All of this brutally hot weather lately has made me think of folks in another brutally hot situation--the characters in the 1987 sci-fi/action movie "Predator." Like a lot of viewers, I adore this film--the actors are perfectly cast, the action scenes are great, and the Predator itself is an imaginative and terrifying villain. So let's get into some obscure details about it for fun. As always, questions first, followed by the answers. And many SPOILERS ahead, obviously.
Questions:
1) Blain is seen wearing a black t-shirt with a company logo on it. What is it for?
2) Of the 6 members of Dutch's team, who is the only one wearing a suit and tie when they get off the helicopter in the beginning?
3) What type of general is General Phillips? (As in, how many stars does he have?)
4) According to Dillon and Phillips, how long ago did the helicopter they're looking for disappear?
5) According to Dillon and Phillips, who was in this helicopter?
6) Dillon mentions two places to Dutch in their first conversation. One is a job that Dutch did, and the other is an assignment that Dutch passed on. Name them.
7) What is Dutch's rank?
8) What song is played on the boombox during the helicopter ride to the assignment?
9) How many people in Dutch's team accept Blain's offer of chewing tobacco?
10) What souvenir did both Dillon and Dutch get in 1972, north of the town of Hue?
11) Which members of the team climb up to the crashed helicopter in the tree?
12) According to Billy, after he observes the tracks, how many guerillas took away the hostages?
13) Also according to Billy, how many additional men wearing U.S. Army boots followed the guerillas?
14) After this, Poncho asks Dutch if he remembers another job, and Dutch says he's trying to forget it. Which one are they talking about?
15) How many members of Hopper's team were hung up in trees and skinned?
16) What is Hopper's first name?
17) Hopper's team are a group of Green Berets out of where?
18) What long time, bodybuilding friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger's plays a member of the guerilla camp?
19) What is the name of Blain's giant machine gun?
20) Dutch assigns tasks to each person of the team before they engage the guerrilla camp. Name them.
21) After the guerrilla camp is dealt with, the team calls for a chopper pickup. From who, specifically?
22) When Poncho and Blain are tangling with the guerrilla up a tree, what animal does Blain compare him to?
23) What is Poncho's reply to Blain's famous line, "I ain't got time to bleed."?
24) According to air surveillance, how far away, in time and distance, are the other guerrilla groups?
25) How many pussy jokes does Hawkins tell to Billy?
26) How many digits are on the Predator's hands?
27) According to Blain, this jungle makes what country look like Kansas?
28) What is Mac's rank?
29) Mac manages to slightly wound the Predator with bullets from Blain's gun. Where is this wound?
30) After Dillon calls for an extraction by helicopter, he's denied, and told to proceed to what sector?
31) While Mac is reminiscing with Blain's corpse, he mentions an incident when a whole platoon of 32 guys got chopped into meat, but just he and Blain walked out, unwounded. What did Mac call this night?
32) After Mac kills the pig that gets caught in their booby trap, who mocks him, belittling the size of the animal?
33) At this point in the movie, how far away is the rendezvous point for the chopper?
34) Anna mentions that a Predator has killed men in her village other times, in the hottest years. What does their name for the Predator mean, in English?
35) Who is the first person to see the Predator "uncloaked" (uncamouflaged)?
36) Who is the only character we hear two (first and last) names for?
37) Billy confronts the Predator by waiting for it, armed only with a big blade. He also cuts himself with it on the chest. Who is the only other character seen cutting himself with a blade?
38) We see the Predator examining a collection of skulls. How many of these are of animals?
39) And how many of these skulls are human?
40) True or false? The Predator is mortally wounded by one of Dutch's traps.
41) The main characters are shown again in the movie's credits. Shane Black (who played Hawkins) is shown reading what comic book?
42) What are the jobs/specialties for each of the 6 members of Dutch's team?
43) We learn midway through the movie that Dillon was lying to Dutch about the job. What was actually the military/political situation?
44) In what two countries is the movie set in?
45) The actor who played the Predator, Kevin Peter Hall, also played another, human character in this movie. Who was it?
46) Whose skulls does the Predator collect? (Conjectural.)
47) How many people are killed in this movie?
48) Why didn't the Predator kill any of the guerrillas? (Conjectural.)
49) Is Blain wielding a minigun realistic?
50) Of the actors playing the 10 major characters (Dutch's eventual group of 8, General Phillips, and the Predator), who among them saw actual combat in a real life war?
Answers:
1) It's for MTV, the cable television network Music Television.
2) Mac.
3) He's a major (2 star) general. As can be seen by the number of stars on his hat, and uniform.
4) 18 hours ago.
5) A cabinet minister, and his aide.
6) Dutch worked in Berlin, but passed on Libya.
7) He's a major. They mention this many times.
8) "Long Tall Sally," the version performed by Little Richard.
9) None, much to Blain's vocal disdain.
10) Cigarette lighters.
11) Poncho and Dillon.
12) 12.
13) 6.
14) Afghanistan.
15) 3.
16) In what may be a mistake, Dutch says it's "Jim," but the man's dog tags read "C.E. Hopper." Perhaps it was a nickname.
17) Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
18) Sven-Ole Thorsen plays a Soviet military advisor.
19) Old Painless.
20) Mac and Blain are to take out the machine gun nest, Billy and Poncho are to take care of the guard, Hawkins and Dillon are backup, and Dutch will handle the fuel dump.
21) Connor.
22) He's dug in like an Alabama tick.
23) "Oh, okay. You got time to duck?"
24) About 1-2 miles, and a half hour away.
25) 2. The first one bombs, but Billy is amused by the 2nd one.
26) Just like ours--4 fingers and a thumb. Albeit with longer nails, or claws.
27) Cambodia.
28) He's a sergeant, 2nd in command.
29) On the Predator's left leg, somewhere around its knee.
30) 3,000.
31) A Number 10 night.
32) Poncho.
33) 10-12 miles away.
34) "The demon who makes trophies of men."
35) Dillon.
36) Poncho Ramirez. The novelization, comics, etc., provide first and last names for all the characters, but they're not mentioned in the film, or listed in the credits except for Poncho.
37) Mac, presumably accidently, as he's distracted while dry shaving his face.
38) We see 5, arranged in the netting around its torso.
39) 3.
40) False. Technically it bypasses the actual trap, but is killed by the trap's counterweight hanging log falling on it.
41) It's a "Sgt. Rock" comic, #408 from February of 1986, to be exact.
42) Dutch is the commanding officer, Mac is 2nd in command/machine gunner. Blain is the heavy gunner. Poncho is the explosives/demolition expert, Hawkins is the radio operator, and Billy is the tracker/scout. The medic is thought to be either Poncho or Hawkins.
43) Dillon and the CIA believed that the guerrillas were preparing for an invasion of their neighboring country, aided by Soviet military advisors. So they sent in CIA operatives to find the main guerrilla camp. But the CIA agents' helicopter was discovered and destroyed, and the agents were taken prisoner by the guerrillas. Hopper's team was sent to rescue the prisoners, and probably also to destroy the guerrilla camp, but they were killed by the Predator. Dutch's team was then sent to do the same task as Hopper's, only they were lied to and told it was a rescue mission of government officials. (In "Predator 2" this gets retconned a bit. In that movie Keyes (Gary Busey's character) actually suspected the Predator was in the area, so he and his group set up the entire plan to try to capture it, presumably lying to Dillon and the CIA in turn.)
44) In the movie they're unidentified, other than being in Central America (Mac notes that the "cabinet minister and his aide" were clearly not Central American.) However, in the novelization and in the sequels the area they Predator was in was Guatemala. So the neighboring countries would be either Mexico, Belize, Honduras, or El Salvador. A writer friend of director McTiernan identified the country as the fictitious "Val Verde," which in turn was used in other movies like "Commando" and "Die Hard 2," but this is not canon.
45) Hall briefly appears as one of the pilots of the chopper at the end. He's the tall black guy.
46) We can be sure that it didn't save those of 3 of the guys from Hopper's team, and Hawkins' skull, since these 4 men were hung in trees with their heads still attached. Of the others, we know that the Predator stole Blain's body, so maybe he craved Blain's skull. We see him rip out Billy's skull and spine out, and prepare it, so I think it's safe to assume Billy's skull is retained. Of the rest, we don't see the Predator take the bodies of Dillon, Mac, or Poncho, although it could have later, offscreen. One skull has a blackened hole near the top, in the left-center portion. Which could indicate that this is Mac's, since he appeared to be shot in this area of the head. Although later his head looks intact when Dillon sees him, but this might be a mistake by the filmmakers. Poncho was shot in the head as well, but it looked like more in the side. Finally, it's possible that the Predator took more of his human victim's skulls, but was storing them somewhere else.
47) The guerrillas/Soviet military advisors apparently killed 5 people--the 2 helicopter pilots, and the 3 CIA agents (Billy says 2 at first, but later adds "a kid" in the aftermath of the guerrilla camp assault.) The Predator kills the 6 members of Hopper's team, and 6 of Dutch's team (Hawkins, Blain, Mac, Dillion, Billy, and Poncho). The number of guerrillas killed by Dutch's team is unfortunately undetermined. Some websites claim a low of 58, others up to a high of 76.
48) The Predator seems to prefer killing people who are alone, or in small groups. It only (apparently) attacks Hopper's group of 6, and then Dutch's group of 8. Maybe the 12 guerrillas and 3 hostages were too many, and the camp itself had dozens more, obviously. Alternately, maybe the Predator only arrived in the area when Hopper's team arrived, and then hung around and waited in the area, and only decided to stalk Dutch's team when they got there, and didn't really encounter the guerrilla camp until after it followed Dutch's team there.
49) According to everything I read online, no. The one he uses, the M134 minigun, is usually mounted on helicopters, and is not picked up and used by a person, even one as big and bulky as Jesse Ventura. To get it to work for the movie they had to slow it down, and power it using heavy battery packs. Also, it fires so quickly that even a bodybuilder couldn't carry the weight of all the ammunition required to fire it as much as the characters do. So it's a cool image, but not really plausible.
50) It appears that only the least prepossessing guy, Richard Chaves (who played Poncho) did, as he was in the U.S. Army and fought in the Vietnam War. Jesse Ventura (Blain) was in the U.S. Navy (possibly a Navy Seal?), and served in Vietnam during the war, but didn't see actual combat. Of the others, Sonny Landham (Billy) served in the U.S. Army, but not in a war, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Dutch) served in the Austrian Army, but again, not in a war or in combat. Otherwise, Bill Duke (Mac), Carl Weathers (Dillon), Shane Black (Hawkins), R. G. Armstrong (Phillips), Elpidia Carrillo (Anna), and Kevin Peter Hall (the Predator) did not serve in the military.
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