The first trailer for The Predator has arrived. While delivering only sparing glimpses of the actual Predators, the new trailer does a decent job of laying out the premise: a ragtag group of special forces assassins team up to defeat a Predator hunting party dropped into suburbia. But the strangest part of the trailer is the reveal of just how the Predators got here: crash-landing after a young boy (Jacob Tremblay) plays with a Predator device that was... uh, mailed to him in a box? It's probably best to just go ahead and assume it will actually make sense when The Predator hits theaters on Sept. 14.
The first trailer for The Predator also helps situate the movie's relationship to other movies in the messy Predator continuity. We already knew The Predator was set in the modern day and is connected to the events of Predator 2 by actor Jake Busey, here playing the son of Peter Keyes (Gary Busey), who led a task force that attempted to capture a Predator during a Los Angeles heat wave. Presumably, Jake Busey's character can clue the rest of the cast into the nature of the extraterrestrial threat. But the first trailer for The Predator also reveals a new take on the Predator shuriken, a weapon so far exclusive to the wretched Alien vs. Predator side series.
There are other indications that The Predator will pick and choose various elements from Predator (and maybe even Alien movies), particularly Casey Bracket's (Olivia Munn) mention of "hybridization," another element pillaged from Alien vs. Predator, which introduced the Predalien. While The Predator is intended to rejuvenate a franchise run into the ground by dumb crossovers from bad directors, it sure looks like it's keeping a lot of the same playbook.
This first trailer might be a bit too withholding to get all that excited yet, but teaming writer/director Shane Black (The Nice Guys, The Long Kiss Goodnight) with a great cast, including Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Trevante Rhodes and Keegan-Michael Key, still has our expectations high.
The Predator will be released in theaters Sept. 14.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
