Films and Fiction

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Contains Spoilers for Predator: Killer of Killers

We return to the Predator universe for the first time since Prey in 2022, as Dan Trachtenberg brings us his latest installment in the franchise with Predator: Killer of Killers.

This movie is a first for the franchise, as it’s animated rather than live-action, and is also an anthology, telling three different stories in three different time periods, as the Predator hunt new victims in the form of Vikings, 17th century Samurai, and WWII fighter pilots.

As it’s an anthology, some parts work better than others. The idea of the Predator taking on warriors from different time periods makes a lot of sense, and it’s something that’s been hinted at since the first film, where it’s referenced as an old legend by Anna, and further reinforced by Predator 2, when Harrigan is given the flintlock pistol that later appears in Prey. It’s cool to see the different fighting styles, and the different weapons; as in Prey, there’s an evolution of the Yautja tech, they don’t yet have the plasma caster so have to rely on different weapons, and arguably, these time periods make for better hunting, as there’s a more personal style of fighting, with weapons like swords and axes, as opposed to the automatic rifles and grenade launchers of the present day.

The first segment takes place in 9th century Europe, following a group of “Vikings” involved in a blood feud, and is probably the weakest of the three parts.

The second is set in 17th century Japan, which seems like a natural place for the Predator to hunt, with the warrior culture, the “cool factor” of Samurai and Ninja imagery, and plenty of atmosphere.

The final story involves WWII fighter pilots, which introduces a new perspective, as we’ve never really seen the Predators use their ships other than as transportation to get to Earth, before continuing their hunt on foot.

The biggest problem is that each story feels rushed. It’s not exactly their fault, as they’re on a tight schedule, as barely twenty minutes each, and it’s a feature of the anthology style. But it means that the characters are pretty blank, beyond their single main personality trait. It also means that the Predators are taken out without much fuss. In the other movies, it’s very much the long game, as the Predator slowly picks off the team until just one or two remain, who then have to use all their skills to win. There’s the suspense as characters don’t know what’s hunting them, the gradual realization it’s not human or animal, and the desperate fight for survival, while trying to find some weakness in the creature.

Unfortunately, there’s no time to include any of that, which means the Predator gets killed off within a few minutes of the first encounter, all in a single scene, without any build up or suspense, which does ruin their threat somewhat, and makes Dutch and his team look like noobs. There’s also a similar element to Prey, where the Yautja essentially kill themselves with their own weapons, rather than the hero having to use their own skills, which is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot, and is another way to ruin their menacing presence.

As I say, some of these problems are a part of the anthology style, and the need to get things over quickly, and I would have been fine with them, if it wasn’t for the fourth and final segment, which really jumps the shark.

After the three different stories, we get a final one that brings them all together and caps things off. We see that the Viking, Ninja, and pilot are all together on a ship, being transported to the Yautja planet, where they are expected to go gladiator and fight each other to the death, with the winner getting to go one-on-one with the big Predator, who appears to be some kind of king or chief.

They really doesn’t make sense and should have been left out. All three of these characters have been cryogenically frozen, which means that the Predators have been waiting for more than a thousand years to bring the Viking into the arena, which seems like a ridiculously long time, and it also doesn’t make sense as Naru, the girl from Prey, is also in a cryo-chamber, so why did they wait another two-hundred years to pick up a pilot, rather than using her for the fight? It’s not even as though the pilot would be a good fighter in the ring, and would be useless in hand-to-hand combat.

It also raises questions about the Predator’s code. I always thought they were supposed to be hunters not just fighters. Their sport came from travelling to a strange world and hunting prey in its own environment, not just fighting and killing their targets, but tracking them, observing them, and getting the kind of sport a big game hunter would, rather than a simple smackdown in the ring. Even in Predators where the humans are transported to another planet, they are still released into the wild, to give the Yautja more sport, hence the name “Predators” rather than just “Killers”.

I always imagined that Predators worked mostly alone, and that they looked for sport simply for their own prestige and their own gratification, and gave you some respect if you won. Not now, it seems, they take you captive and force you to fight, so that even if you win on Earth, you’re still likely to die anyway, by being shipped off to another planet. It also raises the question of why Dutch, Harrigan and the others weren’t picked up too. It’s not explicitly stated they weren’t, but seems a contradiction to everything revealed about the Predator code in those films.

When you look it its individual parts, Predator: Killer of Killers has some good scenes, cool action, interesting designs and new weapons, and aside from some choppy animation, generally looks good. It’s an intriguing idea to see Predators hunting in these different time periods, where different fighting techniques are used to defeat them, but as a whole it falls short, especially in the final, unnecessary, attempt to tie everything together.

We didn’t have enough of a connection to these characters to care about them fighting each other, and it lacks the balance of action and horror that the other movies had, focusing instead purely on the action and gore (I can’t count how many decapitations there are). There’s none of the suspense or stakes of the live-action movies, and it opens up a lot of questions about the rules of these creatures.

To put it simply, Killer of Killers is an interesting idea that fails in the execution. It’s not The Predator bad, but it’s more surface level in its successes, dig too deep and you see the cracks under the paint.

Predator: Killer of Killers is streaming now on Hulu/Disney+.