Mac Eliot was the machine gunner on the rescue team led by Alan "Dutch" Schaefer in Predator, the 1987 film in which Bill Duke played him. A Vietnam veteran and the closest friend of Blain Cooper, he flew into the jungles of Val Verde with Dutch's men to find a missing cabinet minister. After Blain died he emptied Old Painless into the trees, then chased the Jungle Hunter until the creature shot him through the head and took his skull as a trophy.
Biography
Earlier Life
Mac Eliot served as a sergeant on Dutch's team, the small rescue unit that Dillon brought in to recover a cabinet minister lost in the jungle. Of the men Dutch led across the border, he carried the team's belt-fed machine gun. The team arrived at the American base in civilian clothes, and Mac rode in wearing a suit and sunglasses before he changed into jungle gear.
The novelization by Paul Monette filled in more of his past and marked him as almost as large as Blain, with a thick head set on freight-car shoulders and almost no neck. In that book he and Blain had served in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam fourteen years before the mission, and they had survived an ambush south of Khe San together when a whole platoon of 32 men was cut to pieces. Only Mac and Blain walked out without a scratch, and that bond carried them into Dutch's private team and through later work in Angola, Cambodia, Lebanon and Afghanistan. The novel also put them on the Sudanese Embassy raid in Berlin weeks before Val Verde.
The Helicopter Ride
On the night flight across the border into Val Verde, Blain cut himself a plug of chewing tobacco and offered it around the cabin. Mac refused it with a slow shake of his head while the other men turned him down as well. He had little patience for Al Dillon, the CIA man who had joined the team for the mission, and in the novel he and Blain grinned at each other after Blain spat tobacco onto Dillon's boot. When the helicopter reached the landing zone, Mac rappelled down the ropes first and Blain followed him into the dark. From the start of the mission the two men moved as a pair, and Dutch relied on that bond when he needed heavy firepower at the front of a fight.
Hopper's Men
In the jungle the team found the wreck of the minister's helicopter and the skinned bodies of Jim Hopper's men hanging from a tree. Dutch took dog tags from the bodies and recognized Hopper, a Green Beret he knew, then pressed Dillon on why another unit had been sent into the same area. Dutch told Mac to cut the men down, and Mac obeyed without argument. Looking at the bodies he told Blain that it was no way for a soldier to die, and that disgust stayed with him for the rest of the mission.
The Guerrilla Camp Attack
On the approach to the guerrilla camp Mac spotted a hair-thin trip wire and froze the line until he and Blain could rewire the claymore. When a hostage was shot, Dutch sent Blain and Mac to take out the machine-gun nest while the others hit the guards and the fuel dump. Mac fought through the huts with his M60 and, in the novel, smashed a guard's throat with a fist before he and Blain cleared their side of the camp. After the fight he found that the so-called cabinet ministers were dead CIA men, which confirmed his distrust of Dillon. When Poncho saw blood on Blain's arm, Mac joked that the wound looked like a Purple Heart, and Blain carried on as if nothing had happened.
Among the bodies Mac called Dillon over, motioned toward the trees, and laid his knife against the back of Dillon's shirt. Dillon spun with his weapon raised and found a scorpion on the end of the blade. He thanked Mac, Mac answered "Anytime," and crushed the scorpion under his boot before the team moved out with their prisoner, Anna. Once the camp was empty the Predator came down into it, picked up the dead scorpion, and watched its heat signature fade.
The Jungle March
On the march toward the extraction point Mac remarked that he had seen some bad bush before but nothing like the Val Verde jungle. Blain told him the place made Cambodia look like Kansas, and Mac called it a little taste of home. In the novelization Mac offered him a pull of Tennessee mash from his flask on the trail, and the exchange became a quiet ritual between two Vietnam veterans.
Mac's distrust of Dillon came to a head when the CIA man moved too loudly through the undergrowth. He stopped Dillon, put a knife to his shoulder, and told him that if he gave away their position again he would bleed him quiet and leave him there. Neither man knew that an invisible hunter had followed the team since the camp.
Blain's Death & Shooting The Jungle
The hunter killed Rick Hawkins first, then fixed the three-dot sight of its plasma caster on Blain and fired a single bolt through his chest. Mac reached him seconds later, saw the creature's shimmer in the trees, and screamed that it had got Blain. He picked up Old Painless and emptied the belt into the jungle until the gun ran dry, and the rest of the team joined in and cut a wide swath through the trees without finding a target.
The Predator novelization gave Blain a different death. There a spear entered at the base of his spine and carried his heart out through his chest into a tree, and Mac saw more of the attacker before he drove it off with gunfire. In both versions Mac was the first to reach Blain and the only man to glimpse what had killed him. When Dutch pressed him for a description he could only talk about eyes that disappeared, and he was already convinced the hunter was not human.
That night the team dug in with flares and claymores while Mac helped prepare Blain's body. In the novel he polished the 101st Airborne flask, drank from it, and put it back in Blain's shirt pocket before he closed the bag. He told Dutch that he had never had a brother and that Blain had been it. When a wild boar hit the perimeter Mac mistook it for the hunter and killed it with his knife in a blind rage, and in that same noise the creature took Blain's body from the middle of the camp.
Out For Revenge
Mac made Blain's death his own mission. He promised to carve Blain's name into the creature before he killed it, and his grip on the hunt tightened as the team tried to trap an enemy they could not see. When a homemade net trap failed the next day and the hunter escaped, Mac broke from the line and ran into the trees after it while Dutch shouted for him to come back.
Dillon went after him, and Mac pulled the CIA man into cover when Dillon called his name in the open. The two men settled on a simple ambush, with Mac drawing the hunter while Dillon waited to hit it. For a moment they worked as partners instead of rivals, and Mac pointed past the trees and said that he could see the creature waiting there.
Death
The hunter saw Mac coming and locked its three aiming dots on his forehead. A plasma bolt killed him before he could spring the ambush, and Dillon found him dead when he reached the position they had picked. Besides Dutch, Mac was the only member of the team who had wounded the Predator during the film, when his earlier barrage with Old Painless grazed the creature's leg and left a trail of its glowing green blood on the leaves.
The novelization changed the kill. There a vine in Mac's hand became the hunter's claw, and a razor spur opened his windpipe before he could fire. Film and novel both end the same way for the team. Mac dies on the chase he chose after Blain, and Dillon is left alone with the hunter soon after.
The Hunter's Trophy
After the kill the Jungle Hunter claimed Mac's skull as a trophy and kept it with the other remains it had taken in Val Verde. The skull that bears the hole from the plasma bolt sits among those trophies in the creature's cache, a final mark of the shot that ended Mac's chase. By then Dutch's team had already lost Hawkins and Blain, and Mac's death left Dillon, Poncho, Billy and Dutch facing a hunter that collected its prey one man at a time.
Personality & Traits
Mac was a good soldier who kept himself clean and controlled until Blain died. He dry-shaved in the field with a disposable razor, a habit that looked like discipline at first and later looked like a man trying to hold himself together under pressure. Toward Dillon he was cold and blunt, and he made clear that field noise could get them all killed. After Blain's death that control broke. He grew unstable, fixated on revenge, and finally ran into the trees alone.
Beneath the hardness lay a deep loyalty to Blain. The two men had survived Vietnam and a massacred platoon together, and they moved through the camp assault and the jungle march as a pair. In the novel Mac called Blain the only brother he had, polished the shared flask, and put it back on the body before the hunter stole it. Along with Billy he was among the first to insist that whatever hunted them was not human, and that conviction drove the chase that killed him.
Weapons & Equipment
Mac's main weapon was a shortened M60E3 machine gun, the belt-fed gun he cradled on the helicopter and carried through the camp assault. He also wore a Desert Eagle in a shoulder holster, though he never fired the pistol on screen, and he carried a combat knife and part of the team's supply of M18A1 Claymores. After Blain died he took up Old Painless, the handheld M134 minigun, and fired it until the belt ran dry in a failed attempt to kill the hunter.
The M60 gave him the team's sustained firepower beside Blain's minigun, and the novel treated that gun as the weapon he lived with day to day. None of it mattered against an enemy that could cloak and strike from cover. The plasma caster ended the chase before Mac could use either gun again.
Behind The Scenes
Bill Duke played Mac in Predator, which John McTiernan directed for 20th Century Fox from a script by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Duke was already an established actor and later worked as a director, and the film cast him opposite Jesse Ventura's Blain as the other large veteran on Dutch's squad. In early drafts of the script Mac's name was Blain, while the Ventura character was originally called Williams. The film opened in the United States in June 1987.
Paul Monette's 1987 novelization named him Mac Eliot, gave him the 101st Airborne past with Blain, and wrote a spur death in place of the plasma shot. That book also cast Mac as white and gave him racist dialogue toward Dillon and the locals, which the film does not follow. The real-life goblin spider Predatoroonops maceliot was later named after the character, one of several species in that genus named for Predator figures.
Famous Quotes
- "You're ghostin' us, motherfucker! I don't care who you are back in the world. You give our position one more time, I'll bleed you, real quiet, and leave you here. Got that?"
- "Whole platoon, 32 men chopped into meat, and we walk out. Just you and me. Nobody else. Right on top, bro! Not a scratch. Not a fuckin' scratch."
- "I'm gonna have me some fun. I'm gonna have me some fun."
- "Those eyes, they... they disappeared."
- "Out there. Past them trees. You see it? I see you!"
Conclusion
Mac Eliot was the controlled, hard-edged machine gunner of Dutch's team, a Vietnam veteran who refused Blain's tobacco, threatened Dillon for noise, and fought through Val Verde with an M60 on his hip. He survived the guerrilla camp beside Blain, the friend who had walked out of a massacred platoon with him, then lost that friend to a single plasma bolt. His revenge chase ended when the Jungle Hunter put the same weapon on his forehead and took his skull for a trophy. His death in Val Verde cut another man from the team and left Dutch facing a hunter that collected its prey one at a time.
Appearances
- Predator (1987)
- Predator novelization by Paul Monette (1987)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore
