'The Predator' Plot Details Revealed By Star Thomas Jane

Shane Black starred in John McTiernan's original sci-fi classic Predator back in 1987, and now he's continuing the franchise as the director and co-writer of The Predator, an upcoming sequel that will see a new batch of humans face off against the high-tech alien hunters.

20th Century Fox has done a good job of keeping the plot of the film under wraps thus far, but it sounds like one of the film's stars, Thomas Jane, has just blown the doors open and given fans an idea of what to expect from The Predator plot when the movie hits theaters next year.

In an interview with Shadow Nation (via DenOfGeek), Jane revealed some key plot details of the film:

"We play these veterans from like Afghanistan or the Iraq War or whatever. But we're all f***ing crazy so we go to the VA hospital to get our meds. We're all like shellshocked, PTSD soldiers. We're at the VA hospital and we're in group therapy and of course, somebody flips out – this is backstory, I don't think we really see this – somebody flips out and we all get arrested and get thrown onto the bus to go down to the hospital and they throw this other guy on the bus too.

And he's a guy they've actually marked to kill him because he's seen a UFO, he's seen the Predator ships come down so they lock him up and throw him in with us lunatics. They're going to take that bus, drive it down to a ditch and shoot us all just to get rid of this one guy. But, of course, we take the bus over and we're all like 'f*** that, man, let's go kill these f***ing Predators ourselves.' And we're just crazy enough to believe that this guy really did see a UFO and there's these aliens out there. So that's kinda cool!"

That sounds...well, that sounds totally nuts, but at the same time, it has flashes of concepts that Black has dealt with many times on screen before. Mel Gibson's character in Lethal Weapon grapples with his time serving as a sharpshooter in Vietnam, and Tony Stark experiences PTSD in Iron Man 3 as he has flashes and nightmares about the time he saved the world in The Avengers. Black is clearly a storyteller who's interested in what those kinds of experiences do to people on a psychological level, and it sounds like he mixes it in the tropes of an alien sighting here, resulting in a combination that sounds unique and yes, "kinda cool."

Elsewhere in the interview, Jane mentions:

"You know the Predators, they looked...you know they didn't f*** those up. They're still Predators and they're pretty much the same Predator as always."

That seems to confirm there will be multiple Predators in the movie – something we suspected, but hadn't heard confirmation about until now.

He also says the movie "has that Shane Black humor," and as a fan of the writer/director's work, the fact that he's bringing his sensibilities to this franchise makes this one of my most anticipated action films of 2018.

The Predator opens in theaters on August 3, 2018.