In 2018, the “Predator” franchise was on life support, if not outright dead.
The series, which started with John McTiernan’s 1987 action hit starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leader of a shadowy paramilitary unit who runs afoul of an alien hunter, had just endured “The Predator,” an ensemble attempt to — in writer/director Shane Black’s words — “event-ise” and reboot the franchise. But the movie received a cool response from critics (it has a 48 on Metacritic) and audiences (who gave it a C+ CinemaScore) and made only $160.5 million worldwide on a budget of $88 million.
What was meant to rejuvenate the franchise instead seemed like the nail in the coffin of a series that had already been through two inglorious “Alien” crossover movies and a movie where Adrien Brody took on the Predator and won.
And then Dan Trachtenberg came along.
His 2022 film “Prey,” released directly to Hulu in 2022, was a breath of fresh air – taking place in the 18th century in the Northern Great Plains, it followed a young Comanche woman (Amber Midthunder), who faces off against a prototypical Predator. “Prey” returned the series to its roots, focusing on characterization through physical action and once again making the titular creature a fearsome foe, through a seamless mixture of practical and digital effects.
Earlier this year, he followed up “Prey” with “Predator: Killer of Killers,” an animated feature released on Hulu that showed different warriors in different eras of human history dealing with the alien menace.
Now he’s facing his biggest challenge yet with “Predator: Badlands,” the first PG-13 installment in the series and another big swing — but this time for theaters. Can he return the franchise to its big-screen glory?
“I was thinking about what hadn’t yet been done in the franchise. And there was this sentiment of like, how come the Predator always loses? He’s supposed to be the galaxy’s greatest hunter and he comes to Earth and gets his ass kicked every time,” Trachtenberg told TheWrap about the seeds of “Predator: Badlands,” which makes the Predator the protagonist and teams him up with an android played by Elle Fanning.
He started thinking about a movie where the Predator wins. He started to think about scenarios where the audience would root for the Predator. He considered and then discarded an idea with the Predator in World War II, “kicking Nazi butt,” but to him it still felt like a slasher movie where you’re being asked to cheer on the killer.
Soon, his thinking shifted to, What if he’s like the protagonist on an adventure of its own? “That’s a movie that hasn’t happened in the ‘Predator’ franchise, certainly, but also in all of science fiction. We’ve been going to the movies forever and fallen in love with the creatures, sidekicks or the monstrous villains, and they’ve never really been the lead of the movie. That felt like, Oh my gosh, no one’s done a movie like this, right? That really was the first nugget,” Trachtenberg said.
And suddenly, “Predator: Badlands” was off.
Back to the future
Trachtenberg is used to playing in established franchises and putting his own distinctive spin on things. He broke through in 2011 with a fan film called “Portal: No Escape,” inspired by the hit video game. It currently has 28 million views. You can watch it below.
“The very thing that kind of put me on the map was a short based on ‘Portal,’ which was a puzzle game. This is when no one was thinking of movies based on video games other than ‘Halo’ and ‘Uncharted.’ No one was certainly thinking of a puzzle game as a movie. That was what I wanted to take on and say, This thing you’re not thinking of that way, look at how it could be cinematic. I’ve always found myself being attached to an underdog story,” Trachtenberg said. “I love the idea of taking something that people aren’t expecting much from and saying, Actually, there’s something more here.”
After his hit “10 Cloverfield Lane” was released in 2016, Trachtenberg was attached to various projects, including an “Uncharted” movie (eventually directed by Ruben Fleischer). He directed the pilot for Amazon’s “The Boys” and one of the very best episodes of “Black Mirror” (“Playtest,” starring Wyatt Russell). When he started thinking about what would eventually become “Prey,” he wasn’t specifically imagining it as part of the “Predator” franchise.
Instead, “Prey” “came from wanting to make a movie that was told through action, that had a unique protagonist, and had an underdog story fused with sci-fi and period, and then that was all that swirled together.”
Eventually, he realized, Oh my God, a “Predator” would be the greatest. Trachtenberg said that he had always admired Christopher Nolan, whose earthy “Batman Begins” came after the candy-colored “Batman and Robin.” Nolan “taking Batman that was last seen as very comic book-y, and saying, ‘Take this seriously. There’s a version of this tale that can be just as cool as you want it to be, and also be grounded and be meaningful.’”
After “Prey” was a hit with critics and Hulu subscribers, 20th Century, run by Steve Asbell, came to Trachtenberg to ask for additional ideas. One of those ideas wound up being “Predator: Killer of Killers.” Another was “Predator: Badlands,” which sees a young Predator warrior named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) travel to an inhospitable planet to kill a creature that seemingly cannot be destroyed. While there, he teams up with a damaged android named Thia (Fanning), who helps him track the beast. It is unlike any entry in the franchise, not only for having the main character be one of the creatures (part of an alien race known as the Yautja), but for its inventive approach to action and its emphasis on emotion as much as excitement.
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While some detractors will say that this is like giving Jason Voorhees his own movie, Trachtenberg pushes back. “A major distinction between the Predator and Jason and Michael Myers and Freddy – those are all forces of destruction in their films. You would never expect to see them take their mask off and look at their foe and say, ‘We’re going to fight toe to toe with honor right now,’” Trachtenberg said.
In the 1987 original, the creature “was intelligent and had skill, it had culture and a code. He comes to a planet looking for the most worthy foe.”
The ”Predator” franchise “was uniquely positioned to allow for a move like this.” The trick was maintaining the mystique of the character while also exploring its culture. “At no point are we saying, ‘Now, meet the Predator psychiatrist.’ We’re not defanging them,” Trachtenberg said.
For the scenes where Dek carries Thia around on his back, he was inspired by an image from “The Empire Strikes Back” when Chewbacca is forced to lug around a damaged C-3PO. And when Dek arrives on the horrible, creature-infested planet, it is the kind of image you’ve undoubtedly seen airbrushed on the side of a van or adorning the cover of a 1970s prog rock album.
“I’ve always loved that hybrid of fantasy and sci-fi,” Trachtenberg said. Whereas “Star Wars” was inspired by more “feudal medieval fantasy with science fiction,” he wanted “Predator: Badlands” to be indebted to “Conan the Barbarian” and “Heavy Metal.”
What “Prey” is to “Terminator,” he wanted “Predator: Badlands” to be to “Terminator 2” – “awesome action, thrill ride, state-of-the-art visual effects, but also incredibly warm and emotional.”
“What I wanted out of this experience was the full ride,” Trachtenberg said.
Assorted aliens
“Predator: Badlands” was one of three projects in the franchise that Trachtenberg pitched following the success of “Prey.” One of the others was “Predator: Killer of Killers.”
The animated movie is set in three distinct time periods, following three characters who run afoul of the Predator (a Viking warrior in ninth-century Scandinavia, a samurai in 17th-century Japan and an airman during World War II), surrounded by a wraparound narrative set on the Predator home world.
During a panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Trachtenberg showed a new ending to the movie that would reintroduce the characters played by Schwarzenegger (from the first “Predator”) and Danny Glover (from “Predator 2”), promising their return in future animated installments.
The animated feature was, according to Trachtenberg, meant to accomplish a few things. “It’s for people that were hungry for the Predator in a different time period, making sure we were delivering that and delivering the most hardcore experience that you ever could in a ‘Predator’ movie,” Trachtenberg said. “And also within it, table-setting the Yautja culture. We go to the Yautja home world. There’s some rituals that we see in that movie that are carried forward in ‘Badlands’ and even some vehicles and armor. I really wanted to lightly toe-dip into the culture that ‘Badlands’ was going to go so much harder in.”
“Predator: Badlands” is sprinkled with Easter eggs – to both the “Predator” franchise and the “Alien” series, but it never devolves into a series of winking, metatextual references. The filmmaker didn’t want to have a Predator and a human team up “because I knew it would just become any old movie where the human becomes the lead.” Instead, he wanted a movie completely free of humanity.
It then became a Predator/robot team-up. “Then the robot gave birth to, Oh, I know a company who makes robots,” Trachtenberg said of the “Alien” crossover. That led to other elements from the “Alien” franchise and beyond (eagle-eyed viewers caught a skull from an alien from “Independence Day” in the trailer). “All these things don’t come from, I know it’d be cool if we put this in the movie. It came from what the movie was already asking for,” Trachtenberg said.
It was just as important to Trachtenberg for the movie to be enjoyed by audience members who have never seen a “Predator” movie. This was part of the design for “Prey,” as well. “I always wanted to make sure that people feel like the movie is a laser that goes through them like, Oh my God, this movie was made for me,” Trachtenberg said. And this isn’t just for the “Predator” fans, but for anyone who “feels emotionally connected to the story.”
He said that he wished that somebody had made this movie when he was a kid. “A lot of kids have grown up with Star Wars and Marvel as their only sci-fi tale and this movie is really aggressive, in a way that I always wished I was allowed to see and never could,” Trachtenberg said of “Badlands,” the first PG-13 entry in the franchise. “Now they get to have a chance to see things that are going to blow their minds.”
He said that, in the same way that “Prey,” “Predator: Killer of Killers” and “Predator: Badlands” are far afield of each other, the final idea that he pitched for the franchise is starkly different from all of those.
“I didn’t know which one of those three that would even happen and just so happened that two of them have at the same time. I was not expecting that,” Trachtenberg said.
When it comes to “Predator,” it’s always good to expect the unexpected.
