Earlier this week, 20th Century Studios gave us a first look at Predator: Badlands. Unlike the previous movies, the split-faced alien is the top star as he fights against the forces on an alien planet.

In a recent interview with BloodyDisgusting, director/co-writer Dan Trachtenberg shed some light on the film’s plot and its protagonist. The young Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is an outcast from his clan on Yautja Prime and goes about searching for an ultimate enemy on the supposed “Death Planet” of Kalisk, which he hopes will help him prove his worth.

Similar to Prey, Trachtenberg is looking to take Dek and his people seriously. For example, the Yautja language was treated as properly as “Elvish in Lord of the Rings or Dothraki for Game of Thrones.” It was crafted by a student of Paul Frommer, who created the Na’vi dialect for the Avatar movies and helped the director avoid “making something more lore-focused than story-focused.” He described Badlands as made with a specific intent—which he doesn’t feel was the case for prior entries—and “very genre, very specific. I wanted to make it feel like an inversion of the main premise: now the Predator is on another planet, and he’s going to be hunted by things and has to use his guile [to survive].”

A key player in Dek’s journey is Thia (Elle Fanning), a Weyland-Yutani android whose arc is meant to mirror his, but “goes into a different branch of proving oneself.” Trachtenberg cited several influences to BloodyDisgusting, including Frank Frazetta and Mad Max 2—but when it comes to its two leads, he looked to Team Ico’s Shadow of the Colossus. Badlands was inspired by “a [devastating] scene with a horse…in terms of wanting to see a Predator with someone else who provides color and connection. Dek’s very laconic, Thia is not.” Other than her tech skills, Trachtenberg said Thia brings a “real physical thing” to the table, but kept mum on specifics.

Doing a whole movie about the Predator and his android buddy is a “big, crazy swing”—one Trachtenberg thinks audiences could gel with. For those curious, Predator: Badlands is in theaters on November 7; those who just want classic Predator stories can watch the previous five movies. In that same interview, Trachtenberg discussed the film’s visuals and how Dex was made, and you can read that here.

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