The first time I saw Predator was an ideal movie-watching scenario. It was a Saturday, it was raining, I was ten, and my Dad was taking a nap on the couch behind me. I can remember the patter of liquid hitting the window and the looming noise of machine gun fire from the television.
What drew me into the story was how well the movie handled its midpoint. We went from attacking the cartel to liberate a hostage to hunting an alien in the bush. And all of it hinges on the line, ‘If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It’.
Today, I want to look at the structure of Predator and get into it all.
Let’s dive in.
Predator’s Plot
The movie Predator is actually a pretty meticulously structured story. It was directed by John McTiernan and written by brothers Jim and John Thomas.
The story follows Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch Schaefer, the leader of an elite rescue team on a mission to save hostages in a Central American rainforest.
The hostages are being held by a rogue military group.
After dispatching the militia and saving a hostage, our team encounters the deadly Predator (Kevin Peter Hall), a skilled, technologically advanced extraterrestrial who stalks and hunts them down.
Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke, Richard Chaves, Jesse Ventura, Sonny Landham, and Shane Black are supporting co-stars.
Predator’s Structure
I am an absolute screenwriting nerd, and I feel like when I watch a movie, sometimes I am brought out of it trying to figure it out. But this is a movie that lets you have so much fun with it.
In the first act, we get all the establishing relationships, and we also get a plant that something is askew in this world. What this movie does so well is add to reasons for what’s happening.
There are dead bodies in the jungle that have been skinned — but that could be the bad guys we’re hunting, or also something worse.
After our team finds the captives and engages them, someone starts picking them off during their retreat. They think it’s other military members but soon they discover it’s something much worse.
They leave the camp and try to head home, but something keeps killing them as they go. Something invisible that feels invincible and inevitable.
That takes us to the midpoint where everything changes.
Predator’s Midpoint
The midpoint in many movies is where the narrative changes. In this movie, we see the hunters become the hunted.
Once they know there’s something not of this earth going after them, and Arnold delivers the line, ‘If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It’, we start to unpack how formidable the foe is and also how in over their heads these military guys might be. We also get their confidence, it can be hurt, so let’s try to hurt it even more.
The midpoint here shifts the whole movie in a few other cool ways.
The Turning Point within the Narrative:
- The Revelation of Vulnerability: When Anna manages to hit the Predator and it leaves behind bright green, glowing blood, it’s the first concrete evidence that this creature is not invincible. It’s biological, it has fluids, and crucially, it can be wounded.
- Crystallizing Hope and Strategy: Dutch’s line immediately follows this discovery. It’s not just an observation; it’s a declaration of intent and a fundamental shift in mindset.
- Regaining Agency: The line injects hope and agency back into the squad (or what’s left of it). It signifies the moment they stop just being victims and start planning how to fight back. It allows them to move from pure survival mode to formulating a plan based on this newfound knowledge – leading to the traps and tactics used in the film’s climax. It demystifies the monster just enough to make fighting it seem possible.
In its essence, “If it bleeds, we can kill it” is the perfect fusion of narrative significance.
These guys are great hunters, they see blood and know this thing can die, so they know this comes down to a face-off — the movie is now about two entities vying for which one is actually the best.
It pivots the movie toward an assault and toward an acceptance that they are fighting something not of this world.
This radical acceptance of the situation also resurrected us. The rest of the movie is going to be about attack and survival, in a totally different scenario.
Summing Up
Predator’s midpoint changes the story and makes us rethink the stakes. It was always life and death, but now the thing that could kill them is an alien. Also, we know that aliens can die too, so it becomes a story about who is the ultimate hunter.
That midpoint shift is such a fun idea in this movie and draws such a clear and exciting line toward the finish.
Let me know what you think about the comments.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
