Predator: Killer of Killers is a straight to Disney+ stop gap designed to fill the gap between Prey and Badlands. It’s an animated film which allows director Dan Trachtenberg to go nuts, not constrained by the budget of a traditional live action film and flex his creative muscles to tell a story that fans have been cheering for since Prey dragged the franchise back to life kicking and screaming. What if future instalments of Predator took place throughout different time zones? From the perspective of the Native Americans we jump to Vikings; Samurai, and even World War Two pilots – all scenarios that make you think they looked at the last few Assassin’s Creed games for inspiration. Each are blended together culminating in a conclusion where the survivors of all time periods must fight in a contest of champions.
At a breezy eighty-five minutes, Killer of Killers never overstays its welcome. There continues to be an association that animation is just for children and it’s not helped by the fact that that most people; when they say ‘animation isn’t just for children’, they offer up family-friendly films as examples. Killer of Killers shows the boundary of the violent and creative kills that Trachtenberg can introduce – the gadgets are creative and the deaths are more violent than anything that you can get on screen. It’s a franchise designed for animation that we never even knew it was – it should’ve been told this way from the very start. The creativity of the settings are fantastic – I loved watching a Viking raider guiding her young son on a quest for vengeance navigating the harsh wastelands of Scandinavia, and the ninja in feudal Japan who turns against his samurai brother provided for a fascinating family conflict. The switch in style again made it all the more promising that Killer of Killers was consistent as it was – kept its tone from not feeling too disjointed across the three different eras – and the fourth, the final era – the Badlands of the alien homeworld.
“who would win in a fight?” is the primer for Killer of Killers and it’s answered here in style – Predator or Samurai? Predator or a WW2 soldier? The springboard ideas that the film bounces off on are simple what if? Questions but for something that fans have been championing for long after Prey it feels a miracle that when it actually got here; it’s this good. The choreography is fantastic and the brawls are glorious – creative and appropriately cinematic. It’s almost a shame this never got a cinema release – yes Badlands is coming, but Killer of Killers feels made for the big screen just as much as Prey did.
It’s very video-game cut-scene-y at times and the story that connects the characters could’ve been more drawn out and they could’ve been braver with switching the animation styles, even if that’s partly what led to this film feeling so consistent. It’s not quite a proper anthology but the different split in the setting makes it easy to like the characters; and you never stay away from them for too long. Some fates are also answered around Prey. It’ll be fascinating to see whether in the long run this is a springboard for more Predator animated films or just a prequel for Badlands – and what connective thread the three have.
