SXSW: Robert Rodriguez shows off Predators!

Last night Robert Rodriguez descended on SXSW to bring the crowd the first look at footage from PREDATORS. And as a huge fan of the franchise that has seen the original PREDATOR more times than he’d like to admit, I have to say that the man (along with director Nimrod Antel) has done a fantastic job.

Rodriguez showed us the two trailers for the movie, the first of which will be hitting theaters next weekend with REPO MEN. It’s more of a teaser trailer that starts off similarly to the sneak peek posted at the film’s official site. The stars fade into the jungle canopy as one of our humans falls to the ground below.

They’re all trying to get their bearings and figure out where exactly they are. As they get acquainted with each other we see a number of them – Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Oleg Taktarov – rattling off their experience and it’s clear they’re all pretty good at one thing: killing.

We have a lot of quick shots of them walking through the alien jungle landscape trying to figure out where they are and the slow realization that they’re being hunted. We only see a very brief glimpse of Topher Grace in the trailer as he’s lurking through what appears to be some kind of Predator spaceship with a blue glowstick (and he may not be alone in there).

Towards the end we start getting more flashes of the Predators although I’d hesitate to say there’s one REALLY good look. You get a look at a Predator hand with a much longer blade than the guy from Schwarzenegger’s movie. One of the humans struggling to crawl away from a stalking Predator. Brody then says the line about how they’re on a game preserve and they’re the game as you see his body being lit up by the infamous red dot triangle sight that the Predators use. We close with a darkened shot of a Predator howling at the moon (or something).

The second trailer we saw would be considered the full trailer I guess. It still was about 50% of footage from the teaser with some new stuff mixed in. Now in the beginning we’re briefly introduced to Louis Ozawa Changchien’s character Hanzo (a slo-mo shot of him drawing out his sword). New stuff also includes a scene inside the Predators spaceship or homebase or wherever, as the humans have barricaded Predators on the other side of a metal door. They’re trying to bash their way through as we see from our side the dents from the sheer force pounding on the other side.

We get more Laurence Fishburne in this trailer too as he imparts some Predators wisdom. “They hear you, smell you and see you…” and later when asked by Brody how you can kill them he says, “However you can.” A shot of a Predator picking up a human by the chest and bringing him to face level. More quick Predator action that was almost too fast to process. An extremely brief glimpse of a Predator hound though I think I only saw it because I was looking for it (you get a better look at it in the aforementioned web sneak peek).

I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with the trailers. As a PREDATOR fan, they know what made the first film successful and they’re using that in great effect here. There’s also not a lot of pulsing rock music and a lot of natural sounds are used to create the tension.

The final piece we were shown was a scene from the movie when a group of the humans are out in the forests when they hear some whispering all around them. I thought maybe the smoke monster was going to come out of nowhere for a “Lost”/PREDATORS crossover but the camera pans around Brody to reveal a gun pointed at his head and the classic Predator helmet. Brody slowly turns around and asks, “What are you?” It pulls the helmet off to reveal…Laurence Fishburne! That rascal.

He tells them that he could smell them the minute they got there and if he can smell them than surely the Predators could too. He tells them a storm is coming so they all better get moving. Brody again asks, “Who are you?” to which Fishburne says in a rather bad-ass way, “The one that got away. The one you don’t fuck with.” BAM.

All in all, very impressed with what I saw today. I’ll be speaking to Robert and Nimrod later today and I have a ton of questions about this film and how it fits into the franchise. Stay tuned for that!