Predator

I have a confession to make: When I watched Predator for the first time, I approached the 1987 classic with the false assumption that I would be watching Alien, but with a different title and different extraterrestrial creature.

After Hawkins' (Shane Black) eye roll-inducing joke and that shot of Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Dillon (Carl Weathers) famously flexing their outrageously huge, sweaty arm muscles, I realized I clearly had no idea what Predator is actually about, which is manly men doing macho things, like flexing unreasonably huge muscles, blindly rapid-firing their guns, and delivering cheesy one-liners, all while battling an invisible alien in full body armor. Let's be honest: it has no business being as good as it is.

Directed by John McTiernan (Die Hard) and written by Jim and John Thomas, Predator has long been considered a classic in both the action and science fiction genre, despite having been met with mixed reviews upon its initial release in 1987. A blend of sci-fi, action, and horror, plus a heaping dose of muscle, Predator follows a simple narrative: Vietnam War veteran Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer, played by Schwarzenegger in his super muscular prime, is hired by the U.S. government to rescue a foreign cabinet minister and his aide from insurgents. Dutch enlists the help of his team (many of whom, unsurprisingly, are also muscular men), including CIA Agent George Dillon, weapons expert Sergeant Blain Cooper (Jesse Ventura), expert tracker Billy Sole (Sonny Landham), Sergeant Mac Eliot (Bill Duke), mercenary Jorge "Poncho" Ramirez (Richard Chaves), and radio operator/pussy joke enthusiast Rick Hawkins. When Dutch and his team land in Central America and stumble upon three skinned corpses in the jungle, they quickly realize that there is something much more sinister at hand. Their rescue mission rapidly turns into a bloodbath as one by one, an invisible, extraterrestrial threat hunts down Dutch and his team for sport.

Predator is the perfect '80s action film because it doesn't ask for much from its audience. The plot is as simple as it gets: a team of highly trained special force ops fight for their lives in the jungle against a hidden assassin. There are pointless explosions, endless scenes of sweaty, muscled men blindly shooting at absolutely nothing, bellowing out nonsense ("Come on! Kill Me! I'm here! Do it now!"), and classic action one-liners that will live on in your lexicon for eternity ("I ain't got time to bleed.") In short: it's mindless, pointless fun.

- Rae Torres, Collider