Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. not only worked on the Fugitive Predator for The Predator but they worked on an additional two Predators known as the Emissary Predators which were ultimately cut from the film. While the Fugitive hewed quite close to Stan Winston’s original Predator, the Emissary’s were intended to be something completely different.
These Emissary’s have largely been absent from any of the behind-the-scenes coverage but thankfully ADI has just shared an awesome new video on their YouTube channel that shows the evolution of the design of the Emissary Predators!
Early drafts of Fred Dekker and Shane Black’s script, THE PREDATOR, had two characters called Emissary Predators. The Emissaries were of the Scientific Class, the ones who design the technology used by the Warrior Class. Our first instructions were to imagine them as older and wiser versions of the familiar Predators. Later they became fearsome, and eventually they were not part of the final film. Still a fun design challenge! Thanks to the designers who contributed to the Emissaries shown here in this video– Farzad Varahramyan, Ken Barthelmey, Bryan Wynia, Mike Larrabee and Steve Koch.
We recently had the chance to chat to ADI’s Alec Gillis about their work on The Predator for the AvP Galaxy Podcast. Naturally we asked him all about the Emissary Predators and their experience working on the new designs. If you haven’t already, be sure to give the interview a listen!
Keep checking in with Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest on The Predator! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien and Predator fans on our forums!
You should've wrote something good
ya' f**kin' hack.
New ideas aren't bad in of themselves,
your new ideas are.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq8DYbuheWl/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=imfl5tqyoof4
It's just something that is always taken into consideration in costume designs that fans and comics don't worry about, not an excuse for anything.
I'm genuinely asking because I haven't listened to the podcast.
That's a load of BS. Stan Winston studio made the original design with a human under the mask on mind TWICE and had zero problems. It was his designs that made us all fall in love with this character. Not Gillis and his cronies awful designs. All they have to do is give us the original designs with small tweaks. Not these stupid looking crab shell head predators with these warped facial proportions. All these designs including those derpy looking emissary costumes look like something someone dreamt up having seen predator only once and never again. Then they were asked to make a predator design with just that vague image their brain recalled. Like I've said before this movie is a hollow barley recognizable shell of a predator.
At the time, based on my experience, being alive and excited my Mother was taking me to this Rated R movie called "Predator", people weren't calling it a great monster movie. They were calling it a great Schwarzenegger movie.
Yet to some of us, the guy sporting the mandibles was the true star!
Too much at one time. If they had focused on adding new angles to the franchise in smaller doses, it could have gone a whole lot better. But everything together was just...so, so much.
It was entertaining as far as monster movies go. Maybe this is what fans thought when Predator first aired, "what a great monster movie! Now lets move on..." except they (we) never did
I think it would be much, much worse if the studio didn't intervene. It really looks like Fox backtracked this movie from being maybe a franchise killer to a not great, but still watchable (imo) Predator movie.
In a way, The Last Jedi toyed with people's expectations too, but it managed to keep it all in character (if you're willing to accept it not living up to your personal fanboy dreams) rather than just make it about something completely different.
The Predator is a nice film, just a very poorly thought through sequel. Whoever pushed this through Fox should ask themselves if they get what the franchise is about.
Yes they both were.
Was it Fugitive or Ultimate that was experimented on in the flashback? Is there any information on that?
So the problem was not the quality in scripting, casting, direction and execution, it was that they tried something new and the fans (and critics?) wanted predictable.
Indeed.
Doing what they specifically did, less so...
Copy and paste of what he said -
Well of course that would be totally inappropriate. Recently, going with the premise that Super Predators were practicing dna manipulation as the "Predators" script suggests, someone attempted to make the point that the Assasin Upgrade from "The Predator" could not belong to the same rogue, blasphemous Yautja clan with the Supers, because the Supers were a black subspecies and the Upgrade was not - and therefore, the Upgrade must have come from the honorable clan depicted in Predator, Predator 2 etc. Hoping this fellow fan just didn't realize what they were saying, just didn't realize how it was sounding, or what inappropriate parallels could be made, I just explained associating ideology with Yautja subspecies or race was problematic and extremely narrow thinking. And that goes with gender too.
I agree, the ones with the small mandibles felt the most "off" to me - although I think there is potential in varying the mandible and tooth sizes as a way of differentiating individuals, just like how different humans and animals have different jaw shapes and facial structures.
I think the eyes and brows felt "Predator" enough across almost all of the designs that it never felt too human to me, but I agree the narrower mouths feel more human and not in a good way.
Edit
To that end I think the finished versions were probably the best of the designs presented.
Not even that, it's too "sterile". Even humans (generally) don't cut roles along racial and gender lines, at the risk of seeming, you know, racist or sexist.
I mean yeah there's a place in sci-fi for interesting stories about one's role in society and whether one is "born" to be in a certain role, but I don't think "Predator culture" is the place for it.
That said,
re: the design concepts, I dig some of the designs early in the video with the dreadlocks "bundled" up and tied back behind the head, it re-frames the shape of the Predator head in an interesting way without full-on redesigning it (although the particular artwork felt a little "stylized").
The "scale plating" idea at 1:16 reminds me of the armor from 'AvP', especially the bit running down the middle of the chest and abdomen. Putting scale plates on the dreadlocks themselves is a novel idea, though. And the one at 1:21 feels like Berserker's armor from 'Predators', with the straps and cloth bands.
The one at 1:38 feels very "low-tech Prometheus" - the lower-abdomen ribbing and the ridges going up the neck remind me of the Engineer from the end of the movie, but then it's got cloth sleeves and whatnot.
Also while this might have just been because they weren't the focus, I like how the naked Predator body designs don't have anything resembling human genitalia.
I'm serious - I remember an idea tossed around that "male" and "female" Predators would be visually indistinguishable, and that any of the Predators in any of the movies could conceivably be male or female and the audience would have no idea. I always thought that was a neat approach.
I agree with SiL that the face concepts feel a little thin and squished, but I think part of that is the perspective. The faces look too "flat", but almost all of the designs are from straight-on. If they had some accompanying profile or quarter-profile drawings, I might find them more appealing - the designs didn't really start to fall into place for me until the 3D renders at 5:30
On one hand I'm not real big on the large, pronounced ridges going down the center of the top of the head, but on the flip side, shaking up the shape of the head in radical ways goes a pretty long way towards conveying "these are individuals" more than just changing their colors.
And in the BTS clips of filming the Emissary Predators, some of the more pronounced design features from the artwork feel a lot less extreme and it comes together a bit better.
I don't think they cut the roles along gender or racial lines. I think it has more to do with the genetic modification they introduced in the movie. It makes sense that not only their warriors are modified to play their role better, but their diplomats, scientists etc as well, explaining the different appearance . Still kinda lame though.
Maybe they wanted them to have different castes with different purposes and different physical appereance and attributes. Like warriors, diplomats, priests, scientists etc.
Kinda like the Tau from Warhammer 40k have them :
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d3/8a/df/d38adf3adc0212bf8a4983df61e667cb.png