Director Dan Trachtenberg was just minding his business when he heard a conversation he thought would end his career. It was immediately after the first test screening ever of Predator: Badlands, and while in the bathroom, two people who didn’t know the director was standing next to them started talking about the movie. “One is saying, ‘Why the fuck would they make that movie after Prey?’” Trachtenberg recounted to io9. “And the other guy goes, ‘That was awful.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m dead. I’m dead… We’re screwed.’ I just wanted to die. I just thought, ‘My career’s over. [The movie] sucks.’”
It’s a story that, in the moment, Trachtenberg told himself he’d never recount to anyone. That was, if the movie was actually bad. Now, 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and almost $200 million later, the director knows those guys were in the minority. Predator: Badlands is a hit. And with the film hitting streaming this week and Blu-ray next week, we sat down with the director to go long and get honest about the project.
Besides the bathroom convo from hell, we discussed the evolution of the film’s extended homages to Predator and Aliens, multiple alternate versions of the ending, different takes on a few of the main characters, as well as the confidence to put early pre-visualization on the home release. Plus, no, his new Paramount deal does not impact the future of Predator. Read about all that and more below.
Director Dan Trachtenberg on the set of Predator: Badlands – 20th Century Studios
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Germain Lussier, io9: Before we nerd out about some Predator stuff, let me do my journalistic duty here. Congratulations on the Paramount deal. Does that deal mean that you will never be directing another Predator movie again?
Dan Trachtenberg: It does not mean that. No no no no. I am simultaneously figuring out all of the next steps for the Predator franchise. I’m in this moment that I was in when Prey came out, where I was like, “What do I do next?” and got very excited about a Predator protagonist and got very excited about an animated movie with multiple time periods, and then they just happened to go at the same time. And so that’s where I’m at with Predator now, is, “Oh my God, there are so many exciting things we can do.” But also now I have this deal at Paramount where I’m thrilled, and they are thrilled, to make some of the original movies that I’ve always had in my head and heart. And of course, they also have very cool IP and all that. You know, timing may affect certain things, but both things are in my heart.
io9: They do have a lot of cool IP, so, between that and original movies, anything’s on the table at Paramount at this point?
Trachtenberg: Anything’s on the table.
io9: Thank you for addressing that. Okay. Two things I really want to hammer in on are my favorite bits in the movie, which are the homages to Predator and Aliens at the end. So let’s start with Dek kind of suiting up with the stuff from Genna. How intentional was that to be a Dutch getting ready to fight the Predator thing?
Trachtenberg: Incredibly intentional. The most intentional. That was like the first part of the idea, before any other things came to mind, was like “He is Dutch.” And the movie became a little less of this, but at the heart of it was inverting the premise that he is going to be hunted by robots or by the creatures on the planet. That was going to be the fun thing. And if there was one idea that made me want the movie to happen the most when we were just figuring stuff out, it was “Oh my god, he can meet this little eel-like creature and then wear it on his shoulder as a shoulder gun. Like an organic shoulder gun.” It was like “Oh my gosh!” That then became the other idea of “He is going to be using the planet as his weaponry.” How dope is that?
Dek on the hunt. – 20th Century Studios
io9: I wondered about some of the special features on the home release. It seemed like the squirter, or whatever you call it, was kind of reverse retconned to be like “Oh, we need something to be that iconic Predator shoulder weapon.”
Trachtenberg: I wish it was, but actually it was more I was looking at designs for things, and then was like “GASP! Wait! It could! We could put…” and quickly got into like “Can you draw a thing where he’s got it on his shoulder?” It kind of spiraled that way, and I could not believe we had the idea. It was like “Oh my god. We get an idea like that, like now you gotta make the movie.”
io9: And did that then make the creature a little more prevalent, like the whole scene in the river?
Trachtenberg: Yeah. Well, I think the next really exciting thing was like act two of the movie, the first half of the movie, is everything he’s dealing with, and then the end, it can be him using all of that. That’s a thing only this kind of movie can afford with all the crazy creature design that it requires.
io9: Okay awesome. That’s A. Then B, of course, is the Power Loader. Tell me about when that idea came on and the balance of “Yeah, obviously this is Aliens but at the same time we needed to make it our own.”
The Super Power Loader in Badlands. – 20th Century Studios
Trachtenberg: Yeah, that was the second thing that was like, “Oh my god, I had to make this movie,” and it wasn’t there from the beginning. And I remember being very nervous about pitching it to the studio, because I wasn’t quite sure of the appetite for how much we could include from Aliens. So we did concept art so we could pitch it and it was one of my favorite pieces of concept art. And it was early—so, it was Dek riding the back of a creature holding a flaming sword with half of Thia also on the back of a creature, I think, holding a bow and arrow, homemade like Arnold [Schwarzenegger]’s in 1987. And then another little creature that became Bud, but it was different. And they’re facing off in the foreground with a giant yellow foot for a Super Power Loader. And that was just like, “Oh my god, this is a reason to make this movie.”
The challenging thing with that was that the brilliant James Cameron, who gave us the Power Loader, also gave us these awesome mechs in Avatar that have machine guns and weaponry. That’s really what you want to do [with a new Power Loader]. Like the great antagonist for Dek, who has to use creatures and organics, is technology. Now the Predator is up against a worse technology. But I couldn’t also steal from Avatar. And I think everyone was a little bit nervous in general about all the designs, like “Let’s make sure we’re not Avatar.”
And also, the fun of the Power Loader is that it was a piece of utilitarian equipment that was repurposed for combat. And so I knew that I still had to do that. And I think that the thing that helped us concoct the sequence that still allowed it to be intimidating was that [Tessa] has also taken his weaponry and that she would have Dek’s or Quay’s shoulder cannon repurposed, and the three dots are on the Predator. That allowed for the Super Power Loader fight to be ratcheted up the way it needed to be.
io9: And to become your own as opposed to a little bit more on the nose.
Trachtenberg: Correct. Not just an homage. But it’s where the movie wants to go. It wasn’t just, “Hey, remember this thing?” It was like, “Oh yeah, he’s now up against something even worse, and that’s what they would have,” and it all grew organically.
io9: Because it’s way further in the future with Weyland-Yutani, and you’d assume they’d have better versions of everything by then.
Trachtenberg: Correct.
Dek and Thia. – 20th Century Studios
io9: When we spoke last, we talked about your conversations with James Cameron. Did Cameron ever say something to you like, “Hey, that looks familiar”?
Trachtenberg: I mean, I told him about it. I don’t know if I showed him that art, but I definitely told him about what we were doing. I showed him a video. The night that we were there, I think I posted the video to Instagram too. We were out shooting the sequence with the Super Power Loader, and on an iPad, we used that to see in real time where the Power Loader would be for scale and reference and all that. And while we were shooting, I shot a little video and I said, “Look what we’re doing tonight.” And [Cameron] was like, “Well, it’s all the same family.” But he didn’t comment specifically after seeing the movie on that scene with the Super Power Loader.
io9: When you think of the Predator, you think of its weapons, and you think of the cloaking device. Where did the idea come from to make the cloaking device something a Predator has to earn and achieve?
Trachtenberg: That was from our writer Patrick Aison very, very early on. Just a beautiful touch. And I assume we were already in the zone of like his weapons would be taken from him when he gets to the planet because we wanted to make sure Dek was on his back foot and feel more like Arnold in the original. So I think that fueled his thought of “What if the thing is he doesn’t have a cloak? That has to be earned,” which is a fun piece of culture and lore. And you think about it like in Casino Royale, he says “Bond, James Bond” at the end of the movie. It’s not something he has at the beginning. So we wanted it to be along those lines.
io9: That’s cool. I love it. Yeah. Now, Killer of Killers added that little extra awesome thing to the ending. Were there ever any big changes to the end of Badlands?
Trachtenberg: No, it just was slimmer, before showing it to people. It was a much briefer fight with the dad. It was much more Kurosawa-esque, very similar to the sword chapter in Killer of Killers. A showdown with the fun reveal of who killed who. And when we first screened the movie, everyone said, “We want more from that fight. That’s the dad from the beginning.” They really wanted more. So the only difference in version was that it expanded and turned into what it is now.
The father in Predator: Badlands. – 20th Century Studios
io9: So it was always going to be closing this chapter, but opening up a new one with “Hey, now we have this trio”?
Trachtenberg: It definitely ended on the trio. There was sort of a [chuckles] “Hi Ho Silver” moment that was hilarious, where Dek and Thia are on the back of Bud. That was something that early on, I think, because of that concept art, I always wanted to see Dek riding the back of the Kalisk to fight against the Power Loader. And I narratively could not figure out how to get that to happen. So I just tried to force it at the very end. Because the idea of “Now we’re riding Bud” was cool to me. I’m sure people would make fun of it. But it was very silly at the end of our movie. And they were laughing so hard. Like there’s an outtake of Elle [Fanning] and Dimitrius [Schuster-Koloamatangi] on the back, just like this horrible dark ride at Disneyland, like a carousel. It was really funny. And so that needed to change for sure. And from that, the need of “How could we finish this?” came the idea of “Oh my gosh. Wait. What if mom?” And I was also thinking of the end of Killer of Killers, like it’s fun to use that imagery there of the ship going off in the sunset, and [in Badlands] the ship coming from the sunset, but in the same kind of aesthetic.
io9: A literal mothership coming.
Trachtenberg: There you go.
io9: Rewatching the movie again, the Kalisk is such a cool character. It’s this perfect, indestructable weapon. Was that ever explored in more detail? Because it probably had such an incredible evolution in some way so I was wondering if you ever expanded on it?
Trachtenberg: It’s interesting. Different drafts of the script had a bunch of different attempts at what that creature was. And there were some where Bud was the Kalisk. Like there was no mother. You meet little Bud and then he molts and sheds and grows into the [adult]. But I don’t know, it just felt a little supernatural to me, not unlike Gremlins with Gizmo becoming the [creatures]. So there was that. There was the idea of a feeding ground where you saw a lot of carcasses, and this was meant to be like the last one. And I had a whole speech written at one point that Tessa theorized that they kill their young, which is why you don’t see very many Kalisk, so that they can remain the strongest, and obviously that would mirror his father trying to kill him. So there were little attempts here and there. And, you know, as we go forward, there now we may have a final attempt at what stories are behind them.
Dek vs the Kalisk. – 20th Century Studios
io9: I love hearing about the different iterations of the movie because you get a lot of that on the home release, especially in the deleted scenes. I’m wondering, how do you go about selecting those? And also, I was blown away to see so much pre-viz in them. That never happens. Was there any pushback there to reveal such an early, secret part of the process?
Trachtenberg: In this case, it really was just me and my producer, Ben Rosenblatt, saying, “What about these?” And the editors. Us all going, “Oh, maybe this scene, maybe this scene.” And we pretty much put everything. There may have been things that were just a little bit too small or too short to be like, “Well, what the heck was the point of that?” But yeah, I mean, the one that’s in the trench, we wanted to include that because they did so much awesome work. They put [Thia] in the water, and the visual effects are incredible. And I was like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe we can’t have this in the movie.”
And pre-viz, yeah, I mean, hopefully people watch with the commentary and can hear all the dialogue is very much placeholder. And that one scene that was eventually turned into the Kalisk den with big synth fight. But, look, you and I both cut our teeth watching behind the scenes, listening to audio commentary. So I learned filmmaking from that and love the idea that things like this are a resource for people, and also love the work that was put into it. Not only my cool ideas, but also the artists who did awesome things and inspired the stuff that eventually got into the movie. And I wanted that to be visible to someone at any point to see what that stuff could be. And it’s long, and you can watch it or not, but I think there’s a tacit agreement between viewer and deleted scene that you’re going to go, “I get why this is deleted.” I’ve never seen a deleted scene that was like, “That should have been in the movie.” But yet there’s still just something interesting about it. You can watch or not watch.
Image: 20th Century Studios
io9: So you didn’t feel any kind of trepidation or vulnerability showing any of those things?
Trachtenberg: If the movie wasn’t well-received, I would not [have shown them]. I will tell you a story that I told myself I would never tell. Like, this is such a crazy thing. And a thing that I really wanted to get off my chest. But I was like, “If the movie does not work, then I can never tell a soul about this.” But when we first screened the movie in Sacramento, first test screening. I’m terrified because we’re showing people no visual effects, Dimitrus [without the Predator effects], like this is not really what the movie is going to feel like. And we flew up, and I was super out of it because I take medicine to fly. I go to the bathroom the second the movie ends. I’m at a urinal, and two guys walk in. And as they come in, one is saying, “Why the fuck would they make that movie after Prey?” And the other guy goes, “That was awful.” And I’m like, “I’m dead. I’m dead.”
And I walked back, and we were going to get the results from the screening, and I couldn’t tell the studio, “We’re screwed.” I just wanted to die. I just thought, “My career’s over. It sucks.” Thankfully, the actual reaction from everyone at the screening was much more positive. It was not perfect. We had work to do. But it was much more positive than that. Like I walked back from the cliff quickly after. But to have the first moment of showing an actual audience be that… And if the movie was terrible, I would never tell a soul. But because we fixed issues and the movie worked out, I’m able to now confidently say that it was tricky at a certain point.
Predator Badlands, complete with some excellent deleted scenes and featurettes, is now on digital. It’s available to stream on Hulu and Disney+ on February 12 and is coming to Blu-ray, 4K, and DVD on February 17.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
