Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands is a Predator movie like no other, and not just because it broke box-office records for the franchise: This time, a Predator (or Yautja, as they call themselves) is the protagonist. Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), described as the “runt” of his Yautja clan, has to prove himself to his fearsome father (Reuben De Jong) in order to claim his name and his place on his homeworld, Yautja Prime. That quest involves a journey to a different planet, a battle against a fearsome monster, and an alliance with a synthetic human, Thia (Elle Fanning). It also involves facing off against his father in the film’s finale.
That final sequence turns into a lengthy battle, which required extensive digital construction from New Zealand-based Wētā Workshop. But Wētā visual-effects supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and animation supervisor Karl Rapley tell Polygon the sequence was originally scripted to be much briefer and simpler — and that building it out was a significant challenge that involved reshoots and constructing an entire digital world.
[Ed. note: Broad ending spoilers ahead for Predator: Badlands.]
“The part where Dek comes back to Yautja Prime and fights his father was initially a very short, sharp sequence,” Rapley says. “On watching the film, Dan came back to us, saying, ‘I think we’re going to make this bigger. I think this needs to be more of a moment.’ So a whole stunt team came down here [to New Zealand], and we went to the mocap stage, and we developed a whole new lengthy fight sequence.”
The new ending presented extensive challenges, because no physical sets had been built for Yautja Prime.
“It was a completely created world,” Rapley says. “It was a small shoot they had done originally, which had some grounded elements, which we used to reference. But then [on the revised sequence], we were doing these sweeping camera moves, and covering this motion-capture action.”
For Wētā, expanding the sequence meant digitally creating more of Yautja Prime, from clan guards to buildings to geographical features. It also meant digitally animating an entire sandstorm, which sweeps up as Dek and Father are battling.
“The sandstorm wasn’t there originally,” Stopsack says. “It was an add-on as this sequence grew. And it had a narrative point, obviously, a purpose: Dek is outsmarting Father. So you can understand the motive and the creative idea, but when you get this idea, you’re like, Oh my God, how are we going to do that now? We weren’t shy of taking on these challenges. We were excited about that. I thought it was a brilliant idea, from a narrative point of view.”
Setting part of the finale in a sandstorm also raised the technical challenge of making the characters “visually compromised,” as Stopsack puts it. The audience couldn’t see them well, but their actions still had to be clear and legible.
“It turned out to be, in my mind, one of the more beautiful, fun aspects,” Stopsack says. “What I liked about Dan’s approach to a lot of this stuff was […] ‘We don’t want to show them clearly. You don’t want to have this crisp, clear view on Father and Dek. It wants to be muddy, it wants to be a little bit more gritty.’ That reflects the creative approach, the design language that Dan chose. I really admired that and resonated with it.”
Rapley says the original, shorter version of Badlands’ finale looked more like a classic samurai-movie clash. “It was more Dek arriving on the planet. He and Father were quite close together. Essentially, it’s the same idea, but very condensed. Father would turn invisible, and there’d be a quick rush as they ran toward each other. But Dek threw sand at Father, which revealed him, and then they crossed paths, like a samurai standoff, and they went to the opposite sides, and then Father’s arm fell off. So it was just a very quick exchange.”
“What Dan intended to do by letting us grow bigger is develop our appreciation of Dek, reflecting that Dek had matured. Dek was primed now to really defeat his father,” Stopsack adds. “Obviously there were the two guards that came into play, which weren’t in there originally. So it gave it all a much more sort of stronger footing, and you could relate to Dek in a very different way.”
Predator: Badlands is in theaters now.
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