Predator (1987)

Predator is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by John McTiernan. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer, who leads an elite special forces team on a rescue mission in the Central American jungle. After dispatching a guerrilla camp with overwhelming firepower, the team realizes they are being hunted by something far more dangerous — an extraterrestrial creature with advanced technology including active camouflage, thermal vision, and devastating energy weapons that is systematically stalking and killing them for sport.

Predator brilliantly subverted the 1980s action movie formula by assembling the most impossibly muscular, heavily armed team of warriors — including Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers — and then rendering all their firepower, training, and physical superiority utterly useless against a single alien predator. The film functioned as both a conventional action thriller and a deconstruction of one, with each macho team member picked off until Schwarzenegger's Dutch is reduced to his most primal state, fighting the Predator with mud, sticks, and raw cunning rather than miniguns and grenades. Stan Winston's creature design for the Predator — mandibles, dreadlocks, and biomechanical armor — created one of cinema's most iconic movie monsters.

Predator earned $98 million worldwide and launched a franchise spanning multiple sequels and crossovers.