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(Release Info London schedule; September 12th, 2018, Empire, Leicester Square, 2018)
"The Predator"
From the outer reaches of space to the backwoods of southern Georgia, the hunt comes home in Shane Black's explosive reinvention of 'The Predator Series'. Now, the universe's most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before. And only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and an evolutionary biology professor can prevent the end of the human race. The heroes at the heart of 'The Predator' are affectionately known as 'Loonies'. Led by Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), whom meet on a military prison bus, 'The Loonies' are a group of veterans suffering from 'PTSD' who know each other from group therapy, Williams (Trevante Rhodes), Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key), Baxley (Thomas Jane), Lynch (Alfie Allen) and Nettles (Augusto Aguilera).
Quinn McKenna is a retired 'Special Forces' army ranger. He's a mercenary who finds himself leading a ragtag team of veterans to go up against the lethal alien. When we first meet Quinn, he doesn't really have much to live for. He's estranged from his wife and son, and he's on a tear. He's on a mercenary job in Mexico when a 'Predator' spaceship crash-lands. He gets exposed to a cover up in Mexico, and he ends up trying to get this device that he's found back to his address in 'The States'. He needs proof, no one's going to believe him. Dr. Casey Brackett (Olivia Munn) is a evolutionary biologist. Casey is the top in her field, essentially a scientist who researches how creatures change and adapt. She has been on 'The CIA' and government's list of top people to go to if there's ever contact with other intelligent life forms. So this is something she's been waiting for her entire life, not knowing if it's ever going to happen. All of a sudden a call comes through. They need her expertise. It's something she never really expected would happen. It's something she's been looking forward to her entire life, but it's definitely terrifying and surreal. It ignites something inside of her, it's the epitome of her studies. She's chasing and wants to capture this 'Predator'. She wants to study it, be up close, communicate, talk to it, touch it, but at the same time, she's running for her life. There's definitely a mix of joy and utter fear.
Williams (Trevante Rhodes) is 'The Captain', made a bad call and got everyone killed. So he's lived with that. And then, here comes this guy who's fighting to save his family. And that's such a beautiful thing, seeing the passion behind that. Pulling on that emotional cord and showing that facet of the individual who's a stone cold killer in a sense, shows the facet of what he always looked for. His character's full name is Gaylord Nebraska Williams, but he's not too fond of Gaylord. He was a Sergeant in an 'Air Force Special Forces' group. There's a question mark on the inside of his wrist because he ends up attempting suicide, and that's the contemplation of that. He has a strand of barbed wire around his arm, with the names of his unit member, and an American flag. Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key) has resigned himself to a life that mundane and completely, diametrically opposed to the life he lived when he was in the military. Coyle belongs to a group of gentlemen that go to group therapy to overcome 'PTSD', depression and the trauma they went through during war. The only way he's going to make it through his day is to tell dirty, sophomoric jokes. He wants to fill a room with jocularity so that it lifts up his mood. Baxley (Thomas Jane) has always been a little 'OCD' in the first place, develops conversion disorder. He puts a gun in his hand and it suppresses 'The Tourette's' because it goes back to an impulse.
'Predators' have been coming to Earth and hunting humans for some time now, and it's no longer quite the secret it was. The government has established a defense agency dedicated solely to protecting humans from a 'Predator' incursion. 'Project Stargazer' is initially conceived of as a high-tech, top-secret government lab in which captured 'Predators' could be studied. But in the back-story, the government needed some kind of plausible deniability, so they put it in the hands of 'The CIA'. But when Traeger (Sterling Brown) takes over operations, he privatizes 'Stargazer' to profit from 'Predator' technology. Traeger is someone who's not bad and twirling his mustache, but simply pursuing his own agenda, that happens to be at odds with everyone else's. What may have started off as something that's truly altruistic and beneficial for man at large, once he saw that that might not any longer be a possibility, he asked, ‘what can I do at least for myself? He sees an opportunity for personal gain. Dr. Sean Keyes (Jake Busey) is a research scientist who studies 'Predators' at 'Project Stargazer'. Sean is continuing the legacy of the Keys family in 'The Predator World'.
'The Predator' (Brian Prince) in this film is the deadliest and scariest one yet. Thirty years later, it's the same 'Predator', but over time 'The Predator' has upgraded himself. This is not a reinvention and not a redo. This is the franchise you loved, 30 years later. These are the consequences of what has happened. This is what has been going on in the last three decades. They're badder and bigger; they've evolved. It ain't your daddy's 'Predator'. The very first 'Predator' still has a huge worldwide audience, and sells around the globe on cable and streaming services. It's hard to believe that 30 years later, this movie continues to captivate generation after generation.
They're different yet so very alike. They all long for the connection and brotherhood they once had. Loony is a very attractive word. It comes off the tongue with a sense of energy and fun. The film wants them to come across as humans that are broken, not as cartoon characters and not as clowns. They're misfits and outcasts. They're the dirty half dozen. They never knew they'd have an opportunity again in their lives to do this, let alone, fighting warrior extraterrestrials. They're not reintegrated back into society in a way that make them feel like productive, normal members of society and that causes a lot of problems. What would happen if these guys were to be thrust into extraordinary circumstances where you've an alien hunter from another planet? They've all got serious problems, but when it comes time to engage with the enemy, all that shit goes away and they're like a well-oiled machine. Training doesn't go away, it's ingrained into your muscle memory, into your soul, when you've done it a few thousand times. This crackpot group of half-cocked soldiers can't really keep their shit together for 12 hours at a time, but when push comes to shove and the shit hits the ground, they're there for their people, and they'll die for them. And there's something very human about that.
They're all bonded by the fact there's no one else around for them. They're all each other has. This group clings to each other because, when they're alone, their heads go to very strange and bad places. It's only through contact with people who keep them steady that they can find their steam again and go on one last mission. They think we're all nuts. So as long as we're off our meds, why don't we all go a little fucking crazy and kill this thing. There's a gauntlet of things that make up these people. These guys are really a fascinating group of men. They're the forgotten soldiers, misfits. For one reason or another, they're all deemed untrustworthy and unacceptable because they got fractured, something broke. But somehow, they found each other. They aren't a crack team of soldiers. It takes these guys a bit of effort to be good, but there's still a spark waiting to be ignited. There's an unquenchable spirit that's flickering, and this is their opportunity to come to life and support each other and go up against the monster. They're the least likely people you would ever choose for this, except that they're really tough when the chips are down. They've spirit, they've spunk, and they've an unquenchable loyalty to each other.
It was the idea of the hunter. It was the idea of this creature from another planet that hunted the greatest game and would go from planet-to-planet for that sport, and 'The American Commando' and group of guys in the jungle that represented that. And in the end, he was outsmarted and defeated, so even though 'The Predator' had great brawn and weaponry, there was an ingenuity and a desire to survive in man that made it a fair fight. 'The Predator' is one of the most iconick creatures in cinema because the design is elegant and, like all the great monster designs, it immediately targets our subconscious. We look at this creature and we see some mirror image of ourselves but in a dark, scary, primal kind of way and that's hard to do. That look, humanoid to some extent and alien to another, is just shocking. There isn't anything about it that's corny and that's the hardest thing to do when you create an alien creature from another planet. 'The Predator' is the ultimate hunter. He's overwhelming. He has the ability to move incredibly gracefully but fast, the ability to span large distances with a jump, the ability to cloak and hide, the ability to spring out, like a tiger or a lion; pure, raw strength, and the cunning of a great, great hunter.
'The Predator' knows how to follow it's prey, how to lure it, how to attack when it has the greatest advantage, and how to access the weakness of it's prey. It's special because there's a mask that's freaking cool, and then you take off the mask and it's even cooler. It's a creature that we recognize, that walks like us, understands us, has the same kinds of primitive impulses as a human being but it's clearly not from here. The ability of a guy to look at 'The Predator' in the face and actually relate to it's what's interesting. It has the capability of being an actual character. It's always important to find the coolest variant without violating the basic principal that made the first one popular. What's so great about the original 'Predator' was that human quality which, as deadly as it was, it wasn't just a wild animal, it had an intelligence and a cunning and it could look at you and see what you're afraid of and see how to stop and catch you..'The Predator' characters in this film are a combination of both practical in-camera as well as CG effects.
The script is very different from the original. It's lighter, probably more cynical, has a greater sense of humor and it's also more difficult to determine who the good guys and bad guys are. This 'Predator' slice and dice as well. To stay true to it's roots, a 'Predator' movie needs to be scary. It needs to have the menace of a hunt occurring throughout the film. There's going to be a certain amount of bloodshed, there will be some viscera and goo as well, it needs to be scary? The actual 'Predator' in the original is one of the great movie monsters of all time. The film pays tribute and homage to the first two films and references the first two for the chronology and story. But the film wants to expand the mythology. It's almost a literal rollercoaster and it's going to be an exciting part of the movie. While audiences have seen 'Predator' dog creatures before, there's a twist to the alien canines in the new film. 'The Predator' utilizes hunting dogs, which are almost like classic big dogs that have their own personality. We'll get to see 'The Predator' interacting with another creature, almost fondly. It gives 'The Predator' another dimension.
The film creates a lot of mysterious scary monster moments. Because so many people know 'The Predator' and what it's, it's kind of hard to do a big reveal of what he looks like or treat him like a mysterious thing in the film. "The Upgraded Predator' goes through a couple of stages as they play the cat and mouse game. As he gets more involved, he gets angrier and we'll see frustration. A big part of the work is giving a character a personality, even though he's not physically there, but evolving the character so he has his own personality in the movie. Whereas for horror, the cliché is that it's dark and shadowy and you don't see a lot. So, visually, sometimes it's hard to blend those together. The situation dictates the look of the scene. It's pretty hard to make the lab dark and scary, yet we've a monster that's probably going to do some bad things. So, when the emergency happens, red lights go off, other lights stay on, there's a lot of blinking, noises, color change and hopefully, that provides shadows, dark, light and freneticism and chaos that will allow some of that scariness to come through.