Predators (2010): the very best and worst of us

How franchise sequel Predators weaves a survival drama out of the best and worst of being human.

Science fiction may favour stories set in alternate realities and deep space, but their problems and dangers reflect who we are in the here and now. Hence, in the face of hardship, it’s the very fact of our being human that saves the day (and, often, the world).

Self-aggrandising? Most certainly, but not the whole story. What if science fiction doesn’t just show us who we are, but rather who we wish we were, and what we fear we really are? Case in point: 2010 franchise sequel, Predators, which makes a drama out of being human.

Killers from the sky

Predators opens with warriors plummeting from the sky into the jungle below. It could almost be 2017’s Jumanji reboot but is actually a nod to the first film in the Predators franchise.

Predator (1987) similarly begins with soldiers rappelling out of helicopters and into the jungle, and goes on to replay the horrors of America’s war in Vietnam via the lens of science fiction. In both truth and fiction, US soldiers battle a hostile environment and an “invisible” enemy.

By the 2010 sequel the soldiers are no longer action hero good guys. Now, they tell us, they’re the worst kind of killers: people who are skilled at slaughter … and enjoy it.

The ones who survive the initial drop are:

Royce: an ex-military mercenary (presumably US)
Nikolai: Spetsnaz (Russian special forces)
Cuchillo: Los Zetas (Mexican crime syndicate)
Isabelle: IDF (Israel Defence Forces)
Hanzo: Yakuza gang member (Japan)
Mombasa: RUF (Sierra Leone “death squad”)
Stans: death-row prisoner, unrepentant murderer and rapist
Edwin, a doctor, seems to be the odd guy out. Or is he?

In fact, each member has been plucked from their environment in flagrante – in the act of wrongdoing – and transported to a deep-space game preserve.

In common with heists and the anonymity of war, these characters don’t have names for much of the story. Instead, they’re a deliberately diverse group of character types – perhaps because our very worst traits occur across our species.

Either way, landing in the jungle flips a switch. Like the respawning in Jumanji, it signifies a flipped reality. As the very worst of humanity, these guys are also the very best at killing – and therefore the perfect prey for predators who want to be better at butchery.

Natural born predators

The obvious question, then, is: who are the predators? And the answer is: it depends.

The humans play a double role in this because, by profession or personal interest, each is a killer of other humans. Not only do they kill but they enjoy it even if, as Royce claims, soldiers like Isabelle hide their enjoyment behind patriotic duty.

Later he quotes Hemingway’s short story On the Blue Water:

“there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.”

He’s not talking about the aliens. He’s talking about people. But whether or not people enjoy killing each other, all bets are off in the jungle. Here, there are bigger, better predators. The aliens hunt things which put up a good fight: soldiers, but also their own kind (smaller aliens).

Making monsters

But what is it that makes the [alien] predators so monstrous?

Well, because they’re alien we can’t contextualise and therefore excuse their slaughtering. In war, for instance, we pick sides and say that one is justified and the other isn’t. But the aliens kill for reasons we can’t fathom or reason with, and that makes them as horrific as any serial killer.

That said, the Predators story renders such thinking rather flimsy. We can say that war is for noble ends, but the reality is some folk just like killing. Thus, in the jungle, there’s no difference between depraved murderers, gang members, guerilla killers, mercenaries, soldiers … and the alien “monsters”.

Anyway. Visual clues also serve to direct how we interpret the alien predators, and a couple are of particular note.

The alien’s hunting techniques – nets, camouflage and use of punji sticks – hark back again to the guerilla warfare at play in Vietnam. The buried punji stick trap, for instance, was meant not to be fatal, but to slow down troops. Royce attributes exactly this motive to the use of the bear trap that injures the doc.

The design of the predators themselves further nods at the way mainstream stories use deep-seated or unconscious anti-Blackness to conjure things to frighten us.

The creatures look cool, no doubt, but you have to wonder why they sport dreadlocks and African neck rings. Their iconic clicking has one ear on African Khoisan languages. They have totems, and collect skulls, and it’s all rather reminiscent of convenient colonial stories about savages whose land was otherwise rather appealing. But anyway.

Hiding the doctor

Far from being an innocent bystander snatched up by accident, the doctor is the worst of the lot. While the others openly wear the uniforms, attitudes and accessories of murder, the doctor is in full disguise.

This is a good metaphor for the serial killer’s methodology, which often uses mimicry in order to kill, manipulate or get away with murder.

When the doc says he’s just like the monsters, he’s not wrong. He too enjoys killing. More to the point, both are master mimics. The predators, for instance, mimic humans to lure in victims, such as they try to do with Cuchillo’s body.

What’s interesting, though, is how the story simultaneously hides and reveals the doctor in plain sight:

The story set-up tells us from the start that the doc must be another pre-chosen killer.
When Royce says “it doesn’t matter what happened or why”, he subtly masks the odd-man-out.
Royce and Isabelle decide the doc “doesn’t belong”, again masking his true nature.
When the doctor acts as a lure in Royce’s plan, he seems like he’s working for the team.
The doc “saves” Nikolai from a toxic plant. Nikolai returns the favour by pushing him out of the way of a deadfall trap, then saving him from a predator.
Isabelle reasons they should save the injured doc because “he’s one of us”, i.e., a human whose life has value.

We get a sense of the doc’s true personality when he leaves Nikolai to die without a second thought. Later, he uses Nikolai’s kids to manipulate Isabelle. And when they face death together as a result, he uses the toxic plant poison to paralyse her. Why?

Well, Perhaps the doc gets such a thrill from killing that he can’t turn down one last opportunity. Maybe it’s a way to ingratiate himself with the predators, as if to say: look, we’re the same. Or maybe, to borrow the old joke, it’s because he doesn’t have to outrun a predator to survive, he only has to outrun Isabelle.

Whichever it is, it marks the doctor out as an outlier for a very particular reason. He’s the only killer who can’t become human again, i.e., to save himself or others.

Becoming human

Predators is a story about change and becoming human.

This is a common device in science fiction, where being human can defeat even the most seemingly impossible of odds. See stories about sacrifice, for example. Even Predators transforms its inhumane killers into noble team players by the end.

At first, each is in it for themselves. Royce, who doesn’t want to be a leader, even sacrifices Mombasa to flush out the aliens. After all, when personal survival is all that matters, everyone else is expendable.

What’s interesting is how quickly the humans revert to “human” behaviours. There’s strength in numbers, particularly in a hostile environment, so they quickly fall in behind Royce.

When the alien “dogs” attack, Isabelle goes back to save the doc but runs out of ammo. They only survive because loner Royce comes back to save them, foreshadowing the film’s ending.

Yakuza guy finds a sword and fights while the others flee. (Again, it looks cool, though falls back on racial stereotypes and hierarchies of death in cinema.)

Even Stans, who dreams of murder and rape, later lays his life down for his comrades. Does this excuse their actions in life? I don’t think so. But in storytelling terms, their “noble” deaths resolve the plot in a way which has more interest and meaning than simply being picked off.

Incidentally, it’s not just the human characters who change “at the precipice”. When Royce saves the smaller alien, both become team players.

Royce appears to struggle most with this transformation. He claims to have no repugnance or regret about being a killer, and looks out for number one. But when it comes to those who are more vulnerable (the woman, the doc), even he finds it harder to turn off generations of human programming.

More mirroring

It’s rather neat (or you might say implausible) that Royce can team up with an alien. In fact, without words, both understand each other. How? Well perhaps because they already speak each other’s language, that is, as killers and hunters.

Actually, this pattern repeats throughout the story, in which the line between alien and human becomes ever harder to call.

We first see the dead man’s trap when the team discover the body of a soldier left behind from a previous hunt. The aliens then re-use the concept with Cuchillo’s body (although he’s already dead, of course, and the aliens are the ones mimicking being human).

Nikolai, Stans and Hanzo all evoke the spirit of the trap, as a kind of last stand, in their deaths. Finally, Royce enrols the doc into a dead man’s trap against his will … and a very satisfying comeuppance it is, too.

Similarly, the predators use Cuchillo’s body as bait … Royce uses Mombasa as bait in turn.

Noland (Laurence Fishburne) is an interesting character. He mimics both the predators (using their salvaged tools) and the humans. In reality, he is neither – he’s only out for himself. When it comes down to it, he also sees the others as bait, i.e., things he can use to his own ends.

There’s also a nice use of mirroring at the end of the film, when the two remaining predators fight each other above ground while below, the doc makes a move on Isabelle. This rather underlines the ambiguity of the film’s title.

To be human

Just before the double-cross, the doc asks Isabelle if she would make the same choice to save him if she had to do it over. Yes, she says – and we already know why. It’s because she sees Edwin as “one of us”, i.e., human.

This really is what the best of being human looks like: the drive to save others, even if it costs us our lives. The greater good, in other words.

For Royce, this is a trap. He tells Isabelle the predators are counting on them “to be human”. In fact, whether it’s deliberate or oversight, being human – coming back to save the others – saves Royce’s life, too. (“Resurrection” is also part of the sacrifice paradigm. See Interstellar.)

Predators may not exactly be Shakespeare but, like the bard, its story covers the full gamut of being human.

Thus mercenaries and murderers can also be team players. They die for each other. They come back for the little guy.

Ronald Noland illustrates our rat-like tendencies to hoard, scavenge and sacrifice each other to get what we want. He says the predators level up when they die; they come back with new skills. Of course, so do the humans.

Keep calm and carry on

The secret of survival, then, is evolution. And, specifically, being able to transform into the species we wish we were: heroic, noble and selfless. In Predators, only those who master this are redeemed.

Royce and Isabelle are the only literal survivors – as in they get to go again next season. Survival is their reward for being human, or rather, being humane. Thus, after being anonymous for most of the film, they finally gain those most human of attributes: names.

Science fiction’s endless quest is to discover who or what we are – and it’s an ever changing journey. We used to be action heroes; now we’re less certain of our goodness or odds of survival.

There is no single answer to the puzzle of being human, but Predators would suggest if there’s one story we like the sound of, it’s the one where we carried each other.

Predators (2010), directed by Nimród Antal

What to read or watch next

Predator (etc – franchise)
The Most Dangerous Game (short story by Richard Connell)
The Dirty Dozen (fine line between war and murder)
2012 (survival, sacrifice and being human)

Picture credit: HIZIR KAYA

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Predators (2010): the very best and worst of us - The Haughty Culturist (2025)