TedStixon

9th Nov 2024

Predator (1987)

Question: After the Predator gets out of the water and walks past Dutch, it sees some small animal (not sure what) and kills it. Since it kills for sport, targets experts with weapons, why kill a defenceless animal? (01:20:00)

oobs

Answer: The creature it shoots at is a Coati. It shoots at it as it’s looking for Dutch using infrared and mistakes the animal for Dutch, possibly thinking the rest of him is obscured by the log, knowing Dutch is trying to hide. It misses the animal, though.

lionhead

Answer: It simply might have seen killing a different animal as yet another "trophy." Especially if it hunts for sport and is on a different planet. I know a few people who hunt for "sport," and many of their targets are non-dangerous, defenceless animals that could not realistically fight back. It's just... a thing for some people.

TedStixon

Except that the Yautja only kill people who have weapons. The animal was defenceless, and it wouldn't have been very, what the Yautja perceive, as being honourable.

The issue is that you're going by logic established in sequels/spin-off material and trying to retroactively connect it. Nothing in the original movie explicitly states this. Even the name you're using, "Yautja," wasn't coined until a spin-off novel that came out seven years later. Sometimes sequels and spin-offs will "rewrite the rules" and retcon from the original, thus creating small inconsistencies. You just have to accept that it's something that happened in this movie, even if it contradicts future series "lore." You can't really fault it for not lining up with sequels they didn't even know would exist when they made it.

TedStixon

18th Jun 2022

Predator (1987)

Plot hole: After Blaine gets killed and the group hose down the forest, Poncho goes and checks for the enemy. He comes back and says he didn't find tracks or blood "We hit NOTHINGGG." Now, while he would be looking for red blood, he certainly should have noticed at least the glowing Predator blood (made from glow stick fluid - widely used by the military and public alike at the time) easily visible on the large leaf, and deduced that came from something - perhaps the enemy soldier had a glow stick.

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Suggested correction: This isn't a plot hole. The plot of the movie isn't broken because of this. It's an assumption that he "should have noticed" the predator blood but he might not have. And if he had, and had discounted it, it would only be a character error not to have mentioned it.

A plot hole doesn't strictly need to "break" the plot to count as a plot hole. The term most often refers to instances when a film contradicts its own sense of internal logic. For example, something happening that contradicts something else that was already established, vital information being left out, or a character acting way out of character for the benefit of the plot. In this case, this absolutely could count as a plot hole.

TedStixon

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