LOVING THE ALIEN

PREY, A BOLD REINVENTION OF AN ICONIC ANTAGONIST, WAS JUST THE BEGINNING. AS WE FIND OUT ON SET OF PREDATOR: BADLANDS, DIRECTOR DAN TRACHTENBERG JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THE MERCILESS, MANDIBLE-WIELDING HUNTERS…

WORDS TOM ELLEN

BENEATH A SKY DOTTED WITH BRUISE-PURPLE CLOUDS, RUSHING WATER FREEFALLS DOWN 100 FEET OF VOLCANIC ROCK.

As it pummels the river below, the roar is so loud, you can barely hear yourself think. All around is lush, green forest, interspersed with moss-covered cliffs and dappled sunlight. It’s an idyllic sight — one that, ordinarily, would be a breathtaking reminder of the raw power and beauty of planet Earth.

Today, though, it has a dreadlocked alien stomping about in front of it.

It’s August 2024, and Empire is at Hūnua Falls, an aggressively picturesque plunge waterfall an hour outside Auckland, New Zealand. It’s the 39th day of shooting on Predator: Badlands, and this location is currently posing for Genna, a “death planet” housing some of the universe’s most fearsome creatures, on which an undersized Predator and a robot’s severed torso are stranded. Have you heard the one about the undersized Predator and the robot’s severed torso stranded on an alien death-planet? Probably not, because director Dan Trachtenberg is not in the business of re-hashing.

“In general, I’m always looking for: what could happen only in this movie?” he tells us, before braving the squelching mud to issue instructions to his Predator (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, clad in body armour and dreadlocked mask) and severed robot (Elle Fanning, sat in a hole to obscure her legs). “It’s a kind of buddy-comedy,” the director grins, as he returns behind the camera. “Prey was a solo survival tale; this is a relationship story.”

Prey is the reason we are here — the reason Trachtenberg has been given the keys to the Predator kingdom. Since John McTiernan’s Arnie-powered 1987 original, the franchise — about a race of vicious extraterrestrial trophy-hunters — had slogged through three decades of dodgy sequels and false starts. Then came Prey. Released to streaming in 2022, Trachtenberg’s slick prequel pushed the universe in a bold new direction, winding back to 1719 to track young Native American woman Naru (Amber Midthunder) as she protected her tribe against a dreaded (in both senses) invader. The film garnered glittering reviews and in the US became Hulu’s most-watched premiere.

“People liked Prey because it was lean and mean — a 90-minute thrill-ride,” Trachtenberg tells Empire a year on from Badlands’ shoot, from the more comfortable (albeit less picturesque) setting of his LA office. “It shared the same formula as the first Predator — starting out one thing, then becoming a slasher movie — but there was enough ‘new’ in the recipe, too. It was a film my mom could get something out of.”