How I Screwed Up the Great Original Ending to Predator
At our second meeting, I cheerfully congratulated director John McTiernan on his current film project (Hunter, later renamed Predator).
“This is going to be amazing. You’re going to attract two different audiences to this film.”
John looked confused.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll get your action/adventure crowd, of course — but with that ending, you’ll attract a different audience as well. At the end, after Arnold Schwarzenegger has killed the Hunter, he looks down at the carcass of the creature. He notices something odd. He looks closer; then closer still. He reaches down to the carcass and opens it up. Inside all of this scary alien armor is a tiny, frail little creature. What a terrific commentary on Man as Hunter. He has to gird himself up with all this technology to hunt other creatures.”
McTiernan thought about what I had just said. He opened his script and re-read the ending. Then, right in front of me, he tore those pages out of the script.
“John! What are you doing?!”
“We can’t have that ending,” he replied. “That would mean that Arnold beat up a wimp!“
Bill,
I’ll never understand theatrical machismo. I LIKED that ending and instead we got a tactical nuke? I guess expecting that machine to turn out something against SOP is expecting too much.
….thanks, Bill….
Rick
(I kid)