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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

Ever since Spiderman Into The Spider-Verse everybody is trying to uniquefy their animated projects. The unique aesthetic that the movie went with, the animation on-twos for some characters. The comic-book look, even though the film is 3D animated CGI stuff. All of it made other films immediately jump on the band-wagon of imitation.

Looking at the trailers for Predator: Killer of Killers you may think that the director Dan Trachtenberg just tried to do the same. The movie has this painted style, even though it clearly 3D animated CGI stuff. It is animated on-twos. Or even on-trees or on-fours. ( Meaning a lot of the animation has low frame-rate, while the camera moves at a normal 24 frames per second ).

All this low frame-rate, especially in intense action sequences makes you feel like you are watching a well crafted Anime. Which made me think about it. Anime is low frame-rate and stuff, because usually those who make it cannot produce enough of it in time for it to air on TV. They need to cut as many corners as they can for the episodes to be done in time and on budget.

It seems like the movie Trachtenberg was going for here was way too risky and way too ambitious for a studio to green-light it normally. But if he can do that on a fraction of budget. As animation. And not a budget, something like Pixar uses for their ultra-realistic stuff and fluent motion. But on a fraction of that. He can use the trend of animating on-twos and making everything painterly, to cut all of the corners necessary to make this insane movie with the small amount of money that he is given.




Look at this shot for example. The furry texture on that scarf thing that she wares here reminds me of the kind of painted texture technique Blizzard would use for something like the Warcraft III. In that game they had a very hard limitation on geometry because optimization in video-games is hard. And that game was made 20 years ago. So they had to simply paint the details on stuff.

The funny thing is, in this shot they don't even use a normal map. It is literately just a painted texture on what seems to be a rather low-resolution mesh with some triangular spikes sticking out of it. But it looks phenomenal! This is good shit!




In other shots you could see mistakes. Like for example here her hip clips through her shield for a few frames. There are number of reasons for why this is there. For example they could have animated the shot on-fours and then interpolated it to be on-twos ( because she doesn't move 24 frames per second there ). And they simply didn't have time to go over the frames and do the cleanups. They had to move fast to save on budget. Or it could be a genuine screw-up of an animator. And the director didn't think it was an issue that worth paying any attention to because they have no time and the shot works.

I kind of like how messy this movie is. I feel the presence of a human on the other side doing that kind of thing and making mistakes. It made me enjoy the movie a bit more, I suppose, because even though there are little nit-picky things like that, the overall movie is phenomenally well crafted.

In my old short film I'm Not Even Human there is a shot ( on 19:55 in a chase scene, where the car turns while the camera keeps the previous momentum of the car ). This shot was inspired by Trachtenberg in a movie he made in 2016 called 10 Cloverfield Lane. BTW in case you think I'm that bad ( because action in I'm Not Even Human frankly sucks ) please look at my newer short-film ( which also took like 3 or so years to make ) Moria's Race it is much better.

What I'm trying to say here is that even from the very beginning Trachtenberg showed great understanding of action. The shot I was referencing from 10 Cloverfield Lane looks amazing. It is my silly imitation that looks like shit. In Predator: Killer of Killers Trachtenberg takes his action sensibilities and does magic with them.

Don't get me wrong, Trachtenberg is not Steven Spielberg so his action is a bit less perfect. Only Spielberg can do action perfectly. James Cameron I suppose, would be second place. Because not even Cameron can beat Spielberg. But Trachtenberg is bloody good! Like phenomenally good. I would even consider him be close to Cameron. That how good I think he is.

The movie is not shy from violence. I mean it is a horror animated movie. It has guts and blood and stuff. Though because it is animated I think the guts and stuff don't actually hit you as much as something that should be really real. But to be honest Predator: Killer of Killers is kind of living in this cartoon land to some extend.

It is not Loony Toons but more like the kind of stuff you'd expect from a Blizzard cinematic cut scene. It is over the top, mega-cool stuff. Some of it feels like Michael Bay stuff. Other things feel appropriate for their setting. Like the Samurai story part which has really cool TMNT 2003 vibes, if you know what I mean.

Story-wise the story is interesting. It shows the Yautja hunting for the best human killers it can find in different times and places on earth. It has a story about a scary ass Viking lady that is so over the top intense the Yautja thinks: Yes! This is the coolest killer ever. Let's have a fight!

Then there is a story in Japan. Where two brother Samurais had a fight, and wanted to kill each other. So the Yautja was like: Hell yeah! Samurai = cool. Let's fight!

And then there is a story about an American pilot in World War II. Who is so bad-ass of a pilot that the Yautja is like: Damn! Let's go! Dog-fight!

The movie does something to connect the stories together, which I wont spoil. But I do think that it is brilliant from character dynamics perspective.

Also because the film spends its time in different places and times, everybody speaks different languages. And so the movie basically says: to hell with dialogue, let's go visual, for pretty much the entirety of the film. The samurai bit in the middle has maybe like 2 or 3 lines spoken in the entire segment. And even that is in Japanese. Like, those are some bold decisions.

In any case. This movie is a blast and I want more of it.

Happy Hacking!!!




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  Troler c:0


I'm most surprised you actually reviewed an animated movie. Now the doors are open to a LOT of animated classics.

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:1



@Troler I reviewed Ada & Zangenman ( from FSFE ) and I also reviewed a short animated movie Spark. But yeah, this seems to be the first live-action animated movie I reviewed.

  Blender Dumbass c:1

... c:0

  Troler c:0


I'm most surprised you actually reviewed an animated movie. Now the doors are open to a LOT of animated classics.

@Troler I reviewed Ada & Zangenman ( from FSFE ) and I also reviewed a short animated movie Spark. But yeah, this seems to be the first live-action animated movie I reviewed.

... replies ( 1 )

  Troler c:2



@blenderdumbass

But you never reviewed Oscar winning "Flow".

  Troler c:2

... c:1

  Blender Dumbass c:1


c:0

@Troler I reviewed Ada & Zangenman ( from FSFE ) and I also reviewed a short animated movie Spark. But yeah, this seems to be the first live-action animated movie I reviewed.

@blenderdumbass

But you never reviewed Oscar winning "Flow".

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:3



@Troler You are right!

  Blender Dumbass c:3

... c:2

  Troler c:2


c:1

@blenderdumbass

But you never reviewed Oscar winning "Flow".

@Troler You are right!

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