Arnold Schwarzenegger is The Final Girl We Deserve in Predator
One of the cool things about watching old 70s and 80s slasher flicks with my son is that we’re getting a bit of a “horror revue” from that time period. It’s giving me a lot to think about it. I initiated a discussion of Predator vs. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street with my son and wife. I wanted to share some of our thoughts.
The first question is whether or not Predator is a horror movie. My wife and son were divided on this. Predator has gore (people are skinned alive) and jump scares as well as one ugly alien. Yet IMDB lists it as an Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller. Predator is the story of an alien that is hunting large, muscled mercenaries through South American jungles. It is not listed as horror.
I think this leads to a bigger question of what is horror and what defines a horror movie. Webster defines horror as…no, I won’t go there. But as many others have done, I will quote H.P. Lovecraft, who said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” If the driving connection of horror is to cause fear, then the same can be said for horror movies. They are movies that give you a physical, emotional, or psychological fear response.
Based on the connection between the genre and a fear response, then Predator qualifies as a horror. But if all you need is a fear response, then what does that mean for most movies? Does the jump scare and the hunt of the Black Riders for the hobbits make Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring a horror movie? I doubt many people would talk about Lord of the Rings in those terms, though clearly some parts of the story borrow from horror. And what of movies like Contagion, which are about fighting a pandemic? Does fear of the pandemic make the movie a horror. Again, I don’t think so. I think the difference between a horror movie and a not-horror movie is how much of the plot and tone are devoted to the fear response. Simply having a fear response to heighten a movie does not make it horrific, just like comic relief doesn’t turn Friday the 13th into a comedy. Intention, then, seems to be a big part of the equation.
Bringing this back to Predator, it’s easy to see why the movie is an Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller. But it clearly uses the slasher formula, the tried and true of so many horror movies. In so many ways, the plots of Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Predator mirror each other.
Each movie starts by following a group of people, usually teens in the former movies and a group of mercs in the latter. In Halloween, Laurie goes to school, talks to friends, and goes home. She drives around with a girlfriend and then is dropped off at her babysitter gig. While she’s driving around, Michael Myers stalks her from a distance, usually just out of sight. Predator starts similarly, following Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his band of bad asses as they get their assignment, fly around the jungle, and attack an encampment of guerrillas. The predator alien stalks them from a distance, learning their language and reading their heat signatures.
In the second act of Friday the 13th, the stakes are raised as the kills add up. First it’s oversexed but probably still a virgin Ned, then Jack gets an arrow from behind through the windpipe (backwards!). Marcie takes an axe to the head. The shadow appears in the background behind her while she searches in the foreground. One by one the camp counselors are killed off.
In Predator, the oversexed but probably still a virgin Hawkins is dragged away into the jungle. Then Blain (Jesse Ventura) is shot from behind. Mac (Bill Duke) is shot through the head by the alien. One by one the world’s greatest soldiers are killed off.
In both Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, the final girls devise a plan to outwit and vanquish their killers. Nancy implements booby traps around her home to capture Krueger. Laurie opens a back door to make it look like she ran off, but then hides in the closet. Nancy’s booby traps work better than Laurie’s misdirection, and in both cases the killer doesn’t really die. They will be back for further franchise installments.
Dutch, who is teased for his “Boy Scout bullshit” earlier in the movie, rigs some booby traps (and constructs his own bow) to trap and kill the alien. He covers himself in mud to hide his location so that he can’t be seen. And after the big fight, the alien blows himself up and Dutch dives away, but we all know that Predator will be back, if not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So, plot-wise, Predator follows the beats popularized in earlier slasher movies. Even the alien runs around with a two-bladed instrument that he uses to kill and skin his trophies.
But what I find really interesting here is that IF Predator is a slasher flick, then that makes Dutch the movie’s de facto final girl. Except, of course, the dude doesn’t fit the gender mold of the trope. It might be enough to say that this is where the horror genre ends and the action adventure genre begins. But I think by mixing the two genres together, Dutch fits in where the final girl would exist. The difference is that the creators give him tools and abilities that final girls must survive without. Dutch is a hyper-masculine character with a lot of guns and equipment and years of special ops training in his background. I’d like to see if the other slasher franchises ever try bestowing their final girls with the same resources Dutch receives. (As a reminder, I’ve only watched two or three Halloween movies, a couple from the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and the first Friday the 13th movie.) Until then, Dutch is about as far from Laurie, Nancy and Alice as is possible. And I think that’s the point. He is not a damsel in distress. He isn’t “saved” by Sam Loomis shooting Michael or the police officers showing up at the last minute. It’s all Dutch all the time.
To prep for this post, I did a little research on the final girl trope. Final girls tend to be sexually unavailable or a virgin, they have a high moral compass, and a unisex name. While Dutch isn’t a unisex name, it does have that same vibe as Sydney or Laurie. (Just my opinion.) Dutch’s sexuality never comes into play in the movie, at least not overtly. Sure, he smokes a cigar, carries a big gun, and is covered with muscles, but I’ve also said that he is a hyper-masculine character. If a final girl is ambiguously sexual with a high moral compass, Dutch is a final boy who is unambiguously gendered with a high moral compass. He looks after his “men,” and won’t let anyone compromise their lives. But he still ends up like all final horror characters: alone with the psychological scars of dealing with a psychopath. Predator can be seen as a horror movie, and Dutch is a final girl. I can’t wait to see him at the sleepover with Nancy, Laurie, and Alice!
