(This was originally published as Implausipod Episode 52 on November 29th, 2025.)
https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/17441080-e0052-wycu-part-1-predator-s
Welcome to Phase 1 of the WYCU, as we start our look at the Weyland-Yutani Cinematic Universe. We’ve been talking about this over the last few months over on the blog, but with the three new titles released in the shared universe in 2025, it’s time to get caught up on one of the original CUs, one that spans at least three movie franchises: Aliens, Predator, Blade Runner, (and a few more surprises too?)
(Also, a spoiler warning: there’s probably lots in our look at these 9 films).
But we’re doing something different in our (re)watch: we’ve been watching the titles chronologically. Not by release, but by where they fit within the timeline.
We’ll also be taking this opportunity to return to Appendix W: as the original Predator most definitely fits on the list. Let’s get to da choppa!
If you’re an intergalactic hunter coming to earth, how do you determine who is deadliest and what happens if you find out that it isn’t you? Welcome to the WYCU, the Wayland Yutani Cinematic Universe. We thought it was past time to take a deep look at one of the most enduring science fiction franchises or meta franchise and shared cinematic universe.
Over the next few episodes of the ImplausiPod, we will be watching through the series chronologically. But with a twist. We’re not watching them in release order. We’ll be watching through them as they appear in universe from historical times to the near and far future. This is part one where we look at the Yautja, the predators who might have bitten off more than they can chew when they came to Earth.
And with those faces, they can chew a whole lot.
Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. So let’s get into the WYCU, the Wayland Yutani Cinematic Universe, a meta universe spanning 19 movies, one series and comic books, video games, and other elements of transmedia storytelling spanning across at least three sci-fi franchises.
And maybe a few more, and one of the more enduring elements in science fiction over the last 45 years. The WYCU has been on my mind for a little bit ever since the summer of 2024, after seeing Alien Romulus in the theater. Of course, that, along with Deadpool and Wolverine, led to exploration of the nostalgia curve last year.
But following Romulus, a discussion with a friend about the shared timelines of the Alien Predator franchises and the realization that there was at least three Predator films that I hadn’t seen led me to realize I was due for a rewatch, or watch in several cases. But if we were gonna sit down and rewatch all the movies, what if we watched our way through the WYCU chronologically?
As we mentioned, the WYCU stands for the Weyland-Yutani Cinematic Universe, and we’re using the Weyland Yutani Corporation as that key piece of memetic connective tissue because it’s one of those few things that stretches across between the Aliens and Predator franchises, aside from the Xenomorph skull in the trophy room inside the Predator ship and Predator 2.
It’s amazing how much inspiration comes from a little piece of throwaway set dressing. Wayland-Yutani or WY for short is the Interstellar Megacorp behind much of the machinations of the Alien franchise, and they have their hand in the goings on of the predators as well. Much like CHOAM from the Dune franchise, they’ve spread across the galaxy and have their fingers or talons in pretty much everything.
I think we’ve mentioned it in passing before, both on the blog and in the newsletter when talking about her MegaCorp series, a look at the mega corps that permeate the science fiction settings of the future that show up in everything from present day cyberpunk settings like shadowrun to the aforementioned Dune at 20,000 years In the future. We’ll devote an episode to looking at those mega corps real soon, but I digress.
What’s so special about watching the WYCU chronologically? The actual order of all this has been laid out by a few others before, so we’re by no means a first, but we did go back and confirm as much as we could through the material that we had available to us. The nice thing is, is with the recent series Alien Earth Set two years before the original 1979 Alien film, it means we can break this into chunks with a chronolgical rewatch involving most of the Predator franchise and just a tiny smidgen of Prometheus, followed by the Blade Runner films and some of the interconnected media.
And then the Aliens franchise. So we’re gonna break those chunks into single episodes. It’ll probably make it a little bit easier to digest. And by chronological rewatch, I mean within continuity not release order. This goes against my general philosophy and recommendation when it comes to media, whether it’s film or books, or.
Comics or content of any kind, that it should be consumed in release order as the experience in meaning can often drastically change over time. Picture something like watching the Star Wars films in release orders, starting with a new hope. Rather than starting with something like a phantom menace, you’re gonna get a radically different experience and you generally need to respect your audience, that they can catch up and fill in the missing holes, and don’t have to have every part laid out in a linear order from one to 10.
So I’m going against type a little bit when it comes to this chronological rewatch, but I’m wondering how well it’ll hang together and how well the various Weyland Yutani parts of it will coalesce. As we look at the thing as a whole during the rewatch, we’re gonna keep an eye out for a couple other themes that are of interest to us, including Appendix W, which definitely be influenced by some of the earlier films in this series, including those from the seventies and eighties specifically.
And we’ll also be looking at various elements of ancillary tech, which we talked about in our last episode on Tron, and how those throwaway elements often show up as real tech. So we’ll keep an eye out for those too. When it comes to the Predator universe, we’re looking at nine separate films over about 38 years, so we’re gonna break this into a few different chapters.
Again, for ease of management. But first, if we’re doing a chronological rewatch, technically speaking, the WYCU starts off about 20,000 years ago, seen in the thinnest sliver at the start of the movie Prometheus, released in 2012. It was heralded, as a return to the franchise by Ridley Scott, and hopes were high and
I was pretty hyped seeing it in opening weekend, but after the movie, I was slightly less hyped. We’ll get to the reasons why in a couple episodes of the podcast when we look at the full movie chronologically speaking, because while chronologically, it’s the first among all the WYCU movies, only a bit of it takes place in the distant past, and it’s only about four minutes plus of that movie.
We see glimpses of a humanoid alien next to some waterfalls on a distant planet and a thin dish with some black goo in it, where upon touching it, the alien seems to be infected and dissolves to drift away into the waterfall below. There isn’t a whole lot that connects this small bit with anything that we’re gonna see thematically for a whole while yet, and we’re not about to pull a super far reach worthy of Mr.
Fantastic to connect this black goo to the X-Files universe as that would derail us from the outset. But I did wanna mention Prometheus before we get into the Predator proper. So why don’t we do that right now where we skip to chapter one, where we look at Prey from 2022 and Predator Killer of Killers from 2025.
We entered the Predator universe in North America, circa 1719. We witnessed the youth of the Comanche tribe working together on a hunt with strong social ties and deep understanding of their environment. Our protagonist is Naru, portrayed by Amber Midthunder in a fantastic turn as the healer slightly apart from the tribe, as she wishes to fight like the men.
The youth, are looking to prove themselves and set off after a mountain lion that attacked one of the tribe members. Unbeknownst to them, a hunter from parts unknown has landed near the tribe seeking to do the same, Prove themselves, though with significantly greater firepower. Naru was knocked out in a fight with the mountain lion and she finds out that her brother had killed it after she had tracked it
Down heading into the forest to follow up on some clues from the fight that a mysterious creature was watching them. She encounters a bear near the river, which then battles a nearly invisible figure who rises from the river to finish the bear off. Naru is captured by some voyageurs who use her and her brother as bait for the hunter, and then get involved in a shootout with it. Granted muskets, but it isn’t a fast shootout, it’s a shootout nonetheless.
After dispatching the Voyageurs, the comanche escape and Naru realizes some of the herbs that she was using for healing have the side effect of lowering the body heat and making one invisible to the hunter. She’s able to bait the predator and lure it into a trap using a natural bog, and she beats it with its own weapons.
We are gonna drop out the synopsis of each movie in the chronological elements to comment on the movie itself, and we’ll do that for each film in the series. Released in 2022, Prey represented a rebirth of the Predator franchise, one almost entirely absent any direct Weyland Yutani ties. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg and based on a screenplay by Patrick Aison Prey takes what had become the familiar predator story and backcasts it.
Setting in a time without the technological trappings of the films released earlier, which we’ll get to shortly. Yeah, I know it gets a bit confusing. Prey is the fifth film released in the franchise. Seven, If you count the AVP Crossover flicks, which we’ll get to soon enough. And the stars are mostly indigenous cast, including Amber midthunder, and Dakota Beavers.
This movie was new to me. I knew of it, but I held off watching it until I was ready to do this chronological rewatch of the entire verse. I didn’t need to have waited though, It’s ’cause this movie is worth a rewatch. It just rips. The pacing is fantastic. Coming in at a brisk a hundred minutes stuffed with some.
Epic set pieces and gorgeously shot with amazing cinematography. Much of the outdoor scenery was filmed near where I lived, so I got a kick out of scenes in familiar territory near places where I had hiked myself. There are so many good scenes in this movie, the Voyageur encounter rates too, but the bear fight legit made me jump.
The overhead shot stands out in my memory. Yes, there was a little bit of problems with the CGI On the Bear, but not so much that took me out of the film. It was a really enjoyable viewing. The vibe was great. On the more specific front, there isn’t a whole lot here to connect it to our ongoing viewing trends like the WYCU or the topic of this podcast series.
For instance, Weyland Yutani doesn’t really show up at all, even though there is a Musket tie in, which I think we’ll have to get to later. Like many of the later Predator films. to my knowledge, there’s a few hadn’t seen when I watched this, and we’ll keep an eye out for this as we move forward in this episode.
There aren’t many direct influences on Appendix W, which we’ve mentioned a few times before on the podcast. Prey is a fantastic first film in our chronological rewatch, and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.
Our second installment in the WYCU is an animated movie done in an anime style, I guess, or it might be an anime style. I don’t watch a ton of it, but we can go with that as a description. The animation takes us through different time periods in its history.
Let’s cover the three acts and then the fourth act conclusion. The movie begins at a snowy and rugged terrain, circa 841, where Vikings are engaged in a raid on a rival clan. After fighting their way into the longhouse and defeating their rivals, the Raiders are soon attacked by an unseen assailant, much like we saw in prey.
They’re quickly dispatched, saved for their leader Ursa, who’s able to use the icy waters to lower her temperature and defeat the hunter. The second act, and perhaps my favorite of this film takes place in and around a Japanese castle circa, 1609 to 1629. Kenji once a samurai has returned to the castle to confront his brother, who is now the Lord of the castle.
But he comes to learn that an invisible hunter is on his trail, out Ninjaing the Ninja. The predator makes his way through much of the castle’s defenses, but is confronted outside in the forest by the two Samurai brothers. The Samurai duel is my favorite scene. It’s awesomely done. While they defeat the predator, Only one of the brothers survives.
The third act takes place in and above the Pacific ocean circa in 1942, which puts us firmly in the midst of World War II during the naval battles there. The castle fortresses of the previous shorts are replaced by an aircraft carrier here, but the similarities track, the fighter pilots are the Knights of an earlier age, sallying forth from the gates.
What I’m getting at is that it feels like there could have been a medieval segment here thrown into the film, but perhaps the Viking segment filled that role. This act takes place almost entirely in the air. As a squadron of US pilots end up facing off against a predator aircraft getting dragged down by missiles, harpoons, and chains and other weapons that leave them ridiculously outgunned and Overmatched. Torres, one of the pilots, takes a salvaged wildcat into the air to track down the predator and only matters defeated by turning its own weapons against it.
These human warriors are gathered together for a final showdown. Though exactly when isn’t quite sure we know where it is taking place, though, as it appears to be on the main predator planet, in a gladiator like Coliseum. Fitted with explosive collars, the Warriors first have to face off against some enormous beast and have to overcome their language and cultural differences to work together to defeat it.
After their success, they start to affect their escape. With the pilot Torres grabbing a bike and making his way to the spaceship. However, the Samurai is injured and ursa the Viking sacrifices herself so the ship can escape.
Released on June 6th, 2025. Predator Killer of Killers is an animated anthology film said in multiple historical eras, produced and directed by Dan Trachtenburg again, who did the aforementioned prey. The three individual stories written by Michio Robert Rutare come together in the final segment and hint to future directions for the series.
Killer of Killers is the sixth film in the series eight if you include the crossover films. As noted, the section of the films cover different eras with two of the four technically appearing before Prey’s 1719. seeing as it was a tie, and I kind of wanted to talk about Prey first during our chronological rewatch.
We’re going with our podcaster’s discretion to place this second in chronological order in the franchise, albeit with a big asterisk. Because of this predator killer of Killers slots in as number two in our overall chronology all the same, and number two in the Predator franchise.
How this ties into the Badlands movie that came out this fall remains to be seen, but we’ll loop back into that one when we can. Killer Killers was released directly to streaming through Hulu in the US and Disney Plus elsewhere.
I saw it in the comfort of my own home, though I think it misses something there, and it would’ve been cool to see it on a big screen. So for those who managed to catch it at a theatrical screening, which I think I heard about, I’m not entirely sure I’m jealous either way.
Being so new Killer of Killers hasn’t really had a chance to influence much of anything. But the strong action elements really helped spread some positive word of mouth.
And it’s not really tied that strongly into the WYCU Again, much like Prey before it, save for the antagonists, a particular weapon, and some hints at the very end. And a quick note on that, following the release of Killer of Killers, there was an edit made to the epilogue showing the faces of a few other people that we haven’t been introduced to yet.
We’ll have to see why they were included later and where this might be going.
As an aside, let’s talk real quick about their society. Here’s the thing with the predators though, the Yautja, they’re not the good guys and they’re not meant to be. symbolically I read them as a metaphor. This isn’t that unusual. It happens a lot in sci-fi and fantasy media where the archetypes stand in for something else they’re trying to imagine and talk about.
Here the Yautja are like the colonial British. They take the best from the cultures they raid and plunder. They are massively overpowered against their prey from a tech perspective, but are individually pretty weak and seem to get dropped quick by opponents who can work together or disarm and deflect the tech back on their wielders.
Otherwise, they put on a big show of being tough, But can fall to organized resistance Beyond the symbolic nature of the Yautja, there is a narrative role they play, which we saw a bit of in the first two movies and we’ll see more shortly. If we treat the Predator films as more of a sci-fi horror film than an action genre one, than the narrative role they fill is that of the serial killer.
They’re more like Jason or Freddy or the Terrifier, someone, a loner filling that antagonist rule. And a society of Jason’s doesn’t really work, even if you set them in outer space. I mean, outer space worked for one Jason, kind of, but only one, and I digress. The point is that there’s a few elements of the Yautja mythos that work against it having a deeper layer to it.
But that doesn’t mean they can’t fit within something like the broader WYCU. And speaking of those earlier films in the narrative role of the predator, let’s head back to the very beginning.
We start with a chopper full of armed soldiers on a helicopter landing on a beach in a central American coastline. It could be Guatemala or maybe Venezuela. Seems like nowadays it would be Venezuela, but maybe that’s a comment on how long certain things have been going on. We follow a squad of soldiers who head into the jungle, on what they’re told is a rescue mission.
They tear apart a camp of armed men with lethal precision. in a fury of eighties over the top violence and in so doing, learned that they had been lied to after they find the corpses of the men they were sent to rescue.
Trying to work their way out of the jungle. we come to see that they’re being trailed by a mysterious figure who flits in amongst the trees and can see in the infrared spectrum,
Witnessing the heat signatures of them.
When we look through their perspective, the soldiers soon feel that they’re being followed and tensions begin to rise, resulting them lashing out at the jungle and each other. From there, the unseen hunter begins picking the mercenaries off one by one. I wanna stress that the mercs aren’t making dumb mistakes.
They’re competent, but technologically outclassed. I think that’s one of those things that elevates a film, especially a horror film. When the team fighting the horror aren’t dumb. Eventually the team is whittled down to just one remaining survivor, Dutch played by Arnold, as well as the woman that they have rescued from the armed camp near the beginning of the movie.
Much like we saw with Naru in Prey, Dutch is able to use natural traps as well as mud to camouflage his heat signature in order to go toe to toe with the predator. However, the ugly mother has one trick, left high explosives, and sets off a self-destruct sequence that goes off like a small nuke. Hasta la vista.
Released in 1987. Predator was written by Jim and John Thomas, and directed by John McTiernan, who was charged with corralling the most testosterone put on screen since the Dirty Dozen. In 87, McTiernan was starting an epic run where he’d go on to make Die hard A year later, followed by the hunt for red October.
Starring two future governors and a movie director , the reach of Predator and its influence on pop culture has been huge. Part of the reason for this is that predator is eminently memeable.
So much So that it is basically a collection of memes, 107 minutes of tiktoks and Vines stitched together. Much like other movies of that era, like Aliens, Monty, Python, Ghostbusters, and the aforementioned, diehard all come to mind.
Seriously, how many bits can you quote from the top of your head from any of these movies, even 40 years later? I’d start, but I gotta get to the Choppa now. Try that for something more recent. There might be something to this movie as memeplex idea, but we’ll put a pin in that for a later date to further support my argument.
It’s funny how hard it is to pick a favorite scene from this. We have the classic bro handshake between Arnie and Carl Weathers. We have them shooting the forest. Ventura’s iconic I ain’t got time to bleed and so many more. The movie is iconic for a good reason.
Predator is the first released film in the Predator franchise, Natch, kicking the whole thing off, and the third movie released in the WYCU Following Aliens in 1986., By dint of when it was released It’s not very connected to the rest of the WYCU, but it is referenced a lot by the other films. A lot of this extended universe won’t happen without this movie.
While predators isn’t that Connected to the WYCU, it does crossover with Appendix W. The adaptive camouflage technology of the predator being able to blend in, become effectively invisible, does show up in Warhammer 40 K with the cameleoline cloaks being available, as well as various personal fields that can disrupt the user’s outline.
Now, the invisibility cloak has a long history in both fantasy and sci-fi. Featuring prominently in titles like Lord of the Rings, with both the one ring and the Elven cloaks providing various degrees of camouflage. The predator was further adapted into the Agglomerative Warhammer 40 K universe when the tyranid race was further quote unquote fleshed out, pun intended.
And the stealthy camouflaged hunters called the LictorS were introduced to the setting along with the named figure Death Leaper showing up. I’ll let you bing a picture of that character. The resemblance is uncanny. But now that we’ve met the OG predator, what happens when the jungle changes?
Set in 1997, predator Two takes place in the LA of Fever Dreams and nightmares of Fox News filled with slums and gang violence. A group of overarmed detectives are involved in a gunfight on the streets between competing drug cartels with the citizens caught in the middle. We meet our protagonist, Lieutenant Mike Harrigan, who’s getting too old for this, and his team who are trying to fight the cartels. Hunting both these groups in the urban war zone is another Predator, one we have now seen several times.
It begins stalking and taking the heads of both cartels as well as the leaders that Harrigan and crew are only catching the faint clues that something else is involved as the bodies start piling up Throughout it all, we have Morton Downey Jr. poking his nose in as a muck raking journalist trying to get the scoop on the goings on.
Harrigan is stopped by the Feds who are hunting the hunter, aware of the events of the previous film. They’ve got high tech weapons in a carefully laid trap, but unfortunately for them they’re not Batman, so no amount of prep time will help them in this fight. they get owned. However, Glover summons all of his too old for this energy that he was saving for the next lethal weapon film, and manages to wound the predator, eventually chasing it back to its ship for a final duel where he manages to finish it off.
In so doing three other predators de-cloak, materializing right before him and throw him a musket as a trophy for his victory. A musket from a voyageur that we’ve seen several hundred years ago. This movie is a trip. Released in 1990, starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Maria Conchito Alonso, Bill Paxton, and the aforementioned Morton Downey Jr.
It’s a wild mishmash of tropes, some of which haven’t aged well granted, but seemed to be a showcase of a news report of LA in 2025. The film was directed by Stephen Hopkins based on a script by Jim and John Thomas, and despite the violence is sometimes a little boring in places. I feel like the lighting definitely contributes to that with a lot of the movies shot in the dark and sometimes difficult to see what’s going on.
Well, the movie didn’t impact WarHammer 40 K as much as the first movie Predator. It has a cyberpunk or proto cyberpunk feel in places with the urban setting, the corp tech and the hyper violence all contributing to that vibe. There isn’t as much ancillary tech in this movie either. As for the most part, it is just real world tech from the 1990s, albeit exaggerated to the point of ludicrousness.
My favorite scene might be The Predator versus the Jamaicans. Again, that feels very cyberpunk to me. It’s either that or Danny Glover telling the alien, you’re one ugly shut your mouth. The defining element of Predator Two though is how it is the glue that first dawned the WYCU. Predator Two was the fourth movie released overall between the two franchisees and it’s near the end of the movie in the trophy room upon the ship where connection is made.
Cue the Elastica needle drop and hum along because we don’t have a music budget here. Dupe do do Dupe.
A new day is breaking with dawn of the Weyland Yutani cinematic universe. It’s hard to state how important that bit of prop placement was. It might have saved both franchises because it was there on screen undeniably, so it was what these kids these days call a Canon event. It inextricably linked the two franchises.
More than just providing a point for future movies of which we’ll get to in a bit. It opened up a world of potential for future storytelling, allowing other authors to tell stories where these two franchises are connected. It’s like a little bit of fanfic inside the actual fic. It expanded the design spaces where these stories could happen.
And most of this crossover and expansion takes place outside the scope of this cinematic universe. The majority takes place via transmedia storytelling. TMS is where a story is told across multiple platforms, formats, and types of media. More than just adaptation, titles in transmedia storytelling contribute to a larger ongoing story because the predator stories and the comic books, video games, and novels are all part of the larger universe.
They count as transmedia storytelling. We touched on this, but way back in episode 16 when we talked about Spreadable media and the work of Henry Jenkins, if you want to go check out a deeper dive on the topic, so this crossover here in the trophy room near the end of Predator two is the dawn of the WYCU.
Yeah, everything else came after. Of course, the crossover between Aliens and Predator isn’t the first time that this has happened. Television has had this occur multiple times with Battlestar Galactica showing up on chips and the Six million dollar man and the bionic women crossing over as well. And of course, there’s the whole Bobby Westphal meta universe, which seemed to engulf half of television in the eighties and nineties, and numerous times.
This has happened in comic. Books or even amongst fiction authors, either self crossovers like Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion Series, or Stephen King’s Dark Tower Books or shared universes, like those in Thieve’s world. Shared universes could be a lot of fun when applied sparingly, but can also end up feeling very fan servicey where the power scaling conversations of the school ground or the internet chat rooms take place on the screen in front of us.
And while it can be neat to feel that your desires are being catered to as a fan. We’re about to find out why fan service isn’t always what you want
In outer space, a now familiar ship approaches Earth that makes a beeline for Antarctica where it drills a hole into the ice. From there, an international team of scientists and researchers is put together by a wealthy billionaire for the purpose of investigating the blast. And this gives us a sizable cast of characters.
They encounter a frozen over whaling Station, which I’m not sure if this makes historical sense in terms of Antarctica or not, to be honest, but From there, they find a tunnel drilled into the ice, creating a smooth core, hundreds of meters deep. The team uses something akin to Lidar to scan deep into the core and finds a set of pyramids under the ice.
They journey down and begin exploring the ruins and find that there is a hidden sacrificial chamber. The one linguist is surprisingly adept at deciphering the full Unseen sigils, but not quick enough for an ancient mechanism to haul some dragon like beast out of an ice chamber. And then it gets to laying something that looks like giant eggs.
Holy fish balls. What exactly in the name of Dungeons and Dragons is going on here? Something that looks like a cross between a snake and a crab and an octopus bursts outta one of the eggs and attaches itself to the face of some of the team, and they’re left unconscious and paralyzed until Something bursts outta their chest.
And holy moly, this is way more horrific than anything seen in the Predator movies, even the victims in the trees in the first movie. And yes, I know there’s been a lot of alien movies, and I want you to imagine what it would be like if this is the first time you encountered them, because we’re watching these movies through chronologically.
From there, things get. Worse somehow, as the small ones soon get significantly bigger and start stalking the remaining members of the team who are separated. As the interior of the Pyarmid starts shifting its walls and then things get worse again as three of predators show up and begin testing themselves by hunting the larger beasts and wholly mackerel.
This is a Close fight even with the predators tech, the aliens explode into acid or something and take out a couple of the predators, and the humans are quickly whittled down. A few make their way to the surface, but the big egg alien alien does as well until it gets caught by a harpoon and dragged under the ice by a massive chain and trap.
Not sure if that’s enough to actually finish it off though. And from there we see that one of the predators was actually infected by one of the face things, and it bursts loose as it’s flying away from the planet. Oh my God. This is a frightening film. Even though it was overstuffed with characters and ideas and new creatures that sometimes made it hard to follow what was going on with the weird geometry.
This movie is actually filled to the bursting, literally and figuratively released in 2004. A VP was directed by Paul WS Anderson, with input by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, my memory is a little fuzzy, but I seem to recall this being treated as more of an alien prequel movie that Happened to have a predator in it and the writing credits in general plot, to be honest, seem to bear this up.
Technically, this would only be the third predator related title be released. As with earlier films, if we can’t find an explicit date mentioned, we’ll assume this film is contemporaneous with its release date, putting it at. 2004 AVP has a ton of cast numbers, including Sanaa Latham as the lead, but perhaps the most noticeable is Lance Henrickson, cast
here as Charles Weyland giving us our first chronological appearance of the Weyland Yutani Corp in some fashion, as well as that of the Xenomorphs, which I hope I captured the experience of above. My inner d and d nerd self loves the ancient dungeon feel of this movie and the claustrophobia and overwhelming odds.
The execution might leave a little to be desired, though. There’s also a lot of nods in this film to John Carpenter’s the Thing released back in 1982 with the Antarctic station and the like. Now this movie would be the Fifth film of the chronology overall and the third predator movie overall, bringing the franchise back to the cinemas after 14 years, AVP builds on the ending of the previous movie and draws them even closer with a shared backstory echoing through the prehistory of earth.
When it comes to favorite scenes and a little hard press to think of one.
Some of the puzzle sequences were cool and the queen rising outta the cryogenic slumber was neat. Maybe here’s where I can voice a little bit of a beef, though. It’s my ancient aliens rant, as the movie does rely a lot on this early on as if the ancient human nations weren’t able to design or build pyramids on their own without supernatural, or in this case, alien assistance.
This POV or ideology is one that is recurrent in a lot of conspiracy theories, and there’s a racist background to it. So while I get that this is a work of fiction, it’s not cool to see this pernicious meme incorporated into the overall storyline. Maybe we should check in and see where we are overall. Let’s take a little intermission.
At the 30 minute mark, we’re a little over halfway through the nine movies in the Predator series, so I realize this is gonna be one of our longest episodes yet. So let’s just stop to catch our breath for a moment and think about where we are in the chronology.
One of the key takeaways from Alien Versus Predator is how it makes a strong argument for watching movies in release order as the chronological rewatch breaks down to a degree. This also happened with prey and killer of killers showing up before Predator, to be honest. The story beats and the reveal of information that made the original films
Classics are mostly paved over by the more recently released prequels. The big impacts of those first films don’t land the same way more like a wet tissue having been either seen multiple times like the, the Predator’s stealth field and weapon systems, or the full-size alien and alien queen. So this is why I’m advocating for rewatching a series in release order.
No matter the series, star Wars would be a prime example or seeing Lord of the Rings before the Hobbit. The other interesting thing we’re finding with this crossover though, is how well the chronology is actually holding up within the predator universe done by multiple filmmakers and studios over almost 40 years, and the WYCU as a whole so far seems to be able to keep the thread of continuity going.
We’ll keep track of that as we continue moving forward through the other sections of the WYCU.
We begin in a spaceship orbiting earth and true previously on style from TV and comic books with the burst of an alien out of the chest of a predator, and the hybrid stalks the other yautja amongst the ship, causing damage and sending it back to planet Earth below, along with some of the small crab like face huggers that were on the ship too.
A small town in Colorado was about to get a whole lot more than it bargained for. Working from the outskirts of town, the aliens start Picking off people at the margins of civilization. Some hunters in the woods and a few homeless people are attacked and implanted and then spreading from there, but the beasts are not alone.
It turns out that one of the predators from the mothership was able to get a distress call off and showed that a Predator Alien Hybrid was on the ship, so a quote unquote cleaner is dispatched from the Predator home world to take care of business. I didn’t know that Yautja Prime had services like the Continental from John Wick, but it kind of makes sense if you think about it.
But I don’t think this is evidence of a further crossover, though. this series is convoluted enough as it is. The cleaner makes its way to earth and starts following the tracks of the Predalien and the smaller aliens, removing all traces on the path and faces off against some of the fully grown aliens in the sewer.
But the fight is inconclusive. The flick shifts back to town where we get a more typical teen slasher horror film set up with the various towns folk interacting and eventually getting isolated. One group of townsfolk managed to arm themselves, but others like The National Guard are quickly outmatched by the aliens.
Go figure. The film devolves into an ongoing series of gunfights with a small group of humans escaping via helicopters. The predalien and cleaner face off on a rooftop and wound each other before an exterminatus is called in and nuke it from orbit is used. That’s the only way to be sure. However, a piece of the Predator’s Armory survives, and we finished the film with Miss Yutani being handed a plasma gun to be used for research purposes and a future crossover with the Weyland’s, the outcome of which is TBD.
Though I think our episode title kind of gives it away. AVP Requiem takes place immediately after the first film, so We’re placing it in 2004 in the chronology, even though it was released in 2007. The movie was the feature film directorial debut of the Strause Brothers who had previously worked on music videos or done FX work on other movies, and written by Shane Saleno, who had worked on the previous film by adapting that screenplay for Paul WS Anderson.
My favorite scene may have been the callback to the original return of the living dead that we saw in the ending as a nuke was used there as a solution as well. But absent that, I did enjoy the shots of the predator tracking the deadliest of prey in this one on paper. There’s a lot to like with Requiem, especially with how it connects the streams between the Predator and alien franchises in a more local and personal way without the grander scope of the original AVP.
Having a predator tracking and hunting and escaped xenomorph on earth, where the humans have pretty traditional levels of technology, makes for a great premise, and the Predalien hybrid is monstrous in all the right ways except for the filming. In this case, this is a dark and muted and muddy mess, and it’s hard to see a lot of the potentially cool stuff here.
The storyline is a little confusing as well, and we get this weird crossover more akin to a slasher film as if they were expecting to get Freddy and Jason in the film contract as well. Oddly enough, it. Kind of links back to Appendix W too in the odd way that the original Genestealers, which is a xenomorph analog from the 40 K universe, that would manifest differently based on the host life form that they infected.
But this idea may have come from elsewhere too, as it has floated around sci-fi for a while. While this wraps up the Crossover films, the episodes of Deadliest Warrior continue with the next films, return to the singular Predator franchise, and find out who is deadliest amongst the Group of kidnapped humans,
We find an armed mercenary waking up mid parachute drop that we soon learned that where he landed is not of this earth. Based on the flora and fauna being decidedly aggressive. We also soon learned that he is not alone and start encountering other humans of all varieties. So they do all seem to have something in common.
These are not among our best and brightest, nor are they very good people. This leads to some misunderstandings and violence. Though they are soon forced a band together to provide mutual aid from the very, very hostile planet, the band is whittled down by the environment. until we meet a human wearing a predator mask and cloak, a human that has been driven insane by the environment and tries to kill them all after, luring them in with the promise of shelter.
This forces the remaining survivors to take the fight back to the predators in hopes of finding a way off the planet this goes awry. The team is betrayed again by one of the members who was a serial killer, and the last two survivors need to regroup, as they say, more people being dropped in as the movie finishes.
Predators was directed by Nimrod Antal, written by Alex Litvac and Michael Finch, and released in 2010. It’s the third standalone predator film, the fifth counting the Crossovers, and it marks a pretty decent return of the franchise. There’s some elements of other Band of Thieves movies like Con Air here, and the fact that not everyone is trustworthy makes it interesting.
My favorite scene is perhaps the spoiler of the reveal of Lawrence Fishburne playing Lawrence Fishburn, perhaps in a very similar way to what we’ve seen with his role in John Wick and other movies. Oddly enough, despite the movie being released in 2010, there’s an Appendix W link, the Notion of a Death World, planet inimicable to human life where everything was trying to eat the humans is a longstanding tradition in science fiction and appeared in the Warhammer 40 K universe early on.
Rarely has it been seen on screen like it is here though with the alien flora and fauna appearing at every turn. Appearing after the crossover films. Predators continues that crossover with an appearance of the alien skull and tail. aside from this though, it is very much confined to this singular franchise and there’s no mentions of the Weyland Corp that I recall.
This is probably necessary for the franchise to allow it time to reestablish itself and no worries. We can pick up the links later down the road. But I realized we’re starting to notice a trend. Maybe the Yautja aren’t the ones that developed the technology, because if they did, you’d think they’d have figured out landing gear by now.
As of 2018, it was still under development when a ship crash landed in the jungles of Mexico, where a unit of US army rangers were in the area retrieving a hostage, which. Hmm, I’m not gonna question that too much. The predator is knocked out and one of the survivors of the encounter is a sniper who uses the pieces of armor as proof of alien existence, but attracts more attention from the descendants of Gary Busey’s team from 1997 LA. Much like the previous film, we get a bit of a Con Air sequence where the sniper Quinn is transported in a bus with a bunch of other military criminals who commandeer the bus and then swing by his place for
Reasons where all heck breaks loose with a pair of the predator hounds that we saw in the previous movie, too, as well as a larger beefier version of the Yautja, one who didn’t skip Leg day at all or any other day it looks like. And they fight too, using the power of science and Quinn’s son, the government operative figures that the Yautja are here to harvest DNA to improve their species.
And there’s an internal war between different factions of the Yautja, again connecting on links we saw in the previous film tying everything together, the ship starts to take off, but the humans manage to force it to the ground and once again, defeat the predator with its own weapons.
Like we said, the Predator was released in 2018 based on the modest success of predators in reestablishing the franchise, allowing for another movie to be made, with Shane Black returning to the franchise for the first time since the original film both directing
And co-writing it along with Fred Decker. The movie is set contemporaneously as well, like many of the previous films, though one where the human tech is a lot more advanced than we normally see. The government research lab looks like something of the MCU. The movie has a large and notable cast, including Sterling K Brown, Thomas Jane, Olivia Munn, and Keegan Michael Key.
But it ends up being a bit of a bloated, overstuffed mess. There’s a lot of different threads here, and unfortunately a lot of it’s very dark and muted, which further confuses things. I think one of the things that makes the predator work in some of the better movies in the franchise, especially with the adapted camoflage, is that they take place in the daylight or mostly, so where the stealth fields.
Seems all that much more menacing, appearing out of thin air. Disappearing in the darkness just isn’t that cool of an effect. It’s hard to pinpoint a favorite scene in this movie ’cause I really didn’t enjoy it much. Uh, I did reveal like the reveal of the bigger predator making it feel like there was more to be learned about the Yautja.
And I did like how you can follow some of the connective links back to elements from earlier movies in the timeline. But I’m not sure how I care for some of the bioengineering elements of the movie. They seem More advanced than what we have, where we actually are. And I guess we’ll have to see where it connects later on.
And with the release of the Predator in 2018, we come to the end of the initial chronology to the first phase of the WYCU. We’ve had the crossover elements, especially in Predator Two, in the two AVP movies. But until now, everything has pretty much stayed confined to the single combined timeline, even though it bounced a little bit there.
The next movie in the WYCU chronologically speaking would be Blade Runner. Released in 1982 and set in 2019, just after The Predator was released. We’ll start there next episode and figure out how those films connect with the WYCU. But there’s one more predator out there.
We find ourselves viewing a desolate planet where two predators are engaged in battle. Though they seem to know each other, neither gives quarter and the fight is furious. But we learn this battle to the death is between brothers and when brought before their father, one is ordered to kill the smaller one.
Who we learn is named Dek. Dek escapes as the older brother defies the order. Paying the price and Dek soon lands on another death world. Similar to the one seen in predators, though it’s unclear if it’s the exact same one. After nearly getting wiped out, he finds the top torso of some kind of android or synthetic human, and he drags it along in order to help navigate some of the local dangers.
And the planet is very lethal. They encounter various large plants and animals that are all hostile and whittle down Dek’s, high tech resources. It’s an encounter with a small animal that Dek ends up protecting and subsequently getting marked by that ends up paying off later. The Android is not the only Weyland Yutani Android on the planet, and the rest of them managed to track Dek and capture the beasthe was hunting to prove himself, a being
That reminds me of the Tarrasque from Dungeons and Dragons. Something that can endlessly regenerate becoming effectively un killable, which is why the Weyland Yutani Corp is interested. However, the Weyland Android soldiers are defeated and the beast freed with Dek returning to the predator home world to face off with his father successfully.
Released in November 2025 predator Badlands flipped the script on the traditional predator serial killer narrative and looked at the yautja from the perspective of their society, directed by Dan Trachtenberg, again, based on the script, co-written with Patrick Aison, the film stars Elle Fanning and Demetrius Schuster-Kolomatangi
Badlands is the ninth overall predator related movie, and is a more Action focused one stepping away from the predator as antagonist focused films of the rest of the series. Though admittedly, sometimes they could be viewed as an anti-hero in a few of the earlier flicks, like AVP Requiem. And I think overall these changes work well.
The WeylandYutani Corp is clearly the big bad here, and I love some of the fight sequences. The leg fight was creative and having Dek go all MacGyver slash Robinson Crusoe slash A team using the local material to arm himself after losing the high tech from the Yautja home world showed off some creativity and inventiveness.
The thing that Badlands does more than any other film than the AVP Crossovers, and perhaps even more though than those, is firmly crossed the two streams deeply embedding the Weyland Yutani Corp in any future releases in the Predator franchise. They’re aware of the planet and any other information Weyland-Yutani may have gained during the course of their survey and time upon the planet would be surely linked back to the corporate hq.
The one thing that is somewhat ambiguous in the film is exactly where in the WYCU timeline it fits. Some of the tech seems significantly more advanced than we will see in various alien movies that we’ll discuss in the upcoming episodes. Not so much that it’s that far in the future. It doesn’t seem like it would be placed after Alien Resurrection, for example.
So we, the audience are left to wonder a bit, while some of the Weyland-Yutani synths like the soldiers seem on par with those we’ll see in Romulus or Aliens. The twins seem significantly more developed than most other synths that have appeared later in the series. This is the first time we’ve seen a synth in the chronological timeline, though, to my recollection. As to broader connection,
It’s too soon to have any Appendix W crossover, like some of the later WYCU films. It’s almost feels like it’s going the other way. The influence that the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium has had on the niche parts of pop culture. And remember that even though 40 K is big within Nerdom, it hasn’t really broken through to a larger culture in the same way that other games like D and D, Pokemon and to a lesser extent MTG have, but elements of the 40 K universe are starting to pop up and show that they’ve.
Influenced the very things that have inspired it, and here we see that in a bit of the grim dark feel that we have, especially at the Weyland Yutani base and the death world as well. It’s fascinating how interconnected and influential our culture really is. It’s one of the things I love studying and I hope to continue sharing that with you and sharing that with you more.
Our look at the nine films in the predator corner of the WYCU has turned this into a bit of a mega episode longer than our usual ones. So thank you for sticking with us this far. We’re not even halfway through the 21 titles we’ve got on deck for this, so I hope you join us for the rest next time. The WYCU gets down to the near future or the recent past as we untangle what’s going on with all the blade runners that are…
Running around. I hope you join us soon.
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We’ll be back soon with a further look at the WYCU, looking at the Blade Runner franchise, the Alien Earth Series, and the Aliens Movies. We hope you join us for those. Until then, take care and have fun.
