Shane Black Made 'The Predator' to Thwart a Mid-Life Crisis

Director Shane Black has been with the Predator franchise since its inception, having starred in the original film as the soldier Hawkins. After more than 30 years away, Black returns to the saga to direct The Predator, which he joked he did to stave off a mid-life crisis.

"The whole point of it was the nostalgia of, at first, just wanting to go back to a time which was particularly magical," the filmmaker shared with The Rundown. "I was 20-something years old, I had Lethal Weapon going on, and The Monster Squad, and then the Predator, and it was just such a great period of being green and anxious and wide-eyed and not having really done any of it before. Now, here, I'm in my 50s now and I felt like a mid-life crisis coming on, so I called my friend Fred Dekker, who wrote The Monster Squad, and I said, 'Do you wanna maybe be like a kid again?'"

The original film cashed in on many trends in cinema in the decade, combining massive stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger with exaggerated violence to deliver audiences crowd-pleasing thrills. One of the goals of The Predator filmmakers was to embrace that idea of a special effects spectacle for the upcoming sequel.

"Predator number one was a piece of pure pulp, right? It incorporated the Rambo phase and the science fiction, aliens craze of the '80s and a wink and nod to the ideas that these are larger-than-life characters with big muscles and impossible guns," Black pointed out. "It was just the most purely, pop-art shape you could conceive of in the best...the '80s knew how to do that. I thought it would be so much fun in this CG-infested world, to go back and try to make a shape that's pure like that. That's sort of a love letter, as best we can, to the original, and we agreed that would be a fun thing to do."

From the outer reaches of space to the small-town streets of suburbia, the hunt comes home in Shane Black's explosive reinvention of the Predator series. Now, the universe's most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before, having genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species. When a young boy accidentally triggers their return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race.

The Predator lands in theaters on Sept. 14.

Do you think this new film can re-capture the magic of the original? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

[H/T YouTube, 20th Century Fox]