Each creature in Predator: Killer of Killers looks distinct to a high degree. That trend was started in Prey with a Predator that looked quite different to the usual body proportions and facial details that the previous films had for our beloved hunters at that point.
Dan Trachtenberg, the director of both of the mentioned installments, as well as the director of the upcoming film Predator: Badlands has finally revealed his thoughts as to why he envisions the creatures in such a diverse manner, in a recent interview with /Film. When asked if all of the Predators are hunters or if we’re only seeing one aspect of their culture, Dan Trachtenberg had this to say:
Well, yes and yes. We are only seeing one corner of their culture, but I do think it’s a significant part of their culture. But in general, I’m a little bored by — and why they aren’t all wearing the exact same mask and why they don’t all look identical and why they behave in slightly different ways is, I get a little bored when we see Kashyyyk, the Wookiee planet or whatever, and they’re all just a bunch of Chewbaccas. Some have a little bit of a gray fur and some of them [don’t], but they’re all basically just Chewbacca, just standing around being Wookiees. [Or an] ice planet. The entire planet is ice, as opposed to no, just like us, we have ice on this part of the planet. And it’s kind of the exciting thing about Pandora, is it treats planetary stuff a little bit more realistically. Obviously, James Cameron’s the master of that.
But no, I think species-wise, they should be as varied, at least, as we are. But there’s definitely a culture rooted in warriordom, and I see them as a combination of, for lack of a better terms, the Frank Frazetta/Conan aesthetic and those fibers mixed with a Spartan-like culture that prides themselves on strength and brutality.
This isn’t the first time that we hear about potential explanations for the differences in their aesthetic design. Concept artist for Prey Michael Vincent has mentioned before that the Feral Predator might be the result of genetic isolation with different environmental pressures yielding in a variant of yautja that is adapted to a drier climate and how this particular Predator was omnivorous.
When it came to Dan Trachtenberg’s focus on underdog stories, further in that same interview, he states:
Yeah, because the Predator, or the Yautja, are coming from two different planets, looking for a great hunt, looking for the alpha, and sometimes dismissing things that do not appear to be worthy. So if your antagonist is looking for what’s worthy, then certainly your protagonist should be someone who is becoming worthy, or there’s a little bit less conflict there. However, I think we found in the first two chapters of “Killer of Killers,” a way to tell the human story. I think the third one is very much an underdog story and where it goes from there, but I think the first two are certainly a way to approach the human side of a “Predator” story without relying on the underdog genre.
In a question about connectivity between Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers, and Predator: Badlands, the director confirms the connections yet clarifies that they aren’t necessary to view to fully enjoy each installment on its own:
I mean, I like to think that the very end of the movie ensures that it is not off in its own little corner, that they do touch. But I’m also keenly aware, and I was nervous, that people might view the animated movie as homework for the live-action. I sometimes feel like, in all the universes that are out there, that sometimes, with so much coming out around the same time, that things can feel like homework. And I’m not the first director to say this, but no movie is contingent that you see the others to enjoy them.
Dan Trachtenberg further explains his inspiration for the fighting choreography and the possibilities that animation brings in such circumstances:
I will say, I’m a huge action film junkie, specifically Hong Kong action movies of the ’80s and early ’90s were really my awakening. I think the feeling that people had watching the Star Destroyer come overhead in the beginning of “Star Wars” — which I also loved and was very impactful to me — but that specific [feeling] like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing,” that, for me, was seeing “Hard Boiled.” For the first time, I couldn’t believe I was seeing what I was seeing. And probably maybe a year or two before that, specific to “Killer of Killers,” was seeing “Akira.” And there’s specifically that move in the beginning of the movie, but the end of the bike chase when Kaneda steps off the front tire and does a kick. It’s a move that is so cool, so inventive, and could never happen really in live-action.
Clarifying further, specifically in terms of The Sword chapter:
We also worked with a stunt coordinator for The Sword chapter that I had developed a relationship with on “Prey” named Jeremy Marinas, who’s with the 87Eleven team. I think he just did the “Ballerina” movie that came out the same weekend. He’s really incredible and helped ensure that the fights were surprisingly authentic for martial arts nerds or historians. They’re fighting with a pretty strict amount of authenticity, in the ways they’re wielding their weapons or their swords in particular. But also coming up with really cool things and allowing me to riff on cool things that I haven’t really been able to unleash in an action sense the way I’d always wanted to, in the way that was burning inside of me in high school when I would go off in a daydream and picture my own Jackie Chan fight, what I would do with Jackie.
Thanks to ace3g for the news.
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He mentions a couple of deleted scenes. More talk with Freya at the campfire telling a story about the Predators taking somebody. Another one finding skinned hanging bodies.
the frank frazetta style is a big part of the dna, right from the get go.
https://i.imgur.com/PcNbo97.jpeg
THE BRUTE, THE BUTCHER, and THE SKY HUNTER.
Here's my only gripe: The explosion was not enough to prove he died. Instead of the cattle ship pickin up the ww2 pilot, they should have had a scene where Sky Hunter walks into his garage and confronts him, with burn scars all down a side of his face and body. Have him fulfill his hunt and HE be the one to get the ww2 pilot and bring him to the cattle ship. Shoulda had Sky Hunter live on.
I can see it a little bit.
Hell yeah it does.
What he sighted there is the extended opening sequence in which no dialogue is spoken, as an influence on "The Sword."
I didn't get much Once Upon a Time in the West either, but I respect it. (Dan please give us a Jill/Cheyenne/Harmonica!)
There's a description for each pick here:
https://letterboxd.com/crew/list/films-that-influenced-predator-killer-of/detail/
For Best in Show, Trachtenberg had to say:
How the heck did Best in Show inluence KoK?
Also, Once Upon a Time in the West 🤌
I guess I ought to watch Best in Show. Only one on that list I haven't seen.
Agreed. One thing Prey did right was that it didn't dwell on the tension-wrecking, wiki-style "lore" of the creature. It brought the story back to humans trying to cope with the unknown and finding a reflection of themselves, just like the original movie.
I've seen the production notes on the design of the Prey creature and its gear, but the unspoken implications of the actual finished movie are far more interesting: instead of being a "desert subspecies" variant from an action-figure product line, this is instead an alien using versions of its technology from over two centuries before another of its kind met Dutch in the jungle.
The movie Prey itself implies that the creature's weapons are less sophisticated, its gear looks more recently derived from a non-spacefaring culture and its camouflage can't engage as cleanly not because it's some sort of "new Predator" from another biome (as in the production notes), but because it's a creature from more than two hundred years in the past of a living, changing society. Its body and features look different, because why would reflections of humanity all have the same countenance and build? Its aim and tactics are more or less the same, because the creature is us but through a mirror darkly and we are unlikely to stop big-game hunting 200 years from now.
"Creature from the past" does a much better job of presenting the mystery of it while convincing that it really is a story from centuries before the one that introduced us to the Predator series. I appreciate that the good creature design came out of a "desert Predator" concept, but that design is best realized by a movie that gave it entirely different implications, preserving the mystique of the creature as a character... and that didn't use it as an excuse to introduce a gaggle of new toyetic creature designs.
Listening to this now. There's an interesting stray comment about a cut idea that would have been explored that would have explicitly pinpointed Feral and the Predator from "The Shield" as being from the same clan.
The scene would have had another member of the Viking clan, a woman named Freya, telling a story about a Predator encounter in her past while raiding Greenland, and someone else in the group would have cited/compared the Predator of Freya's story to Grendel (which I guess would in turn have further set up Ursa referring to Warlord as Grendel in the fourth chapter).
I'm less about anthropomorphism in my space hunters and more about keeping an aura of mystery. It simply works better to keep the audience guessing instead of showing every aspect of predators and keep making them more human every singe entry. Prey did it right, KoK kicked me in the high hopes after three excellent stories.
Super pro this idea - but I hope the work is put into actually showing these different cultures. The Predators we see in the Badlands do seem more in line with the original two, but they need act like them as well - if they're still just roughhousing and killing everything in sight like Feral and the KoK trio I'll be a bit disappointed
When the creature in the original Predator movie seemed like it might come from a culture that is no more obsessed with "strength" and "brutality" as today's workaday culture is obsessed with hunting elephants and rhinos;
When its behavior towards its prey might have reflected an alien version of why real-world big-game hunters use rifles instead of bomber jets and napalm, risking injury or death from their game fighting back;
When it seemed entirely possible, even likely, that the creature hunting Dutch came from a culture where most of the creature's kind punched the clock building the luxury technology the hunter employed, just like with real-life big game hunters, and just like with Dutch and his own men;
When Predator was a straightforward portrayal of what happens when the manliest men, the hunters of hunters, meet a hunter who hunts them instead, not a movie about humans vs. Klingon rip-offs wearing masks.
But, no, even when someone like Trachtenberg tentatively steps out into the shallows of that original idea, suggesting that maybe the creatures don't all come from a Klingon-rip-off monoculture where they all look the same... they still have to come from a culture where everyone is obsessed with what they do, everyone's a hunter, just wearing different clothing.
How far Predator has fallen.
https://x.com/A4EPodcast/status/1931774289012719685
See! I was right after all.
If you want to approach it from scientific perspective of course all life have variation between species and even between individuals of the same species. It's not a stretch of the imagination to think of predators have this variation to due to selective pressures.
I actually love the idea of Dek having a short crown because he's young. The more predator's age the further swept back their dreadlocks get.
I did absolutely love the quality of Ferals suit though, arguably the best suit since P2.
Some takes look like a chinese bootleg knock off version of a predator (prey) because they deviate too much.