The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend — Predator: Killer of Killers

This thing had so much potential and did so much failing to live up to it.

Or maybe it didn’t have that much potential come to think of it..

Predator is one of my favorite Eighties blast flicks, and given McTiernan’s cinematography, it’s held up surprisingly well. The story was simple: Thing Hunting Men and then Man Hunting Thing. It was as primal a story as you can get. What little you found out about the Predator was mostly from showing and not telling.

Like when Billy stood on the fallen log, clearly challenging the Predator. Up until that point, it had been hunting Dutch’s team, but when Billy challenged it to single combat, rather than just blasting him, it accepted the invitation to duel. Indicating it had a code it had to live by. It left the audience wondering things like, did the Alien even have a choice? When Dutch bellowed out his bull-ape roar of challenge into the jungle, it felt like the Predator had to accept and fight.

There was a little exposition here and there—when Dutch realized the Predator couldn’t see him, he said so. Or when the rebel girl talked about the local legend of the Monster That Makes Trophies of Men.

It was these very restrained elements that helped paint the picture. Great stuff.

However, it was, at the end of the day, a very limited story. You could change the setting, like in Predator II, which was set in an urban jungle. Or Prey, which was set on the American frontier. But fundamentally you’d still be retelling the same story: Predator comes to Earth, the Ten Little Indians scenario plays out, and at the end, the protagonist hunts the hunter and kills it. Maybe you could have a story where the Predator wins, but I haven’t seen that yet.

If you pay a great deal of attention to the characters and the setting, then it can still work. In Larry Correia’s samurai story, Three Sparks, a Predator comes to Japan in the 1100s. A very unconventional Samurai—who is a great hunter—is the protagonist. The author managed to write a satisfying adventure. The characters weren’t particularly deep, but that’s fine. Complex characters don’t thrive in Predator stories.

Because. Predator. Stories. Suffer. When. They. Are. Complex.

When I saw there was going to be an animated Predator anthology on Hulu, I was cautiously interested. The trailer started with a voiceover from an old woman: “Why do we fight, my son?” A young man’s voice replied, “Because our enemy still lives.” Nice and primal. There was clearly a medieval samurai story in it, so I was hooked.

There also appeared to be a World War II story. That could work—a Marine pilot and a Japanese pilot shoot each other down over a jungle island and have to work together to defeat the Predator. Yes, I was committing the writer’s original sin of making up a story better than what I was about to see; I wasn’t even close.

Pity. 

The film was by Dan Trachtenberg, who directed Prey, one of the very few decent entries in the franchise. Granted, I’m less optimistic about Predator: Badlands, so I should have been even more cautious about a straight-to-streaming flick.

First, you can tell it was made on the cheap. The animation is very, very herky-jerky—probably lower than 10 frames per second. Mapping was bad. Timing and spacing were off. They didn’t even bother with motion blur for low-action sequences. All of this screams “fast and cheap.”

So what about the stories?

Like I said, Predator stories thrive on simplicity—but there’s simple, and then there’s Simple Jack. The stories almost felt like they were made with a kids’ audience in mind… except they were way too gory for that.

And then came the Disney politics.

The first story revolves around Vikings. Promising, right? Sure, I was slightly concerned because Predator lore says they only show up in extreme heat, and this one was set in the Arctic. But that turned out to be the least of its problems.

The protagonist is a shield maiden in her fifties with a teenage son. Well, it’s Disney law, isn’t it? If you're stuck with whites as the heroes, the protagonist has to be a woman, and her son is going to have to die to make sure he does nothing heroic.

It ends with the Viking woman in a spaceship. Camera pans from her to a Japanese man.

Then we see his story.

Look, I’m not that big on cultural authenticity at any price. I actually miss the old Arabian Nights genre of movies. That said…

This one starts off with two brothers who are samurai. Their father—a daimyo (though, given how fast and loose this story plays with Japanese history, maybe he was supposed to be the shogun?)—makes the boys fight to determine who’ll be his heir. The protagonist refuses to strike his brother. His brother does not share that hesitation. The defeated brother runs off into the woods.

Fade out. Fade in. The funeral. Big Brother is now daimyo.

Darklings: I thought primogeniture was a thing in feudal Japan?

YES! Yes, it was. Also, the shogun had to give his blessing for any new daimyo. Occasionally someone else was chosen to lead a clan but that was usually a case where either the heir apparent was clearly unsuitable or somebody in the family was exceptionally ambitious. But it was never decided by holmgang.

Anyway, the loser of the family squabble becomes a ninja, because ninja clans were so accepting of outsider Ronins. I think the director must have fallen in love with that Overwatch short with Hanzo and Genji.

Anyway, the ninja goes after his brother the daimyo, and then the Predator shows up. The action’s decent, but again, the Overwatch short was better. The daimyo dies. Ninja brother ends up on the Predator ship.

He also had a bi-brow. I only bring it up because the next protagonist had one too. Coding is blatant. Again: Disney.

Third story: Hispanic Navy fighter pilot in WWII named Torres. This one was just plain stupid. No—it wasn’t plain stupid, it was Marvel stupid.

The pilot constantly undercuts any dramatic tension with jokes. And there wasn’t much tension to begin with because the story was too absurd to take seriously. The Predator is flying a cloaked starfighter… over Germany… in WWII… to shoot down US Navy planes.

Also, the Predator has one eye. Because, you know, pilots don’t need depth perception or anything.

I refuse to recount the idiotic dogfights. I have my dignity.

Then Torres gets kidnapped, and this is where everything falls apart.

The Predator franchise works mostly because of its mystery. You dole out a thimble of lore and let the audience fill in the rest. Like in Predator II when the alien chief tosses Danny Glover an 18th-century pistol as a trophy.

Going to Predator Planet was idiotic.

The plot: all the humans who killed Predators are cryo-frozen and brought to fight each other for Predator amusement in their arena. Winner fights the big boss Predator. So basically it's Mortal Kombat meets Battle Royale on space steroids.

At the end, the ninja and Torres win—because apparently a WWII fighter pilot can fly an alien starship no problem whatsoever. He just climbs in and off he goes. Just like Rey.  I don’t hate Disney enough.

The Viking woman gets put back on ice. As she’s being put back in storage we pan past the other captured “Killer of Killers.” I admit I perked up. Were we going to see Dutch? Danny Glover? Somebody from the old days?

No.. It was the Comanche girl from Prey. Were they setting up something for Badlands?

No. Amber Midthunder isn’t in Badlands’ credits, so even that was a waste.

Fine. Whatever. It’s over. I’ve wasted two hours of my life.

Were the action scenes good?

Yes. I’ll grant that. The director clearly worked hard to come up with original ways for humans to kill Predators. He mostly succeeded—even if the WWII thing was beyond retarded.

Final Verdict: Cheap animation, dumber-than-average storytelling, and Disney-mandated character politics combine into a mess that strips all the mystery, menace, and mythos from the Predator concept. 

The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend.

Discuss in the comments below

*I’ll start doing a series on Dark Horse’s old Predator comics when it gets closer to Badlands’ release date.