[Dolemite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by En Sabah Nerd

Nothing ever officially indicates whether or not the masks are necessary to their survival. If the masks do help then we also know they can go without them for some time and this guy was really close to his ship. The mouth piece used in Predator 2 could just as likely be medicinal given his injuries, like it's some kind of morphine mask.

I think Predator 1 & 2 make it pretty clear that the Predators wear the bio-masks to help them breathe better in various atmospheres. There are visual cues that strongly support this:

• The Predators can't remove their masks until they unhook the gas lines
• The City Hunter was seen using a smaller, secondary gas mask after losing his main Bio-Mask (I don't think that was medicine, En Sabah)
• Danny Glover is shown coughing when he first enters the City Hunter's ship, and soon after he's shown having some difficulty breathing:

So, I think it's pretty clear that the Bio-Masks are intended to be all-around life-support gear with audio/visual enhancement, scanners, video recorders...pretty much whatever any given film's writer needs 'em to be, really.

The one inconsistency I'm surprised doesn't get mentioned more is the goof regarding the Jungle Hunter and City Hunter's heat vision, sans Bio-Mask. In Predator 1, JH's vision goes all red when he removes his mask, but in Predator 2 CH's vision remains exactly the same as when he had the mask on and doesn't . Hmmh.