Let’s Celebrate Alan Silvestri’s PREDATOR Score
Mike Sprague
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Alan Silvestri
As we all know by this point, Shane Black and Fred Dekker have a new Predator film coming out this summer called The Predator. It’s with this highly-anticipated flick heading our way that all of us here at Dread Central have been taking a look back at the original Predator films. And on my latest rewatch of John McTiernan’s original 1987 classic, I noticed just how badass the film’s score is. So I thought it would be a good time to not only celebrate the film’s score but also its composer Alan Silvestri.
To begin, let’s share some love to Silvestri’s Predator score and then we’ll get into the man himself a bit. Silvestri’s music for Predator has a killer mixture of intense booming piano cues but also a whimsical quality to it. It feels dangerous yet magical. This is a very interesting choice considering the film is “supposed” to be an out-and-out testosterone-filled Schwarzenegger flick. But Silvestri seems to be equally interested in the utter wonder of an alien lifeform. Actually, his Predator score reminds me of a mixture of John Williams and Hans Zimmer.
Just so we’re all on the same page moving forward, below is the official track listing for Silvestri’s Predator score. Special note should be paid to the title of track #15, which – in a delightfully bleak bit of black comedy – is called “Dillion is Disarmed”. Hahaha.
1. “Twentieth Century Fox Fanfare” – 0:27
2. “Main Title” – 3:51
3. “Something Else” – 3:34
4. “Cut ‘Em Down” – 1:56
5. “Payback Time” – 2:09
6. “The Truck” – 4:22
7. “Jungle Trek” – 1:47
8. “The Girl’s Escape” – 6:00
9. “Blaine’s Death” – 2:47
10. “He’s My Friend” – 1:26
11. “We’re All Gonna Die” – 3:32
12. “Building A Trap” – 3:02
13. “The Waiting” – 3:27
14. “The Hunt Is On” – 4:51
15. “Dillon Is Disarmed” – 2:07
16. “Billy Stands Alone” – 2:34
17. “Battle Plans” – 9:24
18. “Wounded Predator” – 4:14
19. “Hand To Hand Combat” – 3:12
20. “Predator’s Big Finish” – 3:42
21. “The Rescue and End Credits” – 4:44
One of the main things that stuck out to me about Predator on my recent viewing, is that it became very obvious that – even though the movie is well-known for its famous one-liners including “Stick around” and “I ain’t got time to bleed” – there is very little dialogue in the film. Especially once it’s just Arnold vs Predator. While most of the film is driven by Silvestri’s score, when it comes to the final tracks 17-21 (“Battle Plans” – “The Rescue/End Credits”) it’s basically Silvestri’s show. Other than, of course, the killer line “You’re one ugly motherfucker.”
“Predator was a very unique challenge, musically,” Silvestri told Underscores back in 2015. “And of course, nobody says anything for a very long time in the movie! (laughs) So it became a very interesting kind of jungle ballet: there was a lot of music, an incredible pile of possibility for a composer, but also by sheer quantity a daunting kind of task. Working with John McTiernan, we all knew that jungle sounds and things falling in the jungle only could get you so far.”
But before that bombastic and almost dialogue-free final act, the movie keeps Silvestri’s score thumping throughout. And if we’ve learned anything from John Williams and his classic score for Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Jaws, it’s that sometimes, whether to save cold hard cash or ratchet up the suspense, a motion picture’s music needs to stand in for the monster. And, like the above-mentioned Jaws, Silvestri excels at hinting at the invisible/camouflaged monster throughout the first two acts, teasing and terrifying us in regard to when and where the alien hunter might appear.
“We didn’t even see the Predator for all this time, we heard little sounds once in a while,” Silvestri said. “Of course, John Williams taught us everything we will ever need to know about having music remind us that there is something bad around, with Jaws. (laughs) So music had a big mission, a big challenge there. I remember McTiernan being very clear about where he wanted to feel the tension and keep it moving.”
And boy does Silvestri make us feel the tension and keep it moving throughout the film. From tracks like “The Girl’s Escape” – which is very reminiscent of William’s Jaws score in that it keeps the bang of a drum approaching louder and louder in our ears – to “Blaine’s Death” where it is all too clear the drums have reached their peak and shit has officially hit the fan, tension is ever present in Silvestri’s soundtrack.
And what would a quality sci-fi horror film be without the horror? No worries there as Silvestri slips in some super-creepy tracks such as “The Waiting”, which combines the signature Predator-as-whimsical-alien-creature motif to creepy-crawling effect. And “Can You See Him?”, which utilizes an almost Psycho-style fright factor with striking strings that acts to morph the surrounding jungle into the bathroom of a seedy motel in the middle of nowhere; a seedy bathroom where a killer lurks behind the shower curtain of dark vines and endless trees.
But the score isn’t all intense, whimsical, booming piano and creepy cues. Silvestri switches it up here and there to great effect with tracks like “He’s My Friend” which is more of a Taps-style military lament and one of the very few soft, melodic pieces in the bunch. Coupled with the next track “We’re Gonna Die” which uses the same soft Taps-style military lament, but now all the more sinister as it’s the rest of the team in danger of joining their fallen friend. In fact, “We’re Gonna Die” is perhaps my favorite track on the entire score as it combines all of Silvestri’s different musical arrangements in one soft-to-strikingly-chaotic mish-mash.
The “Main Title” is perhaps the track we are all most familiar with as it features the best mixture of that “intense booming piano cues” and “whimsical quality” I mentioned above. And add that to the final track “The Rescue/End Credits” and we have a score that’s stood and will continue to stand the test of time. Perfectly combining alien horror (and wonder) with a bombastic military angle, Alan Silvestri’s Predator score is a must-own and truly worth celebrating.
All of that out of the way, now let’s talk a bit about the man himself. One of the main reasons why you might not be overly familiar with the name Alan Silvestri is you may very well have thought his scores were composed by someone else. In fact, judging from conversations I have had with colleagues and friends, I’d wager that you might think some of Silvestri’s best work was composed by one of his other counterparts such as John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and/or Danny Elfman. This is a shame. So with all of that in mind, in addition to Predator, here are some classic movie scores you didn’t know were composed by Alan Silvestri.
Because this is Dread Central, let’s start with Silvestri’s contributions to the horror genre. These classic films include Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath and Death Becomes Her, Lewis Teague’s Cat’s Eye, James Mangold’s Identity, and Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing and The Mummy Returns. He has also worked with some of the biggest horror directors out there, such as Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) on The Quick and the Dead, and Gore Verbinski (The Ring) on The Mexican and Mouse Hunt. And on top of all of that, Silvestri was the composer on quite a few of the best episodes of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt including “And All Through the House”, “Abra Cadaver”, “Yellow”, “Beauty Rest”, “House of Horror”, “Till Death Do We Part”, and “You, Murderer”.
Since then, Silvestri has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest films, including James Cameron’s The Abyss, Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, and recent mega-blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War. On top of that, Silvestri finally joined forces with Steven Spielberg this past summer on Ready Player One, and has worked with Zemeckis on many of his best films including Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cast Away, and the Back to the Future trilogy.
Over the years, Silvestri has been the musical mind behind some of your favorite films and you (might) have never known it. I can only hope that this article gave you not only a deeper appreciation of the man behind the music but his Predator score in particular. It didn’t need to be as fantastical as it is. That was a gift that Silvestri brought to the classic film. And if he had only ever conducted the score for Predator, Silvestri would still be one of my personal favorite composers of all time.
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