Dan Trachtenberg Talks Predator: Badlands’ Alien Hero and World

Earlier this week, 20th Century Studios gave us a first look at Predator: Badlands. Unlike the previous movies, the split-faced alien is the top star as he fights against the forces on an alien planet. In a recent interview with BloodyDisgusting, director/co-writer Dan Trachtenberg shed some light on the film’s plot and its protagonist. The young Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is an outcast from his clan on Yautja Prime and goes about searching for an ultimate enemy on the supposed “Death Planet” of Kalisk, which he hopes will help him prove his worth. Similar to Prey, Trachtenberg is looking to take Dek and his people seriously. For example, the Yautja language was treated as properly as “Elvish in Lord of the Rings or Dothraki for Game of Thrones.” It was crafted by a student of Paul Frommer, who created the Na’vi dialect for the Avatar movies and helped the director avoid “making something more lore-focused than story-focused.” He described Badlands as made with a ... Read full article.