Dan Trachtenberg goes from the guy who hit the reset button on the Predator franchise grounding it back to the thrill of the hunt of the first three films after The Predator went a bit off the rails (but I still enjoy it!), to now becoming a mixture between a Dave Filoni lore master and the Christopher McQuarrie of Predator.

Each individual segment is a lot of fun, basically since that fateful June weekend in 1987 the imagination of audiences went straight to what other time periods the Predators went hunting and it wasn’t until Dan made Prey that we got to see exactly that.

Killer of Killers does speed run that somewhat, I enjoyed spending time in each of the three historical periods the film showcases and I believe each would’ve been fantastic for a feature length film. I could especially imagine a near silent film taking place in feudal Japan.

The animation is gorgeous, feeling like hand paintings come to life and gives everyone ample opportunity to indulge their imaginations without the limits of budget and practicality. As much as I would love to see a giant Predator air fortress laying waste to entire squadrons in live action there’s probably not much chance of that happening until Dan racks up and few more W’s.

I got a huge kick out of Louis Ozawa returning to the franchise once again, he was a great character in Predators and brought equal gravitas to his dual role as twins. He actually wrote a short story in one of the Titan Books AvP collections about Hanzo’s twin brother and voiced him in the audiobook, so he’s played two different sets of twins in the Predator universe. To top it off he’s now the only actor to have ever killed more than one Predator on screen but I expect that to change once Dan gets deeper into his saga.

The other huge milestone is the appearance of the GOAT Michael Biehn, finally ing his bros Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton as the third man to have appeared in the holy trinity of 80’s sci-fi action franchises. 

His character sadly fares about as well as Michael Biehn characters usually do but thankfully there’s room for him to return in live action. This is also his first major studio film in nearly 20 years a decade of which was lost to a stroke and hopefully there’s a late era Biehnnaissance coming our way. 

I am a dyed in the wool Predator fanboy. I’m positive I’ve mentioned the story of watching the first film at the age of 5 or so when both me and my grandmother couldn’t sleep one night and we found it on TV. 

She assumed it was no different to a typical 60’s men on a mission movie she would watch in the cinema 30 years prior at the time which was pretty digestible for a 5 year old. About halfway through the film Shane Black gets his guts torn out and my grandmother, after she collected her jaw from the floor, turned to me and said “Well it’s too late to turn it off now”. 

A few years later I was about 11 and my dad had a day off from work and kept me home from school and went and rented Predator knowing I was such a huge fan and to my shock and surprise the VHS was a two pack. There was a Predator 2 all this time! 

I made sure to be first in line for Predators and The Predator despite how much the AvP films bummed me out, I made sure my night was clear for Preys premiere. I always make an effort to watch Predator in cinemas if it’s ever screening. I’m nearly 40 now and I’ve dedicated countless hours over those 30 plus years imagining scenarios and badasses going up against the Predators I wanted to experience (Michael Biehn featured quite prominently in those scenarios). 

The point of all this waffling and waxing nostalgic is to hopefully give some credibility and authority to my opinion that I’ve gone from wanting to see Dan Trachtenberg do a trilogy of Prey films and hand over to other filmmakers to being a full blown Trachtenberg acolyte and seeing he has a plan of unimaginably large scale that I want to see unfold. Maybe even to a definitive end point. I trust him with all of it.