The 1980s were an era of unparalleled cinematic machismo. Movie stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger ruled the box office, and filmmakers were eager to exalt their macho personae for fun and profit. Muscles, guns, violence and hero worship were commonplace, Commando and Rambo: First Blood Part II saw to that, and audiences around the world appreciated this genre of cinema unapologetically, unironically, for many, many years.

The 10 Best '80s Action Movies 11 IMAGES

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But there were some filmmakers who saw through the shallow (albeit enjoyable) façade of so-called “bada$$ cinema.” Paul Verhoeven viewed American violence and capitalism through a distinctly European lens, and used films like RoboCop to subvert traditional action movie expectations. John Carpenter made the traditonal, handsome, musclebound American hunk into the comic relief sidekick for Chinese action heroes in Big Trouble in Little China. John McTiernan cast a TV actor best known for comedic roles in Die Hard, and that movie upended every action movie trope in the book, and invented a bunch of new ones that we still use today.It’s a subversive approach that McTiernan first used in his 1987 sci-fi/action/horror classic Predator . On the surface it’s a film about a bunch of cocky macho heroes who wander into the jungle and fight off an alien monster. It features scenes of male bonding, heroically photographed biceps, and screaming men unloading all their weaponry into the forest. Predator is everything you could possibly want from a 1980s action movie.And it’s a satire.“Satire” is sometimes a misunderstood term. The purpose of a satire is to mimic the subject being satirized, and then simultaneously criticize it. It’s hard to get away with critiquing a movie genre, for example, if you can’t prove that you know how to make a good movie in that genre. It’s the difference between, say, Scream and Scary Movie. Scream is a horror movie that makes fun of the genre. Scary Movie is a comedy that makes fun of the genre. They can’t help but have a different impact.Predator does the same thing. It features all the surface elements of a generic, but very good 1980s action movie. But all the subtext is critical of the genre. It’s a stern critique of a very particular kind of macho showboating, and that’s what makes it unique.The plot, for those who need a reminder, involves Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his team of tough guy mercenaries getting hired by the CIA, represented by Dutch’s old friend Dillon (Carl Weathers), to rescue hostages from a Central American country. They rush in, guns ablazing, and kill every terrorist, blow up every blow-uppable thing, and save the day in the first half hour, making jokes as they go along. They rush through an entire action movie in the first act, and they make it look easy.There are two problems, though. The first is that they learn, very quickly, that the kind of rah-rah patriotism which would normally justify that kind of violence in an action movie isn’t there. Dillon lied to Dutch and his men. They weren’t rescuing anybody. They were just hired assassins for the CIA. They look like heroes but they’re just different kinds of bad guys, and if you think about it, just about any action hero who commits mass murder for their employers, no questions asked, can be accused of the exact same thing.But also, their easy victory against the “bad guys” at the beginning of Predator sets our protagonists up for an enormous fall, once the actual Predator shows up. An alien monster, invisible in the jungle and hunting humans for sport, tracks these tough guys down and kills them one by one. All that bravado in the first action sequence made them a target for an even tougher guy with something to prove.What follows is not so much an action movie, but a slasher movie in which all the victims are the stock jock archetype. Seemingly invincible masculine demigods like Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke and Sonny Landham are reduced to piles of gore by the end of the movie, and in some cases reduced to quivering puddles of fear beforehand. The typical action movie icons are no longer at the top of the food chain, and once their confidence is shattered, they’re practically impotent.There’s a moment in Predator that really brings this message home. Cooper (Ventura) has just been killed by the Predator, and Mac (Duke) picks up his portable mini-gun - a.k.a. “Painless” - and fires indiscriminately into the jungle, in the direction of Cooper’s murderer. Dutch and the rest of the mercenaries arrive and unleash a hurricane of bullets in the same direction. And they hit nothing.It was a scene which existed “to quietly ridicule the desire to see pictures of guns firing,” according to McTiernan himself in the Predator DVD commentary track. “The whole point was the impotence of all the guns, which was just exactly the opposite of what I believed I was being hired to sell.”Predator stands tall amongst the rest of the 1980s action movies not because it’s a mindless movie full of tough guys fighting a monster. It stands tall because it’s made smartly, and uses audience expectations to build suspense. McTiernan’s film shows just how invincible our human heroes are, and then introduces a villain so powerful it makes them powerless. How could they possibly defeat such a creature?The film concludes with Dutch, alone, fighting the Predator without the typical action hero accouterments. No guns, no jokes. He uses his brains and out-thinks the enemy using their own tactics. The Predator was invisible in the foliage. Dutch covers himself in mud to be invisible to the Predator’s infrared vision. It doesn’t end in a punch-out - the last person who tried that died off-camera, that’s how little cinematic respect that approach got him - it ends in a duel of wits.“What the hell are you?” Dutch asks. “What the hell are YOU?” the Predator replies, clearly impressed.He’s not the same man he was at the beginning of the movie, that’s for sure. He’s not a cocky action hero, he’s a man who just lost everyone he cares about just to reclaim his place at the top of the food chain. He was shown just how weak he was, and how much actual effort it takes to prove yourself.Some folks see a straightforward action/sci-fi/horror yarn about guys with guns in the jungle. But look a little closer and you’ll find that Predator has something to say about them. Predator may be a big, macho action movie, but it’s also highly critical of the kinds of characters you’d normally find in big, macho action movies, and the superficial, unquestioningly heroic stories they appear in.The genius is that it uses all its smart satirical elements to bolster an action story which, if you’re only watching it for “fun,” make the movie even more entertaining.