Shane Black had to re-shoot the climax of The Predator because daytime isn't scary
Defying the example set by any number of brightly-lit horror films—including the original Predator, which demonstrated some of its title character’s nastiest capabilities in the middle of a jungle set smack in the middle of the day—Shane Black has revealed that he re-shot the ending of his upcoming The Predator at least partially because his alien antagonist didn’t look sufficiently scary in broad daylight.
This is per Collider, which chatted with Black about the reshoots during last month’s Comic-Con (where he also suggested that his Predator could take on John Wick—Baba Yaga himself!—a batshit ridiculous claim that we promised ourselves we weren’t going to re-litigate here). According to Black, the film’s daylight climax was already a compromise, since night filming is expensive, and he wanted to shove as much cool shit into his movie’s ending as humanly possible. Unfortunately, “When we saw the footage during the day, the climax of the movie…it doesn’t look right. It doesn’t look scary in the daytime.”
And so, the Predator (and The Predator) went back for re-shoots, streamlining the climax so as to plunge the finale into darkness, which, some might say, is the most effective cloaking device at all. (Actually, we just checked, and it turns out that the Predator’s cloaking device is still better, because it can’t be beaten by a flashlight and a pack of D-cells.)
The Predator skulks its way into theaters on September 14.