Geek On Film

S4 E06 - Predator: Badlands

• Robbie Holmes • Season 4 • Episode 6

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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Geekon Film with your host, Robbie Holmes. Hey there, folks. Welcome to episode six of season four of Geekon Film. I'm Robbie Holmes, and this week we have a special guest appearance by an old friend. Hello, everyone.

SPEAKER_00

It's John Hosh. I'm happy to be kind of coming back as a guest. I'm so happy to be continuing to hear the podcast. I was traveling the country uh with a uh Broadway production, so I was a little out of pocket and also had a baby and have another one on the way. So a lot of things are happening, but they're all good. And I just like I'm I'm happy to be back and chatting with my my dear, dear friend. And you know, repping the repping the geek on film sweatshirt and the geek on film mug. So hopefully the uh the merch store is still open and people can get these.

SPEAKER_01

It is, yeah. Uh John is rocking the original logo, uh old school 1.0. Yeah, retro.

SPEAKER_00

It's retro now.

SPEAKER_01

Retro. I literally today am wearing my Geek on Film uh t-shirt, which is the giant head of Robbie. Yeah. Uh, you know, which is my favorite new logo. I figured uh, you know, me and ChatGPT made a great logo here. Eventually you'll be able to buy it. Nice. Um all right. Well, so it's really good to have you back. John's amazing. I was lucky enough to see him at a couple a couple of times in the last couple of years while he's been out uh uh out and about and gallivanting. But uh one of the best ones was in the Kennedy Center in DC before we left and moved. Uh got a chance to hang out with the cast after the fact, uh, meet the lead of the show, but also just how many uh aspects of the show John has been a part of from Broadway all the way to the touring cast, and then how much ended up falling on his shoulders, becoming sort of so many aspects of the road show, right?

SPEAKER_00

The actors equity. Yeah, it's like the it was the first national tour of the production of Life of Pie that was touring the country. And I was the uh I was the U.S. Associate Puppetry and Movement Director and the Resident Director as well as some other things.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I mean he has one head yet many hats. It's uh it's impressive.

SPEAKER_00

Um but I'm excited to be back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, this is great. Um so uh when the reason that is is because this week we're gonna be talking about Predator Badlands. And if you remember, John forced me to watch a terrible amount of terrible movies back in the day. Um, so when I was on my way to sit down and see it in IMAX, uh, I got a text message that said, that is awesome. So not to give away John's position, but like anything with the word predator in it is probably gonna be a positive. Yeah. But uh it was exciting for me to be literally walking into a theater and having John text me. And I was like, oh my god, this is perfect. You should come on the podcast. So uh I'm so glad you agreed. Uh, I can't wait to hear your opinion. I expect it to be effusive, but we shall see.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I love uh The First Predator is a movie that I have on downloaded on every single one of my mobile devices just in case I want to watch it at any given time. Uh so I mean you're exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Um yeah, it's pretty crazy. Like I had never seen Predator 2, Predator, Predators, Requiem, Alien versus Predator. I had never seen any of those movies, and John absolutely was has always championed them as one of his favorite series. And then recently I went to a real deal film society, uh, which is the sort of meetup group here in Phoenix that I go to. Uh, and one of we were all doing intros, and one of the things was like, What is one of your favorite films? And there was a guy there who's very funny, and I think a very contrarian guy by default. He loves to debate. And he was like, All right, my favorite movie. And it's because at 11 years old, I was at I went to the theater and I saw the perfect movie that most perfect movie that had ever been made that exists forever. And he like the preamble was amazing. And then he said, Alien versus Predator. And I was like, You are not to be trusted. You are 100%. There's you no one can trust your film opinions. This is and he was like, I was 11 and I wanted a movie where things happened. I didn't need to care about it. It was unbelievable, and it was just so funny to have that be his perspective. And I was like, I guess you're allowed that, but it was very hard for me to take him seriously after this. And that's where I stand with my friend John, you know, it's pretty great.

SPEAKER_00

But I'm excited to talk about this new one, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, this one's uh really a surprise. Uh, but it shouldn't be based on who we know made it and all the other stuff. Uh so let's talk a little bit about some TV that you've watched up to this point. I haven't gotten a chance to see it, so um, I think you're you're watching the uh the new it series, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Welcome to Dairy, uh it colon Welcome to Dairy, I think is is the official title. Um, this is uh it's really cool. It's it's a prequel to the the two it movies that we've seen, which is also you know uh a novel, and it was also a a TV show that um or a TV miniseries uh that starred Tim Curry. But this really dives into the mythology and the history of not only it, but also the um what it means to like the the history of dairy, and it's really interesting. It's kind of it's bouncing through a couple different time periods, but they're kind of focusing on um kind of uh a generation before the movie takes place, and um really like not not too spoilery, but uh the military is trying to find it, and that's kind of a big part of this big part of this storyline so far is that like they're trying to weaponize it, so they need to find it.

SPEAKER_01

Um and it's really interesting, it's so googlable, you know. It's it's it forces you to say the word it with like emphasis. You're like, it's looking for it. And Google is just like, I don't recognize why did you put emphasis on that?

SPEAKER_00

Like, yeah, um, but but some of the things that I I'm really appreciating about this show is I I never watched the show Castle Rock that was another Stephen King kind of a shared universe show. Um, Castle Rock is another uh town in a lot of Stephen King's mythology, as well as Derry. But um one of the characters from The Shining is a main character in this as a younger version of him. The janitor from The Shining, who has The Shining, is a major character in this, and it's really cool. And also Shawshank, the prison, is right outside of Derry. Uh so they reference Shawshank. So it's it's I'm really enjoying. I have never read a Stephen King novel, and I think that uh they're like he's very verbose and they're very vast and they're quite intimidating to me to read. Um, but I'm always intrigued by the mythology that he has created and how it's all interconnected. So I'm really enjoying where this is going, and it's like it has appeared, but not in the form of the clown yet. So it's very cool to kind of see all the different ver like because he's a it is a shapeshifter um as one of his as one of their uh you know many powers. So it's it's really I'm really enjoying it. It's it's it's very much, you know, there is like but I think the movies had this too, where there's a little bit of you know, Stranger Things vibe, a little bit of Goonies vibe, but with a more horror uh aspect to it. And uh and I'm enjoying it. I mean, I look for it's one of those things where I look forward to every Sunday seeing a new episode.

SPEAKER_01

So that's exciting. I I would say that um I I recently so uh I I we're not gonna talk about here much, but I watched Alien Earth and I felt like that was a show that like for me it didn't fulfill what it could have been. Like it wasn't as fun as I was hoping, but it had some amazing concepts. Like, I think anything that is in the alien ecosystem, the that has anything to touch on the whale and Utani of it all, or any of the other pieces, as long as it has something new and interesting to bring to the table. I'm happy to have watched it. And I feel like my my walk away from that show was like not as good as I was hoping, but boy, there was a lot of ideas, and that's a Noah Holly thing. Like, I think that creator should be allowed to like brainstorm run a writer's room until they write the pilot and they break the rest of the season and then kick him out and be like, now we're gonna rewrite the rest of the season. Cause like we don't the pilot's great, the concepts great, like not knock it off on C episode seven, right? Like, um, but like such a cool experience. And I I'm excited because it sounds like getting something that is a prequel that is filling in some more information that is actually exciting and feels like you're getting something new is really cool, right? Like I all we often reference, like uh, I think you and I talked about it at the time. Like, I feel like solo made the universe smaller, right? Like it didn't actually increase the story, right? Like you went from that movie ending to like he's getting in his ship and he's going somewhere to maybe talk to Jabba, and you're like, uh, did what what so nothing happened between the end of this movie and the beginning? Like, so it it it essentially like also seeing like the Kessel run, right? Like you're like, that didn't get cooler in my mind because I saw it, you know? So you actually took away my ability to have some excitement about it. Like, I feel like in this, you're getting an ex a chance to see like it unfold, so it's giving you more. And I feel like Alien Earth was in a similar situation where, like, as much as I didn't love where it went, it had some ideas that I thought were so mind expanding for the universe that you could bring these forward, hopefully, without all the baggage of what Alien Earth left us. So, like, I think uh we can talk about that later, especially with Dan uh and with what's going on in Badlands. Like, Dan Trachterberg seems to be getting to be in an interesting position where he may have something to say about that. Yeah. So I'll jump over and I'll mention Pluribus. I cannot read you the synopsis off of IMDB because it will give away too much. Uh, what I will say is the creator is Vince Gilligan. If you have liked or watched anything having to do with him, you will get a sense immediately of the competency of the approach of this show. Like it opens with a writer who is at a reading of her book and you quickly figure out that she's had enough of her own crap. Uh, she thinks that what she's doing is garbage, it feels very fluffy, and it's her and her partner, and you follow them until an incident uh unfolds, and it's so competently shot. Like that's the thing when you see somebody who has the amount of experience that Vince has creating stories and telling stories and bringing ideas to light, seeing him bring something to light that's a little bit off-kilter and not a grounded story is so interesting because he can't help but keep it grounded. Everything in there's an incident that happens, there's all this stuff that changes, but everything feels so real and practical. And like that is an amazing part of like sci-fi storytelling or something akin to genre storytelling, but keeping it grounded and and making it feel real, no matter how big the concept is, is something I think Vince Gilligan can do that a lot of other creators probably couldn't. So I feel so much like I'm in safe hands and I can't wait to watch episode two because episode one gave me so much. There's like it opens with a ticking clock that is going down, and that is like an interesting approach. Like you walk in, you're like, tension already. Three seconds into show, there's a clock that says like 429 days, and you're like, Oh wow, that's a long time, right? Like, yeah, um, but then there's a jump to like 300 days, uh 300 days later, like 100 days in. So you get the sense of like you're about to learn something. But it's like, this feels like if you wanted to take it and take it to film school and say, like, if you want to build narrative tension and you want things to move quickly across a longer time period, this is the kind of way that you could approach something like this. I don't want everything to become this show, but boy, people could learn a lot, I think, from the approach that Gilligan is taking in this show and uh how well it's cast. Like every person, every small role feels like a real person, right? Like everybody who's an under five feels like they are not sort of a background actor. They feel vetted. Well, they feel like they're a person playing that happens to be in a television show, like a real human. And I think that is again like a testament to like second unit acting, right? Like, it's crazy how much is going on in this show and how competently and confidently it is moving forward without letting any cats out of any bags. That you know, like I think there's a restraint in the way that this show is being unfolded to us as an audience. And I have a I I'm excited to see where it goes. Like the opening salvo is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00

And this is the this is the writer creator of Better Call Saul, right? Yes, and yep, ipso facto, I guess breaking bad, or yes, no.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, so he created Better uh Breaking Bad and then and moved on to Better Call Saul, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Cool, cool. Well, those are just a shout-out.

SPEAKER_01

Like Rhea Seahorn is Carol Sturker, who's the author that we follow, and uh she is just so grounded in this universe and so frustrated by where she is and what she's doing as a successful author of like romance novels. It's it's funny to see somebody who is get you get to see behind the curtain of like, you know, the people who love this person's work are like a few are like excited and and ready to talk to her, and it's a book sign, and at the end of it, she's just like okay, he walks out and gets into the car, and there's a great line where the the Uber driver is just like, Should I know you? And she's like, Do you like crap? Like, and it's just so uh like so many creatives get so frustrated by the things they create are not the thing they want to be creating, and it just it felt so right in that moment. I was like, Oh god, oh god, I know exactly where she is, you know, and it's cool, it's such great shorthand storytelling to be like, I get it, I know where we are, you know. And that's like what I feel like every aspect of the show has been for me is like you you're on a train that is guided, but you feel like you have no sense of where it's going, but you're confident it's gonna get there, and that's pretty cool. You know, you don't always get that in a pilot episode.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was really fun.

SPEAKER_00

I think as we're recording this, two episodes are out right now, right?

SPEAKER_01

I think there's a second episode out. I only watched the pilot so far, uh, but I'm on. Like I'm often in for anything that Vince is gonna do. I I say that without watching Better Call Saul, but it got away from me. It is a show that I didn't jump directly on the bandwagon and it went away. So it's like one of those that I will likely use as a plane show for a while. Like I will, whenever I'm flying places, I feel like I'm gonna turn Better Call Saul into my airplane uh watching. Right. Cool, awesome. All right, so we'll jump over to our first movie. Uh both John and I got to see Frankenstein, so we can talk about how we got there, but uh let's start with the synopsis. So uh our friends at IMDB have this as uh Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature uh to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation. Spoilers, come on. Um but it's also hard to spoil something from the 1930s. Uh here we go. Uh it was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, also written by, of course, Mary Shelley as the original author. So this would be an adapted screenplay if it goes that far. Uh I have it as three and a half stars uh over on Letterboxd. Uh my review was very beautiful. The production design is astounding. I really enjoyed this version of the story, and Jacob Allordi is impressive in this film. So short but sweet for me. Uh let's go. First high-level impression from you, John. What was your thoughts on this movie?

SPEAKER_00

Um, I really love the story of Frankenstein. I think it's a it's one of the few novels that actually scared me uh when I read it. And I've enjoyed iterations of the of Frankenstein prior to this. Uh I I enjoyed it. It was interesting. I think I would have wanted to see this on the big screen.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um I I don't know. I don't think I've got like the greatest uh TV. And I wonder if my experience was affected by that. There was something about like the sets are incredible, the costumes are incredible. There was something about like the quality that made it feel very much like I was watching a BBC show. Yeah. On TV on my television.

SPEAKER_01

So one of the things I was thinking about is like the show comes across, the movie came across to me as like a dark fairy tale or fable and less of a real storytelling. And I think the sets and the choice of like lenses and things like that to me lent to that idea of like a dark fairy tale, not the real world. Like when you think about the castle that he goes to, right? It is a CGI castle that he eventually takes over. Because I don't think you could find a castle that looks that destroyed that bedraggled and but like that still was functional. And everything about that feels like you're sitting in this amazing set when you're inside of it, but from outside of it, it almost could have been a painted set from like the 1940s. Yeah. Because it is a hundred percent this creation that is being made in a camera and not actually physically a building, right? There may be some guts of that building, but I am sure it is like highly accentuated. So it almost feels like there's like a digital facade thrown over the top of it that adds this like otherworldly feeling to everything I was watching. So I think playing along, it's it's a little bit less maybe the specific television, but I think it's the choice of the way that it is framed. It almost feels like you're turning a page on like a fairy tale from your childhood, and you have this image of a building that happens to be in the world. And that was like, I kept coming back to this idea of it felt to me like this visualization of a dark fairy tale. Yeah, and that's in Guillermo's ballpark, it's not surprising.

SPEAKER_00

Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So uh sorry.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I was just gonna say, uh, I've seen him in interviews saying how this is one of the stories that he's been like dying to tell his version of for a quite a long time. I think he sees himself as the monster, or or as perhaps as Frankenstein, or maybe maybe both, but I think both, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The dichotomy of this, I think, is reality for him, is that he's both sides of this, right? He's the creator and the thing that is being created.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, I I I I really enjoyed Oscar Isaac's performance. Um, I felt a bit like uh like Mia Goth was uh a little subdued, or maybe it was just like in in the editing or the writing, but I felt like her character was not as strong and prominent that I remember in other iterations of this uh story, or even in the novel, but it's been quite a long time since I've read it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think I agree. I would say it feels to me like the the Oscar was uh Isaac Oscar Isaac was told like be the arch component of the story. And Mia Goth was told like be reserved and be sort of like above it all. And that was the overarching tone of both of their performance. Like Oscar feels so arch and like over the top, and well, the way he's like it's all this like crazy dramatic facial expressions and physicality in the way that he's playing the character. And then you get to Mia, and she's like this very like reserved, stoic, quiet version of what be a goth could be. Yeah, and and like a painted porcelain doll, like in the the the way that she's appointed all of her clothing, right? Her costuming, it it's beautiful, and and like she is able to hold the frame. Like she reminds me of like uh like Anya Taylor Joy. They have this ability to be like still and quiet and still interesting to look at. And I think like Mia Goth is bringing a lot of that in this movie, but it's very different, I think, than the world of where Dr. Frankenstein is, right? Elizabeth feels like you're bringing this solace and quietude in like a piece of marble into an environment that's dynamic, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I I enjoyed a lot of the changes in the script that Germo has kind of altered from the the novel. I I there were some aspects that I really, really thought were cool. I don't recall Mia Goth's character's uncle ever being a character until this production. And he's kind of he's kind of a bit of a, it seems like he's kind of a warmonger in a sense. Uh, and he's funding, you know, Frankenstein's uh work, and you don't really know why. And I thought that was a really interesting character. And I I haven't fully kind of dissected that whole idea of like weaponized, you know, like it it like being funded by someone to look for for to create life. I don't know. There's something there that I think I wanna I wanna.

SPEAKER_01

If Guerrero sees himself in the doctor, right? What is he telling us that he has had to do? Who has he worked for to make his art? Right. Like I think there's a lot of like what what is what are you willing to do to to create your your creature, your monster? You know, um, there's a yeah, there's a lot of weird, like very uh overt tones that are subtle is the way I would put it. Like, here's a big idea, you get to decide what it means to his storytelling without him telling you what it means, right? Like so here's this idea like a warmonger is gonna fund this because he's the only person that believes in this, but it's because he has this motivation, right? He wants to be able to possibly move into a body of his own. Yeah, um, and I think you know, there's also that, like, so many of the people who are funding great art want to be in that art, right? Like, it's an interesting, I think there's a lot of plays that are going on in his choices in this script.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Um, and I will say, although I don't condone the way that uh Frankenstein treats the monster when he's like learning how to be alive, but as someone who has a young boy, I I would I there was a bit of a catharsis there, but I was like, but I I would never do this, but I understand.

SPEAKER_01

That's really funny. You only know one word, say something else. Um, one thing we didn't call out, Jacob Balordi was really, in my opinion, uh, his physicality and the level of emotion and the silent acting he does in the first 50 minutes of the movie is is really um change I wasn't expecting. Like when he was cast and when the announcement went out, I think it was a little bit of the like, you know, Michael Keaton is gonna be Batman. Are you kidding me? Like, I think the the idea of like this beautiful, tall man is going to play this hideous monster. What he embodied is this like vulnerable physical creature in a way that I was really impressed with. I think from the moment you see the light and the spark happen in the creature's eyes to the moment where he's burned and is wrapped in, like those moments are visceral. Like he is he is like embodying the physicality of emotion and and uh the drama in his body of the story that he's telling, like his ability to move, like his his his frame, he's so tall and long, and watching him like slink across animal-like as the default way that he knows to move because he's never been taught, right? Yeah, he he he was fully formed in a fully large body, yeah. So he didn't ever have the awkward learning phase. So we are seeing that, but he has this innate physicality to him that he can bring forward in the character. I just was watching him play with the water and watching him like all of those pieces of like his dramatic movement of those long limbs, and you know, let it, and Guillermo like sort of luxuriating in his physicality, like this the length of his limbs, the the size of his frame, you know, and then putting him under the like the wraps near the end where he's wearing like the coat and the this and the stuff he's taken from the wolves, and like you get this like layered creature, yeah, but like underneath all of that is this lean, beautiful person, right? Like, and I think that's also part of the monster story, right? Like, you get this beauty inside and the creature on the outside, right? I think that's a really cool way that he's able to bring forward an actor like a Jacob Alordi gets to play a character that you normally probably wouldn't cast him as.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I've seen I've seen him in other things and just did not clock how physically imposing he is as a present. And I don't know if that's they did that with like camera angles and everything, but seeing him on the red carpet for this, I was like, good God. I actually didn't recognize him from other things that I've seen him in, seeing him do the red carpet for Frankenstein, and I immediately was like, oh, they went out and they found someone to be Frankenstein, and and uh I just didn't realize um it's it's impressive. He's I think it's I think I think his performance might be my favorite of the of the movie.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And uh all in all, I thought I was really I think it's really great. I think that I I I think for me I I just think I want to see it on the big screen.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think I missed out. We had talked about it, Amy and I, and I chose to go see Blue Moon and Predator Badlands because she like gave me a day to be like, hey, let's uh why don't you program a film festival day because you haven't gotten to go to one. So um I went early in the morning to see Blue Moon and then I saw Predator Badlands and then came home and finished Frankenstein. We had started it the night before, so I had a I was like literally halfway through the movie and came home, had dinner, and then what we watched after dinner was the end of Frankenstein, which is really cool. So I had a three-movie day, which I haven't had in a while. Uh nice, but my also my history with Frankenstein is as a 12-year-old, I think I read the 89-page novella that I think was one of the versions of this that came out of Mary Shelley, and it was an early book that I read. So it's like in my literature past, also, it's one of those that I have a lot of affection for. Yeah. And I think you mentioned it. Like there's been so many incarnations of Frankenstein, but there's also been so many stories that are the Frankenstein story that it's interesting to put this in the pantheon of a Frankenstein type story. I think this doesn't sit in the top of that, but I do think in direct adaptations, I would say this is probably in the top five versions of Frankenstein I've ever seen. Yeah. And I still think it's like three and a half stars for me, but I would probably say if I got to see it in 35 on a good screen with good sound, it would probably go up to a four.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I think it also would give you more distance from the wolves. I think the wolves were a little bit harsh uh as something that felt like the dark fairy tale. It almost felt like they were machinations out of somebody's brain. Like they didn't feel like real wolves to me. And and the way that the creature interacts with them and like physically destroys one is off-putting, but it's also great because it shows how ferocious the creature can be when they need to be. So I think they're they're on purpose, they exist for a good reason. Um, because we haven't seen that side of him up to that point, and I think it's important. Yeah, um, yeah. I think uh let's stop there and jump over to Predator Badlands. Uh so if you had to give this a star, where would you say it is uh out of five?

SPEAKER_00

Four point four and a half.

SPEAKER_01

Nice, that's great. Yeah, um, that's an exciting place to be, man. Uh, I don't get a I don't get a ton of those. Um all right, let's jump over to Predator Badlands. Uh so our main review today, uh, as you've heard us allude to is Predator Badlands. Uh our friends at IMDB have this as a young predator outcast from his clan finds an unlikely ally on his journey in search of the ultimate adversary. I have my uh so it's written by uh Patrick Ailsen, Dan Trachtenberg, and Jim Thomas, uh who I believe is the creator of the characters, and then Dan Trachtenberg is the director. I have this is a four-star with a heart. And I said the first 30-ish minutes uh felt like a cutscene from a great video game. Once L Fanning arrived, the tone shifts, and I liked it even more. Uh, where do you stand, John?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I to to just jump onto what what you just in your review. Um so yesterday um I was talking to an older gentleman who had who had never seen a Predator movie.

SPEAKER_01

And are you gonna make them watch a bunch of terrible movies too?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I don't have to because he he has a 13-year-old son. Oh, nice. And and so he went to go see Predator Badlands. I go, oh, what did you think? He said, I really, really liked it. And he's and he said, from someone who hadn't hadn't has no idea about Yauches or or the Whalen Utani Corporation or or anything, um, he said, Man, when when the when the movie started, I thought this was going to be the most soulless movie I was about to watch. And then he said, and then I ended up really loving it. Um and I can see that, you know, it's like the movie starts off, and we're following Deck, who is the our main predator, and and he it's just a big fight scene with him and his brother. Um and I think it's a great fight scene, but you but you know, they're their faces are covered, so you don't you know that's really difficult a lot of times. Like people always kind of in in film and everything, you know, the eyes tell so much of of the story, and it's a and it's a way for the audience to connect with the characters. So, you know, they're in these masks and they're fighting, it's very dark, and they're and they're speaking the Yaucha language. So there's a lot to like there's a lot of walls that we have to get through. But then when we get to the spaceship and we're interacting with uh both of them, that's when I that's when it really clicked in for me. Uh and I think it's something really bold that Dan's doing is you know, prior to this, predators, yauches, uh, were like the silent, scary killer. Like, you know, the first predator movie is kind of it's a analogy for Vietnam and and how like American troops didn't know who they were fighting because um they were not used to guerrilla warfare. So like I think up until the animated film that just came out that Dan wrote, Killer of Killers, you know, I I think that the predators were never the character the main character of their story. It's always the human element that people were were wanting to focus on and how they were dealing with the predator. And I think um I think they they tried very they tried a little bit in Predator versus Aliens to kind of uh make the predator a hero and kind of like uh that was kind of the first time that predators were kind of a good guy because they were fighting the aliens. But man, just like being able to like have two young yauches who are brothers talk about like their their dynamic, their they're like their their conflicts and everything. I think a lot of people in this a lot of people who love this franchise don't want that. They're just like no, they're the badass killers. But I think it's really it was really a smart move to like be like, no, we need to like we need to go deeper with these these this this character or the these these yauches if we're going to perpetuate moving forward and expanding this universe, which I definitely think they can after this, especially.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I think the thing I would say is like watching this movie, knowing where it came from, right? We've you and I both were fans of the Totally Rad show back in the day. So we've known Dan Trachterberg for a long time. We both saw uh, you know, uh was it uh 18 Cloverfield, 10 10 Cloverfield Lane, right? Um we watched that movie, we knew what it was, but it also was like the we knew the marketing around that, which is like they could have not put the word Cloverfield in it, and we would have been it would have been such a cool reveal. Yeah. And the idea originally, the original marketing was going to be what wasn't, but so we've been on the Dan Trachtenberg tip for a long time, right? Like even his uh the the short that he made around um portal, right? The the live action eight-minute portal uh video to prove that technology out, you know. So I've been on board with what he's been trying to accomplish. He like JJ Abrams fell in love with him and brought him into his production world, right? Like all that being said, Prey is probably my favorite of the predator movies up to this point, and that's Dan's baby, right? Like he created, he had this idea from the very beginning about like we want to see the other stories that the Yaucha have been a part of. And in that world, right, he sort of hit the normal predator approach of like we have humans at the center of this story, they're the heroes, right? We have this mystical creature that arrives in a in a magical ship, right? Right, and it could have been anything. The fact that it was the Yaucha and it fit it fit the predator mold, and then what's really cool is watching that evolve into predator, killer of killers, where you actually get to see the different stories of how we got all of these people to be interacting with the yaucha, and the yaucha are still a little bit the sort of boogeyman in all these stories, yeah. Um, and then to turn the corner here and you open on well, A, we open and we're in a movie where there's not a single human.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01

There's no humans in the whole movie. Um, there are humanoid creatures, but they are not human. Yeah, I think that is one. I think your your friend uh who said that like he was worried it was going to be the most soulless movie. I think that is part of the setup here, right? Like you walk in and you're like, I don't have anybody who is my who is my point of view as a human. And I think what we see very quickly is the bringing together when we first meet Thea, and Thea becomes so L Fanning plays two synthetics. We're we're blowing it up. We're into we're into spoiler territory. Two synthetics. One, and they're both from the Whale and Utani Corporation. They're there to try to capture and and effectively do what Whale and Utani always does, which is like alien stuff to make things in the human world better or more life or medical stuff. It it never really matters, right? Whale and Utani is a terrible corporation that goes to places, put pillages and plunders them, and then tries to make money off of it. And they're here doing it again, right? Like, um, so I I love that. I love the fact that it's like you see the the name whale and Uttani, and you're like, uh, jerks, they're here to try. What are they harvesting, right? Like, yeah, and you realize they're trying to harvest the thing that is the main creature because of its properties, it has some uniqueness. What I love about this, and what I loved about Prey, is you saw that I am a process person, right? I love in my life, I spend so much time trying to think about how we got somewhere, how something was created. Yeah, what prey did, and what predator Badlands do is we watch someone learn how to be a great hunter.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, in Prey, we watch her learn how the Predator hunts. What is the Yauch's approach? Because she sees many people and many creatures die at its hands. So she learns, right? How do I acknowledge that this creature is great, yet I need to kill it? And I think we watch in this movie, Deck, learn by getting his ass kicked by a planet over and over again that there's a whole lot of stuff at this planet that he can leverage to become a better predator. And it's not just his physicality, he uses the ultimate weapon that the Yaucha tend to not use, which is his mind, right? He is outthinking his opponent. And usually the Yaucha don't have to do that. They have the physical nature, they have their invisibility cloak, which is also a cool thing that's been brought into the universe here, that you have to earn your cloak, right? You have to go and you have to claim what a trophy is going to be, and you have to bring back a trophy of that kill to your clan before you get your invisibility cloak. Yeah. I think that's an unbelievable component of like adding to the lore of the yaucha, right? Like, and we also have never heard the language, right? Like we've heard snippets of it, but we now have a full language that was created for this movie.

SPEAKER_00

To go on to to hop onto your point about uh seeing Deck think that he's so ironclad in his beliefs and what it is to be a yaucha and part of part of a um do they do they call it a clan or do they call it a tribe? It's a clan. Yeah, so to he was so ironclad in his beliefs, and just to see actually them kind of get chipped away and him to evolve almost past to be enlightened, you know, it's not that it's like he he is uh ascending past what it is to be a Yaucha, um, you know, spoilers, uh, you know, but he he creates a new clan of his own. And uh yeah, like to see the the dialogue was so well done where um deck and um Thea are like just their interactions where like he's so hard headed and she's trying to be subtle and try to like uh you know kind of draw out of him um the things that like she thinks are unnecessary, or like you know, you you can think a different way, and he's just like so hard headed and to kind of see that dissipate, and then to kind of oh, there's just like so many really amazing uh moments in the in in the movie, and like so the the best way I love to watch Prey is with the dub that they are speaking in their uh indigenous, yeah. In Comanche. I love that version because like you definitely have to focus on a lot of like facial expressions, and and you you just like I was drawn more in. The same thing with this, it's like Deck never speaks English, obviously.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. Um and I love the fact that the universal translator, right? Thea can speak and speaks in English, so we understand it, but we don't hear his version in English. I think the choice of allowing it to stay in the Yaucha language and us to have to read subtitles is a brilliant choice to bring us in because Thea is in a physical humanity that we can recognize. He still is not, so it's almost like the Universal Translator is for humanoids and not for, right? So I think it's a really great choice. Um, we've been dancing around Dek as a character, but Dek's physicality was handled by uh save me, Demetrius Schuster Kola Montagi. Uh, and his physicality is amazing. What he's able to bring to this character through a combination of like there is a little bit of physical mask and a little bit of CGI for the face. So you get a little bit of reality in his eyes and a little bit of the creature, but all the physicality of the creature is him. Yeah, like he is like doing so many things to give you a sense of like we understand what a Yaucha can be because of what he's doing, you know? Yeah, and we watch him learning through this process, and you can see his physicality change from his initial fight where he gets kicked onto the ship, right? Like, and how unconfident he is in his abilities to him at the end of the movie, where you're like, Oh, he's totally become a badass. Yeah, like and the badassy is in his head, it's not he hasn't physically changed. He is now, I know who I am, and I know what I bring that's different, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Um watching some of the uh behind the scenes uh footage, yeah. He was like head to toe in uh in a Yaucha costume, and then they hollowed out the face. So like his mouth, his nose, and his eyes were all available for acting with with um L Fanning? Yeah, it's L Fanning. Yeah. Um so they were, you know, but he like all the line deliveries are are him, you know. He he learned the language for the movie. I think it is so important that we see his eyes and that they were able on set to kind of like not mask his eyes under a mask. I think my favorite thing that's well, one of my favorite things that's kind of happening is there seems to be a little bit of a TikTok trend where people are watching the movie and then they're just like, Wait, why am I why am I attracted to this this predator?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yeah, it seems like there's a TikTok trend of sexual awakening to Yauchas. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, um, and also the other one to call out is is that Demetrius here also voices the father, so the father Yaucha that never gets a name. So not only is he physically deck and also the voice of deck, and but he's also doing another voice role, which is pretty unreal. For like he's he's got a relatively short IMDb, it's mostly been television, but to be given the chance to be like a co-lead with L Fanning in a movie like this is unreal. Like he's doing such good work here and and so competently, right? Everything that you see in this L Fanning arrives fully formed. Uh like I am I am such an L Fanning stan. I think she's one of my favorite actresses that doesn't get enough credit for the types of stuff she does. She does so much populist and fun work that I don't think she's ever given credit for being a great actress. And I think what you get from her always is that you get whatever the character needs and whatever she can bring special to a character, you get out of L Fanning. So whether that is like the sort of fun, over-the-top confidence in the great and the physical uh ability to play a character who's in corsets and is still has a humanity to her, right? Like there's something that L brings to those characters that I think is really fascinating. There's a humanity to everything that L does. And having her play a synthetic is interesting because they have to acknowledge that in the script that there's empathy in these characters so they can take advantage of the creatures they come across because you can't turn that off in L fanning, right? Like if you hire Elle Fanning, what you want is L fanning, right? Like there's a reason she gets cast in these types of roles. She has this ability to make things believable and grounded and fun. And even in her the other version of her, the Tessa version, you get the sort of cold terminator-like aspect because that's what that character needs, right? And yeah, her malleability is on display by her playing these two characters. And I think you get a chance to see two sides of L that you don't get to see together ever. So it's cool to bring them together in this movie. You get the sort of two ends of the spectrum that you get out of an L fanning.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I I kudos to her performance in both the characters, both the characters I felt were were very complex and very different. And then kudos to um the design team. I there were a lot of times I was like, wait, what how are they making her look so different? You know, like I think it like it was it was very helpful that what's the quote unquote bad one's name? Tessa. Tessa. It's I thought it was really helpful for that they they bleached her eyebrows. So like there was a little bit of a un like it just seemed she was a little un like you had to examine her face a little more where like having very dark expressive eyebrows like Thea did was more endearing, you know and I yeah I thought it was really good the thing it's almost like puppeteering right like in puppeteering you lose the physicality depend if the puppet doesn't have eyebrows and doesn't have the ability to scrunch a nose right like those things to are where the emotion comes from.

SPEAKER_01

That's why things like Pinocchio right like the Giromodel where it is a wooden creature like the fact that it's a wooden puppet the way that it is made even in the digitization right you get a lack of movement. So you have to do more with the mouth and with the eyes right in this case not having the eyebrows be as recognizable you get this stillness in Tessa like a much more cold feeling out of the character because of that choice. And then having the eye also be sort of a discolored version of the eye makes her makes Elle feel less human. Whereas when you cut to Thea for the first time yes there's half a body but she's like flailing and her like everything is is expressive. It's all like emotion coming out in physicality whereas Tessa they cut to and there's like a cold like reserved nature in the communication and also Tessa's communicating with mother right like the sort of all powerful running of the whale in Utani corporation. So there's a coldness in those interactions because it's just Tessa and mother whereas like Thea is trying to communicate with creatures right like it's like I met a new creature tech is crazy. You know like oh you're a Yaucha that's exciting you know like oh you think you're being you're the only one you're hunting. Oh sorry uh I don't think you stand a chance you know yeah and it's just that sort of uh the also the way the character's written the banter that um L confidently just spews as the like just the it's this it's the Peter Parker I never shut up while I'm in the middle of a fight. Like Thea just is constantly talking and commenting on everything around it. So we even though we have deck not communicating and trying desperately to just be a Yaucha like he's not allowed. Like Thea is like pulling a humanity or or a fun like pulling so much so that we get a joke from deck like two almost two hours into the movie and you're like is that a joke like she even points at it like did you just make a joke and that's really fun. Like you get a chance to see you know so that's that's the part of like building the clan is that like Thea is this never stop nonstop chatterbox and deck has just like never been exposed to something like a Thea and I think that's the fun part of it is you see the growth in the character and Thea is also learning the whole time as a synthetic right like is learning about the world is and is like commenting on the fact that like oh that's gonna suck. You're gonna you shouldn't do that. You know like and it's it's it's a little bit of the droid component right like a little C3PO and with the three of them you get a little bit of like Luke and C3PO and R2 D2 because uh the other creature that is that we run into and that we meet Bud uh is what they nickname. Yeah isn't that what L nicknames him I think so uh or sorry Thea nicknames so it's a little bit of like a silent creature that sometimes coos and makes noises and looks up to deck as a killer. So you get that R2 D2 nature of like it you can't you can only see it react.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And so you get the sort of constant talking of a C3PO you get the and then you get deck who's just like annoyed by it all and also trying to like like model what it is to be a good killer for Bud he realizes I think his role is like a little bit mentor and even though he did it's a reluctant mentor. I think there's a it's so much fun to see someone like Dan Trachtenberg who is a genre lover who has commented on it as a podcaster has grown up watching the same movies that you and I watched getting to make those movies.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right that's that's another piece of this is like I have a relationship with Dan because I've a parasocial relationship. I've been around him and and he's I've listened to him talk so much so that like when you are a podcast person, right? You're in your ears. You're you're like super close you know there's a there's a whole sentimentality that I have for his movies that I don't think I would have with another director.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think that plays into it, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah I want to talk um I want to talk a little bit about the Death Planet a little bit. I was uh I was so I was so impressed with the the amount of detail they put into it uh all the obstacles that they uh deal with seem incredibly for some reason like I was like yeah that's totally feasible in like nature but it just doesn't happen on earth and all the wide shots the thing I loved about this movie whenever you see a wide shot an extreme wide shot of Death Planet there's always something killing something else yeah and I I I just thought it was great.

SPEAKER_01

That feels like a Star Wars thing right like if you think back to like the the Millennium Falcon getting out right of the creature's mouth and then something kill like there's always been that sense in the Star Wars universe of like these planets are more dangerous than any other creature you're gonna come across like there's stuff on the so it does feel a little bit like an homage to like those those stories you know the the Flash Gordons and the like it it's it's obvious that there's a love and affection for all these touch points by the way that he shoots and creates these worlds.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But it's also like his sense and sense of sense sensibility in making these movies is more maximalist. It is like these movies should tell us a bigger story. We have this grounded smaller story with this this trio, right? But then there's also the bigger world he he's creating worlds that allow us to see these creatures inhabit those worlds and they're fully fleshed out. So we feel it makes these characters feel more real um and and as real as a character like a Yaucha can feel but like this is the most real the Yaujas have ever felt to me. Yeah because we've spent so much time getting to know one Yaocha, getting to know deck and also the idea of Wolf, right? Like this is we're heading towards we're heading into Yaucha history, right? Like this is I think the creation of Wolf. Oh yeah sure right but like that is also bringing back an idea from the past that we like I think that's also part of it is like Dan knows everything that's he's he's playing he knows the sandbox so well and he's not making it smaller. He's actually like adding little details and nuggets to the universe for the audience. Yeah and I think like the idea of like when we saw in Predator 2 the the old timey gun right like that is a great thing to pull forward like how did it get here? Well we didn't even see it coming in prey right like and so the first time you see that you're like oh man that is cool. That is so that was this predator right like um and I think there's some some play in the universe of us getting to know more and more predators personally get Yaucha right like now we know deck and now we know uh his dad is uh uh he end to full spoilers at the end like he goes back to his planet after surviving and wants to show that he is the warrior that he said he would be and there's just no acknowledgement of any of that it is literally like you know kill on sight from his father and he competently just wrecks everyone around him um and it's because he is using his brain to know how they fight because he knows them so well and that he knows he's they're going to lean on their invisibility cloak because it's the thing they have that he doesn't yeah because he's seen them do it right like um and I think it's great. And then with the movie ending with another ship arriving and him having to acknowledge like oh no that's mom like that's we're we're in like amazing sequel territory before the movie even comes.

SPEAKER_00

And I man I I would be very happy if they were to green light a sequel to this A because like we've seen Yaucha we've seen female yauchas in video games and comic books but never on the screen really so that'd be really exciting to kind of see that dynamic. And then also kind of like see the dynamic with like I don't know it'd be interesting to see what that what a matriarchal because I don't I don't know if yochas are a matriarchal they seem like a very patriarchal society but maybe they're I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

I mean maybe she's off just being a badass somewhere else right like maybe we we've never seen that side of the world uh universe but I think the other last thing to point out here is like we now know that there's a synthetic in the Wayland Uttani universe that is an L fanning so I think there's like a great future state here where you see L fanning in in alien movies uh as a possibility right like she's now just another synthetic. So we have her we have uh you know all the past synthetics that exist in this universe that's just yet another version of a robot right like so I I love the fact that we possibly have created the opportunity for El Fanning to return in other movies whether it's the Tessa version or the Thea version or a third version I'm excited to a future state where we may have an alien movie that Elle drops into even if it's not a large role because of the fact that they were in this movie. You know yeah and I think it's just expanding again we're expanding the universe not contracting it. And I think that's what I love about this type of genre telling if you're going to tap dance in between the raindrops you need to tell me a whole story that expands the universe that doesn't make that universe smaller. And I think he has done that successfully with Prey and now with with Predator uh uh killer of killers and now with predator Badlands he has not only given us more information but he's also expanded the universe every time he's given us more play playroom for the stories to be told instead of less yeah I'm so excited for the future because like you know as a huge fan of this character type from the get-go it was always like oh well if you want to see something more art artistic you will go watch an alien movie but if you just want to see like a popcorn flick just go watch predator you know what I mean yeah and I think that Dan is like taking the care and consideration to kind of at least elevate the the the the mythos of the Predator franchise and uh it's I'm as a longtime fan super appreciative of I I think what to to play on on the end of that I think the reality I often will say is like this is a big dumb popcorn movie right for movies like that. And this is not a big dumb you don't have to check your brain at the door you get right the you get the you get the a feeling and the sense and the wonder and the awe and the spectacle and you still get a story and you get something cogent and you get something that is making future stories possible not just making a movie to make the next movie. He's making a movie that is in enhancing the universe and adding more story to the universe so there's a possibility of future story as opposed to this movie ends with a car chase that is going to start at the beginning of the next movie. What we have is a creature is arriving at this moment and whether or not we get that story we we know this story is complete. Yeah right yeah it it isn't like we just left on a cliffhanger we have a fully formed complete story with the dangle of a possible future story as opposed to we're ending this movie driving to the next creature right like right what we get is a creature is arriving to a completed story. It seems like it's an interesting one but the perspective for me is they're coming to him yeah yeah yeah as opposed to he's going to it right you I have now established I am the badass right in the Yaucha in my clan right um and that should be where it ends but the cool piece is when you write a story like this you want the future possibility so what is the natural progression of this well his brother is dead his father is dead well this gotta be a Yaucha mom right like so that's super cool that there's like we have another story to tell and whether or not we get that story I feel fully satiated by the story we got. Yeah yeah um I I just want to I want to see it again I just want to go back to the theater and see it again and that's the thing it's did you see it how did you see it did you see it in uh sort of standard what was your format uh I saw it in laser iMacs I also saw it in laser iMac at an AMC yeah um the sound was uh just the last point the sound mixing of the world was unreal oh like the everything felt like the combination of like the great score that was there yeah that was really sort of filling in the sound of the universe but like the mixing like this is a movie that should get nominated for below the line stuff for sure yes uh the music is incredible a lot of the vocals were done by this Mongolian like metal band nice um who do a lot of like throat singing and a lot of and they their songs are in Mongolian um but you know they're I think I believe yeah and they're speaking Yaocha in this but like there's like that gutter stuff and it's just it's so good. That's great. Yeah I'm glad we mentioned it because I I know you're a person who always pays attention to those details. So having you here I'm like if I say something about the sound it's probably going to lead to something great. So there you go you got a glimpse inside of Robbie's head when he's talking to John. Um all right so uh I walk away from this I I'm at a four stars I I I I had such a great time with it I think it grew the universe for me and it brought uh an actress who I really love to this to a genre that she hasn't yet gotten to play in and also possibly future versions of this genre which I think is really cool. Yeah um you have any closing thoughts or are we out?

SPEAKER_00

Uh no I 4.5 for me gonna get definitely gonna see it again and super excited to be able to talk to you about it.

SPEAKER_01

Nice.

SPEAKER_00

All right so we're gonna close it out there uh you can follow John where where can everybody find you john uh on any of the social medias if you if I'm on it it's at J-O-N-H-O-C-H-E.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm Robbie the Geek Everywhere and we are geekonfilm.com or geekonfilmcom depending on the social network um but super excited to have gotten a chance to uh catch up with John and also talk about a movie that I knew would be in his wheelhouse so uh this has been super fun uh thank you so much John for jumping on my pleasure talk to you next time go to the movies go to the movies this has been a keep gone film production

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Robbie Holmes

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