PREDATOR: BADLANDS Spoiler Special (w/Dan Trachtenberg)

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1:28the new series, and hosting the red carpet for Stranger Things Season 5, which is epic, huge. Today's episode, though, most importantly, is all about Predator, and specifically Predator Badlands, which is now out in theaters. This movie is so good. You're going to hear me gush a lot, so I apologize in advance. But Dan Trachtenberg, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Prey, Predator Killer of Killers, he knows his stuff. This is a guy I've known for a while who we've been talking for a while and we kind of run into each other things and you know we have mutuals. He's never done the podcast. We are you're going to experience a little bit of a mutual admiration society again apologies.

2:12Dan is very kind a devoted fan of Happy Second Fused. I'm a devoted fan of his so if you can't stand 45 minutes of men gushing about each other's work, you're listening or watching the wrong podcast. I saw this movie recently, and as I said to Dan, to be honest, I'm running around, I have no room in the schedule, and I'm like, it's time, I have to do Dan. This movie's so good. So this was recorded in this crappy hotel room at 6 a.m. Hopefully I was semi-coherent for catching up with Dan. Luckily he's very articulate, knows his stuff. and had a lot to say and to unload some spoiler stuff. So like I said, this is best experienced.

2:56I mean, don't watch or listen to this until you've seen Predator Badlands because what are you doing to yourself? Experience the movie, enjoy it. But if you have seen it, this is for you. We dissect a lot of cool moments, Easter eggs, connections to other films. It's no secret that this has linkage to the Alien franchise, but take away all those bells and whistles This is just a rockin' great action-adventure sci-fi movie. So you guys are in for a treat if you haven't seen it yet. And if you have, you know what I'm talking about. Other things to mention really quickly. I'll just tease some other things going on.

3:33Patreon.com slash Happy Say Confused. All the info, early access, discount codes, including upcoming events. I've got one next week in New York. Is it next week? Actually, I think by the time you listen to this, it's going to be this week. Yeah, I think so. November 18th. It's coming up soon. Brendan Fraser talking rental family, but his entire career. He's never done the podcast. I'm so excited. Brendan, a living legend. So we're going to screen the movie at 92Y. Then I'm going to have a big career chat with him. There's a lot of great episodes in the can. It's a good time for movies right now.

4:11I love the fall. It's great. Stranger Things, a really cool podcast I just recorded. I'll say it because I posted the photo. Winona Ryder's back. Of course she's back. You guys know I'm obsessed with Winona. She's the best. Fourth time on the podcast. That's coming up soon. Maybe some other Stranger Things podcasts, too. I will just tease. Nothing firmed up, but we've been talking about some other people. So we're going to cover this last season in a big way, I think, on Happy, Sad, Confused. I'm very excited for everything to come on the pod the last couple months of the year because we're, yeah, we got some cool stuff cooking.

4:47So stay tuned. I'm going to let you guys enjoy this now. Like I said, Dan Trachtenberg, you know him, you love him. 10 Cloverfield Lane, Prey, Killer of Killers, and now Predator, Badlands. This guy knows his stuff. And I think this conversation started in a very casual way. So it's going to feel a little organic, but that's all good. Here's me catching up with director Dan Trachtenberg. Enjoy. We're doing it. Oh, my gosh. Can't believe it. We couldn't do another 10 years of dancing around each other. Hi, Dan. I'm in my home in Philadelphia, my childhood home, and tucked away in a room borrowing a computer and all that stuff.

5:33So sorry for all the crazy. No, I get it. You know how to read. You have books behind you. Dude. This doesn't even, we're not even going to talk about my mom's books. This is a crazy thing. It's good to see you. I only half gushed when we saw each other at Comic-Con. I'm ready to full gush. Okay, I want like 10%. Don't do too much. I mean, I'll take a little bit. And luckily, dude, I'm doing, I mean, not to say, like, I always want to do this, but like, I'm doing this at 6 a.m. after I hosted the Stranger Things premiere last night in LA. Oh my gosh. I love this movie. and I know we wanted to do this for a while but I saw the movie and I'm like, okay, we have to make this happen because the movie is so fucking good, man.

6:18I mean, congrats. Thank you in so many ways. But I'm a long time fan and I've always been so curious about your story and because I'm here, I was thinking about I feel like I haven't listened to every episode so I don't know if more has been told but I remember you um did one episode i i feel like it may have been from your childhood home with your brother um that was a rare thing um and i've always just found that um you i think when i first started listening to you i was like why is he so it sounds like he works in the business it doesn't sound like um you're super objective and and come from a place of of journalism as much as like having been inside it which may just be that you're that insightful um or um from stuff with your brother i do not know um but and you also uh which i know that you are aware of but there's this crazy thing that anytime I see a headline of an interesting story it's always from you it's like always from you to an obnoxious level no I appreciate that that's very sweet it's really weird it's really weird that and you you have a very disarming way about you and and so um uh the chats feel more like friends catching up than they do feel investigatory so um um you get people people are comfortable and they and they share things that maybe they wouldn't when we're all so prepared to like sell a movie or tv show or whatever it is um but the only time i ever heard you be nervous do you know the one time that you feel like you were the most nervous no i i well let's see if it because you're normally very much not um but uh indiana jones harrison ford yeah Yeah.

8:26And you used to do a thing where people grab out of a hat. Yeah. Indiana Jones hat. Yeah. Indiana Jones hat. Yeah. That's amazing. I was nervous. That was a junket. And that was like a shorter thing. And yeah, he's Harrison Ford. Have you met Harrison? Yeah, it's a shorter thing. You don't have time to like nestle. And he's famously just like so dry. And so, I mean, he's great. But I actually love the way that interview came out. But you're right. Like I walked into that room like, okay, how do I get something? I heard a difference in you that is not like the way you normally are. But what is your – Dan, we're going to – okay, you've got two more minutes and then we're going into the record.

9:02Okay, just give me a little bit and then we can talk. But how did you gain the superpower? What formed this? I did my 10 ,000 hours, to be honest. I failed before I got comfortable. Like I was like, you know, you know, we probably share a similar early background. I was, you know, I went to like sci-fi conventions. I was like a crazy pop culture nerd with my older brother and like did college radio and did like anonymous interviews for like years and years and years. So by the time, like I didn't start to do on camera till I was 30. So I think there was that. And I don't know, like if I, when I self-analyze, I do think my, I think you've analyzed it well.

9:47like my superpower if there is one is like i i do talk to everybody the same way like i i'm i'm able to shut out 99 of the time outside of harrison ford right the part of my brain that's like why am i talking to my childhood crush winona rider right now like it just this does not compute um and i have so much love this is not i'm not faking it i you know i i love this shit and like i hopefully that comes through so i yeah i don't know how to present i don't know how to teach a Were you like an intern at MTV and then – My quick background is I was – so college radio, I worked for Charlie Rose at a school.

10:28Remember the Charlie Rose show? I was a producer there for four years. And that guy, say what you will about him, he did exhaustive in-depth interviews. So I learned how to prep and research and go hardcore into it. And like I said, lived kind of a life before I started to actually do this. I see. I see. Okay. that's okay but they're not here for me dan look we know i think we are a little bit i think we are but go ahead okay so this is so some further context for the folks out there it's um we're taping this on opening day for predator badlands um and this is a a really really great movie great predator movie great like adventure sci-fi movie um and dan and i as you can tell guys if you're listening or watching we know each other to a degree because we've kind of traveled in the same spaces but we've never done this deep dive and i and i and i want to do this hopefully talk a little spoilers if that's okay with you we're going to run this i'm thrilled to i'm thrilled to that's success i'm like oh my god you talk about the movie as the movie is okay it's great okay so first let's just a little context some of the basics that you have been talking about a little bit um germ of the idea for predator badlands is it about i heard you talk about this but like there is that funny thing when you start to think about the predator in these movies it's like it's the most you know amazing species that always somehow gets its ass kicked so it's time it's time right it's time um and the it's just the the next thought there is like okay so let's make a part of a movie where he wins um but that a slasher movie where the bad guy wins in the end is it is it was a fun thing although kind of happens a lot in slasher movies anyway there's always the like one extra shot of you know the the the coda is usually in this last um so that didn't excite me and did not make for maybe maybe it made for another i could figure out another cool predator movie but not for an actual great movie all-encompassing film so um thought a little bit harder uh and and and got to a place where it was like maybe the predator is on the same journey that normally the human is on um and that leads to this great place where that's not just cool for a predator movie that's cool for a sci-fi movie we we have how many movies have we seen where we've fallen in love with the creature sidekicks um and the you know and even the villains even the monsters in the movie um and for the first time now it's it's not uh it's not it's not it's not even it's there's a little there's quite a bit of t2 influence in this in this movie but even but even t2 it's john connor's movie and and arnold's the sidekick so really going even further and of all the creatures like it feels a little bit more accessible when you think about chewbacca doing it um but the ugly they're like famously ugly motherfucker and like that's who we're hitching you to and yes we're gonna make you feel things for that and um and still let it be ferocious and vicious and and brutal so um that was the like call to action of like holy crap this could be a really cool movie

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16:59And you set it up in such a great way. The pre-credit sequence like had me. It's such a good, and you immediately feel for Deck, and you realize that this is, as you watch the film further, there's this great symmetry. It's a film about siblings. It's a film about, you know, the outcast sibling. Talk a little bit about that first opening sequence, because that, like, if you don't accomplish that, first, it's a kick-ass, dramatic, emotional sequence. but it also puts you on deck side and makes you immediately feel for, for the first time for the predator. The North star for me for openings is not Raiders.

17:42I knew you were thinking it. The North star openings for me are two JJ movies. Oh, Star Trek, of course. Star Trek has to be one of them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how, how, what other opening are you crying like bawling like marley and me end of movie typical tears in the first five minutes of a movie you know let's call them jim jim and the gaquino score kicks in i mean i it kills me every time gone um and super eight uh has it opens on two shots back to back i've always wanted to get them framed and put on my office wall that is like Like someone changing a sign that says we haven't had an accident in so many days and it's being changed to zero.

18:30And the very next shot is a lone house in a suburb and a kid on a swing set and the door opens with a father coming. It's like it's like I know everything I need to know in two images. They don't even need to have been moving, though they are, but like two images. So that's always the holy grail every time. But this time, especially like getting getting people on the side of the quote unquote monster was really thinking about. It's got to happen right away. There's also like Hitman movie logic, gangster movie logic of and from Dusk Till Dawn a little bit to of like you're with the bad guys because they're up against something even worse than them.

19:19you know um and that that in this movie had to be emotional and physical um so and did you hit did you hit upon that kind of linkage between you know Thea and her sister as it were Deck and his brother pretty early on I go this is this is a thematic linkage that's gonna work yeah characters that are um outcasts that are seen as broken um uh that are trying to break a site i love that one of my favorite movies is magnolia and there's a line of magnolia that says maybe don't the past but the past ain't done with you i think that is the only thematic in movies that needs to be investigated if we have that in stories we have enough to like live as a culture so i'm always interested in characters breaking cycles and dealing with the burden of where they've come from um and these are two characters that are trying to be more than where they came from uh or eventually eventually trying to to be more than um where they came from yeah i don't know about you dan but having seen all these movies all these years i think it's time to stop trusting weyland yutani i i don't know if they're a reputable organization someone can investigate them i concur i i concur uh and and and such is tends to be the case in life um with our many corporations that we know um sometimes their best interest is not in the public and yet we still endure and receive, you know, and utilize this stuff from the corporations.

21:01So L's characters follows in a long line. I've always been a sucker. I'm sure you have for, you know, Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen, all these synths. Like these characters are like some of my favorites in the Alien movies. And these two are fantastic. You talked about this a little bit, but let's talk a little bit about connecting Weyland-Yutani Alien into this in the way that you did. just happened organically it's not like a corporate mandate like hey you want to think about alien in here like give me the opposite no none of this movie none of this movie was the corporate no one was like hey dude next up make one with like very little actors that'll help us sell the movie you know like and a monster that you know like no one everyone who likes predator you know has never really asked for this kind of you know like um none of this is it none of this It's, you know, because there's obviously there's oh, there's always a thing from anything that comes from Disney where people say Disneyfication of something or whatever it is.

22:00Or, oh, look at Disney. They're doing this. Let me tell you, they did not ask. This is all if you don't if you're not cool with the movie, it's this guy's fault. I assure you. And and yeah, no, I really was just thinking about if as soon as I put a human in the movie. then it becomes T2 which is great but that exists it's going to become

22:28we as the creators of it and also at the end the audience will just sort of more attach to the human than the monster so that was sort of a rule from the start as I was thinking about like okay no humans and the next thought was like monster and robot there's something sort of Miyazaki feeling about that And then the next thought was like, holy crap, wait a second. It's sitting here. It's right there. It's right there. It's right there. Yeah. Wait a minute, Tony. So is there any permutation of this where you lean even more in, where they're hunting the xenomorph, where there's a little bit even more of a overt alien overlap?

23:11um i just think this is where i'm like my i'm like this is how josh gets it this is how he this is how he does it i'm gonna be i don't know what you're talking about no it like um i forget the line from superman but but like it's more punk rock to me that there is no xenomorph in this movie and the longer we can go but who knows you know whatever but it's just really cool this There probably is precedent that someone will point out. But it's typically when you have two things from different IP or franchise or whatever coming together, it's the things. It's the action figures. And it's just so cool to me that we've just taken an element.

24:00We can do that. We can do that. We can just take this one element. And that's fusing to Predator and we'll let this cook and whatever, you know, come blossoms from there will be awesome. But and it would be great. I concur. It would be really cool. And people have to fall in love with one movie at a time, obviously. um but it would be great if eventually there's a crossover it's not like i mean a heavier crossover with with with xenos um it's not a marketing gimmick it's not like the entire point of the movie is the crossover yeah um it'd be great if it came from the narrative of either that we would be building on or um that's just genuinely awesome for that movie you know so speaking of crossover elements i mean one moment you know she emerges in something akin to the power loader of aliens is that another iteration essentially of the aliens power loader thousand percent that is meant that is weak that is referred to us as the super power loader um yeah no that was every intention of being and i have to tell you yeah it was actually um There was a challenge there because the temptation was you want to see the predator up against something really gnarly and technological.

25:30And you want to indulge in all the mech stuff that you possibly could. but a Mr. Mr. Jim Cameron really indulged in that in Avatar growing up which he deserves to as he as he you know as he born and bred it in some in so many ways but also like the thing that makes it distinct what was so cool in aliens was that you saw it in the beginning as a piece of utility equipment um and that's what it defines wayland utah i always i try as hard as i can a mantra throughout developing and production and the whole way across it's like what can happen in only this movie um because there's tons of money a mech can be in avatar can be in pacific lots of movies can have a mech fighting something um but only in this movie with way the new tani can it be an ancestor of the power like can it be a power loader thing and so um was challenging to to devise it around uh a piece of that equipment that made sense as uh made for utility um could then be weaponized and um and all that yeah well and i think what you tow the line very well and like i don't want to crap on another movie because i actually loved what fete did i loved his last alien movie i think he did a great job i think some people had a quibble i'm not gonna put you on the spot but like the the quoting of the line to get away from her you bitch is like one one one step too much for like we don't need like you know to like underline it and you don't underline the power letter for those that remember aliens or it's like oh that i see the connection and i even had to clarify it with you and um that i think less is more in something it's so funny i actually thought it would be obvious but it hasn't i thought as soon as we put a little glimpse in the trailer i'm like oh my god they're all gonna like say and people weren't saying it admittedly We kept it pretty dark in the trailers, but even now, yeah, the line stuff is just always hard.

27:50We had a line in Prey, and I think that went over okay. The trick is, like, it's a line that would be said anyway. You know, like in that moment, it's it would be necessary to say that as opposed to this is is definitely here or a moment. And we avoided and also because the temptation, what do you all day, every day on set, everyone is pitching. Wouldn't it be fun if, you know, I'm pray everyone was like, let's name a horse chopper. You know, like, you know, or like the fur trappers would be like, get to chopping her or something, you know, like it's fun to joke around. And of course, the temptation is is right in front of us.

28:45I will say we tried very hard. Ultimately, there's a little bit of wiggle in the end, but the the callous, the creature that cannot be killed, does not bleed. Like visually, like like there's there's a little bit of when it's when it's saw spinning. Yeah, that's just flesh that's being around. You know, you see it reconstruct itself and there's no there's no blood dripping. Whenever it reconforms and all that stuff, just so we are internal kind of like, it's fine. It's not bleeding. So you can't kill it.

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31:53Let me ask you this. The ending. Always the way you wanted to end it. Mom coming. What were the permutations? What were you thinking about? I will say the ending went through growth, a lot of growth. The original Coda, the same kind of stuff happened, but it was much more brief. It was much more Kurosawa. It was actually a lot like the ending of the samurai, the sword chapter in Killer of Killers. It was a standoff. They charged each other, Deck and Father. And then you saw green blood dripping. You didn't know whose it was. And we boom up and reveal his gauntlet's got blood on it. And Dad has been sliced.

32:44And then Big Bud comes over and chomps the head. And that was it. Cut to black. Cut to black in so many ways. And the first time we tested it, they were like, we want more. Uh, you know, like more dad, come on, dad's so bad-ass. We, we want more, we want more. Um, so that, that's, that's what evolved. We really, uh, um, added quite at that whole end fight, the brothers, they're the other guards and, um, and so much more with dad. Uh, uh, and then also that mother ending and I and I really can't place um when that first I think I was thinking about the end of um of Killer of Killers and and the spaceship going off into the sunset just like that like that Apocalypse Now-y thing and um and like inverting that and having something you know what it is it's like there's just something to me and Cloverfield ain't ended in this way too of like you forged a character through the fires of one movie um uh and the idea of like it's not over yet for them but but now they are ready for it in a new way yeah i've always loved the surge of that um ready for the next adventure whatever ready for the next thing yeah get ready for whatever's worse out there and then the thought of oh i know what could be worse than than dad you know so how fully fleshed out is what to do with mom?

34:20Have we ever seen on screen a female predator? Never seen on screen a female predator. Crazy. Again, you're finding all of the areas like, oh wait, we've never explored that aspect. So what's, there must be some, you have some ideas to explore that aspect of who? Yeah, there's thoughts. There's thoughts. And certainly I want to make sure that it wasn't there's a lot of fan art of what the comics have had And I'd certainly want to make sure it feels unique and special and like fits in with the culture of the Yautja as we've been realizing it. I will say to you that that was one of the things in the end, this last line, that I suddenly got really, really nervous about.

35:13because I didn't want people to be like, wait, mom from the mother from Waylon, Utah, I have any computer. I got scared. It would be fine if that moment happened in the middle of the movie, but it's the last thought of the movie. And we constructed the thing of going to title and then back to that so that the last thought is like he's deck of the Yautja. Even though it's splitting hairs, but there's still... Um, and I, that's what I emailed Jim Cameron about. Um, and, uh, what was the question or, or thought? I initially sent him the, sent him the cut. Um, and he wrote a lovely response back. I've said this, you know, tail, but, but, but he, to say the full thing and, you know, um but he he loved he loved prey um which is mind blowing um absolutely like that's all i you know it's like no one has to like prey but if he likes it i'm fine you know it's like million percent um and uh and so when we were shooting new zealand he had me come down to we were in auckland he's obviously he's in wellington um arranged by the great steve asbel who runs 20th and is collaborating with both of us.