'Predator: Badlands' sticks its 2 stars together to take the franchise to new places

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — “Predator: Badlands” belongs to a long-established cinema subgenre: two opposed people reluctantly stuck together with a common purpose.

The film, the seventh in the franchise (not counting the “Alien vs. Predator” offshoots), has the buddy comedy energy that comes with that dynamic. It also belongs to the narrower subgenre of people quite literally stuck together, like 1958's “The Defiant Ones,” in which Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis were fugitives united by chains.

And, in a scenario that provided special challenges for stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, “Predator: Badlands” belongs to a still narrower subset it may share only with “The Empire Strikes Back”: movies with a broken android worn like a backpack by a tall and powerful creature as they face peril in a strange corner of space.

“The real physical inspiration for it was C-3PO strapped to Chewbacca’s back,” director Dan Trachtenberg told The Associated Press in an interview where he was joined by the film's two stars. “But I think the fun of this is that it’s not Chewbacca. It’s not a friendly, well-intentioned creature, it’s a Predator.”

The apt working title of the movie, which will be released Friday by 20th Century Studios, was “Backpack.”

For much of the New Zealand shoot, Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi were every bit as close as they appear to be in the film, where the top half of her artificially intelligent character, Thia, was back-to-back with Schuster-Koloamatangi's young Predator, Dek, who is out to prove himself on a hunt against a seemingly unkillable megamonster.

“His Predator braids would, like, whip me in the face all the time in our action sequences,” Fanning said with a laugh.

Trachtenberg and the crew used an array of practical ways to make the backpack setup work.

“Any way you can think of making the rig, we tried,” Schuster-Koloamatangi said.

“Through the mud, through the water, through rivers,” Fanning added.

She said at times her co-star pulled her in a wheelbarrow, and at other times they'd do it on foot.

“I would really pretend to be a backpack swinging around,” she said. “We’d have to coordinate our steps, I’d be walking backward and it would be like, ‘OK, left, right, left, right.'”

In the scenes when they weren't back-to-back, Trachtenberg wanted them to be genuinely face-to-face.

“We developed this system where he wore a suit, but his face was open,” the director said. “And that way Dimitrius could really be driving the performance, and he and Elle could work off each other in moments, though fleeting, when they were actually facing each other.”

He said the “whole reason for making the movie was to really emotionally connect with this crazy thing. So it really demanded that we had a different approach,” and that the process “allows us to be far more expressive and do things the other entries in the franchise couldn’t do with its creature.”

Trachtenberg, a 44-year-old Philadelphia native, has taken over the franchise that began in 1987 with the Arnold Schwarzenegger original. He has taken it to entirely new times and places, with entirely new approaches.

His first time at the helm was on 2022's “Prey,” which was set in 1719 on the Great Plains in the Comanche Nation.

His animated “Predator: Killer of Killers” from earlier this year includes vignettes set in 9th century Scandinavia, 17th century Japan and World War II.

“Predator: Badlands,” which he co-wrote with his “Prey” writing partner Patrick Aison, is set in the distant future on a new planet.

Trachtenberg said at a Comic-Con showcase of the film that one inspiration was the realization that “The Predator never wins.” He wanted to see what that would look like, without making a slasher film.

Fanning, who also plays other identical androids, and Schuster-Koloamatangi were two of only three credited cast members.

She has been acting since she was a preschooler, and is already a veteran pro at 27, but she's relatively new to franchise filmmaking — 2014's “Maleficent” being the exception — and entirely new to space-based sci-fi.

“I guess I’ve always been on Earth, or a fantasy realm,” she said with a laugh. “I think the approach to story and character and the script, it’s very much the same.”

She had more credits by age 5 than her 24-year-old co-star has had yet in his brief career.

Standing over 7 feet tall, Schuster-Koloamatangi was a local hire in New Zealand and a special find for the filmmakers. While there was nothing comfortable about most of the shoot, he appreciated being on familiar terrain.

“Home turf, baby,” he said with a laugh.