The Predator: 18 WTF Moments

9. The Self-Aware Meta-Piss Taking

Again, The Predator came from the mind of Shane Black who started his career (at least in credited roles) as an actor in the first Predator in 1987. He knows the franchise and he knows action movies from the golden age even more, so his film was always going to be pretty meta (his work always is, after all).

But some of the meta self-referential gags take it a little far. We get characters questioning why the Predator is called that when it's not a predator (it's a big game hunter), asking why it has dreadlocks and at one point someone refers to it as "alien Whoopi Goldberg".

There's homage and then there's reductive breakdown, which is what this all feels like and it begins to feel like Black is less invested in celebrating the franchise rhan he is deconstructing it for laughs.