Amph Are the predators a bunch of rich playboys?

Why would you qualify "without their weapons" when they in fact had weapons with them? That's a major part of their training. The Predators themselves are also far less deadly without their weapons? The only one who sticks out is the guy who didn't have weapons training at all, and couldn't do any sort of combat or physical exertion besides.

You have a truly terrible argument.

 

I would imagine that the Predators are just as deadly without their weapons.

 

You would imagine wrongly. The first half of AvP literally shows us how much more the Predators struggled when deprived of their usual armament. Saying they were less deadly is not my assessment or speculation. It's what happened on the screen. I'm pretty sure the characters even explicitly agreed that the Predators needed their weapons back in order to win.

 

Dutch and Harrigan both lost their guns, leaving them without weapons. But both Predators considered them a threat because of their hunters instincts. Dutch was able to make do with primitive weapons and his wits, until the very end when the Predator stripped down and they fought hand to hand. Harrigan's machine gun was damaged by the Predator and his shotgun was taken and destroyed. His sidearm fell on his way down the drain pipe. That left the smart disc which was the only other weapon he had left. Royce ran out of ammo and was forced to fight using a hand tool. Hanzo switched to a katana and still put up a fight without a gun. Stans and Edwin only had a bladed weapon and not a very good one for being a threat to them, yet they were both taken.

"Anytime" beat the crap out of Dutch without using any of the weapons, just his bare hands and elbows. In fact, he only used his knives because he was going to kill him, when Dutch tried to trick him.

Against the Xenomorphs is a different matter compared to a human.

 

What are you saying? They started with their preferred weapons. The Predators subsequently neutralized those weapons. All you are explaining here is that a bunch of dangerous humans ultimately lost in a fight. That's completely different than someone who was never deadly in the first place.

No it isn't. The fact that they were still lethal enough to dispatch humans doesn't mean they weren't less lethal.

 

I'm sorry, but the unofficial name for the Predator in the second film is "Candy". EDIT: At least in my mind. I like the name "Anytime", though!

 

His name is "P**** Face".

 

On the issue of how crap the Predators are without their weapons: I think a big factor is that while the Predators are really good hunters, for the most part the conditions under which they're deadly are shooting-fish-in-a-barrel conditions. The way they take enemies out generally isn't that honourable; most of the time in the first movie, if not the second, the Predator is still cloaked and invisible when he kills. Their hunts seem to happen in the times and places they select, and seem to be primed so the Predators have a strong initial advantage over the target. If the target overcomes those initial advantages -- as takes place in P1, P2, and AvP, the Predators aren't terribly good at improvising. It sort of makes the logic of the hunt a bit odd, but on the other hand that's a big point of the films: that the Predators' code of "honour" isn't actually that honourable or fair, because they never really intend to cut their target a fair break. The Predators seem to like a little risk in their hunts, but in reality in isn't meant to be a risk at all for them. Not to mention they're sore losers when beaten, at least on the P1 and P2 films.

 

And then there was that one time when the Preds decided to form a dance team....

 

Edwin was deadly to humans. Hence he was taken. He could be a threat to them and then again, he could not be. He didn't have to be a soldier or a mercenary to qualify. Just a hunter of men and women, which is what a serial killer is.

The situation in the first AVP film was about a test of their skills, versus conducting a routine hunt. The goal was to start out with the weapons they bring with them from the mothership and reach the ones in the pyramid, while also dealing with the Aliens. Sometimes there was no causalities and sometimes there were. Even with all of their weapons, they can still be taken out as we saw in the second flashback. That only happened when things went out of control and they were forced to take drastic measures. In the second film, since this was a clean up mission, the Wolf gathered all the weapons he could carry and used them accordingly. The hunts in Central America and Los Angeles were standard hunts, with one Predator hunting his chosen prey. They armed themselves accordingly.

 

No he wasn't. He never was. He killed them by putting them in situations where they didn't want to fight back until they could not. The fact that you have caused someone's death, or even that you little problem with killing someone says nothing about one's global ability to physically threaten another. This guy couldn't. At all.

 

The Predators hunt those that can and have killed. That's their criteria. The Predator that went through the subway and killed a bunch of passengers, did so, because they were armed. The one guy who was being bullied by the gang members and whips out his gun, was nothing like Harrigan and Lambert, but he was still armed and still a threat in some form.

 

Those were also young Predators on their rite of passage hunt if I recall. So they were sent in on the assumption they'd have their weapons and usual armaments.

As for Predator tech and advancement, if we take the most recent Alien vs Predators game into account the Predators still wipe the floor with the humans. They blew up a Colonial Marine vessel without breaking a sweat and then proceeded to carve a path through all the marines on the surface while dealing with all the Xenos. So I would guess their tech is either obscenely high even by the 1980s so even a hundred years later they still vastly outclass us, or they have still been upgrading their stuff to stay far ahead.

 

The "cleaner" from AVP:R was such a great character and almost reminded me of Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fiction.

 

That's why he is called "The Wolf", in reference to that character. If he fails, then it winds up being a larger number of Predators coming in to deal with the mess.