The production Arnold Schwarzenegger hated: “It was terrible”
Having evolved from a bodybuilding legend into an A-list superstar after defying the odds and cracking Hollywood despite his thick Austrian accent, hefty frame, and absence of any tangible drama skills as an actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly became accustomed to the finer things in life.
During his heyday as one of the biggest stars in the business, the ‘Austrian Oak’ regularly pocketed eight-figure paycheques for his starring roles and found himself enjoying the comforts of stardom on set. However, when he had to hit the jungle for John McTiernan’s Predator, the experience turned out to be a rather troubling one.
A standard Arnold-fronted action flick that pivots midway through into a bloodthirsty sci-fi thriller, the director gathered together the burliest and manliest ensemble he could possibly assemble and then let the oozing machismo feed into the character dynamics as the ragtag group of soldiers gradually find themselves picked off one-by-one by an unseen alien force with a penchant for skinning its victims alive.
The franchise has never managed to recapture the magic of the 1987 original, but at least the working conditions were better. With principal photography taking place almost entirely on location in the jungles of Mexico, the cast and crew were often left at the mercy of their surroundings.
A month into shooting, Schwarzenegger halted the proceedings so he could fly back to the United States and get married, which would have provided welcome relief. After all, McTiernan ended up losing 25 pounds in weight during production because of health issues, which at least left him as one of the very few people involved in Predator who didn’t suffer from diarrhoea caused by unsanitary water.
In addition to relentless training in the baking heat to maintain the physical edge over his co-stars, Schwarzenegger spent three weeks caked in freezing cold mud to shoot the climactic showdown opposite the titular extra-terrestrial, while other scenes required him to plunge into chilly, stagnant, and leech-infested waters for multiple takes.
The scorching hot days gave way to freezing cold nights that necessitated the use of heat lamps, and even the gradients of the terrain posed an issue. Schwarzenegger lamented that Predator was “always on a hill,” forcing him to stand at an angle all day, every day, for weeks on end.
“We stood all day long on a hell, one leg down, one leg up,” he said. “It was terrible.” He did at least manage to make his own fun to keep himself entertained, pranking Jesse Ventura by instructing the wardrobe department to falsely inform the actor his arms were bigger than Schwarzenegger’s, only to embarrass him in the gym when the overconfident Ventura bragged about being the bicep king.
That’s typical of the action icon’s mischievous streak, which helped keep the misery of his experience at bay.
