| | |  | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Home » » Predator (Widescreen Collector's Edition) | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | The ultimate hunter meets the ultimate adversary?in the ultimate Collector?s Edition DVD! Arnold Schwarzenegger wages an all-out war against an unseen enemy, a force more powerful and deadly than any on Earth?because the Predator is not of this Earth. Now, you can explore the depths of the Predator jungle with this all-new 2-disc set packed with over 5 hours of out-of-this-world extras, including an in-depth documentary, director?s commentary, never-before-seen bonus footage, revealing featurettes and more! | | | Product Details: | | | Actors:
| Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Kevin Peter Hall, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke | | Director:
| John McTiernan | | Format:
| Anamorphic, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | | Language:
| English, French, Spanish | | Subtitle:
| English, Spanish | | Number of Discs:
| 2 | | Studio:
| 20th Century Fox | | Run Time:
| 107 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| August 10, 2004 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 498 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 The perfect Blu-Ray for the original Predator fan!Sep 07, 2010
Predator: Ultimate Hunter Edition
Blu-Ray, released on June 29, 2010
"Predator" is an iconic movie that started a series that led to another series of "Alien vs Predator." This first film was directed by John McTiernan and written by Jim and John Thomas and originally was released in 1987 and is getting the Ultimate Hunter Edition Blu-Ray treatment in 2010. The story is of a team of commandos with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger on a mission in Central America that are hunted by a highly advanced alpha alien.
Some of the other rough, tough muscle men of the time in this commando unit are Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, and Richard Chaves. The Predator himself was played by 7 foot tall Kevin Peter Hall. Over the course of the film, the men are hunted down one by one while they try to deal with a woman along for the ride named Anna played by Elpidia Carrillo. Eventually Arnold goes man to man with the Predator in an epic scene full of explosions, water, and mud.
This film really set the scene for a genre that mixed sci-fi, action, and horror in a new way. No doubt the Predator itself was freaky and scary, but there's the manly man element of fighting back with big battle sequences and the fact that the Predator is extraterrestrial to make it more interesting. It is a memorable film that still gets fans to buy memorabilia and t-shirts to this day and I bet they can't wait for the newest film, "Predators" to open.
Bonus Features:
This Blu-Ray is just crammed FULL of features. Here's a bit of a run down.
First off, you can listen to commentary from director John McTiernan who provides quite a bit of insight into difficulties they had in production with too much jungle, not enough jungle, red suit dilemmas, and designing the predator. Also there is a text commentary which appears along the bottom of the screen like subtitles from Film Historican Eric Lichtenfield. It reads like the man would speak, not a pop-up video format. You can set it up to actually listen to the director and read the historian at the same time if you wanted to, but it's very confusing.
There are multiple detailed making-of features and featurettes starting with the "Predator: Evolution of a Species - Hunters of Extreme Perfection" feature that goes through the first two movies and the creation of a script written with a part for Arnold taking Predator back to the jungle on another planet that got sidelined when it was decided to go into an Aliens versus Predators format instead. The understanding is that the new movie coming out, "Predators" is a manifestation of that script without the Governator. Another feature is "If it bleeds, we can kill it: The Making of Predator" which was clearly put together from interviews taken at the time of the filming and not current day reflection like the other. It tells of fun anecdotes competitive gym time and Jesse Ventura and Arnold measuring the circumference of their biseps. The "Inside the Predator" featurettes break down specific elements even more as well as certain "Special Effects" like "Red Suit Staring Down" and other scenes.
There are several deleted scenes & outtakes, Short Takes with the Filmmakers, and an entire photo gallery and Predator Profile. Finally, there is also a sneak peek of the new film, "Predators" seeing some background footage and explanation of the premise.
Basically, if you love "Predator", everything you ever needed to know about the movie or the making of it is in this Blu-Ray and it looks fantastic when you watch it.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 The first rushed blu-ray to go along with a new theatrical release.Sep 06, 2010
When Predator first came out on blu-ray a few years ago, it looked horrible. There's really no other way to put it. Grain was all over the place, and it looked worse than the collector's edition dvd that had just come out a few years prior. How did it even get released on what's supposed to be the 'superior' format? I don't know. But when Predators was getting ready to hit theaters, they decided to go and release a new blu-ray, similar to how a lot of other movies/dvds do whenever a sequel or remake is about to come out in theaters. Needless to say, this is both a quick attempt to fix the picture quality, and sucker in the easy-to-sucker Predator fans who were hyped for the newest movie. Long story short, the picture quality of this blu-ray does, and doesn't look better than previous releases.
As for the movie itself, what is there to even say? By now, EVERYONE'S seen it whether it's the actual movie or from countless parodies and spoofs in other movies and online. The story of a group of top notch military dudes who go to the jungle for a special mission, only to be picked off one at a time by an invisible...well...Predator. If you want a movie with stuff blowing up and big guns, look no further than Predator. Even today, the film holds up pretty well, and as long as you're not some kind of movie snob, you should enjoy it. It's pure dumb sci-fi/action fun at its best, and introduced the world to what's still considered one of the coolest movie monsters ever. 'too bad none of the recent sequels did him justice.
Here's where things get a bit tricky- the picture quality. Where the first blu-ray had grain up the wazoo, the Ultimate Hunter edition looks MUCH cleaner. Unfortunately, they also went overboard with smoothing, and the majority of close ups with the actors are painful to watch. People look like they're made of wax. The classic opening where Arnold and his buddy do the hand shake/'look at our huge biceps' scene comes to mind immediately. When the camera goes to shots of their faces, it looks like they're melting. Even worse is later on when Arnold is fighting for his life and making use of the jungle to get the upper hand on the Predator. Granted, a lot of people really won't care for the picture quality if they're just buying this because they didn't have it already and are more casual fans, but for those with an eye for detail, it's a big eye sore. Why didn't they take time to make things look right? I appreciate the grain being removed, but I almost want to say the last blu-ray version had better detail. Even some shots with the jungle background look a bit messy. As for the audio, it's much better, but still missing that extra punch that it deserves. You get a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track, as well as a 5.1 in Spanish and French if you want.
The special features are mostly carried over from the collector's edition dvd, with a couple of new things to help promote Predators more than add to the original movie's extras. First up is the commentary track with the director, and I'm sorry but this is one of the worst commentary tracks I've ever heard. The director sounds like Mr. Plinkett from Red Letter Media, and sometimes just ends up watching the movie without saying anything. I will give this track some credit though- he mentions that they tried to use a monkey in a red suit at first for the invisible Predator segments, to make him look more fluid when running/swinging through the trees. But the monkey was embarrassed whenever he'd be in the suit, and just run off and hide in a tree. 'pretty funny. The rest of the extras are the usual on-the-set interviews with the cast and crew where they share some fun stories and talk about working on the movie. 'nothing too special, aside from a great trick Arnold pulled on Jesse Ventura that led Ventura to think his arms were bigger than Arnold's, only to find out that Arnold's were 3 inches bigger. The only extras worth mentioning though are the text commentary, which has TONS of information, and is much better than the actual director commentary, and the Evolution of Predator feature, where we get to see the original Predator costume that was so disturbingly bad that they had to go and get Stan Winston to create the masterpiece we all know and love.
If you still have the collector's edition dvd, you might want to just stick with that, unless you absolutely have to have all your movies on blu-ray, or if you don't own the movie yet. I'm not too mad about my purchase since I got it for a lot less than the standard price, but that doesn't change the fact that this disc was rushed just to help get some extra bucks from Predator fans eager to see the newest installment in the franchise. If you want to see just how overdone the smoothing is, you can easily do an image search for this blu-ray: Predator Ultimate Hunter Edition and see for yourself. But for the casual fans, it won't be a big deal. Blu-ray enthusiasts who go around on blu-ray message boards going on about how the tiniest problem on a disc is insulting, stay away from this.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Pretty good BDSep 02, 2010
I have seen many people saying this first BD edition is too grainy. I don`t agree. I have seen more grainy films than this before. I am also not a big fan of films that has excessive grain in nearly every frame, but i don`t think this film have excessive grain.
Don`t believe the others that sayed it`s too grainy, i don`t think it`s so bad they wanted it to be. I think they exaggerated it.
Some scenes have more grain than others, but i think the picture quality was pretty good. The picture and sound quality surely was a lot better than the last time i saw on tv several years ago just in SD.
I think the audio quality was impressive. The only thing stopping me from giving the audio 5.0, full score is that several times i hear hissing when they speak and the dialog at times sounds tinny. There was great deep bass, especially when the minigun was used and + explosions. I was happy with it. Good enough for me.
Film: 4.5/5
Picture quality: 4/5
Audio quality: 4/5
Overall: 4/5
2 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Outstanding Quality Picture. I Don't Agree With the DNR Haters. (Ultimate Hunter Edition Blu Ray)Aug 30, 2010
For those unfamiliar with what "DNR" is, it's "Digital Noise Reduction". Old/outdated/no longer preferred film technology had imperfections that resulted in a grainy picture. It's why your old 1980's "Batman" picture doesn't have the punch on Blu Ray that a film like "Dark Knight" has.
"DNR" is a technology that processes the old picture and removes some of the artifacts so that it looks more like current film technology. The haters like to point out that things like shadow detail is sometimes lost in the process, but, to me, the sacrifice is completely worth it!
Here's the bottom line: academic debate aside, the picture of the Ultimate Hunter Edition of Predator feels like it has more punch than other Blu Ray adaptations of older films and it's precisely BECAUSE of the DNR processing! I buy Blu Ray so my jaw drops at how good the picture looks as I watch some scenes and it's rare that I get that feeling with unprocessed grainy films.
Shadow detail doesn't matter if it looks like you're watching the movie on a TV that's getting bad reception, and that's exactly how grain makes me feel.
So anyway, I just wanted to throw my voice into fray to offer an alternative viewpoint to the DNR haters. This film looks absolutely wonderful (among the better Blu Ray films I've seen) and Predator and Blu Ray fans who like to feel blown away by films like Avatar will be similarly blown away by this version of the film.
1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Buy this blurayAug 29, 2010
One of my favourite movies growing up. Awesome video and audio. Awesome action. Very cool behind the scenes, interviews, etc. Must buy for any action, Arnie, science fiction, monster movie fan.
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