Three Eras, One Truth: Predator Still Dominates

It’s a great time to be a Predator fan. After appearing to die a painful death with 2018’s The Predator, this franchise has done a complete 180. Prey breathed new life into the property in 2022, and this year, we’re getting not one but two more adventures with these alien hunters. Predator: Badlands is set to hit theaters in November, but before we return to this world on the big screen, the animated Hulu original Predator: Killer of Killers takes us back there from the comfort of our living rooms. This movie promises to expand the universe in exciting new ways, and now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m happy to report that it totally delivers.

Predator: Killer of Killers was directed by Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung, and it stars Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa, Rick Gonzalez, and Michael Biehn. This is an anthology film, so it doesn’t tell a single, unified story. Rather, it tells three different stories from three different places and times, but they’re all set in the Predator universe.

We visit 9th-century Scandinavia, feudal Japan, and the skies of World War II, and every time, we see the same basic formula play out: A group of warriors encounters a deadly Yautja hunter (a Predator) looking for the most dangerous prey it can find, and the humans have to do everything they can to escape with their lives.

I’m going to tell you right now that Predator: Killer of Killers isn’t for everyone. Content-wise, this movie is pretty par for the course for the Predator franchise, so if you’re not a fan of these films, you’re almost certainly not going to enjoy this latest installment.

But if you’re like me and you eat these movies up (well, the good ones, at least), you’re going to have a blast. Let’s start with the animation style. This film evokes the feel of old-school video game graphics from the Playstation and Playstation 2 eras, but it somehow manages to look (mostly) sleek and modern all the same. It’s an odd style that probably won’t win any awards, but it gets the job done.

The real draw here, at least on a visual level, is the action. It’s just as good as anything this franchise has ever given us in its live-action efforts, and the anthology format allows Predator: Killer of Killers to showcase numerous different fighting styles. We get to see the more strength-based approach of the Vikings along with the lighter, more fluid touch of 17th-century ninjas and samurai, and the third story even puts us in the middle of a firefight between a Yautja spacecraft and the US Air Force! It’s a cornucopia of action that gives each segment its own unique feel, so despite the close similarities among the segments, the movie never gets stale.

Along similar lines, the Predators themselves are also different each time around. Sure, they all have the typical traits we’ve come to associate with the Yautja, like the pronounced mandibles and the ability to cloak themselves with invisibility, but each one also has its own unique weapons and even some distinguishing physical features. Unlike in some other franchises, these otherworldly warriors are far from carbon copies of one another (or of the other Predators we’ve seen throughout the franchise), and once again, that variety helps the film feel fresh from beginning to end.

On the complete other end of the spectrum, I have to say a few words about the human characters in Predator: Killer of Killers. Like most anthologies, this one can’t flesh out its protagonists the way a more traditional movie does, but don’t let that fool you. These segments manage to squeeze as much character development as possible out of their short runtimes, so even though we don’t know a ton about these people, the little bit we do learn is more than enough to get us on their side almost instantly.

You’ll already be totally in their corner when things really go south for them, so these are more than just fun horror stories. They're grounded in a sense of genuine humanity, allowing the film’s message to hit you on a much deeper level than you might expect. Predator: Killer of Killers shows us that evil doesn’t have to get the last word, that we can overcome seemingly impossible odds if we stand firm, and since you're so attached to these wonderful characters, you actually believe it.

It's a surprisingly uplifting message for a movie with this much death and destruction, and when you combine it with the top-notch action, you get another excellent entry in the Predator franchise. Predator: Killer of Killers proves that there are still many more stories to tell about the Yautja and their prey, and even more importantly, the film proves that those stories are well worth telling.