Shane Black On What Makes The Upgrade So Much More Terrifying Than The Original Predator

The Upgrade in Shane Black's The Predator doesn't just look terrifying - the creature's also so much more dangerous compared to the franchise's original Predator.

The Predator franchise has had decades of films, sequels, and comic book games, and this time director Shane Black's hoping that he can add surprising and terrifying upgrades to the newer version of the extraterrestrial species.

Speaking in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Predator filmmaker gives fans some of the reasons why the Upgrade is going to be such a fierce creature to deal with. According to Black, not only is the Upgrade more athletic and graceful, but it's also gained the traits of the most powerful species that it's hunted.

"If the predator was to be an amalgam of, not just an ordinary predator, but also a collection of traits garnered from the various most powerful species that they've hunted, then you basically would have one that is stronger, faster, and smarter. We finally got an image that we liked, which captures this very canny, very cunning, and effortlessly powerful, savage predator. One of the only quibbles that I've had with some of the past predators is that, if you're not careful, it can look like a guy in a football suit; big, bulky guy just stomping around. I wanted a certain more graceful, more light, more athletic quality, literally like a predator. If you watch a cheetah, it's not clunky."

The "Ultimate Predator" doesn't sound like something that you'd want to run across on any planet, and we're pretty excited to see how Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Alfie Allen, and Keegan Michael Keys deal with this updated version of the predator. Taking down a regular Predator is harrowing – imagine facing an upgraded Predator with the features of the most powerful species they've ever hunted. It definitely sounds like the team's going to have to fight tooth and nail just to survive in The Predator.

The Predator makes its way to cinemas on February 9, 2019.

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