"I think Predator has odd moments of self-consciousness too. The one interesting (as opposed to efficient) piece of screenwriting is the scene after they've stormed the rebel encampment, when the alien hunter is watching the soldiers in infrared. Carl Weathers's CIA agent thanks Duke for skewering a deadly scorpion on his back; Duke's reply – "Any time" – is played back with menacing distortion by the predator, until it sounds like a warning. The radio operator (played by Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black) tells a variation of the dirty joke he tried out in the helicopter, also concerning an echo. Landham finally gets it, and his booming laugh is picked up by the alien and played back, grotesquely. Echoes, echoes, and more echoes … until all the machismo is hollow. Something telling is going on here, tonally. The final image of the sequence is the predator watching the heat fade out of the scorpion in its own palm. It's like the film is saying: there's always someone bigger."