James Cameron Wasn’t Convinced Predator: Badlands Would Work — Until He Watched It Finished
In the big-budget sci-fi genre, it’s hard to imagine approval more encouraging than from James Cameron. The 71-year-old director of “Aliens” and creator of the “Terminator” and “Avatar” franchises has time and again demonstrated almost unprecedented cinematic ambitions, which have invariably culminated in one spectacular success after another. “Predator: Badlands,” the brand-new franchise installment by Dan Trachtenberg, is a movie based on an unprecedentedly bold premise, and despite his initial reservations, Cameron has had nothing but applause for the finished product.
“Predator: Badlands”: The Background
“Predator: Badlands,” which was released wide this past weekend, is the ninth film in the 38-year-old “Predator” franchise, and the third installment directed by Dan Trachtenberg. Both previous Trachtenberg installments were novel in their own rights: 2022’s “Prey” pitted the notorious alien hunter against an 18th-century Comanche village, while “Predator: Killer of Killers,” released this past June, took the approach of an animated anthology film.
But “Predator: Badlands” takes the most radical narrative swing yet: it’s a buddy-journey movie in which the hero, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), is a Predator – or, to use his people’s term for their own species, a Yautja. The Yautja live and die by the doctrine of might makes right, and Dek’s clan has declared him unworthy because he’s smaller than most mature members of the species. Desperate to prove himself, off he goes to Genna, a planet that veritably bristles with lethal flora and fauna, where he reluctantly partners with a badly damaged android (Elle Fanning) who hopes to teach him that self-reliance isn’t the final word in toughness.
Dan Trachtenberg and James Cameron
Trachtenberg opted to shoot “Predator: Badlands” in New Zealand, which has been a staple of Hollywood’s fictional worlds since the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. A modern-day case in point is the “Avatar” series: Wellington has been James Cameron’s home and professional headquarters since 2012. Trachtenberg recently told The Hollywood Reporter that Cameron invited him over to his studio for a day shortly before he began the “Predator: Badlands” shoot.
On this day, Trachtenberg outlined “Predator: Badlands” to Cameron, who reportedly replied: “I was just thinking about what you’re doing, and I think it’s going to work.” The approval of this sci-fi titan (whose advice to the late special-effects artist Stan Winston all the way back in 1986 influenced the design of the original Predator) was a fantastic boost for Trachtenberg, who returned to his own filmmaking crew feeling elated.
It wasn’t until the postproduction stage for “Predator: Badlands” that Trachtenberg learned Cameron’s praise had been more of a polite encouragement than a sincere expression of his thoughts. At this late point, Trachtenberg explained, “There were a few specific questions that I had in mind, and I wanted to see if he could give us any helpful notes.” Therefore, he sent the near-finished film to Cameron, who replied: “I have to be honest with you. When I first heard what you were doing, I did not think it was going to work. But holy crap, you pulled it off.”
Trachtenberg theorized that Cameron’s previous input had been a function of “what someone in my position needs to hear to get things done… So he put wind in our sails at just the right times, and I had to make sure we gave him a special thanks.”
Final Thoughts
It’s uplifting indeed for such a tremendously successful and powerful filmmaker to lend his helpful advice to a newcomer as talented and ambitious as Trachtenberg. Nearly 30 years after the Oscar-sweeping, box-office-shattering triumph of “Titanic,” the ongoing success of the “Avatar” franchise shows that Cameron has not been dethroned as “King of the World.” If only all monarchs (figurative and literal) were as magnanimous as he is.
