Predator: Killer of Killers

Predator's renaissance in the past five years has been nothing short of fascinating, not the least of which because the ideas that Dan Trachtenberg has brought to the franchise shouldn't work. Prey, his movie about a Yautja hunting a Comanche tribe and an aspiring female warrior of the tribe going toe-to-toe with it, shouldn't work. It's basically the same movie as Predator, just transplanted in time and space, like Friday The 13th Part 8's taking Jason Voorhees out of Crystal Lake and dumping him in Manhattan ... and yet, the change of scenery and time period elevates the movie far beyond its gimmick. Sure, it had some wonky elements -- the woman-fights-against-the-patriarchy arc was the most basic version of it imaginable, the dialogue was painfully anachronistic, and the movie was, as I said, pretty much just Predator all over again -- but it was still the most fun the franchise had been since 1987. Trachtenberg's next step as seeming steward of the franchise was Predator: Killer of Killers, an animated anthology of Yautja vs. historical warriors. Vikings! Ninjas! WW2 fighter pilots? Umm, okay, weird pivot on that last one, but sure. Prey bought Trachtenberg a lot of equity, so I was curious, but a little unsure if the shorter stories would allow for variety or growth or any sense of character depth. As it turns out, Trachtenberg actually managed, in my humble opinion, to top Prey. Somehow, there is more character depth in the three short stories (and the fourth closing story that ties everything together) than Prey managed, and he does so by telling three distinct stories: a Viking woman consumed by grief and vengeance and how it ruins her and her family, brothers in feudal Japan torn apart, and a WW2 recruit desperate to prove himself in the skies but stuck as a plane mechanic. Into each of these, a Yautja is unceremoniously dropped. Yes, it's still all about fighting, but the driving factors behind each scenario are different, which gives each fight a different purpose, allowing the characters to show some evolution, more than I can recall seeing in any other Predator movie, in fact. It all builds to the fourth story, where everything comes together and pays off the character growth in satisfying ways. What hasn't changed, and I don't understand how, is the still-anachronistic dialogue. It doesn't really affect the second story, which has almost no dialogue whatsoever. But the Viking and WW2 stories have dialogue that just doesn't feel natural for the time and place. I'm not asking for doth's and thou's to pepper the dialogue, but contractions and other casual language stylings just don't belong. I can let that go, though, and still enjoy the absolute carnage of this movie, because this is easily the craziest, most violence-laden edition yet of a Predator movie. What I can't forgive, and what truly keeps this from the full score, is the animation. I keep seeing how this is great animation i other reviews, and I can only conclude that everybody who has said this has poor eyesight, because the animation is far from great. It is choppy and stilted, like it's missing frames. That kind of animation, lacking in fluidity and jerky, might work in some kind of underground animation you'd see on Adult Swim back in the day, but in a movie where the action is fast and explosive, it makes the movie feel ... cheap? Unfinished? Amateurish? Something along those lines that annoyed me. The Yautja are also comically exaggerated in size. They're big, sure, but each one in this movie stands two feet above an average sized man, at least, and has shoulders that wouldn't fit through your average doorway. It's like 90's comic book physical proportions, and I thought we all agreed Rob Liefeld's art style deserved to be buried in a shallow grave. This isn't a deal-breaker to enjoying the movie, but I also can't very well give it full marks either. I never expected Predator to be alive and well in the 2020's. After so many middling to awful sequels after the original (two of them I skipped outright), I just assumed it would be the domain of fanfic and comics. Dan Trachtenberg has performed a miracle, not only bringing it back from the dead, but nailing it two movies in a row. I am looking forward to what he does next with it.