AvP Movie Predator Equipment

Below you’ll find descriptions of predator equipment in the Alien vs Predator movie.

The Cloak
First up, we have the Cloak which all the Predators are able to use. This useful tool makes them invisible to humans as we saw in Predator 1 but in AvP, the cloak has no effect on aliens making them easily vulnerable. In the shot below we see a Predator leaping a 25-foot gap in the Chamber of Gods and in mid-air, he activates his cloak.

As you can see, he is practically invisible but you can just make out the silhouette in the middle of the screenshot. Unfortunately, the cloak is not fool-proof and can easily be broken by water or some malfunction in the device making some blue electronic sparks fly around its body. In the screenshot below, Quinn takes a shot at the Celtic Predator disrupting his cloak. The Cloak Device is also able to cloak weapons – even spears that are being thrown… at least for a little while. On the surface, when one Predator was fighting the mercenaries, he threw a cloaked spear at one of them and after a few seconds it materialised.

Vision
Predators have numerous vision modes – both in the films and the games. The most well-known is blue thermal vision which detects humans because of their heat. In AvP, for some reason the thermal vision has been changed to red/orange. From the story’s aspect, maybe this was because they were teenagers therefore had different vision modes to older Predators. From a technical aspect, I’m not entirely sure why the director didn’t use the blue vision. Maybe it was difficult to do, I’m not sure.

Aliens don’t give off any heat so the Predators in AvP have a new vision mode for them. Interestingly, in the video games, the vision mode is known as electromagnetic and it’s red. In AvP, the vision mode highlights aliens in green with a black background making them easy to spot.

Also interestingly, Predators themselves can be seen in both the red thermal vision and the Alien green vision. Perhaps a director’s oversight. In the video games, the Predators have a new vision mode for seeing other Predators called Pred-Tech.

On top of these two visions, the Predators also have two more, possibly even a third one. When the Scar Predator picks up Weyland, he looks at his body. He switches from the red thermal vision, to a yellow/green vision which makes his skeleton more clearer. The Predator looks down at Weyland’s body and it’s now a blue vision mode and slightly pink behind his rib cage. And yet another vision mode or a slightly different variant of the previous one, the Predator can tell where the cancer in Weyland has spread as seen in red behind his rib cage.

Following on from Weyland, later in the film, Scar uses his vision modes on Sebastian. The first one is probably the same as the one he used on Weyland. He appears as a blue skeleton but you can seen body organs in pink. He switches to the alien vision or perhaps a variant of that. The chestburster can clearly be seen in green but the human’s skeleton is blue. Does that mean human skeletons appear as blue in alien vision or is it a slightly different variant of it?

There’s also a point to be made about a Predator’s natural vision – their vision without the use of their helmet. In Predator 1, this was seen in red. In Predator 2, he was seen to have his regular blue thermal vision although this was probably a director’s oversight. In AvP, we never see what Scar’s vision looks like without his mask. He’s fighting the Queen Alien at the end without his mask so how on earth did he even see her without the help of his helmet?

Holographics
The Predators are seen to have advanced red holographic images appearing from their wrist equipment. The Celtic Predator uses this feature when the humans take the shoulder cannons. The holographic contains real-time 3d mapping. How this is done, I’m not sure.

Self-Destruct Mechanism
The self-destruct mechanism is used in the flash-back sequence when the three predators on top of pyramid are battling thousands of aliens and they have no other choice but to self-destruct. It’s much larger than the self-destruct used in the first film. Not sure why, probably another director’s oversight. The mechanism is also used at the end of the film when Scar takes off his self destruct device in the Egg Chamber and sets it to go off in a few minutes. Lex and Scar escape just in time and the device destroys everything and causes the surface to collapse.

The Explosion in the Flashback Sequence

The Explosion at the End of the Film

Armour & Weapons Against Acid
It’s worth noting that the three Predators’ armour or weapons aren’t resistant to Aliens’ acid. This is proven in the Grid Alien vs Celtic Predator fight. The Celtic Predator cuts part of the Alien’s tail off causing his wristblades to melt. The same thing happens to his armour a little later. It’s pretty strange that Predators have been visiting this place for hundreds of years and they don’t even have acid resistant weaponry. Of course, this could be put down to the fact they were teenagers and the right of passage was supposed to be really difficult. A little too difficult if you ask me.

Also check out the Predator Weapons page.