Dek of the Yautja goes through a lot throughout Predator: Badlands, all in the name of seeking validation from his father, Njohrr. This being Predator, “validation” actually means “trial by combat,” and the showdown between father and son at the end was almost more restrained than what we got on screen.
In the final cut of the film, Dek and Njohrr’s fight on Yautja Prime has them really going at it. But as Wētā’s two supervisors—Sheldon Stopsack for VFX, and Karl Rapley for animation—revealed to Polygon, that clash was originally more akin to a samurai film. “Father would turn invisible, and there’d be a quick rush as they ran toward each other,” explained Rapley. “Dek threw sand at Father, which revealed him, and then they crossed paths, like a samurai standoff, and they went to the opposite sides, and then Father’s arm fell off. So it was just a very quick exchange.”
After watching the film, director Dan Trachtenberg approached Wētā about doing a “bigger” sequence that would make it feel “more of a moment.” The Predator: Badlands stunt team came down to New Zealand and made a brand new fight sequence, so Wētā had to digitally create Yautja Prime, including the clan guards Dek disposes of and the planet’s geographical features. Using the original fight as a reference point, Rapley said the team used “sweeping camera moves” for the new sequence and created a sandstorm from scratch.
Stopsack felt the sandstorm served a “narrative point” of Dek outsmarting his father, and the idea behind it was sound. It may have been a challenge, but he said the team was “excited” to tackle it and considers it “one of the more beautiful, fun aspects [of the film]. Dan told us, ‘We don’t want to show them clearly. It wants to be muddy and a bit more gritty.’ I really admired that and resonated with it.”
With the longer fight, audiences get to see how Dek’s come into his own as a hunter, and it hopefully gets them excited about where he goes next. There’s no word yet on if we’re getting a sequel to Predator: Badlands, but at the very least, it feels like the young Yautja has endeared himself enough to hopefully pop up somewhere else.
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