Last Updated on July 21, 2021
I was excited when I heard that Shane Black was going to be at the helm of THE PREDATOR, a sequel to the 1987 sci-fi action classic PREDATOR, and would be writing the screenplay with his THE MONSTER SQUAD collaborator Fred Dekker, but I found the film to be underwhelming and thought it completely fell apart in the end. Black and Dekker seemed to have some trouble figuring out how to wrap the movie up – in fact, the ending we got was the result of substantial reshoots after the original ending was scrapped. Since it involved special effects that were never completed, that original ending is not included on the DVD/Blu-ray release you can buy on Amazon, but some concept art has dropped online to give us an idea of what we might have seen in that original ending if the FX shots had been finished.
One thing that changed multiple times was the reveal of what sort of cargo the Predator was hauling around in its ship. In the final version, the cargo was a "Predator Killer" suit reminiscent of an Iron Man suit (and Black did direct IRON MAN 3). In other versions that were shot, the cargo was ALIEN franchise heroine Ellen Ripley, somehow brought back in time, and Ripley's ALIENS cohort Rebecca "Newt" Jorden. But since the film introduced the idea that Predators were into gene splicing and were juicing with DNA extracted from their prey, the original idea was that the Predator had a menagerie of hybrid creatures on its ship. These things ended up breaking loose, so there were supposed to be weird monsters crawling all over the place in the final sequences of THE PREDATOR.
Brian Wynia, Ken Barthelmey, Luca Nemolato, Jordan Morris, Farzad Varahramyan, Michael Eppinette, Tim Martin, Jared Krichevsky, Constantine Sekeris, and Ben Mauro were among the artists who drew up concept art for the hybrid creatures, and samples of their work can be seen in the images and video below.
Starring Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Sterling K. Brown, Yvonne Strahovski, Jacob Tremblay, Thomas Jane, Keegan-Michael Key, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Olivia Munn, and Jake Busey, THE PREDATOR doesn't feature Predator monkeys, Predator spiders, or Preda-pedes. It does have a hulking "Ultimate Predator" and Predator dogs, though.
The synopsis:
From the outer reaches of space to the small-town streets of suburbia, the hunt comes home in Shane Black’s explosive reinvention of the Predator series. Now, the universe’s most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before, having genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species. When a young boy accidentally triggers their return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race.
Check out the concept art samples below and see if you think these things would have made the ending of THE PREDATOR more interesting.
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