While shooting ‘Predator’ in Mexico, Arnold Schwarzenegger treated the jungle like a bodybuilding stage. Refusing to lose size or sharpness, he demanded that the production take on the hefty task of flying his gym equipment to the Mexican jungle, which, surprisingly, they did.

Back in 1987, when Predator was in its shooting phase, ‘Arnie’ had an entire custom gym airlifted from the USA to Mexico because the hotel gym didn’t meet his training standards. Around this time, he had become popular in Hollywood for his physique, so training was important.

“Before we shot every day, Arnold and his trainer and all of the big boys, they got up an hour and a half before breakfast and trained,” actor Bill Duke told The Hollywood Reporter for its oral history of Predator on the 30th anniversary.

“It was this gigantic gym that Arnold shipped to Mexico in these gigantic trucks so that the [hotel] ballroom, that was our gym. Arnold once knocked on my door at 5:30, woke me up. I started lifting with them, and they all would start yelling at me to lift more weights and more reps.”

The movie’s screenwriter, Jim Thomas, was so fascinated by the hubbub that he said, “I think that phrase ‘manly men’ was coined down there.”

Arnold would wake up the cast and crew before sunrise, putting them through his personal brutal workouts. “It was kind of comical, these guys are all trying to outdo each other,” said Thomas.

Interestingly, his co-actor Carl Weathers reportedly worked out in secret to be more jacked than everyone else. The movie made Arnold a household name in Hollywood, but it was not without sacrifices.

“I Took More Abuse in Predator,” said Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger built his reputation on doing his own stunts back in those days. However, Predator pushed him to his extremes. “I took more abuse in Predator than I did in Conan the Barbarian,” said Schwarzenegger.

“I fell down that waterfall and swam in this ice-cold water for days and for weeks was covered in mud. It was freezing in the Mexican jungle. They had these heat lamps on all the time, but they were no good,” he added.

It was a brutal juncture for him, as even though he sat near the fire lamp, the mud would dry, and he would have to remove it and apply fresh mud once again. “It was a no-win situation. The location was tough.”

Well, all of the hard work certainly paid off, as Predator became a cult classic that is still talked about in pop culture.

Written by

Suryakant Das

Edited by

Siddharth Shirwadkar