Predator: Killer Of Killers

Bluesky

"Go forth among the stars and seek only the strongest prey..." gives us the source of the title. These are tales of the Yautja, the Predators. We start off Earth, in the cold of space, but soon we will be mistbound, in the cold of the Viking North. A raiding party returns, led by the Sea Queen, Ursa. The first chapter is the shield. She wears it upon her back.

With an animation style that is somewhat abstracted, impressions of fire, fur, cold, clashing steel are all deftly and digitally drawn. Elegant work with shadows and the cloaks of the hunters is one of many places where the control afforded by cartoon is cleverly used. Shieldhalls are swiftly sketched, but the real artistry is in its visions of violence. A fjord hides a forest of wrecked longships; we move seamlessly between the water and the ice above to establish our battlegrounds.

Valhalla would have queues at the door so swiftly are soldiers sent. There is a mention of Grendel and while these are ages we have seen in computer animation before, not with this artistry. From that Ninth Century North across worlds and time to a Seventeenth Century East. The same stylisation that so ably conjures Viking violence serves to show samurai strength. Wintry Scandinavia becomes autumnal Japan, for a different tale, that of the sword. In sequences without dialogue much is conveyed by looks, music, a sudden flash of steel. This is Japan reflected back through the lens of Star Wars, at once fearless and inventive.

Benjamin Wallfisch' score is one of several treats. Written by Micho Robert Rutare, it's an impressive piece of work for someone with a story credit for Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus. One could be picky and talk about a feature début. Then there's Prey and Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg, who co-directs with Joshua Wassung. Wassung's got dozens of visual effects credits, and his work with The Third Floor providing pre-visualisation and production effects has clearly been an excellent training ground for this.

There are the traditional moments of the series in new lights. Gearing up, bleeding out, the introduction of new weapons for old foes. Cues from elsewhere are re-used and they're part of familiar patterns. Beyond that repetition, there's even firsts for the series, the third chapter, The Bullet, features dogfights whose ingenuity is second only to their beauty. To try to follow Independence Day and Top Gun and Spider-Man Into The Spiderverse is a strange course but the film threads it with aplomb.

A camera that exists as a point in space can move in ways only virtual geometries allow. To do so as crisply, across as many landscapes is one of many ways where Killer of Killers delights. Animation has often liberated franchises from the constraints of budget, but that creative freedom can be wasted. This doesn't, and it's all the better for leaning into the opportunities granted by the medium. There's a greater variety of yautja than any collection of stuntmen in prosthetics could manage, and putting the alien back into the predators makes the once familiar fantastic.

The universes of Alien, Predator, even The Terminator were built upon and brought together by sequels and comic series, by novels variously graphic. This film comes closer to capturing the lure of expanded universes than most franchises manage.

There's some fan service, including some static (if not frozen) cameos, and Michael Biehn's voice is a familiar one among a talented voice cast operating in five languages. Their efforts bring depth to characters given life by animation with a purposeful aesthetic that finds a canny valley between the real and the rendered. It's being a fan that meant I wanted to watch, and was as optimistic going in, and is probably one of the reasons why I enjoyed it as much. Blue language and lashings of red, green, and ultraviolence mean this is absolutely not child-friendly. How much one would get from it if you haven't seen any of the others I couldn't say, not least as anyone who's likely to enjoy swords and shields and spaceships is equally unlikely not to have seen at least one of them. It is also aimed squarely at adults who are capable of having fun, willing to indulge in a bit of silliness without having to cloak it. I hugely enjoyed Prey, was amused by Badlands, but I spent almost all of Killer Of Killers grinning so widely I nearly grew mandibles. Hunt it out.

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