“I still can’t believe I’m saying this, but James Cameron loved Prey and Killer of Killers”, director Dan Trachtenberg told Zavvi. “When we were preparing to shoot in New Zealand, I was going down to work on the effects at Weta, and he came over to show what he was doing with the new Avatar – I was still incredibly nervous about my pitch for this movie, so I wanted to explain to him what it is we wanted to do with the franchise to hear his thoughts.
“We relocated from the editing bay to dinner, and when he showed up, he sat down in front of me and told me that he’d thought about the pitch for Badlands in depth, and he thought it was going to work. Hearing James Cameron say that it was going to work was all we needed to have the wind in our sails going into that shoot.
“A month or two ago I finally showed him the nearly finished cut for the movie, and he wrote a lovely letter to me afterwards. In it, he confessed: he never thought this movie was going to work when he first heard about it, and he was delighted that it did!”
Redesigning The Predator
Trachtenberg’s third film in the Predator franchise – but shockingly, the first to grace cinema screens – stars Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek, the young Yautja warrior who is outcast from his tribe of Predators for being weak, tasked with finding and killing a mightier foe before he can be welcomed back with open arms. His mission takes him to Kalisk, nicknamed the death planet due to its fatal combination of plants and wildlife that can kill anything in their tracks.
Centring a story not just on a Predator, but a Predator whose bark is far worse than his bite, is one of the many bold decisions Trachtenberg has made here – can you transform the ultimate killer of killers into a conventional action movie hero? The director knew this would only work if you became emotionally invested in Dek as a character, and his design was crucial for this to work.
He explained: “The biggest challenge was finding a way to allow his performance to be as emotional as possible. We wanted to remain in the tradition of the franchise and keep our Predator as a man in a suit, which meant we had to do a lot of early tests to try to figure out a way to maintain this, as it was crucial the suit would allow for emotional subtlety in the performance; it was originally designed to be scary and ferocious, and to be seen only briefly, usually at night, not for this.
“The initial tests came up short, so we decided that it would be a man in a suit with an open cowl, so the face could be digitally altered, which was another challenge. Not just making it mesh aesthetically with the suit, but in terms of not restricting the performance; when you think of the great CG performances, from Gollum to Planet of the Apes, they’re human because their faces match the performer’s human expression.
“The Predator’s face doesn’t match that; he’s got these giant crazy mandibles in the way! Finding our way through that was the trickiest part of the whole endeavour, but we found a way through it, and I’m thrilled with how we pulled it off.”
How James Cameron Shaped The Movie
Once on Kalisk, Dek finds stranded robot Thia (Elle Fanning), with the pair teaming up to try and survive in the wild and potentially track down the ultimate prey that lurks there. Trachtenberg has said that he’s taken inspiration from westerns and post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but the unlikely buddy comedy at the movie’s heart takes its influence from none other than James Cameron.
“I haven’t really been able to speak about it, but the other major challenge was turning a monster into a hero in a way that maintained his ferocity, even though he wouldn’t be as badass as he’s previously been – to make a movie riddled with violence, but with more heart than you’d expect. And that’s why my biggest inspiration is Terminator 2, because after seeing the first Terminator, you’d never assume that a sequel would be the kind of thing you’d recommend your mum go and see.
“But I remember seeing T2 and telling her that she’d love it, and she did, and I think that’s a really special thing; to have a movie literally titled Terminator 2: Judgement Day, that can be as brutally violent as the first, but also really emotionally profound and stirring. I wanted this movie to have that same balance, and that’s what drove me towards making sure the lovely relationship between Dek and Thia was at the core of the story.”
Alien Crossover
The James Cameron similarities don’t stop there. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ll know Thia was created by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, which reaffirms that the Predator films exist within the same universe as Alien – although the bombastic action here is naturally closer in tone to Cameron’s sequel than Ridley Scott’s slow-burning original.
Don’t worry though, there are no Xenomorphs here: we waited until the very end of the credits to make sure there wasn’t a post-credits reveal and everything. This franchise crossover is the opposite of the cheap fan service you might fear, initiated for reasons other than studio executives wanting another Alien vs Predator monster mash.
“It was part of the story from very early on, as soon as I started thinking about that relationship between a monster and a robot – a penny drop moment where I realised I knew a company that made them, which just happened to be owned by the same studio! I think it’s cool to link between franchises without the giant forces in them, sharing these small touch points rather than forcing a Xenomorph or Ripley into the story.
“It’s an approach we don’t often see, and I think I found it more comforting than daunting to play in the Alien sandbox in that way. I’d be freaking out if this was a more traditional crossover, but this is more exciting; no matter the franchise, any fan wants to see something bold and fresh, not just the obvious.”
The Boldest Predator Gamble Yet?
Trachtenberg has been on the record announcing that he’s got another standalone Predator adventure in the works, but its future will naturally rest on how this bold gamble is received. A Native American period piece and an animated anthology may have preceded it, but this is still a mega-budget blockbuster where the lead speaks in an entirely made-up language, and the first act features no spoken English whatsoever.
“I’m very lucky that Prey was so successful and proved that we could do something unexpected that could still delight people. It seems crazy to do a movie like this with no human characters, and large portions that are subtitled from a language nobody on Earth actually speaks, but everybody who worked on this movie knows that this was precisely what made it so fun to make.
“We always want to make things that are bold and unique within the franchise, and I think everybody realises that an approach like this is required to get people off the couch and go to the movies. You have to give audiences a ride they’ve never taken before.”
Predator: Badlands is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 7th November.
