MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

It’s been fascinating to watch the development of the Predator franchise over the years. Following their first appearance in the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie in 1987, the Predators have gone on to feature in numerous sequels and prequels, crossovers with the Alien franchise, comic books, video games, and more, developing a whole back story and cultural history in the process, fleshing out what were initially presented as bloodthirsty killers into something much deeper. We now know the name of the species – they are the yautja – and we know that theirs is a warrior culture that has been sending their young adults to Earth for millennia, requiring them to trophy-hunt human warriors as a rite of passage. Previous films in the series have depicted them interacting with humans across time, helping ancient Egyptians build the pyramids in Alien vs. Predator, and hunting 16th century Comanche warriors in Prey. This new film, Predator: Killer of Killers, expands on this legacy even more.

The film is an animated action horror film, and is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who previously directed the live-action Prey, and has also directed the upcoming live-action sequel Predator: Badlands set to be released later this year. It is an anthology telling three stories of human-predator encounters throughout history – with Vikings in the year 841, with Japanese samurai in the year 1609, and with a Mexican-American navy pilot during World War II – and how these stories come together on the predator home planet Yautja Prime at an unknown point in the future. The film is stylishly rendered in a manner closer to anime than anything in western animation history, and is a fun, bloody, gory celebration of the franchise and its seemingly infinite capacity to pit predators against humans from any point in history.

The score for Predator: Killer of Killers is by the increasingly in-demand Benjamin Wallfisch, who with this score has now added Predator to his collection of new instalments of nostalgic popular action franchises, having already written scores for new Twister, Alien, and Mortal Kombat movies, as well as several super-heroes in the DC Universe. One thing I have always really appreciated about Wallfisch’s franchise scores is how much he respects their heritage; each of those scores are, more or less, stylistic love letters to all the great scores that came before. He may not often directly quote prior themes, but the scores still feel like they are going out of their way to pay tribute to those earlier works, and Predator: Killer of Killers is very much the same.

The score was recorded in Vienna with the Synchron Stage Orchestra – heavy on strings, heavy on brass, heavy on post-recording electronic embellishments – and can broadly be broken down into four distinct sequences, one each for the three historical time periods, and then a fourth one for the intergalactic finale. Each segment has its own clear musical identity – more on them in a moment – but the unifying factor that runs through each segment is Wallfisch’s excellent use of Alan Silvestri’s iconic 6-note ‘predator rhythm’ from the first movie back in 1987. Wallfisch finds ways to thread this idea across multiple cues, using multiple different styles. He has great fun playing around with the tempo, the orchestration, and more; sometimes he layers it within the body of the action cues, as part of an underpinning ostinato, and then elsewhere he uses it as an emphatic musical punctuation at the end of a cue, denoting something important or significantly dramatic. Each time he uses it, he increases the sense of continuity between this score and Silvestri’s original, and this is something that I appreciate enormously.

The first part of the movie, subtitled ‘The Shield,’ comprises everything from the opening cue “Earth 841 A.D.” through to the end of “Through the Mist,” and follows the fearsome Viking warrior Ursa as she seeks revenge for the death of her father years previously, only to have her vengeance interrupted by the arrival of a predator. The sequence begins with a dark, guttural march heralding the arrival of the predator on Earth, filled with lots of heavy brass passages and relentlessly throbbing percussion. There’s a healthy dose of aggressive dissonance running through “Flaming Arrows,” and some inventive use of traditional Nordic string instruments and voices, but then this all gradually becomes softer and more introspective in “Avenge Me,” as Ursa emotionally recalls the death of her father.

“Knock on the Front Door” and “Sweet Revenge” are the sequence’s two central action cues, and see Wallfisch again putting Silvestri’s predator motif through its paces amid some brutal, throbbing writing for the orchestra, guttural vocal shouts, and harshly distorted electronic pulses representing the technologically superior predator. The climactic “Through the Mist” offers a moment of calm and even a sense of darkly emotional catharsis, as Ursa vanquishes the predator, and mourns the loss of her son.

The second part of the movie, subtitled ‘The Sword,’ comprises everything from “Japan, 1609” through to the end of “Fallen Leaf,” and follows the conflict between two brothers, Kenji and Kiyoshi, years after one was named the heir to his father’s title, while the other was exiled to become a wandering samurai/ninja. When the samurai returns to confront his brother, they too are interrupted by the arrival of a predator, and must set aside their differences to defeat it.

Wallfisch uses some more traditional sounding Japanese textures – lyrical flutes, more elegant strings, children’s voices, a sparkling solo violin – to set an idyllic scene in the opening moments of “Japan, 1609,” and then in a more insistent style in “20 Years Later” and throughout “Duel.” In these cues the speed of the string flurries and darting woodwinds match the nimbleness of the ninjas as he infiltrates his brother’s palace, and Wallfisch augments the orchestra with metallic textures from what sounds like a shamisen or a koto, and unusual creative ‘breathing effects’.

Gradually Silvestri’s Predator rhythm starts to infiltrate this music too, including one passage where Wallfisch cleverly transposes it to the shamisen, and this all leads into the brilliant “Predator vs. Kenji” that underscores their fight scene, a vivid and scintillating explosion of speed and energy. This style continues on through the equally engaging “United,” during which Wallfisch pits the strings and woodwinds against the relentless Predator electronics to describe their conflict, before “Fallen Leaf” allows Kenji to mourn his brother with a sense of tragic heroism that features some echoes of the ‘military theme’ from the finale Silvestri’s Predator in the tone of the brass writing.

The third part of the movie, subtitled ‘The Bullet,’ comprises everything from the “Dreams Are Fuel” through to the end of “Flare,” and underscores the adventures of Torres, a young Mexican-American airman in the US Navy who is forced into action when his squadron is attacked by a predator-piloted alien starship, right in the middle of the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II.

There’s a wonderful sense of freedom and adventure during the opening moments of “Dreams Are Fuel,” which speak to Torres’s love of flying, but later everything starts to come apart in the overpoweringly harsh and violent “Heat” which underscores the first of Torres’s aerial dogfights with the Predator spaceship above the waters of the north Atlantic. Wallfisch’s music for the encounter is guttural, primal, and filled with growling orchestral textures, overwhelming electronic drones and slams, relentless percussive beats, and even a set of shouting/yelping vocal cries that seemingly come out of nowhere. It all ends on a somber note in “Flare” as Torres destroys cleverly the Predator ship amid a flurry of celebratory brass, but then realizes that he has lost his entire squadron – including his commander Captain Vandy – and he grimly acknowledges his bittersweet victory.

The fourth and final part of the movie comprises everything from “Arena” through to the conclusive “Remember Me,” and sees Ursa, Kenji, and Torres waking up from suspended animation together and finding themselves on the predator home planet of Yautja Prime, where they are compelled to fight each other to the death in a gladiator-like arena, while a massive Warlord Predator watches on.

The ”Arena” is an explosion of dominant power, chanted vocals and resounding orchestra and grinding electronics combining with the Silvestri Predator motif to overwhelm the human warriors as they begin the battle of their lives. The electronic manipulation somehow becomes even harsher in the equally brutal “Weapon of Their Tribe,” and the choral textures become more dominant too, further illustrating the hierarchy of yautja culture. I really appreciate how Wallfisch is able to bring in different musical aspects of the different human cultures in this cue – Nordic sounds for Ursa, flutes and wooden percussion for Kenji – as the focus switches back and forth from character one to the other.

“Fight to the Death” is as aggressive and cacophonous as one would expect it to be – listeners of a more delicate disposition may find themselves reaching for the volume controls – and then the conclusive “Remember Me” begins with more orchestral carnage, but ends with a triumphant flourish.

Predator: Killer of Killers is Benjamin Wallfisch’s third score of 2025 already, after Wolf Man and Until Dark, and he has sequel scores in the Mortal Kombat reboot series and the Conjuring series to come later in the year. The quality of all of this music confirms that Wallfisch is now firmly established as a dependable pair of musical hands on the film music A-List, who can be relied upon to successfully attempt any genre, any approach, and do so skillfully and tastefully and creatively.

Back in 2005, when Wallfisch scored his first film Dear Wendy, I remember writing in my review of it that he was ‘definitely a composer to watch, someone who film music fans should invest in from the beginning,’ and I’m so happy to have been proven right in my prediction. Predator: Killer of Killers is a great score, exciting and modern and frenetic, and with just enough of a hat-tip to classic Alan Silvestri to please long-standing franchise fans.

Buy the Predator: Killer of Killers soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Earth 841 A.D. (2:34)
• Flaming Arrows (3:02)
• Avenge Me (2:42)
• Knock on the Front Door (2:12)
• Sweet Revenge (7:00)
• Through the Mist (2:55)
• Japan, 1609 (4:02)
• 20 Years Later (2:40)
• Duel (5:13)
• Predator vs. Kenji (3:05)
• United (2:31)
• Fallen Leaf (2:55)
• Dreams Are Fuel (1:16)
• What Does Flying Mean to You? (2:17)
• Heat (6:51)
• Flare (3:45)
• Arena (1:34)
• Weapon of Their Tribe (3:28)
• Fight to the Death (5:17)
• Remember Me (2:45)

Hollywood Records (2025)

Running Time: 68 minutes 04 seconds

Music composed by Benjamin Wallfisch . Conducted by Bernhard Melbye Voss. Orchestrations by David Kristal, Evan Rogers, Michael Lloyd and Sebastian Winter. Additional music by Sturdivant Adams, Peter Bateman, Alex Lu, and Ole Wiedekamm. Original Predator themes by Alan Silvestri. Recorded and mixed by Martin Wiesmayr and Alvin Wee. Edited by Stephen Perone and Daniel di Prima. Album produced by Benjamin Wallfisch.