If It Bleeds...

On predation in Costa Rica, Puerto Vallarta, and Val Verde

Somewhere in Val Verde…

Greetings from San Diego!

I’m back from vacation. Did I miss anything exciting? Tell me how you spent (or will spend) your summer vacation in the comments and I’ll randomly select someone to receive a free signed copy of Corporate Rock Sucks.

As I mentioned last week, my sister moved to Costa Rica during the pandemic and set up her podcasting business at her home office. It’s called Heartcast Media and if your organization is in need of a professional podcast service, check it out. Also, she has the most adorable branch manager in Costa Rica.

Jojo, Branch Manager Heartcast Media

Seriously, I’m very proud of all my sister has accomplished and hope to make it back to Costa Rica for another visit soon.

I spent a lot of time outdoors during my trip to Costa Rica. I walked in the jungle, swam in a lake, took a dip in the ocean, and saw a staggering amount of wildlife—and not just because I visited an animal sanctuary.

Aside from last week’s newsletter and a short review of Patrick O’Neil’s excellent Anarchy at the Circle K for the next issue of Razorcake, if I wasn’t exploring the countryside, I was vegging out in front of the TV. This is something I literally never do—and not just because I don’t have a TV.

I consume most of my media on my computer. If I go to a hotel I almost never turn on the TV, but when I’m a guest at someone’s house I’m a sucker for the tube. (Do people still call it that since TVs don’t have tubes anymore?)  

Last week I watched a movie and a limited series, both of which were set outdoors, which made me think about the spaces I was inhabiting in interesting ways.

Keep Breathing is about an attorney from the city whose plane crashes in the wilderness and every decision she makes determines whether she lives or dies. The story makes use of frequent flashbacks in a This Is Us kind-of-way. At first, I wasn’t a fan of the frequent interruptions in the story, but they’re skillfully done and push the scenes forward in interesting ways.

We didn’t watch Keep Breathing all at once so when I was swimming in the shallow end of a warm lake or hiking in the jungle with a tour guide I thought about the lawyer and her ordeal in the wild. Could I survive?

In Costa Rica maybe. It’s not that big. The odds of running into someone on an ATV or an experienced guide are pretty high—if I don’t run into a jaguar first or lay down for the night on a hill of fire ants. Honestly, I don’t think I would make it through the night in a hammock in my sister’s back yard, though this was a subject of frequent debate.

This is the appeal of shows like The Deadliest Catch. Viewers at home sit on their sofas and speculate as to whether they could brave the waves while bucketing about a storm in the Bering Sea. (The answer is no, you couldn’t. Maybe for a day, on plenty of rest, but not after a twelve hour shift when your clothes are wet, your hands are like claws, and your back is screaming in agony. Trust me on this.)

When it’s brute strength vs. the wilderness, the wilderness always wins, which is also one of the takeaways from Prey, the seventh installment in the Predator franchise. I fucking love Predator. My favorite ’80s movies are horror movies and Predator is a fascinating horror-action hybrid.

Predator’s action bona fides are impeccable. It’s got Arnold Schwarzenegger in an ensemble cast with Jesse Ventura, making it the only action film to star two future governors. Plus, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, and Shane Black. Black had just written Lethal Weapon when Predator was being filmed. Naturally, the producers wanted him to do a re-write of Predator, but Black refused so he was killed off seven minutes into the movie. I endorse this kind of pettiness 100%. This, and other tidbits about the making of Predator can be found in this outstanding oral history.  

Predator almost didn’t happen. The production ran out of money and the creature’s costume was a total flop. The original predator was going to be then unknown Jean Claude Van Damme who was allegedly fired because he couldn’t stop kickboxing. Also, JC is very short and the Predator is very tall. Most movies whose productions are halted never recover. Cast and crew members leave the project and the result is often a disjointed mess. Predator is the rare exception.

My appreciation for the film went up several notches several years ago after I traipsed around the jungle in Mismaloya southwest of Puerto Vallarta where part of the film is set, which Nuvia wasn’t too thrilled about but indulged me nonetheless. (The location in the film is described as the fictional Central America banana republic of Val Verde, which was created for Schwarzenegger’s Commando.) Then, when we took a boat to meet up some friends in Boca de Tomatlan and unwittingly recreated the opening scene to Predator (sans helicopters):

I shit you not the captain of this vessel was named Juan E. Bravo

The river that runs through the heart of Boca de Tomatlan.

If people think of Predator as a horror movie, it’s because of the creature at the heart of the film. Predator doesn’t speak. Predator doesn’t have any super powers. It is not, famously, unkillable.

So what makes this creature so special?

It’s got dreadlocks. It’s got mandibles. It’s got high tech armor that renders it invisible and sensors that can detect heat signatures. It can see you but you can’t see it, which is a brilliant device for ramping up suspense.

But check this out. Predator isn’t an “it” but a species of super violent hunters from a distant galaxy that periodical comes to earth to hunt humans for sport. It’s nothing personal, this is just what predators do. The predators even have a code: they don’t kill creatures that don’t pose a threat.  

The Predator franchise has taken some wild twists and turns, most notably in the Predator vs. Alien detour, which provided two films and continues to inform the ongoing Predator story, of which Prey is the latest. First we have to talk about universes.

The Alien franchise basically ignores the Predator connection, but the Predator franchise does not. Predator’s interactions with Xenomorphs are an important part of the saga that is richly explored in comic books and novels. (The Predator is aptly summarized here.)  

If it has words, we can read it.

What’s remarkable about this is that we still don’t know a lot about Predator. We don’t know Predator’s origin story, which is an essential part of a horror movie that features a creature.

Prey makes Predator new again by focusing on the people it hunts: a group of Comanche on the great plains of North America in 1719.

What makes Predator so fearsome in Prey is that no one in this world has seen anything like Predator before. It is an analog, pre-industrial world where one’s skill in the wilderness determines one’s success as a hunter. The Comanche aren’t brawny combat veterans with bulging biceps and outrageous weapons, but skinny young men with bows and arrows who are hopelessly outgunned by the Predator’s superior firepower.

The hero of the film is Naru, played by Amber Midthunder, a healer who years to be a hunter. Her desire to hunt makes her an outcast: she is rejected by the men who don’t respect her prowess as a hunter and also by the women who don’t understand her. Even her mother, who wants to spare her daughter the hardships she is bringing on herself, is frustrated by her Naru’s determination to follow her own path. The only one who is unquestioningly loyal to Naru is Sarii, a rescue dog who was trained specifically for this film.

If you haven’t seen Prey, watch it immediately. If you’re hungry for more Predator fandom, you’re in luck. Ander Monson’s memoir of his obsession with the film comes out next month from Graywolf Press.

And if you’re still reading, don’t forget to enter the book giveaway by telling me how you spent your summer vacation in the comments. If you’re already got a copy, I have other books you might be interested in…

100% regret not buying this T-shirt