In 1985, brothers James and Jim Thomas penned a film script, The Hunter, about an otherworldly creature armed with near-magical powers of camouflage. The script has a counter-intuitive take on the concept of invisibility. Rather than a mere blank spot, the Hunter exists as traces of motion without coherent form, designed to produce "a dizzying, subliminal experience" and "an intensely visual, highly emotional confrontation for the viewer." During production, special effects teams used ‘inline mattes' to superimpose concentric images of background foliage onto an actor. This fake translucency turns the landscape itself into an aggressor: when the Hunter or, as we know him today, the Predator finally attacks, it's "as if the entire wall of the jungle were rushing in"... Read more.
