20 Things You Didn't Know About The Predator
17. Optimus Prime And The Original Predator Share A Voice
That's right. The Predator's voice was provided by Peter Cullen, a talented voiceover artist who is best known to the world as the primary voice of heroic leader / truck Optimus Prime.
Fox asked Cullen to do the vocalizations of the Predator based on work he had done as King Kong for a recent project. Cullen was reluctant to do another "monster sound" as the Kong work had damaged his throat, but his agent persuaded him to go to Fox studios to appease them.
When Cullen arrived, he asked to see the character he was being asked to voice. Fox first showed him a scene of the "invisible" Predator swinging through the trees. Not good enough, said Cullen. After some hand-wringing by executives, he had the experience of being one of the first outside people to see the Predator's face when it takes its helmet off.
Cullen noted the mandibles of the Predator face, which he said reminded him of the legs of a dying, gurgling horseshoe crab he had seen when he was a kid. With that in mind, he provided the voice director with the now famous low, menacing purr, clicks, and crackles.
Cullen's original clips were used in subsequent films, but sound directors have since added in sounds created from lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, bears, alligators, camels, and elephants.