Dan Trachtenberg doesn’t miss.
From 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and Prey (2021) to June’s Predator: Killer of Killers and this Friday’s Predator: Badlands, the Philadelphia native’s feature career continues to stockpile rave reviews. Badlands, which he co-conceived with his Prey writer Patrick Aison, blazes a new trail for the now 9-film franchise that began with John McTiernan’s 1987 classic, Predator.
Trachtenberg has now turned a Yautja, the well-established villain that is colloquially referred to as the Predator, into the protagonist of his latest installment. Furthermore, he’s paired the Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) with Elle Fanning’s Weyland-Yutani synthetic known as Thia, who’s heavy on words and light on legs. Dek has been discarded by his Yautja clan, and in a last-ditch effort to prove himself, he flies his brother Kwei’s ship to Genna, the most dangerous planet in the universe, to go on an unsanctioned hunt for its most mythical beast. That’s where he meets Thia, and through some persuasion, he realizes she can aid his quest.
The filmmaker knew he needed a lush environment to sell the otherworldly quality of Genna, and Trachtenberg soon found himself prepping to shoot in New Zealand. During that time, he received an invitation from one of his stablemates at 20th Century to come and hang out for the day. The source of that invite was from none other than James Cameron. The decorated filmmaker resides and works out of Wellington, New Zealand, and as the director of Aliens, the second installment in the Predator’s sister franchise, his advice could certainly go a long way. So Trachtenberg drove eight hours to visit Cameron at the studio where December’s Avatar: Fire and Ash was being worked on at the time.
In Cameron’s editing room, Trachtenberg explained his aforementioned plan for Predator: Badlands, and Cameron eventually gave his two cents when they sat down for dinner that night.
“When he sat down [at dinner], he said, ‘I was just thinking about what you’re doing, and I think it’s going to work,’” Trachtenberg tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Predator: Badlands’ Nov. 7 theatrical release. “So all that wind in my sails carried me back up to Auckland to tell my crew. The blessing of that guy — who has taken on some pretty impossible odds and pulled them off — was absolutely incredible.”
However, Trachtenberg would later learn during Badlands’ post-production that Cameron’s stamp of approval that made him feel like the king of the world was tantamount to a Jedi mind trick.
“There were a few specific questions that I had in mind, and I wanted to see if he could give us any helpful notes. So he saw the movie a couple months back, and he said, ‘I have to be honest with you. When I first heard what you were doing, I did not think it was going to work. But holy crap, you pulled it off,’” Trachtenberg recalls mid-laugh. “He either did not remember that first conversation that meant a whole lot to me, or he really does know what someone in my position needs to hear to get things done. I think it’s more the latter. So he put wind in our sails at just the right times, and I had to make sure we gave him a special thanks.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Trachtenberg also discusses how Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover’s legacy characters ended up in Predator: Killer of Killers nearly two months after its initial Hulu release.
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After Prey, the internet pitched every possible historical time period for your live-action follow-up, but you clearly had another ambition in mind. Did you create Predator: Killer of Killers to basically satisfy all that historical demand?
In some ways, yes. But the demand was also from myself. I loved the notion of what we had done [in the 1700s], but I really didn’t want to just do the same thing in a [another] time period. So I tried to find a way that we could do the historical mashup again, but still have it feel fresh. And the thing that really unlocked it all was the idea for the fourth act of that movie. We made something that you thought was an anthology, but it’s actually one story. So that’s what really drove us towards making Killer of Killers, and by making an animated movie, we could embrace the kind of violence that we expect from a Predator film. That was something that hadn’t happened yet in the franchise, and it was incredibly exciting.
Based on the ending of Killer of Killers, the closing credits of Prey didn’t go well for Naru (Amber Midthunder). Are you interested in telling that in-between story someday?
Frankly, the exciting part about the ending of Killer of Killers is that the door is open to tell the in-between stories and the after stories. We’ve had several really exciting ideas about any and all of it.
You also added Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Harrigan (Danny Glover) to the ending nearly two months after the initial release. What’s the story there?
We actually had them in the movie for a long time. This is great for TheHollywood Reporter, but we just could not get the deals done in time for our [June] release window. The deals were then finished just a few weeks later, and we took the opportunity to put them in around the time of Comic-Con. So the cameos were actually intended to be there from the get-go, and I’m so glad they’re now there for everyone to enjoy. It opens the door to all the possibilities that could be in anyone’s imagination.
Better later than never.
Yeah.
And now, with Predator: Badlands, you instead decided to reposition a Yautja as the protagonist. It’s a bold move because the argument against this type of choice has always been that you run the risk of potentially demystifying the storied villain. People made this case against the Star Wars prequels when they were first announced. So what prompted you to take the plunge anyway and defy so-called conventional wisdom?
On the one hand, it’s fun to take on a challenge. On the other hand, Badlands is not the origin story of the Predator. It is not a deep dive into the lore of Yautja culture or even one particular character. The original ‘87 Predator was so exciting because of how different it was from the other slasher movies at the time. Michael Myers, Jason, Freddy Krueger are all forces of destruction and true monsters. When the Predator was decloaked, we saw that what it was adorned with spoke to a culture, and it fought with a code. None of those other slasher movies would see its monster taking all of its advantages away from itself so it could fight its prey mano a mano, hand to hand. So even back then, we saw intelligence, skill and honor, and there was certainly more story there.
So I’ve carefully opened the door ever so slightly to give you a little bit more of a peek into that culture and code, without having the movie be more lore-focused than story-focused. I’ve given you just enough narrative underpinnings to connect to Dek and root for him on the gauntlet that he has to go through.
You paired a Yautja named Dek with a Weyland-Yutani synth named Thia (Fanning). Between Alien: Romulus and Alien: Earth, how much red tape did you go through to use that entity?
None! The secret sauce was setting our movie the furthest into the future among both the Predator and Alien franchises so that we did not have to worry about stepping on anyone’s toes. When we first started making Badlands, I don’t think I even knew about Alien: Earth. Maybe I’d heard that it might be happening, and I also wasn’t fully aware of what exactly the story was for Fede Álvarez’s movie. So I just decided that we will be as far away from it all as we could be.
There was some consternation online about the PG-13 rating, but then people theorized that synths’ white fluid and Yautjas’ green blood helped you avoid an R-rating. Is it actually true that the lack of human blood made all the difference?
Yeah, the same muscles in my body that made the choices on the R-rated Prey and the extremely R-rated Killer of Killers made all the same kinds of decisions in Badlands. There may not be as much as the animated Killer of Killers, but Badlands has an insane amount of severed limbs and decapitations and spine rips. It just so happens that all of that pertains to creatures and synths, as you said.
For a movie about siblings, it makes sense why the Duffer brothers have a voice cameo in Badlands. Was this your way of apologizing for having to exit the final season of Stranger Things?
(Laughs.) Excellent segue. Maybe it was. The truth of the matter was that I didn’t know that Killer of Killers and Badlands were going to get greenlit at the same time. So I thought I could still squeeze in a StrangerThings episode, but then they both happened at the same time, and I just could not do three things at once.
The Duffers were mixing an episode of StrangerThings at the same time we were mixing Badlands. We didn’t have a voice yet for Kwei’s ship’s computer, and I knew we were going to be heavily treating it, so it didn’t really matter as much what voice was fueling it, no offense to the Duffers. So I roped them in and surprised them. They were like, “Yeah, we’d love to be a voice!” And then I was like, “Well, here’s Yautja. You have to pronounce these insane words.” So we had a really fun time in the booth together, and it was pretty cool.
Naru aside, Killer of Killers and Badlands have left a few dangling story threads. Do you have a plan to merge them? Or do you intend to keep them separate?
What’s been fun so far is how separate yet subtly connected things are. I’m very aware of what was so wonderful about [2012’s] The Avengers. It happened after we had seen several [solo] installments, and we bonded with all the individual characters. It wasn’t like AVP [Alien vs. Predator] where you grab all the action figures and smush them together. What’s exciting to me is telling really unique stories that would be cool even if they weren’t in this franchise, but they make the stories inside this franchise even better. So we’ll see where that goes. We’ll let things cook, and we’ll follow the great, original, bold stories rather than forcing things to coexist together.
James Cameron was once asked why he seemingly wants to spend the rest of his career making Avatar movies, and his response was that he can tell virtually any story he wants in that world. Well, assuming you want to hold on to the keys to the Predator franchise for a longer period of time, can you satisfy most of your creative interests in this universe?
Now that I’m this deep in the franchise, I’ve reflected back on why I’ve been able to make the movies that I wanted to make anyway inside this universe, and I think the answer lies in the code of the Predator. It has a great fulcrum for both action and emotional storytelling. He is a creature that is looking for the most worthy, and I think all of us are constantly measuring ourselves up to ourselves, to those around us and to what we feel up against in the world. So just the very nature of the Yautja serves as a great emotional mirror, and it also allows the stories to kick ass and have all sorts of fun with inventive action and visual spectacles. So this franchise encourages the kinds of movies that I love and that I love to make.
Speaking of Jim Cameron, you thanked him in the credits. I know he lives and works in New Zealand, which is where you shot. But what did he contribute to Badlands?
I consider myself incredibly blessed, and it’s probably largely thanks to both of us making movies with the same collaborators at 20th Century. He saw Prey and loved it, and so we had been in touch. And when I went down to New Zealand to start prepping Badlands, he invited me over to see what he was doing down in Wellington. So I spent some time on the stage with him and in the edit bay [of Avatar: Fire and Ash]. In the edit bay, I told him the crazy thing that we were doing, and the crazy way we were doing it, and how it would be very new and new to the franchise and new to me as a filmmaker.
Then we drove separately to dinner, and when he came in and sat down, he said, “I was just thinking about what you’re doing, and I think it’s going to work.” So all that wind in my sails carried me back up to Auckland to tell my crew. The blessing of that guy — who has taken on some pretty impossible odds and pulled them off — was absolutely incredible.
We then shared the cut with him when it was not quite done. There were a few specific questions that I had in mind, and I wanted to see if he could give us any helpful notes. So he saw the movie a couple months back, and he said, “I have to be honest with you. When I first heard what you were doing, I did not think it was going to work. But holy crap, you pulled it off.” He either did not remember that first conversation that meant a whole lot to me, or he really does know what someone in my position needs to hear to get things done. I think it’s more the latter. So he put wind in our sails at just the right times, and I had to make sure we gave him a special thanks.
Along those same lines, I’m going to read you a quote that was said to me recently: “Dan Trachtenberg saved that franchise. His work is impeccable. I saw Prey, and all I could do was say, ‘Sir, my hat’s off.’ That was a really great mythic take. He’s the right shepherd for [the franchise].” That was Shane Black. What went through your mind as you heard another notable filmmaker sing your praises, especially one with deep ties to the Predator franchise?
I’m such a massive fan of Shane Black, and the year that Prey came out, I was at the Saturn Awards, as one is, when you make a movie like Prey. Eric Kripke, the creator of The Boys, was there. I directed the pilot of The Boys, and we’ve stayed friends. So he and I were talking, and then I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. COVID was still happening, so they were wearing a mask and a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt. I could feel that they were waiting for an opportunity to talk as I was talking to Kripke, and then I noticed that the Hawaiian shirt was actually a Monster Squad Hawaiian shirt. And that man was Shane Black.
He said, “I just want to come up and shake your hand.” He then said something like, “I ruined [the Predator franchise], and you really made it awesome.” He said things that I could only partially process. The Boys certainly has the voice of Shane Black in it, and Eric and I were both like, “Oh my gosh.” So I introduced Shane to Eric, and he said something about TheBoys too. It was just this incredible moment for us.
The movies that Shane has made are so filled with machismo, and while you have an idea in your mind of the kind of person that would make them, he was so generous and kind. I’ve now listened to so many podcast interviews with him, and he’s such a humble, awesome dude. I haven’t seen PlayDirty yet. It keeps popping up, so I just need the time to watch it. But I’m such a fan of Shane, so it was incredible to hear those words.
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Predator: Badlands opens in movie theaters on Nov. 7.
