MOVIE REVIEW: Predator: Killer of Killers

Photos courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS— 4 STARS

Before Dan Trachtenberg’s soft spinoff of Prey, the Predator franchise had long lost its initial luster. Despite its efforts to remove the two-film Alien crossover, Predators in 2010 had its moments but was ruined by the Curse of Topher Grace. Eight years later, Shane Black turned The Predator back into a string of jokes with insufferable and insufficient human characters. Until Prey, it had been 32 years of one uninspiring plot after another by screenwriters-for-hire. In one film that should have seen the glow of multiplexes instead of the buffer of streaming, Dan Trachtenberg brought the intimidation factor back in Prey and multiplies it now with the new animated entry, Predator: Killer of Killers. Finally, a Predator is scary, and even better, interesting again.

Jumping right into the refurbished sense of lore, the film opens with a citation from the Yautja Codex that inspires its title:

“Go forth among the stars and seek only the strongest prey. They shall be your trophy. Become the killer of killers.”

LESSON #1: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS– That doctrine set by the Yautja, the extraterrestrial race of hunters, outlines the methodicalness that made this movie monster great back in 1987 and 1990. It came to you and your habitat. It stalked and observed its quarry, learning and plotting along the way. When it came time to engage the best of the bunch, it brought a merciless fight to the death. Perhaps its most intimidating trait of all was how it relished its kills with ritualistic mutilation to acquire its preferred skeletal trophies. Predator: Killer of Killers gets this monster back to that fatal business.

Predator: Killer of Killers offers a four-part anthology that extends the What If…? comic book-style premise of historical hopscotch that made Prey so successful. It does so with a standout animation style that strikingly emulates painted art. Created by an international collaboration of animators and effects houses, the various tints and textures are eye-popping and fill both foregrounds and background layers with tremendous depth of detail. This is far from hand-drawn characters slathered on top of unmoving matte backgrounds. This whole presentation practically pulsates alongside Benjamin Wallfisch’s suspenseful techno score. Like Prey, it deserved a theatrical chance to thrive.

That said, the journey begins in the Viking era of 841 A.D. with Ursa (Lindsay LaVanchy of Initiation), the Valkyrie of the Northern Seas. After years of conquest and pursuit, she has finally reached the stronghold of the conqueror Zoran (veteran TV and video game voice actor Andrew Morgado), who forced Ursa to kill her own father as a child. Now flanked by her teenage son, Anders (Damien C. Haas of Beyblade X), Ursa has arrived for her revenge. 

That’s all well and good until a Predator shows up.

Time jumps in Predator: Killer of Killers several centuries to feudal Japan where two young brothers, Kenji and Kiyoshi (both voiced by Louis Ozawa, returning to the franchise after playing the Yakuza Hanzo in Predators), are forced to fight by their warlord father for future ruling favor. When Kenji refuses to fight his sibling, he flees the village, allowing Kiyoshi to secure that birthright path to power. Years later, when their father dies and Kiyoshi assumes the mantle, Kenji returns to infiltrate his previous home on a foggy moonlit night to properly challenge his brother to the duel they never finished.

Once again, that’s all well and good until a Predator shows up.

Lastly, Predator: Killer of Killers arrives in the Atlantic theater of World War II in 1941. We are introduced to the Florida mechanic John Torres (all-grown-up former teen actor Rick Gonzalez of Old School and Coach Carter). He is supervised and often admonished by his superior officer and squadron leader, Vandy (genre legend Michael Biehn, adding his name to Bill Paxton’s and Lance Henriksen’s to complete the Alien-Terminator-Predator trifecta). With big dreams, John would rather pilot the fighter planes he services than turn wrenches to fix them. He’s left behind on the aircraft carrier while the team takes to the skies to intercept the Axis enemies.

Alas, that’s all well and good until a Predator shows up.

LESSON #2: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BEAT AN INDOMITABLE OPPONENT?— Throughout each of these historical encounters in Predator: Killer of Killers, we see distinctly different instruments of warfare and fighting styles at work. Ursa relies on her blade-edged shield for offense and defense, the Japanese brothers have their deadly katanas, and John Torres is whizzing bullets while strafing and dogfighting. Witnessing these showdowns of pitting classic Predators and their advanced technology against supposedly antiquated brands of combat is part of the inquisitive imagination drawn up by Dan Trachtenberg, his visualization specialist co-director Joshua Wassung, and writer Micho Robert Rutare. There is a tremendous draw to see the woulda-coulda-shoulda play out, as our humans rise to the occasion against an unforgiving enemy built to be too big, too strong, and too fast.

LESSON #3: DEATH IS THE GOAL— Beyond the skills and weapons of each combatant is their will and guile, and that’s where Predator: Killer of Killers also returns the franchise to a grizzled and grisly level of intensity. In the first chapter, Ursa’s mantra as to “why we fight” is “because our enemy still lives.” Matching the samurai-borne brothers and the alien visitors, death is the only goal, and dealing death is what it’s going to take to survive. From an action and entertainment standpoint, that rings up a sizable body count of creative kills that, in R-rated animated glory, mask zero quarter for softening or censorship. However, thanks to the steely resolve fortified within the invested character work, the gore split here matters and stings.

LESSON #4: A PROMISING FUTURE— Avoiding spoilers, the fourth and final chapter of Predator: Killer of Killers combines the results of the previous three portions fascinatingly for a knock-down-drag-out finale. Larger than that, though, what transpires bends time and expands on previously unseen lore for the franchise, revealing borderline revisionist prophecies to the history and purpose of the whole shebang and saga. They mark a progression that promises to continue in Dan Trachtenberg’s next live-action film, Predator: Badlands, coming this November. Love them or hate them, the implications made by Dan and company are awesome and huge, and precisely the mature and heady injection this franchise sorely needed. It’s time to trust Dan Trachtenberg.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1310)