Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands Recieved James Cameron’s Stamp Of Approval

In a new interview with the folk over at Zavvi, Predator: Badlands writer/director Dan Trachtenberg revealed that he had the opportunity to meet the legendary James Cameron while Trachtenberg was visiting Weta during the early stages of production on the film.

“I still can’t believe I’m saying this, but James Cameron loved Prey and Killer of Killers. 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!”

I would consider it too low-hanging fruit to make a joke about the validity of Cameron’s stamp of approval after his own endorsement of the recent Terminator films – and I know you’re all going to do so in the comments anyway – but there’s no denying this must have still been such an elating moment for Dan Trachtenberg!

James Cameron had more to do with Predator: Badlands than the encounters between directors. When it came to shifting the protagonist focus of the film to the villains, Dan Trachtenberg turned to Terminator 2 for inspiration.

“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.”

The Predator: Badlands director goes on to discuss how the shift to focus on Dek as a main character influenced the approach that the film took with the design, explaining that the initial tests that took place weren’t quite hitting the mark. Be sure to head on over to Zavvi’s website to check out the entire interview!

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