Director Dan Trachtenberg Wanted ‘Predator: Badlands’ To Feel More ‘Conan The Barbarian’ Than ‘Star Wars’
In seeking to keep Predator: Badlands true to its respective source franchises and avoid having it slip into a mainstream soft sci-fi feel akin to Star Wars or Star Trek, director Dan Trachtenberg says he made it a conscious effort to approach the film not as a ‘space epic’, but rather a Conan the Barbarian-style adventure story.
His second overall Predator outing following 2022’s Prey, Trachtenberg spoke to his creative intent for Badlands during a recent interview with Collider editor Nate Richard, as conducted during a recent on-set press junket held with multiple members of the mainstream entertainment press.
The director began with a reflection on the ‘language incompatibility’ that serves as a plot-moving point of tension between Badlands‘ two protagonists, the undersized Yautja warrior Dek and the recently-rendered-legless Weyland-Yutani android Thia, who find themselves teamed-up in service of completing their shared-but-differently-motivated goal of killing a trophy beast known as the Kalisk.
“Part of the fun of it was that it was gonna be unusual and challenging. In concept, that was the fun of being limited.
“I remember someone saying or getting a lot of feedback. And the first movie I did [10 Cloverfield Lane], was a bottled, contained thriller, and everyone always was like, ‘Oh, it’s so hard that you were making that one location, that’s such a challenge,’ and actually, the reality is that makes it way easier. Being inside that box and trying to find a way to make that interesting breeds more cool creative things.
“And the same thing with all the challenges with this. Being limited in language and being able to have to communicate so much more visually, makes everything that we’re doing that much more charge and the things that we are saying when he’s speaking, and what the filmmaking has to rise to the occasion to become. all is leveled up by having that limitation.”
Revealing that he originally pitched the film as “Chewbacca and C3PO: The Movie”, Trachtenberg then turned to discuss how Badlands would provide a different experience from Prey, particularly as it was intended as more of an “adventure movie” than its predecessor:
“[Badlands] is trying to continue to combine a sometimes very composed, sometimes very whimsical, but then also sometimes docu style, like really, really maintaining the combination of those things. Prey had a little bit of that because it did have, there was still an adventure movie quality to it. This movie is way more adventure-focused. But the fun of the buddy relationship really does demand to be some whimsy. For me, it never supersedes the really grounded vibe to everything.”
Having made it a point to avoid going “too Star Wars-y” or “too Star Trek” with the film’s content or designs, even asking for assistance in doing so from returning original Predator designer Alec Gillis, the director further noted, “Another thing I would say is for his behavior and giving him more personality, but it’s still feeling predatory. For whatever reason, there’s always been a link to me with Conan [the Barbarian].”
“Tor what, thinking of what their culture is like, but also the way he behaves, is he’s a very terse character, a few words, but they say a lot. And there’s something in the fabric of that world, that’s fantasy, but brutal, pirate-y also, , that’s different than Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, or Avatar, pick any sci-fi thing. There’s something in the Conan vibe that feels right for when we’re digging into the culture.”
Barring any unforeseen delays, Predator: Badlands is on track to begin its theatrical hunt on November 7th.
