20 Things You Didn't Know About The Predator
19. The Original Film Was Hardly A Critical Success, But Time Has Been Kind
When Predator came out in June 1987, it was reasonably successful financially (it made $98 million on its $15 million budget), but not so much critically, garnering very few positive reviews.
The New York Times said it was "grisly and dull." The LA Times called it "one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made by a major studio." Variety scored it as "slightly above-average," but also said the film had a "tissue-thin-plot" and "ever-more-grisly death sequences." The Hollywood Reporter critiqued the special effects and Roger Ebert said it was a good action movie but that he couldn't figure out what the alien itself was really doing.
In the three decades since then, the film has been re-evaluated many times and is now considered a classic of the action, sci-fi, and horror genres. Entertainment Weekly put it 22nd on their 2007 list of the best action movies of all time. Empire Magazine placed it at 366 on a 2008 list of the 500 best movies of all time. Rolling Stone's 2015 reader poll of the best action films placed it at fourth.
It may have taken a while, but Predator has finally taken its place at the top tier of unforgettable films of its kind.