Review by C.J. Bunce
Shane Black, director and screenplay writer of next month’s sci-fi action film The Predator, could have gone in any direction with his return of the Yautja alien hunters to Earth. He, along with co-screenplay writer Fred Dekker, decided to continue onward to the present day following the events of Predator 2. Since the third film, 2010’s Predators, was set away from Earth it doesn’t factor in to the new film and neither does 2004’s Aliens vs Predator and 2007’s Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, so The Predator is basically Predator 3. If you missed the latest trailer, check it out here. The first trailer (and the movie) begin with a child opening a package where he finds a strange futuristic device. His play with the device ends up triggering the return of one or more Predators to the planet. So what happened between Predator 2 and this kid handling the device? You can find out in The Predator: Hunters and Hunted, the official movie prequel to Shane Black’s The Predator, from author James A. Moore.
The novel follows a single Predator on a hunting excursion to southern Georgia in alligator country where he starts plucking off townsfolk, biker gang members and local law enforcement. Derived from the team headed up by Gary Busey’s Peter Keyes in Predator 2, a new government-funded initiative is focused on locating and capturing one of these aliens, and this Georgia sighting has been their first lead since an appearance in Los Angeles back in 1997. We get a brief appearance from Keyes’ son Sean (to be played by Jake Busey in the new movie), but the focal point is an opportunist named Will Traeger–Sterling K. Brown’s character in the new film–who is carefully manipulating both a military special ops unit called the Reapers and Congressional leadership to gain full control of Keyes’ project, now called Project Stargazer. Traeger’s impediment is the current project lead, General Woodhurst, a four-star general played by Edward James Olmos in early cuts of the film (later to be excised entirely from the final cut). Woodhurst is very much like Olmos’ General Adama in Battlestar Galactica, a military strategist more than someone on the front lines with the troops. Woodhurst and Traeger are the guys in Washington, DC, trying to gain funding while answering to the federal agencies dolling it out.
A Yautja alien in Shane Black’s September theatrical release, The Predator.
For most readers the more interesting part of the prequel novel will be the viewpoint of the Predator. While not giving us the play-by-play of the bureaucrats, the story alternates between the Predator’s perspective and thoughts and the Reapers’ efforts to capture him (the Predator’s vantage was also a feature of the novelization of Predator 2). The best scene in the book is entirely removed from everything else–an inspired, vivid one-on-one battle with an alligator. Why waste time on these puny humans when you have a real threat like that? The prequel novel is key to the coming movie because it establishes from the Predator’s perspective an important code that the hunters must follow. Unless this gets recounted in the movie, it’s some key data to know before heading into the theater.
