‘Predator: Badlands’ Comic-Con Panel Shows Off First 15 Minutes, Gives Away Predator Masks

‘Predator: Badlands’ Comic-Con Panel Shows Off First 15 Minutes, Gives Away Predator Masks

Disney was in full on show, don’t tell mode for Predator: Badlands, unveiling the intense first 15 minutes of the upcoming sci-fi adventure movie for a primed Comic-Con crowd.

The panel showed a cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover that is being inserted into the animated Predator movie beginning today, and it wrapped up the panel by giving away Predator masks for every person, all 6,500 of them, in the cavernous Hall H.

The latest Predator installment is coming in with heat thanks to a reinvigorated franchise due to the electric current whipped up by filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg. The movie is coming on the heels of Predator: Killer of Killers, the well-received adult animated feature directed by Trachtenberg and released on Hulu/Disney+ in June.

Being in Hall H at Comic-Con was a true dream come true for Trachtenberg. The filmmaker got his start in podcasting and traveled to Comic-Con eight years in a row as a fan in the aughts. As the filmmaker pointed out, he was a witness to several key Hall H moments as a member of the geek community, including the unveiling of the first Iron Man trailer in 2007 and the infamous pen stabbing incident in 2010. And he got to be part of a panel moderated by Kevin Smith, the filmmaker whose work served to popularize geek culture and who has been a Comic-Con fixture since the 1990s.

Trachtenberg knew that coming to Comic-Con with a movie would be a big deal, but, he said, he had the nagging feeling of “if I go, it has to be something [that] matters.” Well, Predator certainly mattered to the crowd, who ate up the footage, which was not quite finished — some VFX shots were not completed and the score was a temp track.

Featuring only alien language subtitled for the human crowd, the opening section of the movie shows two Predator brothers engaged in a battle on an alien planet. It’s established that one, Dek, is considered the runt of his clan and should be culled. When the older brother fails to do so, the father, who considers the idea of accepting a form of weakness, steps in. In the ensuing Shakesperean struggle, Dek is whisked offworld, setting the stage for the story in which he will fight for his life and honor on a planet where everything is out to kill him.

“It’s the first time we’re seeing the Predator in a protagonist role,” said Elle Fanning, who plays a synthetic being that, for lack of a better term, teams up with the Predator on his quest. The actress spends part of the movie on the back of the Predator, played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, this of the Chewbacca and C-3PO scenes in the classic Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back.

The two actors regaled the crowd of how they worked together on the production, with considerable time spent in natural settings and away from soundtsages in New Zealand.

“Most of the time, we were in nature,” said Trachtenberg. “[The actors] were strapped together going through eel infested trenches.”

Also on stage was Alec Gillis, the FX artist who was mentored by pioneer Stan Winston and has worked with Trachtenberg on all of his Predator films. Gillis and Trachtenberg explained how for the first time in the Predator movies, the face of the creature wasn’t practical, always a very challenging task, because nuanced emotional expressions were called for in which the alien was the hero.

“This time we wanted to make sure we could go to emotional places so we developed a unique system,” explained Trachtenberg. Part of that entailed keeping practical suits but having digital artistry from Weta Workship work on the face.

Predator: Badlands will land in theatres Nov. 7.