Dan Trachtenberg's Predator Trilogy: Watch All 3 Movies At Home
It’s not technically an official trilogy, but Dan Trachtenberg has now directed three Predator movies in a row for Disney — and you can watch them all at home. Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers were both Disney+ exclusives, so they’ve always been available on the Mouse House’s streaming service, but now, the great Predator: Badlands has joined them (not on Disney+ yet, but on PVOD). Trachtenberg’s trio of Predator adventures isn’t a trilogy in the traditional sense, since they’re all standalone stories. In fact, there hasn’t been a direct sequel in the entire history of the Predator franchise; they’ve all been standalone movies connected by the Yautja. But the last three have been connected by Trachtenberg’s directorial voice, and they’ve all been awesome.
Dan Trachtenberg Has Directed 3 Predator Movies For Disney
Thia and Dek back to back in Predator Badlands
Trachtenberg has now directed four feature films, and three of them have been Predator movies. He first made his mark with 10 Cloverfield Lane, a claustrophobic psychological thriller disguised as a blockbuster monster movie. After that, and Trachtenberg’s acclaimed episodes of The Boys and Black Mirror, Disney recruited him to reinvent the Predator franchise. And boy, did he have an original vision for the Predator reboot. Rather than telling another story of musclebound militarized meatheads going up against a hunter from outer space, Trachtenberg went back to the early 1700s to blend historical fiction into a Predator film. Prey revolves around a young Comanche woman named Naru, who gets a lot more than she bargained for when she sets out on her first hunt. After the success of Prey, there was a lot of speculation about which historical era Trachtenberg would introduce a Predator to next. And instead of picking just one, he did an anthology of three separate periods. Predator: Killer of Killers tells three stories: a Viking vs. a Predator, a samurai vs. a Predator, and a World War II fighter pilot vs. a Predator. With two streaming-exclusive hits under his belt, Trachtenberg finally brought his Predators back to the big screen where they belong in Predator: Badlands. Predator: Badlands reinvented the formula yet again, as Trachtenberg had the outside-the-box idea to make the Predator the good guy. It’s a Predator coming-of-age story about an ambitious young Yautja underdog traveling to the most dangerous planet in the universe for his first kill. With these three movies and counting, Trachtenberg has positioned himself as the Kevin Feige of the Predator franchise. For the first time ever, the Predator series actually seems to have a bright future ahead.
How Disney's New Predator Movies Are Connected
the Grendel King overlooking the Predator planet and various warships in Predator: Killer of Killers
While none of Trachtenberg’s Predator movies are a direct continuation of any of the others, there is some connective tissue between all three of them. In Predator: Badlands, Dek and his father are both seen riding the same hover bikes first introduced in Killer of Killers. In the surprise ending of Predator: Killer of Killers, we see that the Predators have the protagonists of various previous Predator movies — including Prey’s very own Naru — in suspended animation. So, there could be a more direct sequel on the horizon, teaming up all these characters in a sort of Predator-verse Battleworld setting. Trachtenberg’s Predator movies don’t just connect back to each other, and other entries in the franchise; they also have some crossovers with the Alien franchise, seemingly setting up a new Alien vs. Predator movie. Weyland-Yutani is a major player in Predator: Badlands, and the final battle even features the robotic loader that Ripley used to defeat the queen in Aliens.
Will Dan Trachtenberg Direct Another Predator Movie?
Dek holding a harpoon-like weapon on the forest in Predator Badlands
Although he’s three movies deep, Trachtenberg still has more ideas for Predator films. Predator: Killer of Killers ended with the tease of a crossover between previous entries in the series, and Predator: Badlands ended with the formation of a ragtag found family and the promise of a new big bad: Dek’s mom.
Although it underperformed at the box office, Predator: Badlands has been a massive success on PVOD, so there’s still hope that the franchise will continue. It might go back to Disney+, but Trachtenberg has plenty more stories to tell, and he has yet to make a wrong move in this franchise, so I say let him cook.
The Predator Franchise Is Finally Exciting Again
Naru hiding from The Predator in Prey
With Trachtenberg at the helm, consistently knocking it out of the park, the Predator franchise is finally exciting again. It hasn’t been this exciting since the very first movie came out in 1987, when this world seemed to have so much potential. It took 35 years for a filmmaker to come along who would actually start fulfilling that potential and thinking outside the box to tell new Predator stories. Until Prey came along, every Predator sequel was even worse than the last. When movies like Predators and The Predator came out, we had no reason to get excited, because the franchise hadn’t delivered a good film since the original, and it seemed like a fool’s errand to try and turn Predator into a franchise. But since Trachtenberg hitched his wagon to the Predator star, it’s been a genuinely great sci-fi saga.
