James Cameron Messed With ‘Predator: Badlands’ Director’s Head

Working on a movie or TV show can make you feel isolated at a certain point. Even if you’re at a stage where you’re working with other people, it’s almost like you’re all in a little bubble. You’re staring at the same thing for so long that it starts to seem like gibberish. There’s a hope that what you put out into the world will make sense to other people, but you never know for sure. So, a little outside encouragement can be helpful.

That’s what director Dan Trachtenberg received from a pretty exciting source. Trachtenberg, who directed the Predator prequel Prey, made a sequel called Predator: Badlands. It features one of the titular creatures as the film’s protagonist, who is making their way through a lethal planet with a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, making it a crossover with the Alien franchise. So, a word from someone in that space would carry a lot of weight.

Enter James Cameron, director of Aliens and shepherd of the Avatar franchise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Trachtenberg was filming his sequel in New Zealand, where Cameron lives and works, and took an eight-hour drive to visit him. Eight hours! I know it’s James Cameron, but Jesus! I assume it was eight hours’ worth of combined travel, but they do not specify that. Regardless, the T2 director had some encouragement to throw Trachtenberg’s way when they had dinner that night.

“When he sat down [at dinner], he said, ‘I was just thinking about what you’re doing, and I think it’s going to work,’” Trachtenberg explained to the outlet. “So all that wind in my sails carried me back up to Auckland to tell my crew. The blessing of that guy — who has taken on some pretty impossible odds and pulled them off — was absolutely incredible.” That rules! Cameron has also accomplished some things that feel impossible, so hearing that from him must have been helpful. But did the legendary director even mean what he said?

“There were a few specific questions that I had in mind, and I wanted to see if he could give us any helpful notes. So he saw the movie a couple months back, and he said, ‘I have to be honest with you. When I first heard what you were doing, I did not think it was going to work. But holy crap, you pulled it off,’” Trachtenberg noted. “He either did not remember that first conversation that meant a whole lot to me, or he really does know what someone in my position needs to hear to get things done. I think it’s more the latter. So he put wind in our sails at just the right times, and I had to make sure we gave him a special thanks.”

That’s pretty incredible. If this were a younger James Cameron, I don’t know if it would have gone the same way. This is the same man who said testosterone is a toxin that must be worked out of your system. He had to learn that somehow! Instead, we have an older, kinder Cameron who lifted a director when he needed it, even if he didn’t necessarily believe what he was saying. That’s lovely.