factions of the Predators; the ones who want to help humans (or at least keep us around a little longer in the hopes that we’ll help them fight the bigger, stronger, faster, ultimate predators) have delivered mankind some impressive gear to narrow the gap between our civilizations' technologies. Enter: Predator Killer, a sort of weaponized exo-suit that gives characters inThe Predatorfranchise Iron Man-like abilities and lets them go toe-to-toe with the Predators themselves.
In the theatrical ending, Quinn got to don the suit while his son Rory kind of ran the show on the research side. But in alternate endings, two familiar names would have featured their own Predator Killer masks: Ripley and Newt.
Take a look at the alt designs for the Predator Killer masks below (viaInstagram):
For my money, those alternate ideas are vastly more interesting than the one they went with, but there’s no reason the franchise couldn’t tap into these should more sequels be in the future.Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
For more onThe Predator, be sure to read up on our previous write-ups:
