Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)

R for all of the mega violence you can handle.  If you think it's just violence, oh no.  You forget that the Predator franchise is a big fan of messing with people's skeletal systems on the outside of their bodies.  Also, the freedom of animation means that you can do some pretty gnarly stuff with violence.  It seems moot, but in the shadow of all that violence is some language.  There isn't any sexuality or nudity.  But, you know, tons of violence. R.

DIRECTORS: Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung

Guys.  Guys.  It's pretty great.

Like, I'm not the first person to be all about Predator: Killer of Killers.  The internet basically unanimously all got behind this Hulu Exclusive.  I'm going to pat myself on the back here because I can.  I saw that trailer when it was first released and instantly thought, "This is going to be my favorite Predator movie."  Now, do I always keep the faith?  Not really.  When I found out that this was going to be an anthology movie, I was a little disappointed.  The thing about the trailer was that we saw a bunch of people from different times fighting Predator monsters.  I thought that Killer of Killers was going to be these people coming together and have a big mega battle.  And guess what?

It was both!  It was both an anthology movie and a sick film about warriors throughout time fighting Predators.  Oh my goodness.  It's so on the nose and exactly what a Predator movie should be that I'm actually going to have a hard time writing about it.  I think that there are some people who get attached to projects and it is absolute serendipity.  Dan Trachtenberg, this is what he does now.  It's like Kevin Feige.  Feige's got his Marvel stuff.  Trachtenberg has his Predator universe.  And where I'm giving him all of the kudos comes from the fact that he's willing to take big swings and make me care about a universe that should absolutely bore me.

(I would like to point out right here that I'm writing the rest of this at 1:15 in the morning three days later because I went to San Francisco for a funeral.  On the plane there, I watched a movie.  On the plane back, I watched a movie.  I was this close to getting caught up on this blog.)

I think that when I wrote my Predator 2 and my Prey blogs, I pointed out some stuff that was pretty obvious. If I didn't, I'm disappointed in myself.  Regardless, I'm going to do a quick version here: The very notion of a Predator is a scathing commentary on the role of the mighty hunter.  I suppose that Kraven the Hunter tried to do something with this and failed in the shadow of the Predator franchise.  I never want to kill things. I'm not wired to do that.  But we know that there are people who go on safari to hunt lions and massive killer beasts.  The logic of this behavior implies that man is able to be something bigger than his fragile self and fell nature's predators because of intellect and cunning.  However, for people like me, this behavior is always a bit absurd.  After all, those not involved in killing lions for funsies are aware that the gun is doing most of the work.  Also, a lot of these hunters hide behind the luxury of money, meaning that they are equipped with guides and places of safety to do their hunting.  

That's why I always thought the notion of the Predator was always a little bit silly.  This is a race of creatures who have devoted every element of their society to hunt the universe's greatest killers.  But the one thing that is wildly obvious is that the Predator always outguns its victims.  (One of the things that I can't really wrap my head around is how the creatures, who seem intellectually pretty simple, create the most devastating hunting technology in the universe.  Are there Predator scientists?)  Now, when these Predators used to stalk Arnold in the first movie, that tech was pretty advanced.  But Arnold at least had machine guns and stuff.  That was at least a weapon that could potentially put a hole in a Predator from a distance.  Sure, that stuff didn't work so well because the Predator has cloaking tech.  But we can at least pretend that late '80s military weaponry could hold its own against an invisible killer.  But I love that Trachtenberg takes that one moment at the end of Predator 2 and rides that imagery into the ground.

The best part of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the opening credits.  We got to see Wolverine and Sabretooth throughout the ages, interacting with history.  The rest of the movie is a full-on disappointment because all of those images in the opening credits seemed more interesting than the actual plot that the movie had.  But what Killer of Killers does is embrace the absolute insanity of this massive goopy alien tearing apart warriors from olden times.  Sure, these are the humans that win. There's the shieldmaiden Viking, the samurai, and oddly the kid who uses more smarts than weaponry to destroy the bad guy.  But I love that the newest tech in this is from World War II. With the viking and the ronin (which is probably more accurate?  Maybe ninja?), their tech is pointy things.  That's the extent of tech that goes against a monster that can see you in the darkness and be invisible with spaceship tech to back him up.  It's so hilariously unevenly matched that it becomes more about the skill of the fighter than it is about the absurdity of what is being watched.  There's no way that anyone would stand a chance against the Predator.  And yet --AND YET! --there are three guys through sheer skill and luck get through killing their hunters.

Yet, again, this is a commentary on the stupidity of hunting.  That's what the movie keeps kind of coming back to. Even when we get to the Predator planet, which I have to believe is more about building lore in a franchise that was almost infamously anti-lore, these are a bunch of alpha males all clapping each other on the backs and saying that they are the ultimate killers.  Heck, these three, against all odds, defeat their respective predators on Earth only to be forced into a deathmatch with each other, a giant beastie, and then have to take on the King Predator.  And of course it's unfair.  The movie doesn't even go into a place that says that the hero beats the King Predator.  No, it just makes them win by escaping...kind of.

The reason that I'm losing my mind over Killer of Killers is that none of this should work.  Instead, what I was given was a Hulu original (the second in this franchise) that is animated and absurd. And yet, the movie feels rich.  It sticks to its guns about what a Predator movie should be about.  When Terminator fell off the rails, Predator somehow maintained a very similar formula and continues to be more and more entertaining without losing what made the movie something to be watched in the first place.   Honestly, Killer of Killers is probably my favorite Predator movie.  On a much smaller scale, Killer of Killers is what Into the Spider-Verse did for Spider-Man.  It's super fun.  It turns the anthology format on its head, giving value to the connecting thread, and it's a darned gorgeous animated movie.  

​Points all around!