Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Predator Casting Was Doomed From Day One

Jean-Claude Van Damme's Predator Casting Was Doomed From Day One

A footnote in the career of martial artist and action star Jean-Claude Van Damme is that he was originally cast as an alien in the 1987 sci-fi horror film Predator before being unceremoniously fired and replaced by the late Kevin Peter Hall. In recent years, it seems everyone and their mother has come forward with conflicting eyewitness accounts of what led to Van Damme’s firing, but the consensus is that his casting was doomed from day one. Van Damme, then an aspiring action star, was cast as the villain and expected to showcase his speed, athleticism, and spinning kicks in an epic clash with one of the best action stars of the decade:

Arnold Schwarzenegger. It would have been a showdown that would have certainly put the young and hungry Belgian on the map. He and casting director Jackie Burch seemed to be on the same page. “Jean-Claude Van Damme kept coming into my office, jumping up and down, showing me his moves, and begging me to give him the job,” Burch told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “And then I finally said [to producer Joel Silver], ‘He’d be great as the Predator because no one moves like him.’ I mean, he’s really amazing.”

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The Original Predator Costume Design Was A Disaster

The alien’s design in the “Predator” that hit theaters in June of 1987 was not the look the executives first had in mind. In an interview with Matt Winston (actor and son of the late special effects artist Stan Winston), FX artist Steve Johnson, who worked on the original suit, recalled an executive meeting that included the film’s director John McTiernan and producer Joel Silver. “With great pomp and ceremony, McTiernan comes in and slams down a bunch of designs [of the Predator] that have already been done by a production designer … They said, ‘Here’s what we want you to make.’ What they needed was a character with backward-bent reptilian legs, extended arms, and a head that was out here.”

Johnson said the original alien designs, though ahead of its time, were awful and the protruding head especially sucked. “And they wanted to shoot on the muddy slopes of Mexico in the real jungles,” Johnson said. “It was virtually physically impossible to do.” Johnson warned them it wouldn’t work but proceeded with the design. His team made a red version of the suit made of thick rubber as a cloaking device (the scenes were to be shot against the greenery of the jungle and red is the opposite of green on the color wheel).

The 5-feet-10 Van Damme was no match for the suit’s protruding head; even while on stilts, his head was in the suit’s neck. “I hate this. I hate this. I hate it. I look like a superhero,” Johnson recalled Van Damme complaining onset. Finding out that he was essentially an invisible stuntman infuriated the action movie star hopeful even more. “We get him out there for the first shot and he’s just seething,” Johnson said.

Yes, Jean Claude Van Damme Hated It

Jean-Claude voiced his grievances with the original “Predator” alien suit in an 1989 interview with Starlog Magazine (via The Hollywood Reporter). He points to miscommunication; whether it was unintentional or deliberate miscommunication is unknown. “They said I would be in a tight leotard with half-[human], half-animal makeup on my face,” Van Damme told Starlog. “Then, I got a full-body cast and, in the creature outfit, my arms and legs were on metal stilts.”

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Not only did the costume prevent Van Damme from being able to showcase his martial arts prowess on screen like he had anticipated, but also, he said the costume, which took him 20 minutes to get into, was so dangerous that if he had fallen and tried to brace himself with his arms, he would have broken them. Additionally, being in the costume impaired his vision and made it difficult for him to breathe … not to mention being in a rubber suit in a jungle in Mexico is pure torture.

“They wanted me to make a big jump, and I told them, ‘It’s impossible [from that height]. I know my limitations and I’ll break my legs,'” Van Damme said. Starlog reported that a stuntman was hired to execute the jump Van Damme refused to perform, and the stuntman subsequently broke his leg. And while Van Damme seemed to back up this account in a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, supervisors on the film denied any injuries happened on set. “Nobody broke their f****** leg,” the film’s first assistant director, Beau Marks, told THR.

A New Predator Suit, But No Jean Claude Van Damme

Whether or not the Predator injury was the catalyst, producers sent Jean-Claude Van Damme home and went back to the drawing board to come up with a new, safer design for the alien. The new suit didn’t require the use of stilts, as 7-foot-2 Kevin Peter Hall was hired to play the lead, and the film became a box office success without Van Damme. Van Damme told Starlog in 1989 that he held no grudge against anyone associated with the film. What is the alien? “It’s a guy in a plastic suit,” he said. “That’s not my goal in life, it’s to be a good actor.”

Van Damme finally got to show off his martial arts prowess on the big screen just months after the release of Predator. He made his breakthrough performance in the 1988 martial arts action film Bloodsport, in which he plays American soldier Frank Dux, who competes in an underground Hong Kong martial arts tournament called the Kumite. Van Damme became one of the biggest action stars of the ’90s — even without that arguably epic showdown with Arnold Schwarzenegger.