Punishing Toxic Masculinity

Welcome back to The Popcorn Isn't Real, starring me, Torvald, my brother, Leif Ehrich. Hello. Happy to have you here. So today, we're going to be talking about Predator. Directed by John McTiernan. 1987 horror slasher. Is it a slasher? I think it's a slasher. Sure, whatever. I mean, it's the same basic formula. I mean, I think Predator was actually a really cool idea because it is a slasher, but it's not a slasher where they're killing like defenseless teens right like the slasher in this movie is killing like strong powerful manly spec ops soldiers right that's a really cool way to like shake up the formula right yeah john mctiernan has said that to him they were following the basic formula of king kong right which is that a group of people go on to a strange place and get attacked by monsters overwhelmed basically and which like if you've seen the old black and white king kong most people wouldn't think that island sequence where they're getting

attacked by you know random dinosaurs and stuff and things uh wouldn't see that and think oh yeah just like predator no it's interesting that that's where he feels like he got the inspiration well yeah but he also wasn't the writer and he has said that the the writer and the producers uh were trying to just make it like uh alien versus commandos which is exactly what it is that is exactly what it is yeah well i mean except the predator he's not like alien right like he's very different and they wanted to make him different alien and yeah very purposeful i think i feel like i grew up and predator popularity was huge when i was in like elementary school the monster the predator had only had two movies right yeah there was alien versus predator in 2004 i think the popularity is is just a testament to how cool the predator himself is not just killing but hunting down trained killers and he's killing them it's really cool it's a fun idea yeah like

he could stand there with arnold schwarzenegger and make arnold schwarzenegger look like a little baby right the actor they got to play him was seven foot two and like a giant like a full foot Tuller than Schwarzenegger, almost. Well, as for the cast members, I think it's cool. Hawkins, the guy with glasses, he was played by Shane Black. Shane Black. He's a screenwriter. He wrote Lethal. He's also a director. He wrote and directed Iron Man 3, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, and The Predator, the newest Predator movie at the time of this recording. There's a rumor that they brought him in as an actor because they wanted him to do a rewrite on the script. mctiernan has said that he cast shane black in that role because he wanted to have a writer on set is that something they do in hollywood like they trick writers into acting in their movies and then you're like oh what's this a script right in front of you would be a shame if you

happen to rewrite it what do they think writers just compulsively do what they do i mean i don't know that it's very common to cast writers as actors in general but it is very common to try to trick writers into writing things for free all right yeah that's you got you you got a point that's what everybody wants you to do we can't confirm or deny that rumor i guess but uh shane black interesting i can confirm oh you mean about shane black jesse the body ventura played blaine the big tough manly man uh he was a wrestler and went on to be the governor of minnesota sunny landham played billy so this i thought was really interesting he was apparently required like in his contract to have like a big bodyguard at all times and this wasn't for his safety but due to the fact that he was reportedly so unbelievably dangerous and volatile that they needed to contractually protect his co-workers from him right yeah the

bodyguard was to protect other people from him which sounds like something that like people would just like lie about at school like my hands are registered as deadly weapons kind of thing yes i thought sonny was by far the coolest character in the movie yeah billy is his character name in the movie billy is the coolest character in the movie but like knowing that that he had to have a bodyguard makes him like even cooler it's like whoa this guy like he was he was a literal bomb waiting to explode they needed that bodyguard there to tackle anyone who stepped in his path just to save them from Sonny's wrath of course we got Carl Weathers as Dylan everyone knows Carl Weathers Creed on Rocky he's a grief karga in the Mandalorian he is definitely the best actor in this movie maybe but I like Carl Weathers a lot Mac played by Bill Duke went on to be a director He went to school at the American Film Institute, which is also where John McTiernan went to school.

The last character who they call Poncho, which it's confusing because pronounced correctly, the word Poncho would be spelled with an A, P-A-N-C-H-O. Yeah. Like Poncho Villa, right? They spell it with an O, which is something you wear, a poncho.

He is played by Richard Chavez, which is a Hispanic sounding name. But I do not believe this man actually speaks Spanish because his accent is terrible. And also he mistranslates everything that the woman says. Not terribly, but, you know, he's definitely not translating directly. I don't know. I don't know enough about his background to try and claim him as a false Latino. know i do know that elpidia carillo was the one actor among this big group of people who ended up in the jungle who didn't get to go on like their boot camp treks with them they went on these long boot camp treks to sort of train and also get camaraderie with each other so they could seem like they were a real squad right yeah i think personally that this movie had a really colorful and fun cast of characters like that was the main thing that stuck out to me the first time i watched i was like these guys are fun like these are interesting guys from a screenwriting perspective

you wouldn't think that predator was usually studied by screenwriters but it is sometimes just as an example of like how to quickly and efficiently establish a group of really good characters and that's one thing that this is good at is that we don't know much about these people but they manage to establish them as real characters like they don't just feel like you're like dumb teenagers who are going to die like in a lot of slasher movies like they feel like real characters and real people even though we know virtually nothing about them and they do that really well in this movie okay before we get into like the story and the theory we're going to talk about today i just want to mention that we've got links in the description for this episode if you want to watch the movie and then you know compare what you think about the movie to our theory you go for it um i'd encourage you to because it's a good movie i like it and also i

think our theory is really interesting today so uh the story of predator you know if you haven't caught on by now basically this team of special operatives they go into the jungle on a mission and they get ambushed and murdered one by one by an extraterrestrial hunter right yes originally this movie was going to be called the hunter which as shane black pointed out in the movie the predator would have been a much more appropriate name for the predator and what he does because he's very much more of a hunter than he is just a predator yeah but i think predator just sounded cooler and it does sound cooler i agree you know so i think they made the right choice there a lot of what we're going to talk about is based on a post on reddit it's from about four years ago it was posted by a now deleted user and i'll assume since they've deleted their profile they want to remain anonymous their theory is that the whole movie is actually about hyper masculinity

you have this super macho team of alpha male soldiers and they're each competing against each other to show off their strengths and superiority and raw power throughout the movie each one of them like keeps trying to one-up each other and you know just dropping like weird comments and mind games to each other and also throughout the movie each one of them has their masculinity put to the test and then dies in a way that mocks their toxic masculinity and failure as a man right so that's uh that's pretty much the gist of the theory and the reddit user who originally posted it. He had a lot of really cool ideas about it. I based a lot of this on their theory, but I have slightly different interpretations for almost all the characters. One important thing to note is that all of these characters die because of their toxic masculinity, except for Dutch. He's the most masculine of all, and he proves that he's even more manly than the Predator. He kills it, and

its death mocks its failure to be masculine as well. Are we arguing that this is a critique of toxic masculinity or is it in support it's in support of healthy masculinity right like i said all these characters are constantly like quipping and playing mind games with each other to the point where it seems like maybe they doubt their own manliness because they need to like reinforce it all the time and interestingly enough this is something that john mctiernan fostered on set like weird things like how who could smoke more cigars which i don't i don't smoke so i don't really know like how you measure like how my plays until you just can't breathe anymore until you get lung cancer i don't know but i also know there's a fun story of uh jesse ventura who plays blaine he heard from the wardrobe department that his arms were bigger than arnold schwarzenegger oh oh no and so he said to arnold schwarzenegger hey let's measure our arms

and the person with smaller arms has to buy the other one a drink or something like that and then they measured arms and of course Arnold Schwarzenegger was bigger that guy's arms are Mr. Olympia like six times in a row and then Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out he had told the wardrobe department to lie to Jesse Ventura so Jesse Ventura would make that bet and lose crafty little dog oh my gosh that's so good what a prank well like how well must you know how well must you know your co-star to be able to predict him like oh my gosh dude that fits so well with this this theory important point in the movie in the very beginning when schwarzenegger meets carl weathers they have a arm contest right basically to see whose arm is bigger contest i like the way you put it it's not even an arm wrestling it's just an arm contest oh man it's a good movie i like predator another thing john mctunan talked about

the executives wanted lots of shots of guns firing like just guns shooting so he made that one scene about halfway through the movie where everyone just starts firing their guns in one direction for like five minutes straight. Completely leveling the forest. Just leveling the jungle in front of them. And he said the point of this scene, like the whole reason for this scene existing was not only to please the executives, but also because there was nobody in front of their guns. They were shooting. And, you know, right after they're done, one of the guys walks over and he says, we hit nothing. Right. So the executives wanted gun porn and he wanted to make a critique of gun porn while also delivering them their gun porn. Well, like in his own words, he says the whole point was just the impotence of all the guns, which was exactly the opposite of what I believed I was being hired to sell. But yeah, I mean, I think that goes along with this theory that the movie is critiquing masculinity, right?

And so McTiernan also said that, like we kind of already talked about, that this was sort of pitched as Alien versus Rambo, what you think of as Rambo, right? just a bunch of rambos walking around in the in the jungle which is just funny because like this is the first movie in the predator franchise right and yet the first movie is already a versus movie right predator versus rambo yeah it's just weird because like usually you don't start there right you work up to that right like like alien it's just a bunch of random miners right and then alien aliens is when oh alien versus space marines you know right so i want to talk about each character. I want to give you evidence and basically cover them death by death and say exactly what their problem was, why they deserve to die, and how their death mocked them. I want to start with Hawkins. Hawkins is the first one to die. He is a bully, in my opinion. He's weak,

but wants to appear strong and only picks on people weaker than him. He's scrawny. He wears glasses he's constantly cracking jokes about exclusively about big vaginas i don't know why that's his uh topic of preference but he thinks large vaginas are hilarious i mean i hate to jump the gun here just in case this is your point you're trying to make but is his cardinal sin that he is a big pussy pretty much yes he is a big pussy that's what i'm getting at first evidence for this they assault the rebel base that sounds awfully star wars but they assault the rebels who are set up in the jungle and during this entire assault it's a big scene like there's the whole team is jumping around shooting people killing people like it's a surprisingly in-depth fight scene for something that literally doesn't matter well but it does matter i i like it's a really important scene because it establishes that these guys are amazingly good at their job

and like nothing is going to kill them like no they don't lose a single guy against this armed camp it's not even a challenge they're not not even a scratch right well except for except for jesse ventura's blaine right yeah we'll get to that yeah um but like uh yeah so that establishes like these guys are amazing and if anything kills one of them it is like unbelievably amazing you know what you're good at killing i take everything i said back this is an important scene for this movie. And even more important is the fact that Hawkins doesn't even kill a single person during the assault. He never even helps the team in any way. After this big assault, they take a prisoner who is a lady named Anna. Anna runs away from the group and Hawkins chases her. We know that this specific predator refuses to attack Anna. And it's either because she's a woman or more likely because she's unarmed. But we don't know. We just know he doesn't attack Anna. The only reason we're

given. It's by Schwarzenegger who says it's because she's unarmed. We also know that Hawkins refused to attack anyone but Anna. So he runs after her. He attacks this unarmed woman instead of all the armed soldiers that they fought. So I believe that the Predator was watching disgusted at this frail, feeble, wimpy, you know, barely a man who could only choose for his prey an unarmed fleeing woman. so i think the predator judged his lacking masculinity very harshly wait wait wait a sec so your argument is not that thematically this movie is about toxic masculinity but that within the universe the predator himself is judging their masculine is is punishing people for their so but what is it for their over-the-top toxic masculinity or like their lack of it's okay i'll explain it this way it's more like the predators are like the penultimate masculine race and what he's doing is giving these masculine soldiers a trial by masculinity and if they don't measure up

they die and the reddit user notes that previously seen skin soldiers in this movie were all castrated like they did not have genitalia which is true they didn't could have something to do with like the art department and it could build these skin suits and stuff but yeah definitely but in universe it means that this predator is skinning them and chopping off their genitals okay i just want to say that right after hawkins dies they have the cliche let's split up moment that all slashers have but i like it here because we've seen what they're capable of right and we haven't seen much of the predators so like this is the one instance for the let's split up moment doesn't seem stupid no it feels like they're about to gang up on this thing every single one of these guys can take anything that comes at them right yeah and so there's no reason not to split up to search for hawkins anyway so the next one to die is blaine now blaine in my opinion his his problem is that

he's a showboat right like he tries to be bigger and better and badder than he actually is he needs acknowledgement unlike Dutch who is just as big just as strong or bigger and stronger but he wears his masculinity comfortably you know like with dignity right like Dutch is not showing off how big he is Blaine needs to flaunt it he needs to push it on you right right he's over masculine at the beginning in the helicopter he's offering all the team members chewing tobacco right and when they all reject him he calls them a bunch of homophobic and racist slurs and then says this stuff will make you into a he says this stuff will make you into a sexual tyrannosaurus like me which i just love that line what about why would you want to be a sexual tyrannosaurus what about a tyrannosaurus is sexual you want to have tiny arms and no thumbs and and to who like like what person has ever been like man i wish my my man was a sexual

tyrant a sexual dinosaur oh man uh he has a gigantic minigun that he calls painless and he shows it off as often as possible and you know like he named it he loves to use it and like he said during the attack on the rebels he clearly gets hurt he's bleeding and pontius says you're hit you're bleeding to which he responds i ain't got time to bleed and then the best line in the movie great line oh okay i love that line the correct response to someone who's very wounded saying i ain't got time to bleed it's like oh all right all right i accept that well no this is this is key in his toxic masculinity is that he is wounded but he can't acknowledge it even though everyone else does right like he's not fooling anyone he's bleeding but his toxic masculinity won't allow him to say it he can't cover up his weakness here there's no way later on in the movie the predator kills him with a plasma bolt through his body after which dylan examines his corpse

and says the wound is all fused cauterized what the hell did this he didn't believe he's been cauterized he's not bleeding there's no time the predator is mocking him you didn't have time to bleed but you had time to die exactly so that's blaine blaine's out of there next guy the next death in this movie is mac now mac is he's a cool character i like mac a lot um he's very interesting and he is also from what i believe this movie's trying to show he is a coward the predator hated mac it was constantly watching him and listening to him and replaying his voice over and over like the predator really had its eye on mac after the assault on the rebels mac he was playing some sort of power game with dylan where he like right i was a little confused as to why mac just seems to hate Dylan so much Dylan I think it's kind of like Dylan's like the he's the he's the upper brass like he thinks he's in charge maybe maybe Mac has a thing with authority I don't know what

I know for sure is that he was playing head games with Dylan he says hey come here or he says over here and the predator records that right Mac doesn't tell Dylan what's up he doesn't say hey Dylan there's a scorpion on your back let me get it off he just says turn around and then pulls out a giant knife and sticks it into dylan's back to get the scorpion and then dylan like turns around like why are you trying to murder me and he's like the scorpion i was just helping you right and then dylan he's like thanks matt goes anytime like i'm always ready to stick a knife in your back unexpectedly they make it very clear that the predator watched this exchange with dylan I think he judged him right here. He interpreted through his actions that Mac is underhanded, cowardly, and weak. He saw Mac playing this power game about putting a knife in somebody's back. That's not the way a manly, honorable soldier kills somebody, right?

Yeah, I mean, he definitely seems manipulative, and he tries really hard to intimidate people. I think he's also a little nuts. He's talking to himself a lot. Yeah, well, he did. The guy is, yeah, the guy's freaking crazy. so but what do you make of i'm sure we're gonna get to this what do you make of the scorpion i thought he might have had the scorpion on the knife already and just put it like picked up the knife and put it to his back but the scorpion has to be important i feel and i just couldn't figure out why because they have a shot of the predator going and picking up the scorpion and looking at it like why does the predator do that when if you listen to john mctiernan talk about this movie those infrared shots were really expensive and hard to do so why did they waste one on an infrared shot of the predator going and picking up and looking at a scorpion in its hand the predator

is clearly obsessed with this interaction and this guy like he hates mac like he just wanted to come and see the aftermath of it because he's like how could you do such a cowardly thing to your fellow soldier right like i think he sees this as dishonorable and disgusting and he's like oh you were getting a scorpion off of him like i think he just doesn't like it so the predator is an armored creature with like built-in weapons uh it's got knives it's got guns things built directly into its armor he's a scorpion right it's kind of like a scorpion right they're armored creatures with built-in weapons it's like the end of men in black when he's stomping on the cockroaches kind of but i i think that it's like to another insect a scorpion is extremely intimidating like it is would be scary like another insect can't beat a scorpion it's gonna grab you poison you and eat you right and i feel like this is sort of the

predator its way of testing the humans because the predator won't kill unarmed people it wants to kill things that are in a way scorpion like the things that have weapons that that that seem dangerous but also by comparison the predator is a human squishing bugs right because it's its weapons are so advanced that it doesn't matter right that these humans have weapons and so i i felt like that was that was like they were trying to draw a comparison there that like he's trying to be all tough and intimidating and then he just squishes this creature that is dangerous to some but not to him and the predator is showing like you humans may be dangerous to some but not to me not to me right that could be sure i mean this is all a masculinity test for the predator as well so he's playing just as many power games as they are so i could see that later the predator kills blaine and mac sees the invisible predator he looks him in his glowing eyes and this is important

mac is really the only one who sees the predator for like almost the entire movie and then in just utter terror he screams sergeant and opens fire and shoots all his bullets and then picks up the minigun painless and shoots all its bullets and keeps shooting like 20 or 30 seconds after it's empty like he's scared out of his mind and i mean rightfully so but also the predator looks him in the eyes and knows it you are afraid and you are not manly is what the predator is thinking right yeah predator gets back at him that night by throwing a big fat pig at him because he doesn't like mac and he wanted to throw a gross disgusting defenseless animal at him like this is you and later in the movie when he's pursuing the predator with dylan mac's hiding in the bushes he pulls dylan in and he says up there in the trees i see you and he points out the camouflage predator predator is just sitting there in the trees staring at mac he knows mac's there mac knows

it's there it's testing him right like this is like a who's gonna blink first moment like they concoct a cowardly plan for dylan to go around and draw the predator out so that mac can shoot it in the back just like he was gonna stab dylan in the back as mac is crawling through the underbrush to do this plan he then sees the predator's laser on his arm it's got a clear shot. It could have killed him, but it doesn't. It waits for him to completely turn and look it in the eyes before it kills him face to face. It's not going to shoot him in the back. Yeah, I agree with you. Do you have any thoughts on the razor blade that he's chasing? No, I wish I did. I think that's a cool quirk. I wish I had something to say about it. I feel like it has to mean something because on a shoot where they were in the middle of the jungle they were trying to do lots and lots of things to reduce their budget like like i uh i had talked about the expense of the infrared

shots from the predator's point of view john mctiernan says that those shots were really really expensive because the ambient temperature in where they were shooting in mexico was the same as the humans so so they were all invisible to the predator right not vice versa they doused the jungle in ice water and the people by a fire like this would take forever John McTiernan says like this was so expensive and it would take like three hours to get off one shot yeah so in a time when they are over budget they bothered to make a razor blade like a prop that squirts out blood on his face to make it look like he is cutting himself right and if you actually watch when he takes it away he has no cut he just got some blood on his face because it was squirted from their prop right yes well like why take the time to make that unless it means something it has to mean something for his character if it was important enough that they had it in the script

and they kept it in the movie mr mctiernan he said that that shot was uh max actor's idea that was duke's idea he said yeah duke was really into it he was like hey can i make this uh shaving thing can i make that like my guy's thing and maybe i push the blade into my skin and it breaks i mean it's a good character quirk oh yeah i think it shows like you've been saying his cardinal sin is fear and perhaps more specifically overcompensating for his fear with like intimidation and so i kind of think at the beginning when he is shaving his face it seems like he's really trying to intimidate someone even though it's a dinky little like disposable razor it's not like he's using a straight razor that would be freaking intimidating if he had a straight razor but no he's got like a little disposable plastic razor yes he's trying to be intimidating with his dumb razor thing at the beginning and then finally at the end when he's

about you know he's getting more and more scared his his fear is coming through his razor breaks yeah his thing breaks his intimidation cover his his facade breaks at the same time as his razor um and so i think that's cool possibly what that represents and also like with the eye contact thing uh like he makes eye contact with the predator and that's a an intimidation tactic is staring someone down i just want to say that that moment where they shoot for five minutes yeah oh which is a great moment like it's a good scene so that moment really did feel to me like when we fought the predator in wildlands oh yeah because that's all you did you're just constantly shooting everywhere that predator could be everywhere and like bringing in like how we recruited all the rebels and all everyone we could get to bring in just to have more people for the predator to kill just to distract him so i really like that moment because like i was like

dude that's exactly how it feels to fight the predator you're like i don't worry i'm just gonna shoot another thing to mention about max death which kind of corresponds with that moment when we talk about the predator what are his iconic things like what does this slasher do he he hunts people down he has his arm he takes trophies he has his wolverine blades he takes trophies and another iconic thing that i think most people would recognize the predator for is he records his victims and plays their sounds as like a lure yeah right he doesn't do it in this movie yeah not the one time he actually did that or and it's debatable if he actually did that but after mac dies dylan sees his dead body and then he hears anytime which is what mac said to him after killing the scorpion but it's kind of like in the background you can barely make it out it's definitely there so i just thought it was really weird that in this movie even the first time i

watched it i knew that the predator is supposed to record them and then use their voices as lures he doesn't do it right like when did that start well is that in predator 2 so i guess this is a just a really small bit of trivia that that's easy to miss when billy is walking alone and he's like there's something in the trees i guess right before that it's really hard to hear but the thing that tips him off there is something in the trees isn't he doesn't see anything he hears you can hear really quietly the sound of billy laughing from hawkins joke and the predator plays it back so why i don't know but like the predators i think generally in the movies don't understand human speech they just they record things that we say and then just use them hoping that it'll but lure people in he definitely understood when max says over here and then dylan walks over to him he definitely understood that because he played it back like

three times and he watched it yeah right like he understood that this animal said this noise and this animal approached it yeah and then he never used it he was gonna use that one but he never used it like it seemed like he was doing it when mac is hunting the predator yeah and dylan's kind trying to find a great fake out Dylan it's like over here you think it's the predator doing it but it's actually it's actually yeah I was just like when I was watching that part I was I was like that was a great fake out except it's only a fake out because I've seen the other movies right yeah coming into this you wouldn't even be a fake out at all so yeah Mac he was a coward that's why he died next person to die in this film is Dylan Dylan's thing in my opinion is that he has no integrity he is a pushover basically yeah i can i can agree with that dylan's dutch's old friend they used to you know be in the in special ops together dylan used to go out on missions

and he wants to prove to the world that he hasn't gone soft from all the paperwork he's been doing lately right he's all about his image of strength and he's got to prove himself you know like i am the soldier i am the guy and then he tries to prove his strength by having an arm match with dutch and they clutch their right hands together and pull or something and whatever they're doing dylan loses handily like like dutch isn't even trying he's smiling and talking to dylan as dylan loses and surrenders and it shows this personality that if someone is stronger he bends yeah now you can see that dutch he respects dylan and dutch believes him when dylan says that they're going out to rescue somebody but it turns out that dylan's lying about everything about the whole mission he and he knows what's going on behind the scenes he knows they're there to just assassinate some rebels and he knows it's wrong and he knows that dutch would never go along with it but he has

orders from his higher ups and he buckled he only cares how he looks superficially but not enough to actually take a stand so when dylan faces off against the predator his inadequacies come to a head he raises his gun in his right arm and this is the easiest manliness comparison to spot the same arm that couldn't stand up to the stronger manlier dutch and it's completely unable to stand up to the predator as well it gets immediately cut off he can't stand up against the predator just like he can't stand up against his superiors just like he can't stand up against dutch he surrenders and is killed unceremoniously so first he's got his orders then once everyone finds out that he betrayed them he feels like he has to redeem himself but really all he's still trying to do is prove himself to dutch yeah so does he feel weaker than mac because he goes along with mac's plan and i think yes is it because mac has been intimidating intimidating him no and i i

actually did take that to be the case like as soon as he goes with mac to take on the predator he's subservient like he does whatever mac says he doesn't debate it i think it's because mac played the power games with him and beat him now but because dylan i think was one of the best characters because he was played by one of the best actors yeah i like him a lot i was a little disappointed that he didn't do anything like i thought dylan should have at least been the one who like shoots the thing that disables the Predator's camouflage you know I completely agree and this is one of the things that rubbed me the wrong way the first time I watched Predator I remember thinking oh whoa it's Carl Weathers I love this guy he's great he's Apollo Creed right like I really was happy to see him and then he kind of just bends over and dies I was like oh and just like from a perspective of how you set things up and pay them off in a movie

if a guy goes out on a quest for redemption which is presumably what carl weathers is doing here it's totally cool if he dies but he needs to do something that helps everyone else and he doesn't get to do that so while it does in a way weaken the story i think like i was disappointed it strengthens the theory well because once again it's all superficial like he would have loved to have proved himself but just for the image that's dylan's problem poor dylan now we're going to talk about billy your favorite character oh i love billy billy's sin is the sin of pride now billy is one of the few people on the team who openly acknowledges his fear at one point billy even says he says i'm scared poncho and poncho says you ain't afraid of no man and billy says there's something out there waiting for us and it ain't no man so billy says he's scared unlike everyone else on the team he's superstitious he's careful he's listening to his surroundings

he's willing to stop and make absolute certain that the path is safe before continuing right he is by far the most cautious member of the team yeah and yet unlike dutch who uses his caution to protect himself like fleeing when necessary camouflaging himself unlike dutch billy allows his fear and caution to control him and he gives into the toxic definition of a man and decides to face the alien head on in the end in billy's last stand he stops on the log bridge and he allows the team to go ahead he strips off his shirt throws down his guns takes out a knife and carves a bloody gash in his chest i interpret this to be that he believes he is facing his fear but in actuality he's giving into his fear of being a wimp and not a man right like he won't run anymore because he wants to show his masculinity and that's why he dies because he needs to appear brave instead of actually you know fighting this thing and using everything to his advantage that he has like dutch

does yeah and in my opinion billy was the least deserving to die billy was great there are much more intelligent ways he could have gone about it than what he did right what he did was very stupid and he certainly seemed intelligent before that point yes him like carving his chest open like that really shows what it's all about right like this isn't necessarily about saving his friends that's part of it but it's really about his pride like he needs to be the guy who stood up to this thing and it's too bad Billy died off camera I thought he deserved better than that right yeah he should have had a showdown but well I think it's it's uh it's because of his pride right like he wanted to be the guy who went one-on-one with this alien and we don't even get to see it right like that's that's his reward for yeah he's the ultimate badass but that was his sin so we don't get to see his ultimate badass moment exactly okay we've almost made it through we got one more death

in this movie and that is poncho poncho or poncho poncho i'll just call him poncho because that's what they call the movie poncho is a control freak his weapon of choice is a grenade launcher an excessive use of force and control sending his enemies flying powerlessly to their deaths many times they show him fire off a grenade and then they show like two guys fly away and die with no control poncho doesn't say much but his toxic masculinity boils to the surface in one situation when anna escapes just momentarily from dylan just for half a second she starts to run away and then poncho appears above them pointing the barrel of his grenade launcher in her face and he says maybe you better put her on a leash agent man yeah so he is a controlling misogynistic toxically masculine man who is implying that you big strong agent man should control this woman and a leash would suffice if you can't do it right like i mean also i would say

that like one of the hallmarks of toxic masculinity is mansplaining right where you take what a woman says and then you reinterpret it in your own words you know or or you're talking to a woman and explain to them something that they already know probably better than you you know and as the translator that's kind of what he's always doing is that everything she says has to go through his filter right which you know in society even you could take it even bigger like that's kind of how it's often been in society everything women think has to go through the filter of a man before it's ever heard yeah you're right and his filter is wrong she says la selva legevo and he's like she says the the jungle just just came alive and it took him which is not what she said she says the jungle took him she does not say it came alive that is an embellishment and he says that several times even though she never says it came alive like that's just false it the jungle didn't

come alive and she's not even saying that it did and she was the only one who saw it so he has no right to embellish it and and say he needs to he's the man he's got to control this like he's got to insert himself into that situation like you said he's the filter that her words run through that's pretty good in my opinion he meets the most pitiful end in the whole movie he completely loses all control when he gets hit by their own log trap yeah breaks all his ribs and this time he's the one who gets sent flying powerless ends up broken crumpled in a pile like he's broken ribs and everything when blaine says ain't got time to bleed poncho says oh yeah you got time to duck he's kind of eating his words here because poncho you should have ducked right yeah he's he's useless he's a burden and at this point billy implies that they may need to leave poncho and in the end anna the woman he derided she becomes his one savior and he needs her help to even attempt

to move to safety so immediately after billy dies dutch who is holding poncho they turn around and they both aim their guns in the direction the scream came from now at this point dutch he is aiming forward just trying to spot danger poncho is freaked out he's nervous he's shaking like crazy his control has completely faded away and disappeared and it's at this point that the predator shoots not dutch but poncho who then dies in dutch's arms so within universe though like we know the predators don't usually kill people who are unarmed they don't kill people who are sick the predators kill people who are willing to fight well in alien versus predator they do avoid killing a man because he's sick oh yeah you're right they do but they do kill him once he tries to fight them yeah you're right yeah so there you go well i was gonna say that i think what this is is the predator kind of showing its whole manliness man gotta go out and

hunt and there's kind of this cliche about like you got to force a kid like a poor little kid to like kill the thing they injured you know yeah i think that's sort of the predator's manliness thing right here is that he injured it so now he's got to kill it and that's why he didn't even injure him he injured himself right but it was because of the predator's attack that he got yeah it's true it's true it's true and now we can actually talk about the predator's toxic masculinity because we've gotten through all the deaths i mean the predator is it not the embodiment of toxic masculinity right like it's a hunter no that's the whole thing is the embodiment of toxic masculinity and in the end the predator's death its downfall is its own overconfidence in believing that it is the epitome of the perfect man hunter predator's design is amazing he's menacing he's huge he's lethal he wears fishnet stockings he wears fishnet stockings he wears fishnet chest

like chest coverings um he's strong he's fast he's brave and he knows his limits several times the predator actually regroups tries again it's not making the same mistakes as dutch's team was making he refuses to put unfounded faith in his high-tech gear when he realizes that dutch can hide from his infrared takes his helmet off although he still seems to have very odd vision yeah he's got odd vision but what are you gonna do maybe he's not used to seeing on earth he refuses to fight dutch or anyone on unequal ground he will only attack armed fighting soldiers he will not attack fleeing unarmed people right and when the predator during a fight finds dutch unarmed but still willing to fight he does the manly thing and throws away his cannon and guns and then fights dutch with his fists and blades the predator is masculine but dutch is more masculine from the predator's point of view for the whole fight sometimes you see from the predator's point

of view and he sees dutch as this whimpering sniveling high-pitched little baby man that he's throwing around and bashing him around. He's lifting Dutch effortlessly up, right? The predator's toxic masculinity leads it to underestimate Dutch's manliness. Now, Dutch never underestimates anything in the whole movie. He's calm. He's cool. He's careful and cautious. That's a lot of C's. His careful approach leads him to victory. His precautions lead him to use everything at his disposal. Mud has camouflage, weapons, traps, running away, hiding, regrouping, going down a waterfall. He uses everything he can to kill this thing and he never underestimates it. And in the end, he leads it into a trap. The predator senses the trap, goes around, and at this point it believes that it has bested Dutch. And it never occurred to this alpha alien that the puny little baby human could actually kill it and then he does right dutch had set another trap on the side

which the alien never even imagined smashes the predator and in realization of his own toxic masculinity the predator laughs and laughs to hide his shame and sets off an atomic bomb right so well let's talk a little more about the predator as the epitome the the embodiment of a toxic masculinity so like i would say that like there's nothing wrong with hunting as a survival tool right yeah you know you gotta live and sometimes to live you gotta eat and to eat you gotta hunt but like the predators don't hunt to eat they hunt as as a trial of masculinity right yeah as a coming of age test right like and all of them have to do it and i've heard it said that the the predator in the original predator is like a young predator. Like he's not super proven yet. Proving thing, yeah. But then they take trophies, right? The only reason to have a trophy is just to like... To prove your manliness. Right.

You're better than the thing, right? And then they mark themselves with the blood of their enemy, that kind of thing. Which really hurts when you killed a xenomorph. I know. But they're manly enough. They don't care about acid blood. No, it's what you do. If you don't do it, you're not a man, so do it. Through like seven floors of a ship, but not through their skulls, luckily. They're hard-headed. So what does it mean when it self-destructs at the end? I think it's just how your own toxic masculinity will self-destruct your life. I don't know. I'm not sure. Well, no, I mean, I think that's what it is. I mean, like, because the idea of toxic masculinity is like men who might have psychological issues and problems, but they can never see it, right, within themselves. and right up until the predator is is invisible for most of this movie they can't see the problem the embodiment of their toxic masculinity is invisible to them right and then if if the problem

is invisible to you you don't see it you don't get like psychiatric help or whatever or you don't change things within society because you think it's all good eventually society or yourself will self-destruct you're right um he self-destructs i don't know that's pretty good no i like it i can get down with it a toxically masculine alien that comes to earth to judge the toxic masculinity of over competent masculine men and then gets judged himself by the most masculine man who is arnold schwarzenegger generally one wouldn't think of arnold schwarzenegger as the poster boy for the antithesis of toxic masculinity he's the face of gold's gym right and their whole thing is come as you are well we want you here you can be big small whatever just get in here we're your family right so i mean that's that's something he likes you're right he's not doing any of the things that the other people do he's not afraid but he's not overconfident and even when he has

that dumb arm contest um he he thinks he talks like right well like he talks through it right like it's to him it's as though it's not even happening he's not doing it to necessarily show off right it's just how you say hello and i'm just having a conversation with you and i won he's not doing it to humiliate um he's not doing it to humiliate dylan he's just doing it because he likes dylan his good masculinity is perhaps epitomized in the most famous line from this movie and arnold schwarzenegger says among all his catchphrases it is his favorite catchphrase get to the chopper oh you got it i mean like just think about that like he's got i'll be back stick around he's got lots of catchphrases he's got one-liners constantly in all his movies and his favorite is get to the chopper he's not showboating he's not trying to say he's better than anna but he is concerned about her it's save yourself right she's not even one of his men

and yet he's like you get to the chopper i'll take care of something to protect her so he will do something to protect her and it's not because he's better it's just because he is you know the the best manly man who takes responsibility and does what he can unlike poncho who is like get me to the chopper yes oh poncho well another supporting evidence that perhaps you know the filmmakers john mctiernan even schwarzenegger himself knew what this movie was about knew that it was about toxic masculinity as arnold schwarzenegger recommended jesse ventura for blaine after he interviewed him for the role, which is interesting that Schwarzenegger was doing interviews. Yeah. Not the director. He said that he thought that Jesse Ventura looked the part because he was big enough and had a deep voice that was manly. There you go. He does have a deep voice that is manly. All right, that's enough of that.

How many times do you think we say man in this podcast? A lot. No, something I thought was interesting about this movie is it's got great characters but not much really happens in the movie itself they go and raid this rebel base and then they just kind of are walking through the jungle the rest of the movie yep like there's not really any other plot events like usually it'd be like oh now we need to do the thing and get them a jigger and put it in the place right like they're not doing things they're predator from 2018 yeah that one that was all about doing the thing and getting them a jigger you're right i just thought it was interesting that they could use this movie with so little plot as a vehicle for something that's actually really fun and cool right like i guess uh you don't really need that much plot to make a good slasher i don't know if that's a compliment but another cool thing about the production of this movie was um i guess the

director john mctunan he wanted the predator for the shots in the trees he wanted it to be an actual monkey just to give it kind of that otherworldly and like you know dynamic feel so they they got a monkey and they made like a red suit for the monkey so they could like catch it and you know cut it out and put it over overlay it on the on the jungle red is the most con it contrasts the most with green which was what their background was right so they made it a red suit and then it wouldn't swing around because it didn't like the red suit and he said it was embarrassed embarrassed i mean i think maybe it just was like well it's this weird suit on me i've never worn a suit before when you put something on a cat and it just stops moving because it's like i don't want to move what do you think about the theory do you buy it yeah i think i do uh well i mean everything fits everything fits really well yeah the one thing that's hard to swallow is just like did they

read did they intend this did john mctiernan did the writers is this what everyone intended but you know i think there's enough evidence to make that argument that that that is is what they intended and i think that it elevates the movie in a way instead of just being like this fun little alien movie alien versus commando which is a fun idea and a fun movie it creates you know some bigger greater idea for the whole thing which gives it a deeper more fun yeah if you liked it feel free to you know go get the movie watch the movie compare what we said we've got links in the description so let us know if you agree or not this has been the popcorn isn't real thanks so much for listening and if you like our podcast uh be sure to like subscribe on wherever you get your podcasts we will see you next time see you later opening music for this episode was provided by Christine. And remember, the popcorn isn't real.