Dark Horse Comics' Predators titles clear the killing floor for the film of the same name, due in July. But can the franchise that Arnold Schwarzenegger fired up in the '80s regain its heat in a new millennium with a mercenary mind?
"There can be a million Predator stories, but the creation will always endure," said David Lapham, co-writer of Dark Horse's Predators prequel series, the first issue of which launches Wednesday. "It's bigger than even that first film."
Lapham and Marc Andreyko's pulp prequel sets the table for director Nimród Antal's Predators, using the kind of tense mercenary gamesmanship more routinely found in war films and documentaries than in spacey sci-fi blockbusters. Screen the preview panels below and you'll even find the obligatory Blackwater reference. The franchise could use that kind of topical disaster capitalism to back up its been-there-done-that chess matches involving soft human targets and hard-core interstellar killers.
"Mercenary heroism is always culturally ascendant," said Paul Tobin, writer of Dark Horse's Predators film adaptation, out July 14. "What we see as mercenaries might change from pulp heroes to detectives to gangsters to whatever. But the theme of the lone man against all odds, and breaking all the rules, is always the basis for action-oriented pop culture."
Lapham and Andreyko's Predators prequel arrays the franchise's bloodthirsty chessboard, using Guilherme Balbi and Gabriel Guzman's strong but subtle pencils as a weapon. The narrative provides the back story of Royce, the film's mercenary anchor (played by a beefed-up Adrien Brody), as well as divulging a tale that picks up where the Robert Rodriguez-produced movie leaves off.
"The comics take Robert Rodriguez's screenplay and expand on it," said Lapham. "As writers and artists, we've been given latitude to create stories that add to the characters. So even if you see the movie, you're going to get something different. And people who read the comics are going into the film knowing so much more about the story behind what they're seeing."
"We're covering the film from all angles," said Tobin in an e-mail to Wired.com. "The last couple decades of Predator were enjoyable at times, but without the tension and horror that I feel Rodriguez is bringing back to the franchise."
Tension is usually not something associated with reboots, as they're often familiar simulations of source texts that have long since ceased to shock. So it's no surprise that Predators' is also riding on the strength of big shots like Rodriguez, Brody and sci-fi and horror superstars like Laurence Fishburne and Danny Trejo. But as long as there are good and bad people doing good, bad and ugly things to each other in real life, there will always be fail-safe franchises like Predators to flesh out our torturous wish-fantasies. We're junkies for their murderous, often banal truths.
"We love to live safe in our beds and hope the police and the law will protect us from injustice and right will prevail," Lapham said. "Inside, everyone knows injustice happens every day. Ultimately, we're alone."
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