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In today's movie landscape, the Predator is still seen as one of the most terrifying creatures ever put to film. Though during production, they actually had to fire the original actor who played the Predator, Jean-Claude Van Damme. But why exactly did one of the most popular action stars at the time get let go from such a massive project like Predator?
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What is it? There's something in those trees
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During the hottest days of the year, the jungle comes alive. It hunts men
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This is the core concept underneath the seminal 1986 science fiction horror film
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Predator. Today, the jungle hunter has become one of the most iconic movie monsters ever
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But the film struggled to get made, had multiple production issues, and even had a completely different man in the famed Yautja suit, Jean-Claude Van Damme
0:26
That is, until he was fired. Stick around. The cinematic masterpiece that would eventually go on to be known as Predator
0:33
was written by brothers Jim and John Thomas. Following the release of Rocky IV
0:37
a running joke started circulating throughout Hollywood that Rocky Balboa had defeated every possible permutation of human
0:44
and he would have to next take to the stars to find a worthy opponent. Always on the lookout for their next great screenplay idea
0:50
the Thomas brothers started to think about what that might look like as an actual movie
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with super producer Joel Silver and burgeoning action auteur John McTiernan getting involved
1:00
Now you have the core ingredients for one of the most iconic monster movies of the decade brewing
1:05
However, the road to production was not a smooth one. The picture had major problems with the
1:09
script, but deadlines and release dates required them to roll right into shooting after everyone's
1:14
favorite 80s action megastar, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed on to be the human lead of the picture
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Dutch Schaefer. Despite hiring Stan Winston to create the creature, the short lead time required
1:24
rapid solutions like apparently going with the first suggestion for what the Predator could look
1:29
like. To make things even more unthinkable, the suit actor who was hired to be inside the costume
1:34
a fresh-faced gymnast and kickboxing champion named Jean-Claude Van Damme. That's right
1:39
the muscles from Brussels, was the Predator. Before he was the star of a cavalcade of canon
1:44
films he was going to be strapped into a clunky robot insect version of the Predator If it bleeds we can kill it As production commenced on Predator and Jean still in the suit
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things got worse and worse every day. The actors were all hyper-competitive with each other
1:59
locations were falling through, and behind-the-scenes frictions were mounting by the day
2:04
With every passing day on set, tension between Jean-Claude Van Damme and the production
2:08
became more and more strained. In fact, there are no less than five conflicting versions of
2:13
just exactly why Van Damme was fired from Predator. The first one involves the Belgium martial artist
2:18
breaking his own costume. On some level, it seems intentional, if you believe all the reports of Van Damme
2:24
hating being in the costume for the Predator. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter
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Craig Baxley, who was the second unit director and stunt coordinator on the film
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said he witnessed Van Damme trying on the costume and then rip the helmet off his head
2:36
and throw it to the ground, shattering the mask. For context, the mask cost roughly $20,000 to make and could not be easily reproduced
2:45
The next possible reason in our cavalcade of potential explanations as to why JCVD
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isn't now known as the most fearsome bounty hunter in the galaxy is that he complained
2:56
A lot. According to the casting director Jackie Birch, Van Damme was constantly complaining about
3:02
the heat, weight of the costume, and its immobility. For some reason, Van Damme didn't understand that he was going to be in a costume when he signed on for the job
3:10
and thus was shocked that he would be covered from head to toe in a rubber alien suit
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Thus, he was constantly lobbying to be pulled out of it, which just wasn't an option for this film
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You're one ugly mother. Multiple sources have also pointed to the fact that he was just too short to be credibly scary
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against the hulking behemoths of Schwarzenegger Jesse Ventura Sonny Landem and the rest of the cast When Joel Silver hired Van Damme it was away from all the other actors They made him do a movement test where he leapt into the air and did the splits at standing eye level
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This impressed the mega producer that Van Damme would be able to bring an otherworldly mobility to the character
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Only catch being he's 5'6", so when he put him next to the 6'4", Bill Duke
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well, he's less imposing. The penultimate reason why Van Damme was fired
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includes multiple people having eyewitness accounts of Van Damme passing out multiple times on set due to dehydration
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The 100 degree jungle heat and the strain of the suit were considerable on Van Damme's body
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After passing out twice mid-scene, Silver purportedly informed him that if he passed out again
4:18
they'd be forced to recast the role for safety purposes. Two weeks later, while on wire shooting a predator leaping from the tree shot, he lost consciousness
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Reportedly, Silver had no other alternative but to let the future star of Hard Target go
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The final and goofiest reason why Van Damme might have been fired
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is that he was constantly lobbying Silver and McTiernan to make the Predator into a kickboxer
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Yes, you heard that right. Van Damme wanted to show off his skills by any means necessary
4:47
and he wanted to show that he could do a roundhouse kick. Thankfully, these pleas landed on deaf ears
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and the Predator was never modeled into an intergalactic martial arts expert
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What the hell are you? Obviously, whatever the true reason was, the production problems climaxed with Silver and McTiernan
5:05
opting to shut down filming and reconfigure the primary antagonist's aesthetic. The robotic bug thing just wasn't working
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They needed something else. So they pulled Stan Winston back into the design process
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and asked him to create something wholly original. As fate would have it
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This was right before Winston and James Cameron were about to be on an extended flight together I was sketching concepts for the Predator Jim Cameron looked over to me and says you know I always wanted to see something with mandibles
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And I went, oh, really? Well, so what? And the rest, as they say, is history
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Kevin Peter Hall was recast as the Predator. His seven-foot-three frame proved to be the winning combo
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for the struggling production. His elegance, grace, and brutalist movement archetypes instantly breathed life into Winston's new costume design
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Out with Van Damme complaints and transparent ambition, and in with an actor who brought a gravitas and verisimilitude
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to a role that would spawn countless sequels and reinterpretations. If Jean-Claude Van Damme had, in fact, made it through production
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and then the Predator, it's highly unlikely the film would have worked. The strength of the film is the suspense of not seeing the extraterrestrial entity
6:15
hunting our group of GIs, and then, when it finally does appear
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it's an ungodly seven-foot-tall hellhound of a lizard creature. If the reveal was that it was Jean-Claude Van Damme
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trying to do the splits in a weird bug helmet, no, it just wouldn't have landed
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You ain't afraid of no man. There's something out there waiting for us
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And it ain't no man. So the real question is, has Van Damme ever gone on the records about his time as the Predator
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He had kept pretty mum about the process until March of 2019
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when he told the Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision podcast. The guy who did my stunt, something bad happened to him
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and then they stopped the film, and they did a new, more safe outfit
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Is that the whole story? It sure doesn't seem like it. It seems like in the cold light of day, and after a very long and successful career
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Van Damme doesn't want to admit to whatever his behavior was all those years ago
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But that's the story that Van Damme's sticking to. So who are we to argue with the world's foremost expert in kicking people in the head