The intergalactic sport-hunter hops through human history, and way past this critic’s patience
FILM
Jorge Ignacio Castillo
June 13, 2025
Predator: Killer of Killers
Now Playing (Disney+)
First thing you need to know before reading this review: I’m not the biggest Predator fan. The character is one-dimensional and doesn’t make sense. Are you going to tell me that in the world of predator, nobody does anything besides hunting? What happens if I’m a Predator and I prefer, I don’t know, alien chess? Do I become prey? Also, who develops all that funky technology? It can’t be the meatheads hunting human special forces units.
Yes, I’m fully aware there’s an entire comic series that partially tackles these issues. No, I’m not going to read. A movie should stand on its own merits and not depend on supplemental reading. I’m not doing predator homework.
Since the Predator is a one-note antagonist, the burden of carrying the movie is on the humans. They’ve been up to the task only in the two first movies (the one with Schwarzenegger and the one with Danny Glover). The humans in The Predator, Predators, and Prey barely registered (some may disagree on the latter one), and the less we say about Alien vs Predator, the better. Unwatchable.
Predator: Killer of Killers isn’t unbearable, but as with his previous foray in the franchise director Dan Trachtenberg takes the title character (and himself) way too seriously. This isn’t Shakespeare, no matter how many blood relatives you pit against each other.
The film is structured like an anthology, featuring three self-contained stories of warriors facing a predator in different periods of human history: A Viking chieftain, two samurai siblings in feudal Japan and an American pilot during WWII — all underdogs fighting the creature with nothing but their ingenuity.
There’s a fourth segment that brings everything together, which I would rather not spoil. It’s arguably the weakest portion of the movie and sheds undesired light onto the problems I mentioned previously. The Predator is frequently championed as an honest fighter. How fair can it be when he can turn invisible and use weapons generations ahead of ours?
The one element that makes Predator: Killer of Killers slightly more interesting than previous franchise entries is the animation. Elegant and merciless, the enhanced 2-D look elevates the been-there-done-that material. It nearly justifies watching the film. Nearly.
