PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS (2025)

Following the success of Prey (2022), his prequel to Predator (1987), pitting 18th-century Native Americans against the extra-terrestrial hunter, director Dan Trachtenberg is back (aided by animation expert Joshua Wassung) with a “surprise movie” debuting months ahead of his upcoming movie Predator: Badlands. This animated side-venture, Predator: Killer of Killers, is an anthology of three historical tales set in the Predator universe, which seems to have been made in order to scratch various nerdy itches and avoid the financial burden of bringing such scenarios to the screen in live-action.

The opening tale, “Shield”, takes place in Scandinavia, 841 A.D., where a female Viking warrior called Ursa Anders (Lindsay LaVanchy) leads her clan, including her young son Anders (Damien Haas), on a mission to avenge the death of her father at the hand of the rival Krivich tribe’s leader, Chief Zoran (Andrew Morgado). Unfortunately, a hulking Predator (or Yautja) has tagged along, ambushing Ursa’s men and dispatching them before turning its sights on her as the sole survivor.

After Prey, there was a lot of speculation about how this venerable 1980s franchise could continue by simply dropping different Predators into various historical milieu. Two of the most common suggestions are brought to life in Killer of Killers, with this opening Nordic setting offering a clear advantage to the humans considering the low temperatures. Indeed, the cold and ice plays a significant role in proceedings when it comes to evading the Predator, and “Shield” offers a great deal of atmosphere and brutal action —my favourite moment being someone getting decapitated by a shield used to hold open two heavy wooden doors. Like all the stories, it’s foremost a way to have fun with a ‘Predator versus [blank]’ idea, so gets to the point and provides some thrilling moments and succinct action choreography.

The second story, “Sword”, leaps forward in time to feudal Japan in 1609, where two sons of a samurai warlord have become estranged in the decades since one of them, Kiyoshi (Louis Ozawa), passed a brutal physical challenge to succeed their father, while the other, Kenji (Louis Ozawa), became a shinobi and now returns to face his sibling. However, unwittingly, Kenji has been followed home by a Predator, who engages the brothers in combat and eventually forces them to put aside their differences and work together to have any chance of surviving.

Again, ‘Predator vs. Samurai’ has been a common dream of fans to see portrayed on screen, with a side order of black-clad ninja, and “Sword” delivers on that promise. There’s arguably the best fight choreography of the entire film in this story, and I particularly enjoy how every Predator doesn’t use weapons that are quite as advanced as those seen in the original 1987 movie. They’re still relying on tech that’s centuries ahead of their quarry, but the aesthetic and design feels more medieval in nature. 

The third story, “Bullet”, takes a different approach from anything seen in any previous Predator adventure. It’s 1942, World War II is raging, and a young man called Torres (Rick Gonzalez) has recently joined the US Navy as a fighter pilot, only to be called into action when his squadron is attacked in the Atlantic Ocean by an unknown aircraft apparently using hooks and advanced weaponry to down them. Can Torres’ gift for engineering and bravery help turn the tide against a Predator pilot that doesn’t get its hands dirty but instead prefers aerial combat?

“Bullet” provides the freshest take on a typical Predator setup, as the alien spacecraft we’ve seen before have only ever been glimpsed as transport. But here, the craft is more of an advanced fighter jet, so the combat is WWII-style dogfighting given a sci-fi twist. Again, it’s appreciated that the ship’s weapons aren’t too advanced (with heat-seeking missiles or futuristic laser beams), as that would be too easy, and it’s frankly more creative to see how the Predator ship deals with the US Navy using old-school grappling hooks through the clouds. The choreography of the stunts and action is once again excellent, while also being coherent and exciting to watch unfold. It feels like Trachtenberg and Wassung designed these set-pieces by sitting down and playing with toy planes and bits of string for hours, which delivers just the right degree of childish glee to what happens.

Details about the fourth story is a huge spoiler, so don’t read on if you haven’t seen Killer of Killers and want to be surprised. But as each story ends we’ve become aware that the human victors don’t simply return to life with an amazing tale to tell to disbelievers, but are taken prisoner and flown to the Yautja homeworld to participate in fight-to-the-death gladiatorial combat. With the winner getting a chance to take down the enormous Warlord Predator, to potentially crown themselves the “killer of killers”. Therefore, Viking Ursa, ninja assassin Kenji, and fighter pilot Torres have to overcome their language and cultural barriers to work together, survive, and hopefully escape this ongoing nightmare.

Overall, Predator: Killer of Killers offers incredible action moments and will please fans of the franchise who’ve daydreamed about seeing the Predator in different eras. I don’t know if Trachtenberg made it an animated project because it would have otherwise have been cost-prohibitive in live-action, or if a suitable story didn’t present itself that could sustain a two-hour narrative by itself, but we instead get 20–25 minutes of solid action with only modest character work. But it’s enough to be worth the time invested by everyone involved. Although I wish the characters looked more shocked by meeting a real-life monster. The brevity of each story also makes it feel like each Predator is relatively easy to defeat, compared to the films having more time to make audiences feel like the alien is a more significant threat and allow the human prey to earn a hard-fought victory after many failures.

The quality of animation by the Third Floor is also worthy of praise, as this is the studio’s first foray into full-blown animation. They started life in the mid-2010s as a company specialising in the “previsualisation” of action sequences for blockbuster movies, so their work is only really seen the filmmakers and intended to help everyone achieve a final product. So it’s great to see them step things up, by essentially rendering their pre-viz into a Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse (2018)-flavoured 3D animation, which seems to be the new normal as we transition away from the beautiful but over-familiar Pixar CGI aesthetic.

Overall, it’s a joy to have a Predator movie suddenly appear without much advanced word and take the franchise into a whole new medium, while showing us new eras, and new characters. And there’s fun connective tissue to the films to ensure this is canon with what’s come before, which I appreciated as a fan. Benjamin Wallfisch’s music score also doesn’t shy away from riffing on Alan Silvestri’s iconic themes, which can’t help but get the blood pumping.

Killer of Killers may even have cleverly set up a direct sequel to Prey, and I still have hope Arnold Schwarzenegger can one day be persuaded to cash a pay cheque and return as old man Dutch.

USA | 2025 | 90 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

directors: Dan Trachtenberg & Joshua Wassung.
writer: Micho Robert Rutare (story by Dan Trachtenberg & Micho Robert Rutare; based on characters created by Jim Thomas & John Thomas).
voices: Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa, Rick Gonzalez, Michael Biehn, Doug Cockle, Lauren Holt, Damien Haas, Piotr Michael & Felix Solis.