The Deleted Predator Weapon That (Accidentally) Still Appears In The Movie
A deleted Predator weapon designed for the original version of the title hunter still makes a brief appearance in the movie. Long before he became a movie star himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme started out in lower budget projects like No Retreat, No Surrender before landing the role of the alien hunter in Predator. Unfortunately for the then up-and-coming actor, the original version of the creature's suit not only looked terrible, but it also proved to be nearly impossible to work with, with Van Damme often passing out from the heat of just wearing it.
Due to a combination of the suit looking goofy and Van Damme's constant complaining about it, he was fired from the production. The Predator was later given a glorious redesign and the late Kevin Peter Hall gave an iconic turn as the character. The movie proved to be a major success and spawned a franchise that is still running, with Predator 5 currently in development with director Dan Trachtenberg at the helm.
The Predator's most famous armaments like the netgun or spear didn't come into play until the second movie, so its loadout in the original movie is relatively light. The shoulder-mounted Plasmacaster is its most commonly used weapon though, and it kills several members of the team - and is used to literally disarm Carl Weathers' Dillion. In the original Van Damme design, the hunter's main weapon was a gun that fired razor-sharp spears. While this weapon isn't seen in the final movie, it's still used to take down one of the squad.
Jesse Ventura's Blain is the second member of Dutch's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) team to die in Predator. Viewers may recall during his demise the character is shot by something offscreen in his shoulder, with the dazed soldier then being shot in the back by the Plasmacaster. Pausing just before the impact of the shoulder wound, it's possible to see that he's hit by a spear-like weapon, which was intended to have been fired by the Van Damme version of the creature.
Similarly, while the wide shot clearly shows the Plasmacaster being fired at Blain from behind, the closeup of the impact still shows a spear exiting the wound. This goes by so fast that most audiences likely wouldn't even pick up on the fact he wasn't hit by the Plasmacaster, and even fans of Predator tend to miss this detail. Blain's death leads to the famous scene of the team unloading their weapons into the forest, only to learn they hit nothing. Blain's friend Mac (Bill Duke) leads the charge by picking up and firing his fallen comrade's minigun - AKA "Old Painless" - which shouldn't be possible, considering the plasma blast went through the gun's ammo pack when it killed Blain.
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