SXSW Report: ‘Predators’ Sneak Peek

The Playlist EIC along with our correspondent in the field, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra aka Robogeek, have descended upon SXSW. Here is our first report from Austin with more interviews, reviews and features to come over the next few days. Stay tuned.

It’s been a long time since I stood in line for three hours for anything, much less skipped something as cool as the SXSW Opening Night Premiere of “Kick-Ass” to do so (which I could only stomach doing because I’d had the good fortune to see it at Butt-Numb-A-Thon in December; and yes, it does exhilaratingly kick ass), but my inner teenager has always yearned for a worthy sequel to the iconic 1987-vintage John McTiernan/Arnold Schwarzenegger action opus. And it looks like he’s getting his wish.

Robert Rodriguez took the stage at a packed Alamo Drafthouse Cinema at the Ritz on Sixth Street in Austin Friday night and shared his history with the franchise. Some 15 years ago, when “Desperado” got delayed, he took a writing assignment from Peter Rice at Fox for a sequel to “Predator”. Without any hope or plan of ever directing it himself, Rodriguez dived into the deep end, with no regard for budget or scale, and wrote his dream sequel. In a nod to “Aliens”, he dubbed it “Predators,” and wrote it for Arnold to reprise his role as Dutch, shanghaied off Earth to a safari planet where the Predators would hunt him for sport.

Rodriguez shared an amusing anecdote about how he got to personally pitch the script to Schwarzenegger at his restaurant, Schatzi on Main, who passed on the project months later, effectively killing it.

Flash forward to last year, when Fox executives dug up the long-forgotten script, loved it, asked “why haven’t we made this?”, and approached Rodriguez to revisit it. As we all know, Rodriguez came on board to produce via his Troublemaker Studios banner in Austin, and attached director Nimrod Antal (“Kontroll,” “Armored”) to direct.

At this point, Rodriguez showed the theatrical teaser, which is different than the sneak preview that’s now available on the film’s official site (and embedded below) though it shares much of the same footage.

The teaser opens with a shot of space, and then the starscape dissolves into a jungle forest canopy with light peeking through. We’re in a jungle, and we see a group of soldiers, mercenaries, etc. meeting for the first time — all having been kidnapped from around the globe. Among other things, we get a shot of a buff Adrien Brody (also in the online preview) saying, “This planet is a game preserve. And we’re the game”, along with the shot of him getting covered in multiple Predator laser-sight targets. We also get a tagline that sets up the film nicely: “They are the most dangerous killers on the planet. But this is not our planet.” Overall, the teaser is fast-paced, dark and gritty, and does a remarkable job delivering an updated take on the original film’s tone and feel. (The full teaser trailer should be released online soon, but much of the footage we saw is in the online preview that’s available now.)

Rodriguez returned to the stage, now joined by Antal, and backed by a slideshow of very cool concept art and creature designs from KNB and Troublemaker, showcasing a variety of different Predators in different armor/helmet/weapon configurations with “different personalities based on different [hunting] techniques”, along with some new creatures such as a four-legged, tailed Predator hell-hound, complete with tendrils and mandibles. Some very cool stuff that painted an intriguing picture of the larger Predator world we might have all imagined, but never actually seen. At last, we now will.

Antal talks about coming on board the project, and it’s quickly apparent he’s a huge fan of the original. He and Rodriguez make it clear they had a simple, shared agenda — get back to basics of the original, “concentrating on the hunt”, and focusing on suspense and fear. They also revealed the basic set-up and story of the film, which is intended to be a true, direct sequel to the original film, basically the sequel Rodriguez and Antal always wanted to see, informed by such classics as “The Most Dangerous Game.”

We can presume that Predators travel across space to hunt for sport, and that the events of the first film caught their attention. So they return to earth to take a closer look at humans, and pluck the best-of-the-best hunters off the planet, and drop them onto a safari planet (note: not the Predator homeworld). This sets up a “hunters being hunted” scenario, with the added twist on the original film that instead of a well-oiled unit, our heroes are all strangers to each other, who must figure out how to work together to survive. And of course they’re not just being hunted by one Predator, but a host of different Predators with different methods (including a “dog handler” Predator with the aforementioned hell-hound, and a “falconer” Predator with a large, spiky insect-like flying nasty).

Greg Nicotero from KNB EFX Group joined the stage, and shared some tidbits. He and his team of 60 had 12 weeks to build everything, and all the Predators you see were built. “No CG Predators!” Antal proclaimed. Nicotero also talked about working on the original, and how they referred to archival close-up reference photos of the original Predator suit to match its look for the film. Yes, the iconic original Predator design is featured in the film, referred to “the 8-track version” by Nicotero, while the new Predators are “the iPod version” — sleeker, slicker, more advanced.

We were also shown one rough scene from the film, “straight off the Avid”, which showed the big reveal of Laurence Fishburne’s character (who one can imagine might have been originally intended to be Schwarzenegger’s Dutch way-back-when). Our heroes, led by Brody, are in the jungle, on the run, when silently, out of nowhere, what appears to be a Predator decloaks behind him, aiming a weapon at Brody. He slowly removes his Predator helmet, and is revealed to be Fishburne, who gloweringly chastises them for talking too loud, and smelling too much.

Brody asks, “Who the hell are you?”

Fishburne replies, “I’m the one who got away. I’m the one you don’t fuck with.”

Awesome sauce.

One of the treats of their presentation was the unveiling of their recreation of the classic Predator animatronic head prosthetic, which they demoed to us while Rodriguez played Predator sound effects from his iPhone through the mic. The audience was invited to come up and get a close look, and it’s a remarkable piece of work.

During the Q&A, Rodriguez addressed the 3D question, saying they had never planned to shoot 3D, and didn’t have the time or inclination to dimensionalize the film in post, which he felt was not an ideal thing to do anyway.

To cap things off, Rodriguez unveiled an exclusive (signed and limited to 200) poster (pictured above), which was given to all attendees, along with a t-shirt covered in Predator tri-laser targets, and a keychain light that, yes, shines a triangle of three red dots. (Sadly not a laser pointer, but one hopes that product will soon exist).

As a postscript, I was able to ask Rodriguez if they’d be incorporating Alan Silvestri’s original score in the film, and he confirmed to me exclusively, “we’ll use it at some key moments (but not lean on it so much that it diminishes its power)”.

I haven’t been excited about a “Predator” film in decades. But I am now. -Paul Alvarado-Dykstra aka Robogeek