October 30, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode of 'Midnight Viewing,' the hosts delve into 'Killer of Killers,' an animated Predator anthology directed by Dan Trachtenberg. They explore the uniqueness of each segment, starting with the Viking-age tale 'The Shield,' moving to feudal Japan in 'The Sword,' and ending during World War II with 'The Bullet.'
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
03:59 Anthology Format and Inspirations
06:40 Story 1: The Shield
07:30 Story 2: The Sword
08:30 Story 3: The Bullet
09:21 Story 4: The Battle
10:02 Animation Style and Visuals
14:40 Predator Technology and Weapons
18:42 Historical Context and Storytelling
28:03 Predator in Different Genres
30:04 World War II and UFO Lore
36:44 Gladiatorial Combat
44:24 Cryo Stasis and Future Battles
FATHER MALONE
fathermalone71@gmail.com
patreon.com/fathermalone
@Midnight_Viewing
HP
hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
03:59 Anthology Format and Inspirations
06:40 Story 1: The Shield
07:30 Story 2: The Sword
08:30 Story 3: The Bullet
09:21 Story 4: The Battle
10:02 Animation Style and Visuals
14:40 Predator Technology and Weapons
18:42 Historical Context and Storytelling
28:03 Predator in Different Genres
30:04 World War II and UFO Lore
36:44 Gladiatorial Combat
44:24 Cryo Stasis and Future Battles
FATHER MALONE
fathermalone71@gmail.com
patreon.com/fathermalone
@Midnight_Viewing
HP
hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
We can kill it. Shouted it out there? What hell
(00:31):
are you?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome back to midnight viewing. More specifically, we're talking yaucha fest.
I heard an interview with Dan Trackckenberg recently, and evidently
I've been saying it wrong this entire time. What a crime?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
HB, yao sa yalloa is a yaucha?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense. I
wait about this time for that. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
kids and germs and smith mars. This is the one.
Oh no, we did pray. This is the stopgap. This
was a surprise. This was a secret project. Evidently nobody
knew about it while they were doing it. They were
doing it in conjunction or at the same time as
(01:15):
Predator bad Lands.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
All Right, Dan Tracktenburg is full of surprises, as will
be this discussion. I think you'll find father alone. This
discussion on killer of Killers will be full of surprises
as well.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Okay, that means that HB didn't like it, evidently, so
let's find out why. First of all, here's the trailer.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
You are old enough. Now it's time I tell you
about the monster. We must kill it or it will
(02:48):
kill us.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Old editor and Killer of Killers, released on June sixth,
(03:28):
twenty five, on streaming only. This is a Hulu jam.
It is directed by Dan Tracktonberg, screenplay by Mishow Robert Rutari,
Story by Dan Tracktonberg and Me Show Robert Routari, based
on characters by Who Say It with Me? Everybody? Jim
and John Thomas. And this one stars Lindsay Lavanchi, Louis Ozawa,
(03:51):
Rick Gonzalez, and Michael B. HB. What did you say this?
What does you think of this one?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Actually, no, I'm going to take that back. Let me
just say it is rare in the midst of a
franchise to receive the gift of an anthology. We hear
at midnight viewing specialize in anthologies. So what a welcome
fucking dessert this was for me. I love short fiction.
I love slices of fiction. Now, HP, did you know
(04:17):
that part of the inspiration for this film a side
of Dan Tracktenberg saying a pulp fiction is also an
anthology because most people think of horror anthologies when they
think of anthologies at all. But do you know that
part of the inspiration for this film was best in show.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
That I did not know, and I'm searching trying to
find the Is it just because of the fact that
you're dealing with five or six different groups of dog competitors?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Is at the tie in that's part of it? Okay?
Speaker 4 (04:45):
What's the formal connection between the two?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You meet each of those characters individually, you fall in
love with them and their own particular stories, and then
you have to watch them battle at the end.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Ah. Interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Now can I up for one minute before we get
into this. I just I feel the need to bring
this up now. I didn't want to imply that I
did not like this. I'm maybe I'm spoiling the discussion
a little bit, but it's not that I did not
like it.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
It's just we'll get into it.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
But just understand, first of all, I love the fact
that this was a surprise that was sprung on people.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Without any real notice.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
It was like getting a present on when it's not Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It reminded me.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
It reminded me a little bit of when musicians sometimes
have a surprise album drop. Bowie did this with the
next day. I remember it was a big deal to
me because it came out of nowhere. He hadn't recorded
in forever, and there we had this gift of an
album kind of out of the blue. So I really
I love the fact that trackten Berger. It makes me
(05:49):
feel like he values the fans and loves that shock,
surprise and appreciation of something that kind of out of
It's not like he had to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
He did.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
He wasn't under any obligation to give us these the
gift of this movie or this animated collection of shorts.
But so all due respect to Trachtenberg, I love the
fact that we were gifted this essentially.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
But let's dig into it a little bit.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
And I'll go into some of my the pros and cons,
my likes and dislikes of this.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Too late. You didn't like get the atracted Mercades.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yeah, I hope not, because I respect the hell out
of him. I love I love what he's done with
the franchise. But let's dig into this a little bit.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Let us do that three stories technically four, because there
is a wrap up, a wrap around, if you will
take us there HB.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Broad Strokes. The first episode takes place in its Viking times.
It's called The Shield, and it involves a.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
This is the oldest one, This is the oldest story.
This takes place in eight forty one ad.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Ah okay I must not have written down the year.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So this is the story of a shield.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Maiden in Viking times who is obsessed with vengeance. She's
trying to she wants to kill the feudal lord or
what have you who murdered her, actually forced her to
murder her own father. And she's taking among the people
she takes with her as her son, and they have
this final assault on his palace, if you will. And
(07:22):
of course who has to come and crash the party
but our friend the Yaucha.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So that's story one.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Story two is a little further into the future. It
takes place in sixteen oh nine feudal Japan. This, by
the way, spoiler alert, this was my favorite of the
stories that we get.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
This one was called The Sword.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
This is about two brothers who are supposed to fight
to decide who gets to carry on the samurai tradition
of their father. One of them runs away in disgrace
and becomes essentially a ronin, and they eventually the father dies.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Excuse me, sir, he did not become a robin Ronan.
He became a shinobi, a Ronan is a disgraced samurai.
He becomes a ninja.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
That's fine, I stand corrected.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
This is the classic tale of samurai versus ninja.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yes versus and again it's they're having this showdown, the
father has died. They're having this showdown, and who crashes
the party? Our friend, the Yaucha. The third tale is
called I have it here. It's called The Bullet It
takes place in nineteen forty one. It's the story of
(08:33):
a young man who dreams of becoming a pilot.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
One day he is.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
He eventually joins the war effort. In nineteen forty two,
there's an air battle. Once again, our friends the crashed
the party, as it were, I already said that before.
I used that metaphor twice.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Thank you. And this young man what's his name, Gonzalez?
I think his name is Torres.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Sorry Tores played by Rick Gonzalez.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, that's where the mix up was.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Torres musters the courage to try and take out the Yaucha.
And then the fourth technically the fourth and final entry
in this anthology is spoiler alert. All of the main
characters of the preceding three stories beat the predators. They
effectively kill the Predators. The fourth story is they've all
(09:23):
been brought together to the Yaucha home planet to juke
it out in gladiatorial combat to decide who is wait
for it, the Killer of Killers.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, that last story is called the Battle.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
By the way, The Battle, Oh sorry I left that out.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Let's Dig into the Shield my favorite story. In fact,
I wish these stories had been played in reverse order.
I wish we had started with the Bullet and then
gone back further and further in time.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
It would have been an interesting choice. I so I
said that the the one that in Japan that the
Sword was my favorite. This one was a very close second.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I really like this.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
This is a very solid introduction to the world and
the sort of look of this because it is animated,
but it's not animated in a traditional sense. It almost
looks and I think the team that animated this, they're
known primarily as a Previz team, and that's the vibe
I get from this. It's both kind of a strength
(10:22):
and a weakness of this, because if you don't like
the look of this animation, you're predisposed to not really
enjoying the experience.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I think that's the thing about every animation, honestly, And
the further and further the older and older I get,
the more and more I find that I either respond
to the character design or I don't, and no amount
of oh wow, that school wizbang whatever is going to
change that or make me enjoy that thing. Luckily, these
look like watercolor paintings come to life.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, they're very cool.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
They have a three dimensionality to them, which I think
is appealing. And it's animated very well. I like you,
I really enjoyed it. I thought it's probably a less
expensive way of producing the animation because it's not as
smooth or as detailed as other animation that I've seen.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
But this worked very well, I think.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, And this is a story I like the most
basically because it's it goes everywhere I want a story
to go. It has breathless action, it has fantastic action
as a matter of fact, and it has crazy emotion
and it leaves you devastated at the end, and that's
what I'm looking for. And no Predator movie to this
point has left me feeling that way at the end, bereft,
(11:37):
even Predators where they're trapped on that planet. Because I
didn't give a shit about those characters. This story is
twenty two minutes maybe in length, and by the end
I was absolutely shredded for Ursa.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It's a powerful story and it's well told, and I
think what you hit upon is one thing that we
talked about in the context of Prey the last episode,
which is pro was we basically agreed that Pray you
could have taken the Yaucha out of it entirely, and
it could have been. It would have been a very
compelling story of this Native American tribe and the struggles
(12:12):
of Naturu and how she was going to navigate the culture.
The best stories in this anthology, in my opinion, follow
a similar dynamic. So this one the story of the
shield Maid and looking for vengeance against her her hated
this person that destroyed her world essentially and made it.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
So that she says she feels that there's.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
A monster inside of her that cannot be it can't
be slaked until she kills this person. That's a very
compelling story without the other worldly dealings with the predator.
Same thing when we get to the Sword, it's the
same deal. We really care about these characters, and it's
such a compelling tale that they tell that with or
(12:56):
without the Yaucha, it's still going to be a cool
story that they're telling. That to me is what marks
the best of these anthology pieces is and The Shield
is a good example of that.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I've been in the anthology trenches for years now, and
I can say with authority that the greatest thing an
anthology story can be is economical with its time. And
each of these is incredibly economical their fleet to foot,
considering how much shoe leather they're laying out here. And
I agree with you, the best predator stories are the
(13:28):
ones that could exist without the predator, that could just
be whatever the threat happens to be. At the end
of the Shield, the predator character might as well have
been the Zorn character, which is the be evil warlord
that she's come to kill. She dispatches them, or rather
her son dispatches him pretty quickly, but and then she
has to fight the predator, so that easily just could
(13:49):
have been swapped out in her fight Zarren and then
come with the same outcome. However, what they do here
by aditing the predator is they do something really which
is they tell us once again the story of Baio Wolf,
where they've come to this king's grand hall and they're
in there, all these warriors, and then this monster of
(14:11):
Grendel shows up, and the fact they call him Grendel
as soon as he does, and that to me was
fan fucking tasting, a real world sci fi reasoning for
the Beowulf tale to have been told in the first place.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
I thought that was really cool too, that because that's
the only frame of reference these characters have back then,
is this mythology of this great monster that's come to
do battle with them. Of course they would lean on
their own mythology to make sense of what's happening around them.
The other kind of cool thing that they introduce in this,
and we've seen this in the other Predator movies especially,
(14:46):
is that each Predator, each Yaucha, has some kind of
unique style or weaponry that kind of distinguishes them from
any of the other yaucher that we've seen.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
We saw this in every one of the movies.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
This has one of those kind of cool weapons. He
has what's essentially like a sonic spring. He's missing a hand,
this yaucha, and in its place, it's this spring loaded
device that when it's fired, it shoots like a wave
of sound energy and knocks down people, can break things.
(15:22):
I love the technology. Every little morsel of technology that
they introduce with the Yaucha, I think is always really special.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Absolutely, when Pray we discovered that they hadn't at that
time come up with energy based weapons. They were still
using projectiles. So this is even further back. This is
like a thousand years before that movie. It only makes
sense that it's going to be more physical and less
sort of sci fi energy based phasers or something. And
(15:51):
if so, that makes it almost steampunk because he has
to lock it into place to get it to work
every time, basically like Prime the Pump not only like
the cool, steampunky version of a Predator weapon, but it
does continue the care with which Tracktenberger's treating all of
this because, as he said, each of them has their
own specialized weapon, and he knows that as fans, we
(16:12):
like that shit. We want new stuff and we want
it to be super cool, and all the weapons are
super cool, and this one in particular more than the
other stories. And maybe the reason I like it the
most is that's that Predator's ace in the hole. That's
what he thinks and probably has gotten him out of
every scrape he's ever been into or ever been in,
and it's the thing that effectively kills him here at
(16:35):
the end. I love the ending and using the shield
and that knocks her back and knocks him into the
fucking anchor, and ah, I don't know, loved it, loved it.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
That's key to all of these stories is the combatant,
the human going up against the predator always figures out
how what's the secret to beating it? What's that thing
that makes the vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Or how do they use their weaponry against them?
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I think that's the thing that kind of binds them
all together, all of these winners in the predator battles,
they all have the ability to figure out what's happening,
quickly process that information and figure out a way to
use it back against the predator.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And they don't. Really. Half of every Predator movie till
now is them figuring out those things. Oh, it can't
see Cole. Like here, she's under a fucking ice flow,
She's beneath a frozen lake and it can't see her.
Does that matter to her? No, She's just trying to breathe.
We as the audience already know. So I'm glad he's
(17:38):
working his way towards that where we don't have to
be introduced to the rules of the predator every single
fucking time. How many times can we watch fucking Bruce
Wayne crying over his parents' corpse.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
And that's the thing about this that I appreciate is
he's clear he's doing this. Trackenberg is doing this. He's
produced this for the fans. And that's the earest indication
that you just described, which is he doesn't have to
sit there and give you the rundown on the Yaucha
and their existence and their history and how they work
(18:10):
and their code of ethics and honor.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
We all know that.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
So clearly this was executed in such a way that
fans are going to have a field, have a lot
of fun with this, and not have to be spoon
fed the origin and how this all works.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
It's all.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
The word you used was like economical. This is so
streamlined and efficient storytelling. It's really that part of its
I think very effective.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
I think it's not only excellent service for the fans
because it's not insulting to us and it came out
of nowhere and we love this and we want more
of it. But it allows him to expand his universe
exponentially and very simply the fact that this entire movie
starts with a quote from the Yaucha codex, go forth
(18:58):
among the stars and seek only the strongest prey. They
shall be your trophy. Become the killer of killers. That's
from them, and this is the first sort of text
we've received from the Yaucha. Apparently there is a law book,
and that's one of them.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
The more and more he expands the universe, so the
cooler it is, and we see a lot of that
come the end of this movie. But for me, it's
also very chilling. And there's something very disturbing about one
aspect of the basically the third going into the fourth
story that we'll talk about. But the bottom line is
(19:36):
Tracktenberg and his team of writers and everyone else, they're
just so smart at expanding this universe in such a
logical way and making it. I'm not sure they would
ever dreamed of where the Yaucher is now when the
first Predator was made back in eighty six, some forty
(19:57):
years ago. It's pretty remarkable what we we have now
versus what was originally given to us back then.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, and you know, what like, finally somebody fucking innovating,
because what we had thirty years in between Predator and
Predators and they just told the same fucking movie. Pretty much,
Let's go back to the jungle with a bunch of soldiers. Okay,
let's do it. Hey gives the show we got dogs now, Okay, great.
I know I liked that movie more than I'm letting on,
(20:25):
but give me a break already. Anyway, let's move on
to the next story. By the way, I listened to
and ran a bunch of interviews with Tracktenberg about this film,
and as if my admiration wasn't high enough, he gives
credit like it's fucking Halloween candy. He like everyone who
points out something that was cool that came from another
person's idea, he points that person out immediately, And I
(20:48):
admire that.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
I love humility. I love somebody who gives credit where
credit is due.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Makes me like him even more.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
All right, Take us to the Take us to the
Sword sixty oh nine Feudal Japan. Beautiful chakrahachi flutes playing.
I would like to mention the score. By the way,
Benjamin Wallfish did the score. He's a very prolific film
composer and television composer. As a matter of fact, I
listened to this entire soundtrack they're getting Dan today. It is.
It's remarkably good and only occasionally plays on the dundadum
(21:20):
that has to be in every Predator thing. But he
works it in so well that I just fucking love
it anyway, the sort what else?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
What else has he done soundtracks for?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Most recently, he did the soundtrack to it. He was
the co author of the Blade Runner twenty forty nine soundtrack.
He did, He did Shazam. He did hell Boy, that's
the bad hell Boy with David Harber, not.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The Oh yeah, the most recent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
He's also Leewan El's go to guy. So he did
the Invisible Man and Wolfman. He did that last Mortal
Kombat movie. He's doing the new Mortal Kombat movie. Oh,
he did the Flash for Andy Mashetti. He did Twisters,
he did Alien Aromulus. So he actually in the fucking
neighborhood already. Wow. He is prolific and good and we'll
(22:06):
be reviewing his music again in a few weeks because
he did Predator, bad Lands, Super The Sword, My Man.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
The Sword.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Like I said before, your favorite, right, it was my favorite.
I'm a sucker for a good tale of feudal Japan
where you know it's there. It's honor running through everything
you these The Seven Samurai is one of my favorite movies.
I love all that stuff. I love the honor that
that they present. I love this idea of the duty
(22:36):
that these two brothers feel. The one who's disgraced and
has become a shinobi, the other wants to uphold the
tradition of his father, and that just the idea that
they're both they're having this last duel together. Like I said,
even outside of the alien aspect of it, that alone
would be an interesting tale. It's it's from lack of
(23:00):
a better word, it's shot really well, it's animated really well.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
The action is great. I just love it.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
I love martial arts movies, so this was very much
in my wheelhouse.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Agreed, The action is all fucking fantastic here. And I'd
like to point out that I forgot to mention in
the last story The Shield, when they finally arrive at
Zorn's compound and Ursa jumps off that boat, that's one
shot from beginning right until she gets to Zarn it's
all on intaken. It's fucking amazing.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Anyway, Banks, we should we also should mention before we
get to that, that there's this thing that he does
where at the very end after the Shield, Maiden has
not only killed the predator, but sadly she has lost
her own son. And it's the story, like you said,
it's heart wrenching because he dies in her arms. But
(23:51):
what essentially happens at that point is it fades into
another scene where now she has some kind of collar
around her neck and somebody's kneeling in her presence. She
doesn't know where she is. We don't know what's going
on as audience members, but this will become part of
effectively the wrap around story and the finale. But I
(24:12):
love this little mystery that Tracktenberg is presenting us with
because we already know just from the idea of the
Killer of Killers what's probably happening.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
But it's like leaving.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
These little clues as to the ultimate fate of these characters.
But then anyway, we move into the Sword, this story
of these two brothers and the father that has split
them into very compelling stuff. And one aspect of this
that I think is cool in both stories up till
now is the Predator is there but really observing, studying
(24:48):
in a way that we don't.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
They do this in the other.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Movies, but in this sense, it's almost as if he's
following their individual stories even as he's making his own
plan for what he's going to try to accomplish.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
It's very cool.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
So he's observing these characters just as we are. It's
almost like he's a proxy for the audience up to
a point.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Professionals being professional. I just like watching the Predator doing
his thing man and what he's focused on in any
one time. These three guys have arrows. What are they doing?
Target practice? This guy's wait, who's this dude? Aha? Finally
some action loved it.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
It's great, it's great.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So they you know, there's a reason that these, this
particular group of stories could be told without the Predator,
and that's because these are the oldest stories in human history.
I've got to get revenge from my father's story, and
that revenge makes you should dig two graves. There you go,
brother versus brother. You want Dad's love, I want Dad's love.
(25:54):
I became a And then on top of that, Ninja
versus Samurai which we've also seen how many times, So
look the secret sauce here is the Predator. But I
do agree these are so beautifully animated that had you
just given me a movie called Killer of Killers, I
would have been like, ah, wow, yeah, those were the
Killer of Killers. They were the best.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
And what the other thing that is apparent to me
is that, obviously, Pray we sung the Virtues of Prey
to an amazing degree in the last episode. We both
loved it, and audience has loved it because it essentially
rejuvenated the franchise. But I think it's in bold and
Tracktenburg to do is to say, you know what, I
(26:35):
think there's an appetite for people to see these historical
versions of these Predator tales. Everything up before Prey, everything
was basically modern day or near future sort of tales
of the Predator. We knew that he existed in the
past or the race existed in the past because of
(26:55):
the Adelini gun that Danny Glover gets way back in
Predator too. But it's just so smart of Tracten Bird
to keep pulling on that thread of the Predator all
through history and the fact that they've always been here
and they're always finding new ways to battle humans and
the ingenuity of these these humans throughout history to battle
(27:21):
and kill these predators. It's it's like I said, I
maybe I seemed a little too harsh at the outset
of this episode. It's not as if I didn't appreciate
it and I don't love the idea behind it. I
just think that's just so creative. And obviously with bad Lands,
he's going in the opposite direction. It looks like it's
now we're heading back into the future for the next
(27:43):
phase of this series.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
But actually committed to that idea as opposed to just
dicking around. The last one took place. Now we can't
really have another one. This won't take place ten years
after that one. Why who cares? Go backwards? Motherfucker? We
don't care what the continuity of these things. It's insane
to me that it took this long for anyone to
figure it out. Honestly, add Predator to any genre in
(28:08):
any time period. You're gonna have a fucking good movie
as long as you don't just keep repeating the first film.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Obviously he has an ultimate license, or he should, I
would say, if I'm the movie studio, I would give
him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants.
If he wants to do a Raiders of the Lost
Arc meets the Predator movie, fucking do it. If he
wants to do who like that kind of an archie
versus Predator type thing where it's like a teen sex
(28:33):
comedy with the Predator mixed up.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Sign me up, I'm already in line. I'm there.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So again, we're really we're praising him an awful lot,
but I think it's very well deserved.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
And even if he might not take all that credit
for himself, maybe.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
He would give it to the other people who He
doesn't do this all by himself, let's face it, but
he is the secret sauce that made this series come
alive again.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
And that brings us to your favorite segment, the bull.
The bullet, by the way, is the name of his plane, yes,
and that is his weapon. You get the idea here,
shield sword, bullet.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
My favorite part of this, by the way, is the
fact that Michael Bean was in it, and I didn't
even know it was Michael Bean. I thought that was
really cool because we all love Michael Bean. But having
said that, this was my least favorite episode for a
variety of reasons, but really it was a little It
felt to me like an episode of Amazing Stories.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's what it felt like to me.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
It felt it leaned very heavily, far too heavily, in
my opinion, into the action adventure comedy kind of thing.
It felt like, what was that episode with Kevin Costner
with a tailgunner get stuck.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
In the thing?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
The mission?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
The mission? Yeah, it felt like the mission.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Casey Schamasco is a belly gunner trapped in the bubble
dome on the bottom of a B seventeen landing gear
won't come down. But he's a cartoonist, and this is
a man Spielberg episode.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
I really wanted to like this particular episode of the
movie because I love the idea that it's the nineteen forties,
it's World War two. I being an amateur UFO buff
I'm aware that there have been UFO sightings in wartime.
I think they were originally called the Foo Fighters. Think
(30:22):
that's the origin of that name. They called them Foo Fighters.
I was so excited to see that kind of idea
come to life in the context of a Predator movie.
But really what we got was it felt safe to me,
and I don't think the Predator series works when it
plays it safe.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Here's what I'll give it. It's the first time we've
seen a dog fighting Predator. It's the first time that
we've seen an aerial dog fighting fella. And to me,
that being his secret weapon, his specialized thing, was super
duper cool. This should have been my favorite AP episode
or my favorite story. Like you said, it takes place
(31:03):
during World War Two, and it takes place during the
North African Campaign, and it's about an air battle above
the fucking the fray. And like you said, this is
where modern UFO lore comes from. It starts at the
end of World War Two. Or there are reports during
World War two of as you said, Foo fighters where
B seventeen pilots will report strange lights following them for
(31:26):
miles and then disappearing in a way that didn't seem
terrestrial in origin. And there's an entire squadron that went
missing in the quote unquote Bermuda Triangle not too long
after the end of the World War Two that they
could have used, and the idea that we could have
gotten the I know, look, they did it so well
in heavy metal, but the idea that they could have
(31:46):
had a B seventeen flying Fortress battling a predator. A
crew of humans fighting a predator is super cool to me.
But that's not the story they're telling. They want to
give us dog fights. Okay, fine, let's do that, but
let's have him get out of the fucking cockpit at all,
because what the fuck are you doing. I ride a
bike to and from work. If I take my hands
(32:08):
off the handlebars for a second, I'm going to be
in a lot of pain. This character is constantly getting
out of his airplane. What the fuck is happening?
Speaker 4 (32:17):
That's really where it lost me bottom alone for good.
This particular vignette is at one point his auxiliary fuel
tank is on fire, I think, and he asked. He
literally gets out of his cockpit at six thousand miles
above the ocean to basically work it out by hand,
to bang on it till it look.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I'm deathly afraid of heights.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
I went with my kids once to one of these
treetop adventure things, and I had to be helped down
because I was terrified of even being twenty feet up
in the air. It was probably not even probably ten feet.
It look, by definition, it's already straining credulity because we're
dealing with an alien creature who's dogfighting with an entire squadron.
(33:04):
But having said that, the idea that this guy clambers
out of his cockpit and he's talking on the radio
and he's doing all these things and not having a
heart attack at everything that's happening, that the horror of
what he's presented with it just seemed it was a
bridge too far for me at that point. And to
be honest, I checked out a little bit at that point.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
He gets out of that cockpit multiple times, and that
is to me also where I checked out, because, like
I said, you tell me he tied off the fucking rudder,
you know, the stick? Okay, fine, and as soon as
it tilts in any direction, even if he look he's
a pilot. He has no fear of fights. I get that.
And he's probably been out on a wing of a
(33:47):
plane maybe when it's been in the air before, because
those guys are crazy. But the idea that the technology
is working in concert with him and everything is working
fine while a predator in advanced alien ship is hunting
him down is fucking or ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
It was ludicrous, and yeah, it made me frankly sad
because I'm rooting for Tractenburg. I in Tractenburg, we trust.
This just seemed to me to totally it was off.
I get what he was trying to do. Maybe he
was trying to make it a little more lighthearted than
the rest, and by that definition he succeeded, But it
(34:27):
just wasn't for me. Maybe some maybe this was some
people's favorite episode of this particular anthology, but it wasn't mine.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
It's just okay at best, which is probably which is
definitely what prompted my proposal that they show these in
reverse order they'd started in the forties and we worked
our way back in time. It would have been way
more powerful, because here's the thing. What he's working against
is the great bummer that we finally discover, and we
(34:55):
discover about the predators overall eventually, is that if you
beat them, they're coming to take you. And that's a
fucking drag man on a certain level, it's a fucking drag.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
That was the most horrifying part of this whole movie
for me. Father Malone is after in the final sort
of vignette where we are. At the end of this
the bullet Torres.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Has gone back to civilian life.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
He now has his own mechanic shop. This is probably months,
if not years after this battle all happened, so it's it.
All this time has gone by and the predator still
has not forgotten what he did, but tracks him down
to where he lives in I think Florida. That's horrifying
(35:42):
to me that it doesn't matter. It could be three
or four years after you kill that predator. They will
find you and they will take you against your will
into a spaceship back to their home planet with really
no way of getting back home. That's so fucking scary
to me. That's worse than the average alien abduction because
(36:04):
you're getting taken because you've survived. But they don't see
it that way. The Yaucha don't see it that way.
They want your cunning, they want your ability to fight
for their own amusement.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
That's scary as hell.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It's a whole other level to the predator. So that
I don't like about them, but that's okay. They are
the villains after.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
All, agreed. It makes them even more hateable as villains
because they, yes, they do have a code. They won't.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
They usually don't kill you if you're not an armed and
not a threat. But Torres, it had been forever since
he fought and killed the predator, had he was just
living his life and he gets taken by this ship.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Scary, so we end up Oh, not only are do
you end up grabbed by the predators and taken from
your world to be shipped off to fight in some
gladiatorial combat at some point. But that's the point I'm making.
It's at some point. These characters have been some sort
of cryo freeze for hundreds of years, and now they're
(37:06):
just being thought out. This is obviously the first time
they've been thought out, because they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Yeah, because the fuck he's on this ship with the
Shield Maiden and the Shinobi. How what do we say,
six ninety one was when the Viking shield.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Eight hundred a D sixteen hundred a D and nineteen
forty five or so or seven.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Maybe hundreds of years. That's so scary to me, Like
that's like your worst nightmare. You're taken from the everything
you know and love and put on this planet tould
just kill.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
So they're paraded out to an arena where they're going
to have to kill one another, and then the victor
has the privilege of fighting. The character is listed as
the Grendel King. Yeah, okay, so that's now. First of all,
when they come out of the ship and they're marching
to the arena and the predators are all kneeling on
(38:06):
either side of them, that was great. Yeah, I like
that the predators still have the respect even if they're
doing this horrible fucking thing to these people.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
But yeah, if you can kill these other people, then
it's not as if you then are given the ability
to leave. All that affords you is the ability to
get killed by an even larger and meaner predator than you've.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Already dealt with.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
What do you win if you beat him? They never
tell us.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
I was wondering about that too. I don't know, because.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Do you become the king of of all the ouches,
this foreigner from another planet becomes their king. No.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I would assume that if you make it that far,
and I'm sure precious few ever do that, they just
put you on ice again, that you put back into cryo,
and then when the next maybe you then become.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
The killer of killers that they have to get through.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
I don't think there's any real reward at the end
of all this, other than and surviving another day.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
It would be cool if you become if you're really
good at it, if you're a killer of killers, you
become the one that they drop onto a planet with
a bunch of like young predators, like they you're the
feared thing. But when okay, when they're gonna pit these
guys against each other, they give them weapons from their
home world, figuring this is what you need. So they
(39:23):
give him a sword, and they give her some sort
of axe, very Viking. And then they give him and
this should be a clue as to where we're going
at the end of this, they give him the end Alini.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Pistol, but with no ammunition.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
There is ambunition. It's sitting right there. He just doesn't
know what to do with it.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
Oh, he just he fumbles it and then he realizes
what it is. You're right, I thought the ammunition popped
up in another like at another point in their fight,
just after the fight goes on for a little while.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
It had popped up. He just hadn't seen it. He
just grabbed a gun and thought, I'm going to use
this gun, and then afterwards when oh what, oh, I
see the weapon has gunpowder and such.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Which kind of ties it in with prey because that's
Naduru also struggled with the pistol a little bit. She
didn't even after being told how to do it, she
still doesn't understand the gunpowder and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So she had never seen a pistol before, so she
has an excuse.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
But he had never seen a flint lock.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It's probably a fair bet that Tores hadn't never seen
one of those.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Come on, Dorez, you know what you're supposed to You
got to put the powder in. You gotta ram rod
the thing.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
But while he's trying to because it's what it's like
a for step process to load and fire these things.
But meanwhile he has the shield maiden kind of decides
immediately that this is what she has to do, just
starts swinging the axe. The Shanobi at least realizes, maybe
he actually decides he's not going to fight because he's
(40:46):
not going to fight for someone else's amusement, and he
just doesn't believe.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
In the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
And Torres is just trying to figure out a way
to get to the ship so he can fly them
off that world. So he's struggling with this pistol. Meanwhile
this shield maiden is swinging this big fucking sharp ACKs
at him and trying to kill him, and the Shinobi's
just trying to keep the piece as best he can.
And they also have they we should also mention that
they have the universal translators that so they can talk
(41:15):
and be understood in each other's language, at least to
a certain degree. And we get more of the Yaucha speaking,
and I know there's something, like I said, cool and
chilling about all of that.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
I loved it. I loved hearing him speak, and I
loved hearing the translation. More of that, please, I'm so
excited for bad lance. Okay, I'm gonna stop.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
We're going to get that in bad at least according
to the trailers, we're going to get a lot of that.
But anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we come to
it very soon.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Right, so to get away when one remains, although, oh
you know what, here's something that happens, much much like Voltan,
he's got a few tricks of his sleeves. This grendel king.
If they're not going to fight each other, let's courage them.
So they released beasts from other worlds, yes, including one
with this maw on the top of its head that
eats Torres. And I gotta tell you, HP when he
(42:10):
did eat Toarres, I thought, oh wow, the steaks got
really high. Also, I don't really care that they killed Taurrests.
He's the one that was expendable, so that was good. Like,
as long as the shield made and the and the
ninja are okay, I'm good with Torres.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
That was a cheat though.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
He should have died because what they do that stupid
thing where he's inside of the belly of the beast
and he's struggling trying to get out. I wish they
had just done away with them and that would have
been it. They need somebody to take off in the ship.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
But still, see that's the problem, and this is Tracktenberg's problem.
He wanted to do best in show because he realized
that we love these people and now we're going to
feel really bad if any of them died. But then
he loved the characters too much, so he couldn't kill them. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
So what ends up happening, though, is that he they
all take their lumps. I think the sword the Schernobi
gets it the worst. I think he is bitten or
stabbed or I don't remember exactly. But they escape on
the ship. They steal the ship. Torres pilots a ship out,
but the Shield Maiden has been left behind and she's
(43:15):
held by the other predators.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And that's when the leader.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Of this whole enterprise, this amphitheater, essentially Declare's hunting season
has begun.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
First of all, they put her back in cryo sleep,
which look they easily could have said you're a failure
and stabbed her. And then that was the end. So
at least they recognized that she has some value as
a fighter and a killer of killers potentially. But then,
like you said, here's the thing, all of the problems
I had with this movie, and I did have some,
(43:47):
and I did not like portions of this movie were
completely papered over. When the Predator king goes, let's go hunting,
and then an innumerable number of ships took off and
in pursuit of Torres and the Ninja boy.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
It's absurd the number of ships. There's absolutely unless there's
maybe he has a sequel in mind at some point
there's no way.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
That they could have gotten away where you think.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
But at the same time, you're right that the Shield
Maiden is spared. But it's still a living nightmare because
all she's ever going to wake up to is another
opportunity to fight for her life. But what we do
have the kind of lasting image from this, and this
was something that was revised after release, is we see
her getting pushed in this cryo stasis.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Boxer of the Lost Dark. We mentioned that during Prey
it's Raiders in the Lost Dark. At the end here
it's the fucking warehouse with all of the artifacts it
is there.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
There's hundreds, if not thousands of cryo tubes in this warehouse,
and we.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Get to tear into one as we pass if there's
the silhouette of something with four arms that looks.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
Formidable, which I think, as a side note, I what
I'm hoping we get eventually. I know it's important to
have a human protagonist because that's what we identify with
as humans, but I do want to see more extraterrestrial
aspects to add it, because it's not just that they're
hunting Earth. They're they're hunting grounds are probably like innumerable
(45:19):
there's probably weird planets with that forearmed creature that you describe.
I want to see some more of that. I want
to get Let's widen it out from Earth and let's
see some more interesting Maybe we'll get that a little
bit in bad lance.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
We'll see.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
I think we're probably gonna get a whole lot of
beasts and other predators and humans. But I like where
you're going because I would like to see another humanoid race.
Who else have they encountered that have fucked them up?
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah, clearly the humans cannot be the killer of killers.
There's got to be some weird alien race that is
even more formidable than humans.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
I have to believe that.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
But anyway, so they're wheeling the Shield Maiden back to
her spot in the warehouse, and as they're passing, who
do we see?
Speaker 3 (46:06):
We see Nadu.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
She is and that makes me sad for a Naturu
because she was such she fought through so much, and
pray the idea that she's just been boxed up and
kept in storage to fight.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
This is the next day and Daniel finds out that
Ali has broken up with him for some dude, and
his car is trashed and everything sucks again. That's how
you begin Karate Kid too. Fuck you. We fought so
hard from that.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Ending it is, But I like where you're going with this.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
This is we've watched these rebels fucking fight and lose
and fight more and defeat an empire. And here's the
empire again.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
What what did they fight for?
Speaker 4 (46:53):
Crumples up that previous plot of the Karate Kid and
just says, oh, you know what.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Fuck you.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
So that's how it originally ended, but then they put
out I think, I don't know if they called it
like a special ending or what, but for whatever reason,
they amended that ending later. So not only do we
get to see Nadu, but then the camera pans over
again and it's Danny Glover from Predator two h.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
And A double R I G A and Mike Harrigan harrogon.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
But then, but the thing that really got me excited
was right next to.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Mike Harrigan, No no, no, no is Dutch and they.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
Give you that little musical cue from the first Predator.
It's Arnold Schwartzenegger from the original. So what this effectively
does is if they decide to make another animated picture
in this world, we might actually get to see Dutch
fighting alongside Nadu and Harrigan, and that is pretty fucking badass.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
It's so fucking cool. I can't even they're around. You
start recording their voices. I hope they've done it secretly.
I hope there's a fucking Predator Killer of Killer sequel
on the way and it's Dutch and Harrigan and nah
Roup fucking shit up everywhere. Throw Ripley in there.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (48:06):
How about the Flash Batman. He can show up to
and fight some predators. He's done it before.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
So that was it almost redeemed the last couple of
the vignettes in this anthology. I just the prospect of
having those characters come back, because you'll never ever get
Danny Glover and Schwarzenegger in a live action sense. That
ship is sailed. But this gives them the license and
the ability to bring them back.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
You don't even need.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
Honestly, you don't even really need Schwarzenegger to do it,
because I will tell you this, like the Mortal Kombat,
the last few Mortal Kombat games, they've added in Schwarzenegger
characters as bonus characters, so you can fight Mortal Kombat
as the T eight hundred you can fight Mortal Kombat.
I think Dutch is in there. I think Kakonan is
(48:52):
in there.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Whoever they got ricks John Michritz, that would be cool
listening to a pisshants just try and tough. They make
me laugh if Matrix was here.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
No, the My point is that it's not Schwarzenegger delivering
the lines in this Mortal Kombat game. But whoever they
got to do it sounds like Schwarzenegger to me, So
what the hell? He can have just somebody else through
his lines because he doesn't really seem to have much interest.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
To go back to the point, your cousin Ivan could
do an Arnold Swarzenender impression that could probably past come
on now.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
That would be so cool.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
Imagine if these characters from these different movies got together.
That would actually we wouldn't be talking about a Hulu
only surprised thing. This would be a an actual theatrical
because why wouldn't you have that in the theater.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
That sounds so.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Bad ass, It sounds bad lands.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Sounds awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
And that's where we're headed next. Oh my god, HP,
we've reached the end of a fest. Ladies and gentlemen,
next week you're gonna be hearing us talking about Predator
bad Lands. That's what's happening. Whoo oh boy, it's gonna
be such a good time. Hopefully it's a good movie,
because man, oh man, we've been fucking playing it up
and talking it up, and oh wouldn't it be terrible?
(50:14):
If it's terrible, Well.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Give something to talk about.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
I'll be suppressed.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
I don't think anything can happen. Look, our favorite filmmakers
have disappointed us in the past. I all signs point
to yes on this one.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Fall alone, like the Magic eight ball HP. Where you are?
Where can people find if they're looking for you? These days?
All right?
Speaker 4 (50:36):
I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast, alongside
midnight viewings Father Alone. Right here, I host the Noise
Junkies music podcast, and not to mention, I have a
bandcamp site hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
As for me, you're listening to the show that I do.
Keep it here twice a week Mondays and Fridays, maybe
Sundays and Thursdays, who knows, whenever I get them done.
If you're a patron, you're listening to this month's in advance,
and oh, check out, we're starting Star Trek fast. We're
actually recording that one next but you're not probably gonna
hear that until December. Oh anyway, anyway, keep it here
at midnight viewing. That was another great thing about it,
(51:15):
all the subtitles. Anyway, we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
You can kill it. What hell
We can kill it. Shouted it out there? What hell
(00:31):
are you?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome back to midnight viewing. More specifically, we're talking yaucha fest.
I heard an interview with Dan Trackckenberg recently, and evidently
I've been saying it wrong this entire time. What a crime?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
HB, yao sa yalloa is a yaucha?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense. I
wait about this time for that. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
kids and germs and smith mars. This is the one.
Oh no, we did pray. This is the stopgap. This
was a surprise. This was a secret project. Evidently nobody
knew about it while they were doing it. They were
doing it in conjunction or at the same time as
(01:15):
Predator bad Lands.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
All Right, Dan Tracktenburg is full of surprises, as will
be this discussion. I think you'll find father alone. This
discussion on killer of Killers will be full of surprises
as well.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Okay, that means that HB didn't like it, evidently, so
let's find out why. First of all, here's the trailer.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
You are old enough. Now it's time I tell you
about the monster. We must kill it or it will
(02:48):
kill us.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Old editor and Killer of Killers, released on June sixth,
(03:28):
twenty five, on streaming only. This is a Hulu jam.
It is directed by Dan Tracktonberg, screenplay by Mishow Robert Rutari,
Story by Dan Tracktonberg and Me Show Robert Routari, based
on characters by Who Say It with Me? Everybody? Jim
and John Thomas. And this one stars Lindsay Lavanchi, Louis Ozawa,
(03:51):
Rick Gonzalez, and Michael B. HB. What did you say this?
What does you think of this one?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Actually, no, I'm going to take that back. Let me
just say it is rare in the midst of a
franchise to receive the gift of an anthology. We hear
at midnight viewing specialize in anthologies. So what a welcome
fucking dessert this was for me. I love short fiction.
I love slices of fiction. Now, HP, did you know
(04:17):
that part of the inspiration for this film a side
of Dan Tracktenberg saying a pulp fiction is also an
anthology because most people think of horror anthologies when they
think of anthologies at all. But do you know that
part of the inspiration for this film was best in show.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
That I did not know, and I'm searching trying to
find the Is it just because of the fact that
you're dealing with five or six different groups of dog competitors?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Is at the tie in that's part of it? Okay?
Speaker 4 (04:45):
What's the formal connection between the two?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You meet each of those characters individually, you fall in
love with them and their own particular stories, and then
you have to watch them battle at the end.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Ah. Interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Now can I up for one minute before we get
into this. I just I feel the need to bring
this up now. I didn't want to imply that I
did not like this. I'm maybe I'm spoiling the discussion
a little bit, but it's not that I did not
like it.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
It's just we'll get into it.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
But just understand, first of all, I love the fact
that this was a surprise that was sprung on people.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Without any real notice.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
It was like getting a present on when it's not Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It reminded me.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
It reminded me a little bit of when musicians sometimes
have a surprise album drop. Bowie did this with the
next day. I remember it was a big deal to
me because it came out of nowhere. He hadn't recorded
in forever, and there we had this gift of an
album kind of out of the blue. So I really
I love the fact that trackten Berger. It makes me
(05:49):
feel like he values the fans and loves that shock,
surprise and appreciation of something that kind of out of
It's not like he had to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
He did.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
He wasn't under any obligation to give us these the
gift of this movie or this animated collection of shorts.
But so all due respect to Trachtenberg, I love the
fact that we were gifted this essentially.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
But let's dig into it a little bit.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
And I'll go into some of my the pros and cons,
my likes and dislikes of this.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Too late. You didn't like get the atracted Mercades.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yeah, I hope not, because I respect the hell out
of him. I love I love what he's done with
the franchise. But let's dig into this a little bit.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Let us do that three stories technically four, because there
is a wrap up, a wrap around, if you will
take us there HB.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Broad Strokes. The first episode takes place in its Viking times.
It's called The Shield, and it involves a.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
This is the oldest one, This is the oldest story.
This takes place in eight forty one ad.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Ah okay I must not have written down the year.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So this is the story of a shield.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Maiden in Viking times who is obsessed with vengeance. She's
trying to she wants to kill the feudal lord or
what have you who murdered her, actually forced her to
murder her own father. And she's taking among the people
she takes with her as her son, and they have
this final assault on his palace, if you will. And
(07:22):
of course who has to come and crash the party
but our friend the Yaucha.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So that's story one.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Story two is a little further into the future. It
takes place in sixteen oh nine feudal Japan. This, by
the way, spoiler alert, this was my favorite of the
stories that we get.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
This one was called The Sword.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
This is about two brothers who are supposed to fight
to decide who gets to carry on the samurai tradition
of their father. One of them runs away in disgrace
and becomes essentially a ronin, and they eventually the father dies.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Excuse me, sir, he did not become a robin Ronan.
He became a shinobi, a Ronan is a disgraced samurai.
He becomes a ninja.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
That's fine, I stand corrected.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
This is the classic tale of samurai versus ninja.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yes versus and again it's they're having this showdown, the
father has died. They're having this showdown, and who crashes
the party? Our friend, the Yaucha. The third tale is
called I have it here. It's called The Bullet It
takes place in nineteen forty one. It's the story of
(08:33):
a young man who dreams of becoming a pilot.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
One day he is.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
He eventually joins the war effort. In nineteen forty two,
there's an air battle. Once again, our friends the crashed
the party, as it were, I already said that before.
I used that metaphor twice.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Thank you. And this young man what's his name, Gonzalez?
I think his name is Torres.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Sorry Tores played by Rick Gonzalez.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, that's where the mix up was.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Torres musters the courage to try and take out the Yaucha.
And then the fourth technically the fourth and final entry
in this anthology is spoiler alert. All of the main
characters of the preceding three stories beat the predators. They
effectively kill the Predators. The fourth story is they've all
(09:23):
been brought together to the Yaucha home planet to juke
it out in gladiatorial combat to decide who is wait
for it, the Killer of Killers.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, that last story is called the Battle.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
By the way, The Battle, Oh sorry I left that out.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Let's Dig into the Shield my favorite story. In fact,
I wish these stories had been played in reverse order.
I wish we had started with the Bullet and then
gone back further and further in time.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
It would have been an interesting choice. I so I
said that the the one that in Japan that the
Sword was my favorite. This one was a very close second.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I really like this.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
This is a very solid introduction to the world and
the sort of look of this because it is animated,
but it's not animated in a traditional sense. It almost
looks and I think the team that animated this, they're
known primarily as a Previz team, and that's the vibe
I get from this. It's both kind of a strength
(10:22):
and a weakness of this, because if you don't like
the look of this animation, you're predisposed to not really
enjoying the experience.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I think that's the thing about every animation, honestly, And
the further and further the older and older I get,
the more and more I find that I either respond
to the character design or I don't, and no amount
of oh wow, that school wizbang whatever is going to
change that or make me enjoy that thing. Luckily, these
look like watercolor paintings come to life.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, they're very cool.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
They have a three dimensionality to them, which I think
is appealing. And it's animated very well. I like you,
I really enjoyed it. I thought it's probably a less
expensive way of producing the animation because it's not as
smooth or as detailed as other animation that I've seen.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
But this worked very well, I think.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, And this is a story I like the most
basically because it's it goes everywhere I want a story
to go. It has breathless action, it has fantastic action
as a matter of fact, and it has crazy emotion
and it leaves you devastated at the end, and that's
what I'm looking for. And no Predator movie to this
point has left me feeling that way at the end, bereft,
(11:37):
even Predators where they're trapped on that planet. Because I
didn't give a shit about those characters. This story is
twenty two minutes maybe in length, and by the end
I was absolutely shredded for Ursa.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It's a powerful story and it's well told, and I
think what you hit upon is one thing that we
talked about in the context of Prey the last episode,
which is pro was we basically agreed that Pray you
could have taken the Yaucha out of it entirely, and
it could have been. It would have been a very
compelling story of this Native American tribe and the struggles
(12:12):
of Naturu and how she was going to navigate the culture.
The best stories in this anthology, in my opinion, follow
a similar dynamic. So this one the story of the
shield Maid and looking for vengeance against her her hated
this person that destroyed her world essentially and made it.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
So that she says she feels that there's.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
A monster inside of her that cannot be it can't
be slaked until she kills this person. That's a very
compelling story without the other worldly dealings with the predator.
Same thing when we get to the Sword, it's the
same deal. We really care about these characters, and it's
such a compelling tale that they tell that with or
(12:56):
without the Yaucha, it's still going to be a cool
story that they're telling. That to me is what marks
the best of these anthology pieces is and The Shield
is a good example of that.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I've been in the anthology trenches for years now, and
I can say with authority that the greatest thing an
anthology story can be is economical with its time. And
each of these is incredibly economical their fleet to foot,
considering how much shoe leather they're laying out here. And
I agree with you, the best predator stories are the
(13:28):
ones that could exist without the predator, that could just
be whatever the threat happens to be. At the end
of the Shield, the predator character might as well have
been the Zorn character, which is the be evil warlord
that she's come to kill. She dispatches them, or rather
her son dispatches him pretty quickly, but and then she
has to fight the predator, so that easily just could
(13:49):
have been swapped out in her fight Zarren and then
come with the same outcome. However, what they do here
by aditing the predator is they do something really which
is they tell us once again the story of Baio Wolf,
where they've come to this king's grand hall and they're
in there, all these warriors, and then this monster of
(14:11):
Grendel shows up, and the fact they call him Grendel
as soon as he does, and that to me was
fan fucking tasting, a real world sci fi reasoning for
the Beowulf tale to have been told in the first place.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
I thought that was really cool too, that because that's
the only frame of reference these characters have back then,
is this mythology of this great monster that's come to
do battle with them. Of course they would lean on
their own mythology to make sense of what's happening around them.
The other kind of cool thing that they introduce in this,
and we've seen this in the other Predator movies especially,
(14:46):
is that each Predator, each Yaucha, has some kind of
unique style or weaponry that kind of distinguishes them from
any of the other yaucher that we've seen.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
We saw this in every one of the movies.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
This has one of those kind of cool weapons. He
has what's essentially like a sonic spring. He's missing a hand,
this yaucha, and in its place, it's this spring loaded
device that when it's fired, it shoots like a wave
of sound energy and knocks down people, can break things.
(15:22):
I love the technology. Every little morsel of technology that
they introduce with the Yaucha, I think is always really special.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Absolutely, when Pray we discovered that they hadn't at that
time come up with energy based weapons. They were still
using projectiles. So this is even further back. This is
like a thousand years before that movie. It only makes
sense that it's going to be more physical and less
sort of sci fi energy based phasers or something. And
(15:51):
if so, that makes it almost steampunk because he has
to lock it into place to get it to work
every time, basically like Prime the Pump not only like
the cool, steampunky version of a Predator weapon, but it
does continue the care with which Tracktenberger's treating all of
this because, as he said, each of them has their
own specialized weapon, and he knows that as fans, we
(16:12):
like that shit. We want new stuff and we want
it to be super cool, and all the weapons are
super cool, and this one in particular more than the
other stories. And maybe the reason I like it the
most is that's that Predator's ace in the hole. That's
what he thinks and probably has gotten him out of
every scrape he's ever been into or ever been in,
and it's the thing that effectively kills him here at
(16:35):
the end. I love the ending and using the shield
and that knocks her back and knocks him into the
fucking anchor, and ah, I don't know, loved it, loved it.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
That's key to all of these stories is the combatant,
the human going up against the predator always figures out
how what's the secret to beating it? What's that thing
that makes the vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Or how do they use their weaponry against them?
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I think that's the thing that kind of binds them
all together, all of these winners in the predator battles,
they all have the ability to figure out what's happening,
quickly process that information and figure out a way to
use it back against the predator.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And they don't. Really. Half of every Predator movie till
now is them figuring out those things. Oh, it can't
see Cole. Like here, she's under a fucking ice flow,
She's beneath a frozen lake and it can't see her.
Does that matter to her? No, She's just trying to breathe.
We as the audience already know. So I'm glad he's
(17:38):
working his way towards that where we don't have to
be introduced to the rules of the predator every single
fucking time. How many times can we watch fucking Bruce
Wayne crying over his parents' corpse.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
And that's the thing about this that I appreciate is
he's clear he's doing this. Trackenberg is doing this. He's
produced this for the fans. And that's the earest indication
that you just described, which is he doesn't have to
sit there and give you the rundown on the Yaucha
and their existence and their history and how they work
(18:10):
and their code of ethics and honor.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
We all know that.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
So clearly this was executed in such a way that
fans are going to have a field, have a lot
of fun with this, and not have to be spoon
fed the origin and how this all works.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
It's all.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
The word you used was like economical. This is so
streamlined and efficient storytelling. It's really that part of its
I think very effective.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
I think it's not only excellent service for the fans
because it's not insulting to us and it came out
of nowhere and we love this and we want more
of it. But it allows him to expand his universe
exponentially and very simply the fact that this entire movie
starts with a quote from the Yaucha codex, go forth
(18:58):
among the stars and seek only the strongest prey. They
shall be your trophy. Become the killer of killers. That's
from them, and this is the first sort of text
we've received from the Yaucha. Apparently there is a law book,
and that's one of them.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
The more and more he expands the universe, so the
cooler it is, and we see a lot of that
come the end of this movie. But for me, it's
also very chilling. And there's something very disturbing about one
aspect of the basically the third going into the fourth
story that we'll talk about. But the bottom line is
(19:36):
Tracktenberg and his team of writers and everyone else, they're
just so smart at expanding this universe in such a
logical way and making it. I'm not sure they would
ever dreamed of where the Yaucher is now when the
first Predator was made back in eighty six, some forty
(19:57):
years ago. It's pretty remarkable what we we have now
versus what was originally given to us back then.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, and you know, what like, finally somebody fucking innovating,
because what we had thirty years in between Predator and
Predators and they just told the same fucking movie. Pretty much,
Let's go back to the jungle with a bunch of soldiers. Okay,
let's do it. Hey gives the show we got dogs now, Okay, great.
I know I liked that movie more than I'm letting on,
(20:25):
but give me a break already. Anyway, let's move on
to the next story. By the way, I listened to
and ran a bunch of interviews with Tracktenberg about this film,
and as if my admiration wasn't high enough, he gives
credit like it's fucking Halloween candy. He like everyone who
points out something that was cool that came from another
person's idea, he points that person out immediately, And I
(20:48):
admire that.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
I love humility. I love somebody who gives credit where
credit is due.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Makes me like him even more.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
All right, Take us to the Take us to the
Sword sixty oh nine Feudal Japan. Beautiful chakrahachi flutes playing.
I would like to mention the score. By the way,
Benjamin Wallfish did the score. He's a very prolific film
composer and television composer. As a matter of fact, I
listened to this entire soundtrack they're getting Dan today. It is.
It's remarkably good and only occasionally plays on the dundadum
(21:20):
that has to be in every Predator thing. But he
works it in so well that I just fucking love
it anyway, the sort what else?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
What else has he done soundtracks for?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Most recently, he did the soundtrack to it. He was
the co author of the Blade Runner twenty forty nine soundtrack.
He did, He did Shazam. He did hell Boy, that's
the bad hell Boy with David Harber, not.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The Oh yeah, the most recent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
He's also Leewan El's go to guy. So he did
the Invisible Man and Wolfman. He did that last Mortal
Kombat movie. He's doing the new Mortal Kombat movie. Oh,
he did the Flash for Andy Mashetti. He did Twisters,
he did Alien Aromulus. So he actually in the fucking
neighborhood already. Wow. He is prolific and good and we'll
(22:06):
be reviewing his music again in a few weeks because
he did Predator, bad Lands, Super The Sword, My Man.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
The Sword.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Like I said before, your favorite, right, it was my favorite.
I'm a sucker for a good tale of feudal Japan
where you know it's there. It's honor running through everything
you these The Seven Samurai is one of my favorite movies.
I love all that stuff. I love the honor that
that they present. I love this idea of the duty
(22:36):
that these two brothers feel. The one who's disgraced and
has become a shinobi, the other wants to uphold the
tradition of his father, and that just the idea that
they're both they're having this last duel together. Like I said,
even outside of the alien aspect of it, that alone
would be an interesting tale. It's it's from lack of
(23:00):
a better word, it's shot really well, it's animated really well.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
The action is great. I just love it.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
I love martial arts movies, so this was very much
in my wheelhouse.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Agreed, The action is all fucking fantastic here. And I'd
like to point out that I forgot to mention in
the last story The Shield, when they finally arrive at
Zorn's compound and Ursa jumps off that boat, that's one
shot from beginning right until she gets to Zarn it's
all on intaken. It's fucking amazing.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Anyway, Banks, we should we also should mention before we
get to that, that there's this thing that he does
where at the very end after the Shield, Maiden has
not only killed the predator, but sadly she has lost
her own son. And it's the story, like you said,
it's heart wrenching because he dies in her arms. But
(23:51):
what essentially happens at that point is it fades into
another scene where now she has some kind of collar
around her neck and somebody's kneeling in her presence. She
doesn't know where she is. We don't know what's going
on as audience members, but this will become part of
effectively the wrap around story and the finale. But I
(24:12):
love this little mystery that Tracktenberg is presenting us with
because we already know just from the idea of the
Killer of Killers what's probably happening.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
But it's like leaving.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
These little clues as to the ultimate fate of these characters.
But then anyway, we move into the Sword, this story
of these two brothers and the father that has split
them into very compelling stuff. And one aspect of this
that I think is cool in both stories up till
now is the Predator is there but really observing, studying
(24:48):
in a way that we don't.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
They do this in the other.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Movies, but in this sense, it's almost as if he's
following their individual stories even as he's making his own
plan for what he's going to try to accomplish.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
It's very cool.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
So he's observing these characters just as we are. It's
almost like he's a proxy for the audience up to
a point.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Professionals being professional. I just like watching the Predator doing
his thing man and what he's focused on in any
one time. These three guys have arrows. What are they doing?
Target practice? This guy's wait, who's this dude? Aha? Finally
some action loved it.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
It's great, it's great.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So they you know, there's a reason that these, this
particular group of stories could be told without the Predator,
and that's because these are the oldest stories in human history.
I've got to get revenge from my father's story, and
that revenge makes you should dig two graves. There you go,
brother versus brother. You want Dad's love, I want Dad's love.
(25:54):
I became a And then on top of that, Ninja
versus Samurai which we've also seen how many times, So
look the secret sauce here is the Predator. But I
do agree these are so beautifully animated that had you
just given me a movie called Killer of Killers, I
would have been like, ah, wow, yeah, those were the
Killer of Killers. They were the best.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
And what the other thing that is apparent to me
is that, obviously, Pray we sung the Virtues of Prey
to an amazing degree in the last episode. We both
loved it, and audience has loved it because it essentially
rejuvenated the franchise. But I think it's in bold and
Tracktenburg to do is to say, you know what, I
(26:35):
think there's an appetite for people to see these historical
versions of these Predator tales. Everything up before Prey, everything
was basically modern day or near future sort of tales
of the Predator. We knew that he existed in the
past or the race existed in the past because of
(26:55):
the Adelini gun that Danny Glover gets way back in
Predator too. But it's just so smart of Tracten Bird
to keep pulling on that thread of the Predator all
through history and the fact that they've always been here
and they're always finding new ways to battle humans and
the ingenuity of these these humans throughout history to battle
(27:21):
and kill these predators. It's it's like I said, I
maybe I seemed a little too harsh at the outset
of this episode. It's not as if I didn't appreciate
it and I don't love the idea behind it. I
just think that's just so creative. And obviously with bad Lands,
he's going in the opposite direction. It looks like it's
now we're heading back into the future for the next
(27:43):
phase of this series.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
But actually committed to that idea as opposed to just
dicking around. The last one took place. Now we can't
really have another one. This won't take place ten years
after that one. Why who cares? Go backwards? Motherfucker? We
don't care what the continuity of these things. It's insane
to me that it took this long for anyone to
figure it out. Honestly, add Predator to any genre in
(28:08):
any time period. You're gonna have a fucking good movie
as long as you don't just keep repeating the first film.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Obviously he has an ultimate license, or he should, I
would say, if I'm the movie studio, I would give
him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants.
If he wants to do a Raiders of the Lost
Arc meets the Predator movie, fucking do it. If he
wants to do who like that kind of an archie
versus Predator type thing where it's like a teen sex
(28:33):
comedy with the Predator mixed up.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Sign me up, I'm already in line. I'm there.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So again, we're really we're praising him an awful lot,
but I think it's very well deserved.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
And even if he might not take all that credit
for himself, maybe.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
He would give it to the other people who He
doesn't do this all by himself, let's face it, but
he is the secret sauce that made this series come
alive again.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
And that brings us to your favorite segment, the bull.
The bullet, by the way, is the name of his plane, yes,
and that is his weapon. You get the idea here,
shield sword, bullet.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
My favorite part of this, by the way, is the
fact that Michael Bean was in it, and I didn't
even know it was Michael Bean. I thought that was
really cool because we all love Michael Bean. But having
said that, this was my least favorite episode for a
variety of reasons, but really it was a little It
felt to me like an episode of Amazing Stories.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's what it felt like to me.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
It felt it leaned very heavily, far too heavily, in
my opinion, into the action adventure comedy kind of thing.
It felt like, what was that episode with Kevin Costner
with a tailgunner get stuck.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
In the thing?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
The mission?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
The mission? Yeah, it felt like the mission.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Casey Schamasco is a belly gunner trapped in the bubble
dome on the bottom of a B seventeen landing gear
won't come down. But he's a cartoonist, and this is
a man Spielberg episode.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
I really wanted to like this particular episode of the
movie because I love the idea that it's the nineteen forties,
it's World War two. I being an amateur UFO buff
I'm aware that there have been UFO sightings in wartime.
I think they were originally called the Foo Fighters. Think
(30:22):
that's the origin of that name. They called them Foo Fighters.
I was so excited to see that kind of idea
come to life in the context of a Predator movie.
But really what we got was it felt safe to me,
and I don't think the Predator series works when it
plays it safe.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Here's what I'll give it. It's the first time we've
seen a dog fighting Predator. It's the first time that
we've seen an aerial dog fighting fella. And to me,
that being his secret weapon, his specialized thing, was super
duper cool. This should have been my favorite AP episode
or my favorite story. Like you said, it takes place
(31:03):
during World War Two, and it takes place during the
North African Campaign, and it's about an air battle above
the fucking the fray. And like you said, this is
where modern UFO lore comes from. It starts at the
end of World War Two. Or there are reports during
World War two of as you said, Foo fighters where
B seventeen pilots will report strange lights following them for
(31:26):
miles and then disappearing in a way that didn't seem
terrestrial in origin. And there's an entire squadron that went
missing in the quote unquote Bermuda Triangle not too long
after the end of the World War Two that they
could have used, and the idea that we could have
gotten the I know, look, they did it so well
in heavy metal, but the idea that they could have
(31:46):
had a B seventeen flying Fortress battling a predator. A
crew of humans fighting a predator is super cool to me.
But that's not the story they're telling. They want to
give us dog fights. Okay, fine, let's do that, but
let's have him get out of the fucking cockpit at all,
because what the fuck are you doing. I ride a
bike to and from work. If I take my hands
(32:08):
off the handlebars for a second, I'm going to be
in a lot of pain. This character is constantly getting
out of his airplane. What the fuck is happening?
Speaker 4 (32:17):
That's really where it lost me bottom alone for good.
This particular vignette is at one point his auxiliary fuel
tank is on fire, I think, and he asked. He
literally gets out of his cockpit at six thousand miles
above the ocean to basically work it out by hand,
to bang on it till it look.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I'm deathly afraid of heights.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
I went with my kids once to one of these
treetop adventure things, and I had to be helped down
because I was terrified of even being twenty feet up
in the air. It was probably not even probably ten feet.
It look, by definition, it's already straining credulity because we're
dealing with an alien creature who's dogfighting with an entire squadron.
(33:04):
But having said that, the idea that this guy clambers
out of his cockpit and he's talking on the radio
and he's doing all these things and not having a
heart attack at everything that's happening, that the horror of
what he's presented with it just seemed it was a
bridge too far for me at that point. And to
be honest, I checked out a little bit at that point.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
He gets out of that cockpit multiple times, and that
is to me also where I checked out, because, like
I said, you tell me he tied off the fucking rudder,
you know, the stick? Okay, fine, and as soon as
it tilts in any direction, even if he look he's
a pilot. He has no fear of fights. I get that.
And he's probably been out on a wing of a
(33:47):
plane maybe when it's been in the air before, because
those guys are crazy. But the idea that the technology
is working in concert with him and everything is working
fine while a predator in advanced alien ship is hunting
him down is fucking or ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
It was ludicrous, and yeah, it made me frankly sad
because I'm rooting for Tractenburg. I in Tractenburg, we trust.
This just seemed to me to totally it was off.
I get what he was trying to do. Maybe he
was trying to make it a little more lighthearted than
the rest, and by that definition he succeeded, But it
(34:27):
just wasn't for me. Maybe some maybe this was some
people's favorite episode of this particular anthology, but it wasn't mine.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
It's just okay at best, which is probably which is
definitely what prompted my proposal that they show these in
reverse order they'd started in the forties and we worked
our way back in time. It would have been way
more powerful, because here's the thing. What he's working against
is the great bummer that we finally discover, and we
(34:55):
discover about the predators overall eventually, is that if you
beat them, they're coming to take you. And that's a
fucking drag man on a certain level, it's a fucking drag.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
That was the most horrifying part of this whole movie
for me. Father Malone is after in the final sort
of vignette where we are. At the end of this
the bullet Torres.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Has gone back to civilian life.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
He now has his own mechanic shop. This is probably months,
if not years after this battle all happened, so it's it.
All this time has gone by and the predator still
has not forgotten what he did, but tracks him down
to where he lives in I think Florida. That's horrifying
(35:42):
to me that it doesn't matter. It could be three
or four years after you kill that predator. They will
find you and they will take you against your will
into a spaceship back to their home planet with really
no way of getting back home. That's so fucking scary
to me. That's worse than the average alien abduction because
(36:04):
you're getting taken because you've survived. But they don't see
it that way. The Yaucha don't see it that way.
They want your cunning, they want your ability to fight
for their own amusement.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
That's scary as hell.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It's a whole other level to the predator. So that
I don't like about them, but that's okay. They are
the villains after.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
All, agreed. It makes them even more hateable as villains
because they, yes, they do have a code. They won't.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
They usually don't kill you if you're not an armed and
not a threat. But Torres, it had been forever since
he fought and killed the predator, had he was just
living his life and he gets taken by this ship.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Scary, so we end up Oh, not only are do
you end up grabbed by the predators and taken from
your world to be shipped off to fight in some
gladiatorial combat at some point. But that's the point I'm making.
It's at some point. These characters have been some sort
of cryo freeze for hundreds of years, and now they're
(37:06):
just being thought out. This is obviously the first time
they've been thought out, because they don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Yeah, because the fuck he's on this ship with the
Shield Maiden and the Shinobi. How what do we say,
six ninety one was when the Viking shield.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Eight hundred a D sixteen hundred a D and nineteen
forty five or so or seven.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Maybe hundreds of years. That's so scary to me, Like
that's like your worst nightmare. You're taken from the everything
you know and love and put on this planet tould
just kill.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
So they're paraded out to an arena where they're going
to have to kill one another, and then the victor
has the privilege of fighting. The character is listed as
the Grendel King. Yeah, okay, so that's now. First of all,
when they come out of the ship and they're marching
to the arena and the predators are all kneeling on
(38:06):
either side of them, that was great. Yeah, I like
that the predators still have the respect even if they're
doing this horrible fucking thing to these people.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
But yeah, if you can kill these other people, then
it's not as if you then are given the ability
to leave. All that affords you is the ability to
get killed by an even larger and meaner predator than you've.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Already dealt with.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
What do you win if you beat him? They never
tell us.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
I was wondering about that too. I don't know, because.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Do you become the king of of all the ouches,
this foreigner from another planet becomes their king. No.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I would assume that if you make it that far,
and I'm sure precious few ever do that, they just
put you on ice again, that you put back into cryo,
and then when the next maybe you then become.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
The killer of killers that they have to get through.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
I don't think there's any real reward at the end
of all this, other than and surviving another day.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
It would be cool if you become if you're really
good at it, if you're a killer of killers, you
become the one that they drop onto a planet with
a bunch of like young predators, like they you're the
feared thing. But when okay, when they're gonna pit these
guys against each other, they give them weapons from their
home world, figuring this is what you need. So they
(39:23):
give him a sword, and they give her some sort
of axe, very Viking. And then they give him and
this should be a clue as to where we're going
at the end of this, they give him the end Alini.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Pistol, but with no ammunition.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
There is ambunition. It's sitting right there. He just doesn't
know what to do with it.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
Oh, he just he fumbles it and then he realizes
what it is. You're right, I thought the ammunition popped
up in another like at another point in their fight,
just after the fight goes on for a little while.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
It had popped up. He just hadn't seen it. He
just grabbed a gun and thought, I'm going to use
this gun, and then afterwards when oh what, oh, I
see the weapon has gunpowder and such.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Which kind of ties it in with prey because that's
Naduru also struggled with the pistol a little bit. She
didn't even after being told how to do it, she
still doesn't understand the gunpowder and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So she had never seen a pistol before, so she
has an excuse.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
But he had never seen a flint lock.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It's probably a fair bet that Tores hadn't never seen
one of those.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Come on, Dorez, you know what you're supposed to You
got to put the powder in. You gotta ram rod
the thing.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
But while he's trying to because it's what it's like
a for step process to load and fire these things.
But meanwhile he has the shield maiden kind of decides
immediately that this is what she has to do, just
starts swinging the axe. The Shanobi at least realizes, maybe
he actually decides he's not going to fight because he's
(40:46):
not going to fight for someone else's amusement, and he
just doesn't believe.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
In the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
And Torres is just trying to figure out a way
to get to the ship so he can fly them
off that world. So he's struggling with this pistol. Meanwhile
this shield maiden is swinging this big fucking sharp ACKs
at him and trying to kill him, and the Shinobi's
just trying to keep the piece as best he can.
And they also have they we should also mention that
they have the universal translators that so they can talk
(41:15):
and be understood in each other's language, at least to
a certain degree. And we get more of the Yaucha speaking,
and I know there's something, like I said, cool and
chilling about all of that.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
I loved it. I loved hearing him speak, and I
loved hearing the translation. More of that, please, I'm so
excited for bad lance. Okay, I'm gonna stop.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
We're going to get that in bad at least according
to the trailers, we're going to get a lot of that.
But anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we come to
it very soon.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Right, so to get away when one remains, although, oh
you know what, here's something that happens, much much like Voltan,
he's got a few tricks of his sleeves. This grendel king.
If they're not going to fight each other, let's courage them.
So they released beasts from other worlds, yes, including one
with this maw on the top of its head that
eats Torres. And I gotta tell you, HP when he
(42:10):
did eat Toarres, I thought, oh wow, the steaks got
really high. Also, I don't really care that they killed Taurrests.
He's the one that was expendable, so that was good. Like,
as long as the shield made and the and the
ninja are okay, I'm good with Torres.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
That was a cheat though.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
He should have died because what they do that stupid
thing where he's inside of the belly of the beast
and he's struggling trying to get out. I wish they
had just done away with them and that would have
been it. They need somebody to take off in the ship.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
But still, see that's the problem, and this is Tracktenberg's problem.
He wanted to do best in show because he realized
that we love these people and now we're going to
feel really bad if any of them died. But then
he loved the characters too much, so he couldn't kill them. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
So what ends up happening, though, is that he they
all take their lumps. I think the sword the Schernobi
gets it the worst. I think he is bitten or
stabbed or I don't remember exactly. But they escape on
the ship. They steal the ship. Torres pilots a ship out,
but the Shield Maiden has been left behind and she's
(43:15):
held by the other predators.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And that's when the leader.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Of this whole enterprise, this amphitheater, essentially Declare's hunting season
has begun.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
First of all, they put her back in cryo sleep,
which look they easily could have said you're a failure
and stabbed her. And then that was the end. So
at least they recognized that she has some value as
a fighter and a killer of killers potentially. But then,
like you said, here's the thing, all of the problems
I had with this movie, and I did have some,
(43:47):
and I did not like portions of this movie were
completely papered over. When the Predator king goes, let's go hunting,
and then an innumerable number of ships took off and
in pursuit of Torres and the Ninja boy.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
It's absurd the number of ships. There's absolutely unless there's
maybe he has a sequel in mind at some point
there's no way.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
That they could have gotten away where you think.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
But at the same time, you're right that the Shield
Maiden is spared. But it's still a living nightmare because
all she's ever going to wake up to is another
opportunity to fight for her life. But what we do
have the kind of lasting image from this, and this
was something that was revised after release, is we see
her getting pushed in this cryo stasis.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Boxer of the Lost Dark. We mentioned that during Prey
it's Raiders in the Lost Dark. At the end here
it's the fucking warehouse with all of the artifacts it
is there.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
There's hundreds, if not thousands of cryo tubes in this warehouse,
and we.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Get to tear into one as we pass if there's
the silhouette of something with four arms that looks.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
Formidable, which I think, as a side note, I what
I'm hoping we get eventually. I know it's important to
have a human protagonist because that's what we identify with
as humans, but I do want to see more extraterrestrial
aspects to add it, because it's not just that they're
hunting Earth. They're they're hunting grounds are probably like innumerable
(45:19):
there's probably weird planets with that forearmed creature that you describe.
I want to see some more of that. I want
to get Let's widen it out from Earth and let's
see some more interesting Maybe we'll get that a little
bit in bad lance.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
We'll see.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
I think we're probably gonna get a whole lot of
beasts and other predators and humans. But I like where
you're going because I would like to see another humanoid race.
Who else have they encountered that have fucked them up?
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah, clearly the humans cannot be the killer of killers.
There's got to be some weird alien race that is
even more formidable than humans.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
I have to believe that.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
But anyway, so they're wheeling the Shield Maiden back to
her spot in the warehouse, and as they're passing, who
do we see?
Speaker 3 (46:06):
We see Nadu.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
She is and that makes me sad for a Naturu
because she was such she fought through so much, and
pray the idea that she's just been boxed up and
kept in storage to fight.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
This is the next day and Daniel finds out that
Ali has broken up with him for some dude, and
his car is trashed and everything sucks again. That's how
you begin Karate Kid too. Fuck you. We fought so
hard from that.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Ending it is, But I like where you're going with this.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
This is we've watched these rebels fucking fight and lose
and fight more and defeat an empire. And here's the
empire again.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
What what did they fight for?
Speaker 4 (46:53):
Crumples up that previous plot of the Karate Kid and
just says, oh, you know what.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Fuck you.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
So that's how it originally ended, but then they put
out I think, I don't know if they called it
like a special ending or what, but for whatever reason,
they amended that ending later. So not only do we
get to see Nadu, but then the camera pans over
again and it's Danny Glover from Predator two h.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
And A double R I G A and Mike Harrigan harrogon.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
But then, but the thing that really got me excited
was right next to.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Mike Harrigan, No no, no, no is Dutch and they.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
Give you that little musical cue from the first Predator.
It's Arnold Schwartzenegger from the original. So what this effectively
does is if they decide to make another animated picture
in this world, we might actually get to see Dutch
fighting alongside Nadu and Harrigan, and that is pretty fucking badass.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
It's so fucking cool. I can't even they're around. You
start recording their voices. I hope they've done it secretly.
I hope there's a fucking Predator Killer of Killer sequel
on the way and it's Dutch and Harrigan and nah
Roup fucking shit up everywhere. Throw Ripley in there.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (48:06):
How about the Flash Batman. He can show up to
and fight some predators. He's done it before.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
So that was it almost redeemed the last couple of
the vignettes in this anthology. I just the prospect of
having those characters come back, because you'll never ever get
Danny Glover and Schwarzenegger in a live action sense. That
ship is sailed. But this gives them the license and
the ability to bring them back.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
You don't even need.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
Honestly, you don't even really need Schwarzenegger to do it,
because I will tell you this, like the Mortal Kombat,
the last few Mortal Kombat games, they've added in Schwarzenegger
characters as bonus characters, so you can fight Mortal Kombat
as the T eight hundred you can fight Mortal Kombat.
I think Dutch is in there. I think Kakonan is
(48:52):
in there.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Whoever they got ricks John Michritz, that would be cool
listening to a pisshants just try and tough. They make
me laugh if Matrix was here.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
No, the My point is that it's not Schwarzenegger delivering
the lines in this Mortal Kombat game. But whoever they
got to do it sounds like Schwarzenegger to me, So
what the hell? He can have just somebody else through
his lines because he doesn't really seem to have much interest.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
To go back to the point, your cousin Ivan could
do an Arnold Swarzenender impression that could probably past come
on now.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
That would be so cool.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
Imagine if these characters from these different movies got together.
That would actually we wouldn't be talking about a Hulu
only surprised thing. This would be a an actual theatrical
because why wouldn't you have that in the theater.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
That sounds so.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Bad ass, It sounds bad lands.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Sounds awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
And that's where we're headed next. Oh my god, HP,
we've reached the end of a fest. Ladies and gentlemen,
next week you're gonna be hearing us talking about Predator
bad Lands. That's what's happening. Whoo oh boy, it's gonna
be such a good time. Hopefully it's a good movie,
because man, oh man, we've been fucking playing it up
and talking it up, and oh wouldn't it be terrible?
(50:14):
If it's terrible, Well.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Give something to talk about.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
I'll be suppressed.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
I don't think anything can happen. Look, our favorite filmmakers
have disappointed us in the past. I all signs point
to yes on this one.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Fall alone, like the Magic eight ball HP. Where you are?
Where can people find if they're looking for you? These days?
All right?
Speaker 4 (50:36):
I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast, alongside
midnight viewings Father Alone. Right here, I host the Noise
Junkies music podcast, and not to mention, I have a
bandcamp site hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
As for me, you're listening to the show that I do.
Keep it here twice a week Mondays and Fridays, maybe
Sundays and Thursdays, who knows, whenever I get them done.
If you're a patron, you're listening to this month's in advance,
and oh, check out, we're starting Star Trek fast. We're
actually recording that one next but you're not probably gonna
hear that until December. Oh anyway, anyway, keep it here
at midnight viewing. That was another great thing about it,
(51:15):
all the subtitles. Anyway, we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
You can kill it. What hell
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