For all their badass stalking and killing, Predators aren’t the elite warriors you think they are. Oh, they’ll hunt you down, brutally murder your friends one by one, and skin you before you can see their telltale shimmer, but that sadism isn’t alien to us. Nope, the human race also has its own gun-toting weekend warriors that hunt and kill for fun: Rednecks. Yep, dig through the luggage of a Predator ship and you’re sure to find a cooler of beers and a banjo, for these ugly motherfuckers are actually probably cousin-fuckers. Using overzealous firepower to hunt weak stupid animals for no reason other than a new trophy for the space-ford, these are the rednecks of space.
Rednecks have the biggest gun collections in town. Tell them it’s hunting season, and they’ll pack a duffel bag full of handguns, automatics, shot-guns, and knives, throw on some full-body camo, night-vision goggles and disappear into the woods. Predator also packs an unnecessarily huge arsenal of killing machines from cloaking devices and heat vision masks to laser cannons, homing shuriken, projectile nets, and of course knife-gauntlets. To hunt what exactly? Us? Do they really need all that to hunt a hairless ape with a big brain and bullets? Hand-to-hand a Predator beats a human. Hand-to-gun, predator still beats a human. But where’s the fun in hunting if you don’t get to play with all the new toys you order from Space Guns & Ammo. The idea that Predator hunts for a challenge is complete bullshit. In 2010 they kidnapped a bunch of humans and dropped them on a planet to shoot them like fish in a barrel. “Wait,” you say recalling the crossover franchise, “They hunt deadly xenomorphic aliens too!” Kill; yes. Hunt; noooooooo. Would you call imprisoning a queen of a species and forcing her to lay eggs so you can raise her young for slaughter “hunting”? I’d call that farming, like breeding cattle then chasing them with a shotgun.
I’m willing to bet that Predator isn’t even the name of their species, it’s just their word for “Redneck.” You never see these guys on their own planet. They’re always out on a hunting trip in the backwoods of the universe. I bet it’s a totally civil society of well-adjusted aliens that appreciate art and culture. While Schwarzenegger and Glover were fighting for their lives and kicking ass, I bet there was a pair of 8-foot mandible-faced aliens chatting over a watercooler:
“Hey, where’s Xill? I haven’t seen him around the office.”
“Oh, he took a long weekend to Earth.”
“Earth?”
“Yea, it’s human season. He and Xob are on a hunting trip.”
“Oh wow. I didn’t realize he was into that kind of thing. Does he have one of those…”
“Heat-vision masks. Yep. And knife-gauntlets too.”
“Wow, what a fucking Predator.”
“Yep.”
So if you’ve got too many high-tech weapons to count, you might be a Predator. If you like hunting weaker dumber animals that don’t have half a chance, you might be a Predator. If you spend the weekend far from civilization so you can bag another kill-trophy, you might be a Predator. So next time you rent one of the sci-fi action films to watch your favorite alien villain prey on humans, toss in some Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams III for the soundtrack.
thefletchzone 