Predator 1987: Cast, Plot, Ending Explained and Where to Watch

Predator (1987) is about an elite team of mercenary soldiers who are flown into a Central American jungle on a rescue mission and discover that something else is hunting them. Dutch Schaefer leads the team, and his old friend Dillon, now working with the CIA, briefs them on the job: a government minister has been taken hostage and must be brought out.

The mission starts to feel wrong almost at once. The team finds the wreckage of a helicopter and the skinned bodies of soldiers hanging in the trees, which is not the kind of thing a guerrilla patrol usually leaves behind. They go on to reach a guerrilla camp and attack it, and a captured woman named Anna is taken along with them. Dutch learns that the mission was not what Dillon claimed, and the team realizes that something in the jungle is following them.

That setup is the whole appeal. It starts as a straight action film about big men with big guns (it could be argued that no other 1980s film packs so many muscles into one frame), and then it quietly turns into a monster film.

The full plot of Predator (1987) is a slow squeeze: the team loses one soldier after another until Dutch is the only man left to face the creature. After the camp is destroyed, Dutch confronts Dillon, who admits the mission was really about wiping out the guerrillas and that the hostage story was a cover. As the group heads for an extraction point, an unseen hunter begins picking them off one at a time.

The hunter can turn nearly invisible and sees heat, and it keeps the skulls of its victims. Anna explains that the jungle people know of a creature that comes in the hot season to hunt. Dillon dies, and the survivors are killed until only Dutch is left alive.

Dutch hides his body heat by covering himself in mud, and he sets traps around the jungle. He wounds the creature and its cloaking fails, but he is knocked into a river and loses the advantage. The creature then removes its mask and its weapons and fights him hand to hand, which, in my opinion, says a lot about how it sees the hunt. Dutch lures it under a heavy log trap that falls on it. Dying, the creature sets off a self destruct device, and Dutch gets clear of the blast. He is picked up by a helicopter at dawn with Anna aboard.

Predator (1987) opened in US theaters on June 12, 1987, according to Box Office Mojo. It reached Australia on August 20, 1987 and the UK on January 1, 1988, based on TMDB release data, and none of the three dates is studio confirmed.

The film earned $59.7 million domestically and $38.5 million internationally, and the series-wide predator box office numbers start from there. It is first by release and third in chronological order, behind predator killer of killers and prey predator.

The ending of Predator (1987) shows Dutch beating the creature by trapping it under a heavy counterweight log in the jungle. The badly hurt creature triggers a device that destroys the area around it, but Dutch gets away from the blast. He is the only member of his team to survive, and a helicopter collects him and Anna the next morning.

What does it mean? In my opinion, the key beat is the moment the creature takes off its mask and weapons to fight Dutch hand to hand. It could be argued that the film is showing the Predator as a sportsman with rules, and that Dutch wins because he stops playing the soldier and starts playing the prey, with mud for armor and traps for weapons. The mud matters because the creature sees heat, so Dutch only becomes a fair target once he hides what the creature hunts by. That shift is also why the film works as a monster story and not only as a shoot out.

The staging is worth a second look. The film spends its first half as a muscle-bound action picture, with a guerrilla camp assault and a team that out-guns everything it meets, then strips Dutch of every advantage one by one until he is a mud-covered man with a spear and a log. The trap is a rig built from the jungle itself, and that is the point. The soldiers who died earlier relied on firepower against something that skins its victims and keeps their skulls, and none of that helped them.

The last act has a production story behind it. After the first creature design was dropped, Stan Winston's team rebuilt the creature, starting from a much taller performer, and the crew returned to Mexico to reshoot the third act. Kevin Peter Hall, who was over seven feet tall, wore the redesigned suit, so the bare-handed fight owes a lot to a physical performance rather than to effects. Compared with the sequels, the finish is unusually intimate. Predator 2 moves the hunt into a Los Angeles heat wave with a police lieutenant at the center, and predators 2010 drops a group of strangers onto an alien world, while this film keeps one man, one hunter and one stretch of jungle.

The closing shot leaves Dutch exhausted, with the idea of other hunters visiting Earth left open for the franchise. The film has no post credit scene, so there is no teaser beyond the helicopter ride. For the next chapter, head to predator 2, or see the order of the whole saga in predator movies in order.

Predator (1987) was filmed in Mexico, with principal photography beginning in the jungles of Palenque, Chiapas, in late March 1986. Most of the film was shot near Puerto Vallarta, which stands in for the Central American jungle that Dutch and his team cross.

When the first creature design was dropped, the crew returned to Mexico to reshoot the third act. If you are tracing the jungle across the series, the locations change quickly in later films: predator 2 trades the jungle for a heat wave in Los Angeles.

Predator (1987) had a rocky production, and most of the best stories involve the creature suit.

• The Thomas brothers wrote the script in 1984 under the working title Hunter.
• Principal photography began in late March 1986 in the jungles of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, though most of the film was shot near Puerto Vallarta.
• Jean-Claude Van Damme was first cast in the creature suit and was replaced, and accounts of why differ (The Hollywood Reporter).
• After the first creature design was dropped, Stan Winston's team rebuilt it, starting from a much taller performer, and the crew returned to Mexico to reshoot the third act.
• Kevin Peter Hall, who was over seven feet tall, took over the role of the Predator.
• Producer John Davis has said the Predator needed to be taller, which was one reason for the recasting.
• Thermal vision shots were made with an Inframetrics thermal scanner.
• The closing credits dedicate the film to art director Augustin Ytuarte and location manager Federico Ysunza, who died in a 1986 plane crash.

For how this film compares with the rest of the series, see predator movies ranked and the predator timeline.