Back in 2022, filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg unleashed Prey on audiences, a Predator movie that took place long before any other entry in the sci-fi franchise, with the movie’s Hulu debut earning tremendous praise from audiences and critics alike. Even though the movie didn’t land in theaters, its ambitious narrative and high-octane action entirely revived interest in the franchise, with Trachtenberg then tapped to develop further entries into the series. Not only did Trachtenberg helm Predator: Badlands, in which the otherworldly hunter becomes the protagonist instead of the antagonist, but he also directed Predator: Killer of Killers, an animated anthology that depicts the ferocious figure in different points in human history.
“I had three very cool ideas. One of them, the first one, the one I was the most excited about at the time, was Badlands. But then there was this other thing, that was Prey, [that] was really cool,” Trachtenberg recently shared at a press a event ComicBook attended. “We got to put the Predator in these different time periods and tell that story. I think the thing that made Prey special, though, wasn’t just Predator in a different time period, it was that the story we were telling was made better by the story of the Predator, and I didn’t want to just throw them into a different time period. I really wanted to figure out, if we were to do that kind of thing again, how could it be special? And what’s the kind of story we could tell that could be equally badass and awesome, but also emotional and thematic and character-oriented?”
He continued, “In thinking about the different time periods, I honed in on the idea of, what if we made an animated movie where we could express ourselves in a way that we don’t get to see? We’ve now had all these Predator movies and we’re doing this one that’s crazy different, but still with all the stuff … The other side of the coin that I love in Predator movies is that hard-R, crazy carnage. Wouldn’t it be cool to see that in a different medium? So we made this movie, Killer of Killers, at the exact same time, stupidly, but awesomely.”
By putting the Predator in the central role of Badlands, it required Trachtenberg and his collaborators to flesh out enough backstory for the Yautja culture. One of the biggest challenges involved developing the culture’s language, a process the filmmaker approached organically.
“That’s one of the cool things of the movie, is that, outside of very brief glimpses in other films, we’re on Yautja Prime, what is known as Yautja Prime mainly from extended universe stuff. There’s a lot in this movie that is more from the extended universe than is from things that are properly in the movie,” the filmmaker detailed. “I should mention the language. We, insanely, decided to really treat that properly and worked with, we reached out to the guy who does the Na’vi language [in Avatar], who was very occupied, and recommended his mentee. We did it the way that, for The Lord of the Rings, you would do Elvish, for Game of Thrones, you do Dothraki. Except for those, there’s more precedent, for us, there’s very little. As we discovered, with him being a language expert, all the stuff, and frankly, actually working with [Predator special effects artist] Alec Gillis, all the stuff that you’ve seen in other Predator movies is complete garbage. There’s no sense of it. People from the Internet have tried to make sense of it, but none of it was made with intention.”
He continued, “So we decided to make it with intention and we completely developed the language, so everything they’re speaking has actual rules and structure and all that stuff. And written as well as verbal. Very early on, we just did explorations, concept art explorations of what Yautja could be. I wanted to be very careful in making this, that I not fall into a trap that is making something that is more lore-focused than story-focused. I think, lots of times, when people do more in a franchise, there’s a tendency to really go whole hog into the Senate trading committees and whatever. I thought we should just have a little sliver of that, but not let the movie be like, there could be some expectation when people hear the premise that the movie is going to be all about the inner workings of the Yautja culture and that’s not — we wanted to still make it feel genre, feel very specific. Really, what it is, it’s an inversion of the premise of now the Predator is on a planet. He’s going to be hunted by things and has to use his guile to figure out stuff. While we were writing, we were doing concept art and things like that to figure out the world-building of it all.”
Not only did Badlands require the creative team to expand on the world of the Yautja, but new methods were also utilized to inject more life into the main hunter, known in the movie as Dek.
“We did a very new thing with the creature. The thing that’s been special about Predator is that it’s had practical suit effects. It’s one of the first big pioneers of that art. All the movies have featured that craft,” Trachtenberg explained. “The problem is that … when we did some early tests for this movie, we realized the obvious thing, is that it’s typically a horror character. It pops out of the shadows for a few seconds and we see glimpses and it’s cloaked for so often. This movie, you really wanted people to connect with Dek. Unfortunately, the rotors that go inside the mask that is usually adorned for the Predator not only affects all the physicality of the creature, so it makes people move a certain way, but also it just does not have the articulation to bring people in and connect to a creature. We were trying to do this thing of, we want you to bond with a horrific-looking creature. The methodology was a guy in a suit, and you’re seeing suit, the whole thing, other than his face. The face is all digital, largely handled by Wētā Workshop.”
[RELATED – Predator: Killer of Killers Movie Reveals First Trailer, Release Date]
While there have been a lot of technological advances in visual effects since the first Predator hit theaters in 1987, the filmmakers were tasked with finding the right balance of honoring the past while using cutting-edge techniques.
“The thing I should have mentioned, that I think is very cool about how we’re treating the faces — the CG is so that, we expressed this in Prey, where we had some [scenes] we would augment a lot,” the director clarified. “There was a lot of handover between the practical and digital, like in his hands and picking up things and things you would never notice. Some things, unfortunately, were a little bit noticeable. A lot of that, it was when we went to a face occasionally and it became a creature face. The cool of what we’re doing … where it’s digital, it’s meant to match the suit. So it’s not matching creature flesh, it’s matching his suit, which has a look to it, which Wētā makes amazingly, and should feel like an alien creature, but it’s still a little different than like when you see a full CG Gollum or any alien creature in any cool Alien. It’s that flesh is different than suit, and so the face perfectly blends in and is matching that suit quality. So, hopefully, it looks like real material.”
Conveying the physicality of the iconic creature is a task easier said than done, though Trachtenberg confirmed performer Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi not only rose to the challenge of playing the Predator in Badlands, but also offered an opportunity to convey components of the Yautja that he hadn’t anticipated.
“Let me tell you, this guy, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is the actor’s name. We had a very specific casting for Dek. We thought we would want a stunt guy and this was a real opportunity, because all the other Predators need to be like seven-foot-six. It’s very specific people that aren’t often trained stuntmen,” Trachtenberg pointed out. “They happen to be that size and they decide to get into this business. [Prey star] Dane [DiLiegro] did want to be in the business, but he also was an ex-basketball player, he was the one who played the feral in Prey. Here, it was the first time I was like, ‘Oh, we can get a proper stunt guy to be the guy who can move in the ways…’ And at one of our castings, we had a number of stunt guys and then this dude Dimitrius came up and the way he moved just had a great swashbuckle to it. He just was so cool. We set up a little physical obstacle course. That’s how we cast him. Then he did some dramatic stuff from the movie and it was awesome. I was not at all prepared for what he actually does, it’s so … I could not believe, how did we luck into this guy? It’s crazy that we found him. Then he gave so much to the movie and learned the language and, I mean, that language is, not everyone can do it. I can’t do it. I can’t even pretend. You have to make a whatever [click sound] in the back, and he can just do it. He would learn it that morning, if we changed lines or whatever, and it was incredible.”
Schuster-Koloamatangi also helped drive the facial performance of Dek, as Trachtenberg recalled, “It’s why there’s some of those dots there, he’s totally driving the animation. But then also, and this is important to say, is that it’s very much also shared with animators that are … if something in the look didn’t quite hit what we needed to … we’re really in this process where we’re discovering how to animate this face. It’s very different than Gollum or [Planet of the Apes] that are a one-to-one translation to a human face. They’ve got these mandibles, and we just discovered the other day, whenever Dimitrius blinks, we might not want to see the Predator blink. That might just be an eyebrow movement, and we tried that. Like, ‘Oh yeah, that feels more like that emotion.’ And how to make his smiles and snarls and whatever work with the mandibles, they’re different than the mouth inside. It’s all been very tricky and we’re, thankfully, really finding our way through it.”
Much like how Prey marked a new foray into the Predator franchise, Killer of Killers similarly marked a seminal exploration of an animated adventure for the series. While there’s a wealth of potential of what can be done in the animated realm, Trachtenberg confirmed the new movie wasn’t meant to merely set the stage for follow-up projects.
When asked if there were more ideas for animated movies, the filmmaker confirmed, “Certainly. I’m sure you guys see a cool movie and [say], ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if…?’ That [thinking] doesn’t turn off for me. So there’s tons of cool things. We’ll see if we get to make it. People have to like it. But it certainly wasn’t made … I guess the thing that we’re always trying to say is it’s not made [to feel] like it’s just Act One of something larger. I think that’s what we all mean when we say … Christopher Nolan would always say to make it as if it’s the only one. It’s really because you don’t want to feel like you were shortchanged by the experience and it was incomplete. These are very much, for me, I won’t sleep at night if I don’t feel like I really communicated with exactly all that I wanted to with both of these movies. So we’re really throwing all our hearts out there.”
Predator: Killer of Killers is set to hit Hulu on June 6th and Predator: Badlands is set to hit theaters on November 7th.
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