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We’re celebrating the past here in Made in ‘87 week - or is it, we’re celebrating the past as it relates to the present? I mean, I know I’m spending a lot of time writing about blockbuster action romp Predator, and it’s not lost on me that I’m doing so while a new Predator movie - that is, Predator: Badlands - is playing in theaters. What’s interesting, though, is that had the Predator producers  not made one phone call, Badlands might look a whole lot different or, honestly, not made it to theaters at all. But they did make that call… A call to Stan Winston.

If you were a monster kid growing up, I might not even have to tell you who Stan Winston is. But say you loved a deprived childhood and need a refresher: Stan Winston is the SFX artist who designed The Terminator. He also was the artist who gave visual life to Pumpkinhead, and who won an Oscar for his work with James Cameron on Aliens, where the Queen was his design. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Before all that, Winston was a Hail Mary from the producers of the original Predator, whose production was… er, troubled.

You can learn all about how troubled in The Hollywood Reporter’s history of the OG Yautja film, but the long and short of it is this: after going through at least two monster designs (one similar to a weasel, one similar to an ant), and one guy in the suit (Jean Claude Van Damme, if you’re wondering), the Predator filmmakers were pretty deep into making a monster movie before realizing they didn’t have a real monster to work with. Fortunately, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself had a suggestion - his old Terminator pal, Stan.

In 1987, the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon debuted - and all our lives were changed. Watch this reunion of the original voice actors:

"We had tried to describe in the script as best as we could about the camouflage," explains screenwriter Jim Thomas, "The warrior stuff, the helmet coming off and the face. Not being artists, we could only go so far. And I remember when I first saw Stan Winston’s drawings and stuff, I said, “This is absolutely it. This is amazing!” The creature that they came up with wasn’t quite as light and fast as we had. In our script, we had the creature moving quickly through the canopy, much more simian-like, but once we saw that, we said, “Well, you’re not going to beat this.”

And indeed, they did not.

After arguably saving the Predator franchise in its infancy, Stan Winston worked on Edward Scissorhands, a couple Jurassic Parks, and even the MCU's Iron Man before passing in 2008. But not only does his legacy span multiple Hollywood icons, he's also had a makeup/SFX school named in his honor (where we got the header image for this piece, actually). And now that you know of what he brought to the franchise - maybe say give a silent “thanks Stan” as you go in and out of Predator: Badlands this fall.

Unless you would’ve preferred a weasel, of course.

Predator is available to stream now on Hulu. 

Get your wide-shoulder blouses and your Members-Only jackets, and go back in time with Popverse's Made in 87. Highlights include:

• Marvel Comics killed the X-Men in 1987 to reset the franchise - but it didn’t stick
• The Full House cast addresses some of the series’ biggest continuity errors
• How Spider-Man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was saved by a fired Marvel boss — and Ronald McDonald
• How NBC panicked after Diane left Cheers — and why Kirstie Alley’s casting sparked a quiet battle inside the hit show
• How Bart Simpson was quietly toned down from being "so mean" before The Simpsons' first episode, as revealed by his long-time voice actor Nancy Cartwright
• The 1987 Justice League reboot that made superheroes weird, hilarious, and unexpectedly human
• How The Golden Girls became a staple at gay bars in the 80s