SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Predator: Killer Of Killers. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
Since the launch of the franchise in 1987, the various Predator movies have principally operated independently. They have all had different settings and different characters, with the one thing tying them together being humans going up against a Yautja (the in-universe name for the Predator species). What’s particularly special about the new animated feature Predator: Killer Of Killers, however, is that it successfully changes the formula – and its central idea is one that could end up having a massive impact on the future of the canon.
In the new movie (available now for Hulu subscribers), it’s revealed that humans who successfully manage to defeat Predators aren’t simply left to go about the rest of their lives; instead, they are abducted by the Yautja, brought to the alien species’ home planet, and kept in a kind of stasis until they are called upon to participate in a kind of champions tournament. It’s a massive idea that changes the way that audiences look at the aftermath of all the previous movies, and Dan Trachtenberg explained to me in an interview last week that it was the idea that made Predator: Killer Of Killers a story he wanted to tell. Said the filmmaker,
That notion was the real unlocking of this movie. It was when I had that idea that I felt ready to take the concept to pitch to the studio. We had thought, you know, Josh Wassung, my co-director, brought up the idea of what if it's an anthology movie? And I thought that was a clever way of being able to keep it as a movie rather than a series, which would've been a separate arm of the movie studio.
Predator: Killer Of Killers is an anthology movie, with three individual segments about Vikings, samurai and ninjas, and World War II pilots – but those tales are all linked together via the bigger idea that humans who defeat the Yautja are abducted following their victory. The stories are awesome independently, but Dan Trachtenberg and co-director Josh Wassung recognized that there are many different approaches that can be taken for an anthology structure.
It wasn't until I realized, 'Oh, wait a second, there's Twilight Zone: The Movie, but there's also Pulp Fiction. That's also an anthology movie.' We can have interconnected stories that culminate in a cool way, and then that cool way was like, 'What if they grabbed...' All that stuff started to unfurl in front of me, and yes, allows for even more stories to be told in the future for sure.
The most significant potential is holds, of course, is the fact that it allows the possibility for the Predator franchise to bring back characters from previous movies – with the final scene of the animated film suggesting that there are thoughts about doing exactly that. At the end of Predator: Killer Of Killers, it’s revealed that one of the champions being kept in stasis on the Yautja home world is none other than Naru – the protagonist from Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey played by Amber Midthunder.
It was previously thought that Naru might have a very limited role to play in the grander Predator franchise due to the fact that Prey is set in 1719 – centuries before the events of all of the other canon features – but the new film totally changes the equation. We don’t have any specific clue as to how long the Yautja keep champions in stasis, but it can clearly be for a long, long time, as demonstrated in the fact that the three protagonists from Predator: Killer Of Killers are all from very different time periods in world history.
The table is clearly now set for Naru’s return… but what about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch from Predator? Or Danny Glover’s Mike Harrigan from Predator 2? Or Adrien Brody’s Royce and Alice Braga’s Isabelle from Predators? Or Boyd Holbrook’s Quinn from The Predator? The door is wide open now, and I’m thrilled about the idea of the franchise walking through in the coming years.
At present, we don’t know precisely how the Predator will dip back into the continuity’s past, but we won’t have to wait for the next installment generally speaking, as the next film in the canon is now just months away. Providing a whole new angle for the franchise by featuring a Yautja protagonist (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), Predator: Badlands is currently scheduled to arrive in theaters on November 7 – and after the extreme badassness of Predator: Killer Of Killers, I am even more hyped than before.
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