Here's another shot I can't stop looking at.
So I watched this 146 times.
One was just frame by frame.
And so I'm showing you some of the shots for those of you
who have not had the pleasure of seeing
the best movie of all time.
You should go check it out.
It's a really amazing movie.
And it's an art movie.
People think of it as an action movie.
But it's a sneaky art movie that means to satirize
the tropes of action movies.
And the more I started watching it,
the more I started drinking my own Kool-Aid.
"So here's another shot I can't stop looking at.
The creature, having been lured into the trap laid by Dutch--
who's Arnold Schwarzenegger's character--
moves slowly along the length of a giant tree that
is broken in half and parallel to the ground.
The crew had to build this tree.
There was nothing like it in the jungle where they were filming.
It was, quote, 'made by a team of about 50 over two
weeks,' unquote, John McTiernan, the director,
tells us in the commentary track.
We see the creature in relief against the fires Dutch
has set in the background.
Going frame to frame, there's one moment, this one,
as the fires flicker, in which the slope of the creature's
head and neck, seen through its cool camouflage effect,
is mirrored almost exactly by the path of flame at the right.
It's perfect.
I love to show you it.
It's at 1:28:23 if you're going frame by frame at home.
But what I want to know is how accidentally this shot was
made, like, how much can you shape the pyro?
Probably a lot.
We tame fire as it suits our needs, I think.
And did someone plan it this way, probably not, but maybe,
in order to reveal a poetry, which this shot does.
The eye seeks similarity, slow motion.
Watching the film this way, shot by shot and frame by frame,
all the accidents seem inevitable.
This is, I guess, the effect of art or my willingness
to believe and find myself in film.
I believe that if I look hard enough, the screen will fade
and I will see myself and then the culture that made me
and the men that made me to the degree they did.
In fact, a bit right from center, just
under the flame's tentacular curl, reaching up
from the left, I stare at it and seem to find a face.
Even the background vines echo the creature's curls
and curves.
Our phones and digital cameras are trained to find the face
and focus on it.
It's what the machines believe we
want because we said we did, to see ourselves
in flame, in anything really.
Surveillance algorithms track us like this.
For the first third of the movie,
the creature surveys the team from its silent post,
invisible.
I think it's watching Dutch.
But as we're also watching Dutch, it also turns to us.
It's watching us watching it.
That's the subtext of the film as seen these years later.
Through the Predator's eye, we are
revealed for what we are, animal and cruel, no better
for our sonneteering and our musicals
and our occasionally advanced consciousness of race.
Good sci-fi works like this.
Through it, we see ourselves anew."