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Prey Trailer Breakdown: Director Dan Trachtenberg On Thwarting Expectations, Generating Suspense And Targeting New Characters

Just this week, we saw the latest trailer for the new Predator prequel, Prey, directed by 10 Cloverfield Lane's Dan Trachtenberg. In a real break with the usual follow-ups, it spins the clock back 300 years to follow Naru (Amber Midthunder), a fierce and highly skilled Comanche warrior. She has been raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters to roam the Great Plains, so when danger threatens her camp, she sets out to protect her people. The prey she stalks, and ultimately confronts, turns out to be a highly evolved alien with a technically advanced arsenal, resulting in a vicious and terrifying showdown between the two adversaries…

Bringing a Predator to the screen, of course, has been a tough assignment in the decades since the original, with the various sequels and spin-offs given a mixed reaction. Trachtenberg comes to this with a deep and abiding love of John McTiernan's original (and good memories of some of the other movies), and an approach that feels fresh and new. We couldn't resist setting our sights on a chat with the director to talk about why he chose to make this a prequel, how he tackled making the Predator feel similar yet different and what Midthunder brings to the lead…

A History Of Violence

Trachtenberg remembers exactly how he first encountered the Predator story – and like many of us, it was at a much younger age than its 18-rating would suggest…

"Predator came out when I was in third grade. I was not allowed to see it, and rightfully so! But I was in the van on the way to a karate tournament with a bunch of sixth graders. And they described the entire movie to me, including a beat where Billy, the Native American scout (Sonny Landham), carved into his own chest and fought the predator on a waterfall. And then I saw the movie, and that scene is not really in it! But that always captured my imagination. I always wanted to see that movie, you know. And that is also a part of the genesis of this."

Going Native

Focusing on Native American hunters as the ideal counterpoint to the extraterrestrial menace was something that Trachtenberg had in mind from the start.

"That was my initial pitch to Fox [before it was purchased by Disney], the notion of how cool it would be to make a movie that focuses on a Native American story, to make a Western that has no cowboys in it," says Trachtenberg. "That's a movie which really does not exist. It shockingly doesn't. And I just I wanted to make a movie that would be told primarily visually and through action."

Which brought up a challenge for the filmmaker. "How do you engage in a very economical way, and still tell an emotional story? I'm not an athlete in any way, I do not follow sports, but I love sports movies, primarily because they feel like action movies that you don't need laser guns for. But they always feel warm and hopeful, you know. And so, I thought, 'if I could have the engine of a sports movie, tell a real underdog story inside this action movie, it could feel really gripping and moving.' Part and parcel with that underdog story was, 'what if we make it about someone, and a people that also, in media, are the underdog? Who are the people that never have a light shined on them?'"

Bring the (Mid)thunder

Amber Midthunder, who has been seen in shows such as Legion and movies including The Ice Road and Hell Or High Water, has a chance to shine here, playing the central character. Trachtenberg is quick to outline why he chose her.

"Primarily because she's awesome!" he laughs. "She read for the role in a hotel room, over Zoom or FaceTime and she really delivered. She transported me, immediately, despite the strange circumstances of her audition tape. She's incredibly thoughtful, and relatable."

It's that relatability that ultimately sold the filmmaker. "One of the things that I was excited to have was a period piece that didn't put a wall up between the viewer and the characters. And not stuffy in a way that sometimes a period piece can get. Because it's of a different time, you forget that people are still people and still felt the same feelings that we feel today, even way back when. And Amber immediately has that laser into our soul of, 'oh, man, she feels how I feel'. Also, her parents have both been stunt performers in the past and I thought, 'If they can do it, she can do it too'. And boy, did she! She trained so hard for this movie and really delivers on the action."

Colonial Themes

The trailer offers a look at other fighters battling the Predator, and they're not all Native American, hinting at a wider theme of colonialism and warfare running through the film. It's something that Trachtenberg doesn't want to touch on too much yet but does offer that they'll play a part.

"I don't want to speak too much of this. I want to make sure that I let the movie speak for itself," he cautions. "But yes, those are French fur trappers. Right. And, and they do play a significant role in the movie."

Hunting For Inspiration

The trailer for Prey, doesn't evoke the same feeling as more recent entries in the Predator franchise — which is no bad thing! — but rather conjures something more akin to The Revenant or a Terrence Malick movie. And that's by design.

"Terrence Malick probably came up the most," says Trachtenberg. "And not just The New World, but Days Of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line also. We referenced images from those movies and cinematography and, wanted it to feel authentic. That's very much a part of the soul of this movie. And Macbeth, the Michael Fassbender Macbeth was a big visual influence on the movie.

Mud, Blood

Near the end of the trailer, there is a moment where Naru hides in mud, which feels like a clear callback to McTiernan's film and Arnold Schwarzenegger's mud-caked Dutch using it to cloak his body heat from the Predator's thermal vision. So, can we expect a lot of nods to the original movie?

"There was so many moments where were almost seduced by putting in more and more easter eggs!" admits Trachtenberg. "'Get to the chopper!' is not in this movie despite so many people wondering, 'what if there was a horse named Chopper?' We didn't go all the way there, though there are tonnes of intentional and unintentional nods to the first movie."

Some of them, according to the director, were entirely unconscious, born from his sheer love of both suspense and Predator. "What's funny is in the trailer, there's a sequence in the tall grass. And I remember going over to one of our actors, Harlan [Blayne Kytwayhat], who plays Itsee in the movie. He's the one who pulls Amber down into the grass. And he has to tell her to be quiet. And I said, 'I think it wants to feel like you don't freak out. There was a line or something, but I said, just go, "Ssh." Just hold up your finger. I watched the take back, turned the cinematographer, and said, 'this feels familiar, I think.' And he goes, 'yeah, Predator.' And I was like, Oh, yeah…' Obviously that movie is ingrained in my brain.

Weapons Of Choice

Setting the movie hundreds of years in the past means that the Predator creature we see is different from any we've seen previously, but still has some of the wonderful toys we've come to expect from these aliens (canonically known as Yautja). Crucially, though, the Predator's mainstay of destruction, its go-to killing tool has been deliberately shelved for Trachtenberg's story.

"The primary thing that I wanted to remove was the plasma caster," he explains. "Just because it just felt like such an instant win button. I wanted to make sure that that the fight could be as exciting as possible without stripping it of its advantages. He doesn't have all the tools that he has in the in newer movies. But he does have awesome new gadgets for people to see."

Tracking Down Suspense

Though he's a fan of other Predator films, Trachtenberg wanted to take Prey back to a feeling that hasn't been truly felt since Dutch and his team first put boots on the ground in the Val Verde jungle back in 1987: fear.

"There's a lot of suspense in the movie," says Trachtenberg. "I think that's something that hasn't really been as much a part of the franchise. Certainly, when you think about [these films] you think much more about the action. And the gore, the horror of it. As a kid, it was very much a horror movie to me. So, the movie is, I think, trying to be much scarier than it's ever been and much more suspenseful, for sure.""

Battling Preconceptions

If we're to address the alien in the room however, it's that, for all the franchise's cult following, the quality of subsequent Predator films has historically been rather varied. What started out as an unbelievably tense monster movie that all but oozed dread from every pore has seen diminishing returns in follow-ups ranging from the mid-judged to the ridiculous. For Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison, Prey became an exercise in taking on all the notions about lesser Predator sequels that have plagued this franchise an ensuring that they didn't fall into the same trap.

"I think all of the movies after the first one have all had really cool bits. I don't know if there's ever been one that on the whole was just a fabulous movie, I think they've all had varying degrees of awesome parts in them. So, it was very important to me that not only does this movie have to have awesome parts in it, but it also really needed to have a great story and something that was more universal even than in the original Predator," he says.

"I wanted to return to the basic primal, instincts of that original Predator movie," he continues. "I think so many big swings have been taken since that one. And that was a part of this. 'Okay, let's do small again. But in a big way.' And so, hopefully, for diehard fans of the franchise and all its incarnations, they feel like this movie speaking only to them. And for people who have never seen a Predator movie before, they're like, 'Oh, it's a movie? It's a real movie? I thought it was just a monster movie!' It's both!"

Prey will land on Disney+ in the UK on 5 August, and via Hulu in the US the same day.