Best Kills in the Franchise

A new entry in the Predator franchise, director Dan Trachtenberg’s film Prey, has just been released through the Hulu streaming service – and to celebrate the occasion, we have assembled a list of some of the best, most memorable kills in each of the Predator movies. Keep scrolling down to see what our choices were, then let us know what you would choose as the best kill in the franchise. But watch out for SPOILERS, because there are kills from Prey at the bottom of this article. Now, here’s the list – Predator: Best Kills in the Franchise.

PREDATOR – Dillon, That Son of a Bitch

The majority of the deaths in the first Predator are human-on-human kills, but the Predator itself does gather a nice selection of trophies over the course of the film. Late in the running time, CIA agent Dillon thinks he has the drop on the alien hunter… then the Predator blows off his right arm with its plasmacaster. But since this guy is played by Carl Weathers, that doesn’t take him out of the fight. He still has another hand and another weapon he can use. Unfortunately, the Predator is too fast. It’s on top of Dillon with its wristblades before he can do any damage to it. Dillon was a man of questionable character, but he redeemed himself by attempting to be a hero. It just didn’t work out.

PREDATOR 2 – Slaughterhouse

The hunter in Predator 2 scores a higher body count than its predecessor, it puts more weapons to use, and it even gets to wipe people out in multiple massacre sequences. It kills a bunch of gang members in an apartment. It kills armed commuters on a subway train. And then we get the best massacre in the film: a sequence in which the Predator takes out a handful of government agents in its slaughterhouse lair. The Predator uses its plasmacaster and its spear, and the best kill of them all is when it throws a razor-sharp disc that cuts Gary Busey in half at the waist. This “smart disc” was a great addition to the Predator arsenal, and it’s awesome to see it in action.

AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR – Bishop

Alien vs. Predator was released with a PG-13 rating, so impressive human kills are in short supply in this movie. Yes, the Predators have their plasmacasters, wristblades, flesh-cutting nets, and spears, and they do use them to kill some people in the midst of battling the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, but these kills are nothing special. So the best and most memorable kill in the movie comes when a Predator kills Charles Bishop Weyland, mainly because the character is played by Lance Henriksen from Aliens and Alien 3. Weyland has a terminal illness, so the Predator initially passes him by… but then Weyland pesters the hunter into killing him anyway. And we get to see Lance Henriksen fall victim to a Predator’s wristblades.

PREDATOR – Old Painless Can’t Save Blain

This isn’t the first kill the Predator scores in the first movie, but it’s an early and impactful one. It’s no surprise when a creature can snatch Shane Black away with great ease, but if the Predator can take down Jesse Ventura (toting a minigun called Old Painless) early in the running time, it’s clearly a badass. The death of Ventura’s Blain has also left some viewers asking “What just happened?”, because it’s not quite clear which weapon is being used in this moment. Is it the plasmacaster or something else? Blain is actually taken down by a speargun that was originally supposed to be a prominent weapon for the Predator, but ended up being cut from the movie. Except for this scene. Slow it down and you can see the spears that hit him.

ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM – Bloody Bully

Equipped with an R rating, the Alien vs. Predator sequel was able to enhance the violence, the nastiness, and the darkness… in fact, it’s so dark that you can barely see anything that happens in the movie. This isn’t a very good movie, nor is it very pleasant (the fact that they had the Predalien hybrid multiply by pumping alien bellybursters into pregnant women is quite disgusting), but it does feature a badass Predator who attempts to handle a Xenomorph infestation problem on its own. And while a bullied pizza boy never should have been a character in an Alien or a Predator movie, let alone an AVP movie, we do get the payoff of seeing the bully’s face get melted off by the blood of a Xenomorph that has been blasted by the Predator.

AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR / ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM – Xenomorph Clashes

We never really got the Alien vs. Predator movie fans were expecting (that would have been set in the future, on spaceships and/or a different planet, and probably would have had Colonial Marines), but we did get two movies worth of Predators fighting Xenomorphs. Which was cool to see, since fans had been talking about the idea for over a decade before the first AVP was made. And it’s always kind of neat to see these creatures kill each other, which we see plenty of times over the course of the two movies – you get Predators dying in the first movie, and one Predator killing a whole bunch of Xenomorphs in the second. So this entry is a general celebration of every time we got to see a Predator destroy a Xenomorph. But if you need a specific favorite, how about the “Wolf” Predator in Requiem taking out two Xenomorphs at once with thrown shurikens, one of which continues flying until it claims a human victim as well.

PREDATORS – Swordfight

Predators was an attempt to get the franchise back on track after the botched AVP movies, and it is a good return to the style of the original film. We’re back to people getting hunted in the jungle, but this time the jungle is on a different planet and there are multiple Predators participating in the hunt. We even learn that there are multiple clans of Predators, and bigger, badder Super Predators aren’t fond of the “classic” Predators we’ve seen before. There are some cool kills in this one, with a standout being a swordfight between Hanzo, wielding a katana, and a Super Predator with its wristblades out. This scene is handled much like a classic samurai duel, and comes to the perfect ending.

PREDATOR – Mac Attack

Predators like to collect the skulls of their prey as trophies, so you wouldn’t expect them to kill victims with headshots… But sometimes they don’t mind messing up their trophies. And there’s no salvaging the skull of Bill Duke‘s character Mac. We know he’s screwed as soon as the Predator’s triangular laser scope shows up on his arm. That triangle then moves over to his forehead… and the Predator blasts him in the face with its plasmacaster. What makes this kill even better is the fact that we see Mac’s head get blown open from behind, the camera getting coated with his blood. Mac’s death is immediately followed by Dillon’s death, so this is a very intense few minutes in the film.

THE PREDATOR – Stargazer Escape

The “clashing Predators” idea comes up again in The Predator, which also tells us that at least some Predators like to enhance themselves with DNA gathered from prey they’ve hunted. So we get a “classic” Predator who has some human DNA and an Ultimate Predator that has really juiced itself up. There are some bad ideas in this movie, but there are also a whole lot of kills. And while the most memorable death may be the scene where a character accidentally blows his own head off with a plasmacaster, the hunter’s best chance to show what it can do is during an extended sequence where it breaks out of a government lab. People are slashed, stabbed, shot, and even bitten by the creature’s mandibles.

PREY – Trapper Massacre

It’s great to see the Predator take down prey on an individual basis – but as you can see from the entries on this list, it’s even more entertaining when the hunter massacres multiple people in one sequence. There’s an awesome sequence in Prey where the Predator takes down a group of fur trappers with various weapons, including its blades, its net, and a hatchet it gets from one of its victims. One trapper is taken down by his own bullet, which ricochets off the Predator’s armor. And there’s even a moment where the Predator gets caught in a bear trap, frees itself, and uses the device as a weapon, tossing it into a trapper’s head. This sequence immediately earns a place among the all-time great Predator moments.