Predator Skulls: 10 Mistakes It Needs To Avoid

10. Don't Show Too Much Of The Predator... Right Away

The first Predator is a brilliant exercise in tension-building. At first, the movie plays like a run-of-the-mill 80s actioner about a rescue team on a covert mission. It's only gradually that the audience is made aware that something more sinister than guerilla warfare is afoot when members of the team are picked off one-by-one.

By the time the titular alien hunter makes an appearance, director John McTiernan has built him up as a horrifying spectre that can strike at any time.

It is only during the climax that we get to see the Predator in its full glory as it dukes it out with Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch Schaeffer. If Skulls wants to replicate some of the feel of the first movie and generate a certain amount of suspense, it needs to make the Predator an unseen force that strikes down its prey seemingly at will.

This was how the first instalment managed to make an elite military force that was armed to the teeth feel like the underdog in their battle for survival.

While special effects have improved significantly since the original was released, suspense rather than FX should be the order of the day.