It's a big weekend for "Predators," the promising Fox film that began the ramp-up to its July 7 release with a sneak peek at South by Southwest in Austin. I just got off the phone with the film's director, Nimród Antal, and he seemed to be pulsing with enthusiasm.

"This is gasoline," the filmmaker said using an appropriately petroleum-based description for the film's building buzz at the Lone Star State gathering."We're very excited."

Antal is coming off the 2009 film "Armored" which did not go over well with critics although more than a few pointed out the filmmaker's flair in the ultimately disappointing heist movie. If the L.A. native needed a mentor, he's certainly got one with this revival of the well-known sci-fi franchise; "Predators" is a product of Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios in Texas and Rodriguez came up with the story. Antal said the property and the producer made this a dream gig for him.

"I grew up with 'Predator,' I loved it, I had the poster on my wall and it was a big thing for me," he said. "And working with Robert was amazing, he was unlike any other producer I've ever worked with. It was intimidating at first but it was a gift as the work went on. He knows when to leave a filmmaker alone and when to help, it was great for me."

The first "Predator" film, released in 1987, was directed by John McTiernan (who would go on to "Die Hard" and "The Hunt for Red October") off a script by Jim and John Thomas. It starred not only Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers but also the signature work of creature-creator Stan Winston and his team. The plot: An elite commando team goes into the jungles of Central America to rescue some kidnapped airmen but find they are the prey of an alien creature with advanced technology who has come to Earth on an interstellar hunting safari.

The movie is one of the best-regarded sci-fi action films of its decade and its alien hunter proved so popular that he and his kind popped up in three more films ("Predator 2" in 1990, "AVP: Alien vs. Predator" in 2004 and "AVPR: Aliens vs Predator -- Requiem" in 2007) as well as in comics, video games and toys.

"Why was that first movie so special? If I could answer that I would bottle it up and sell it," Antal said. "There were so many elements that came together. It was like a really good band playing together. If one person is off, it doesn't work but when everybody is on, it's just magic. It was excellent film making by McTiernan, you had Arnold, the score, Stan Winston, the script. It was magic."

The sequels, well, they weren't nearly as special and Antal said the reason was "bad choices" when it came to tone. "The later movies lost the tension and the suspense of the hunt. They whole building the stress up during the hunt and the big reveal of the alien was lost as the movies went along. You see more and more of the alien and get less and less of the mood and tension."

(SPOILER ALERT: THE NEXT PARAGRAPH HAS PLOT INFORMATION ABOUT THE NEW FILM)

The new film wipes much of the slate clean and, in narrative, goes back to a point not long after the events of the first film. The aliens, surprised to find that one of theirs has been killed on Earth, want to study humans in a controlled environment and so they pluck killers of different sorts (convicts, organized-crime killers, mercenaries, etc)  from around the globe and take them to a preserve environment where a new hunt begins. The film stars Adrian Brody, Topher Grace, Lawrence Fishburne and Alice Braga as the confused humans who are suspicious of one another and not exactly team players. More than that, they find that there may be a serial killer in their own ranks as they tramp through the underbrush one step ahead of their high-tech hunters.

"They are all predators in their own right and they are at each others throats," Antal said. "We're expanding the mythology but we're also making a stand-alone film. And, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but when it comes to imagery that not one of the previous can come close to. I'm very proud of the way the film looks."

Those are big words from Antal and fans will take them seriously and deliver their own verdict. Welcome to the jungle, Mr. Antal, the hunt is on. . .

— Geoff Boucher

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Patrick Goldstein at our sister blog, The Big Picture, was deeply puzzled by the news that Oscar winner Adrien Brody is taking on the lead role in "Predators," producer Robert Rodriguez's revisiting of the alien-hunter franchise. Here's an excerpt:

The same Adrien Brody who won an Oscar as a frail musician in "The Pianist," the same boho hustler who was in Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited" and Rian Johnson's "The Brothers Bloom," the same guy who played the village idiot in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" and an oddball screenwriter in "King Kong" is now set to play much the same character that Arnold Schwarzenegger played in the 1987 "Predator" original.

Does this sound like a miscasting of epic proportions or what? This is no knock on Brody, who is shaping up to be the Jeff Goldblum of his generation, a quirky guy who's good in oddball parts. But can you imagine him fighting aliens, much less shooting the gun and kissing the girl?

I don't remember a whole lot of romance in "Predator" but Goldstein has some fun lines and I get his point. You should check out the whole piece (I especially like the comparison to casting Jack Black in "The Manny Ramirez Story") and he's got a snarky poll question posted so you can vote whether the actor's selection is full of promise of merely full of, um, empty hopes.

The casting choice strikes me as a little bit odd, but it doesn't leave me as aghast as my colleague. For one thing, Brody was fine, I thought, in "King Kong," as he battled all sorts of beasties. And more importantly this isn't a remake of "Predator"; this edition, to be directed by Nimród Antal, takes place off-world, so this perception that Brody is following directly in Schwarzenegger's jungle footprints is a bit off. We're told that Brody plays a mercenary, but that leaves a lot of room for different sorts of characters -- remember Alan Rickman in "Die Hard"? He wasn't exactly muscle-bound but there was there was plenty of menace in his performance.

There are a good number of art-house veterans who successfully sought a change-up in action and genre movies, such as James McAvoy in "Wanted," Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man" James Spader in "Stargate" and Daniel Day-Lewis in "The Last of the Mohicans." Also, consider that Jeff Goldblum got buff for duty in special-effects films, as did Robert Downey Jr., so perhaps the 34-year-old Brody is simply ready to flex some muscle.

That or maybe we'll end up filing this DVD next to -- gulp -- "Godzilla" with fish-out-of-water star Matthew Broderick.

-- Geoff Boucher

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Photo: Adrien Brody in "Kong." Credit" Universal. Photo: "Predator." Credit: 20th Century Fox

Fifteen years ago, a young-gun filmmaker named Robert Rodriguez was hired to write a new "Predator" film and now, looking back, he can chuckle at the final product he delivered. "It was this crazy, intense off-world story and there was just no way it could be made. The technology wasn't there yet."

That was then, but this is now. "Predators," as it will be called, is happening and Rodriguez is producing. I sat down with him for a pleasant lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel and, as our sons sat together munching French fries and drawing pictures, he explained his plans for the summer 2010 sci-fi release.

"It's the story from that script I had written way back then," Rodriguez said. "They had hired me to write a ‘Predator’ story while I was waiting to do ‘Desperado’ back in 1994. It was crazy, this thing I came up with. So then fast-forward to now and, like, six months ago, they found the script and called me up. ‘Hey, we want to redo this franchise and we found your old script. This is where we should have gone with the series! We want to move forward.' And that's what we're doing.”

"And, like I said, back when I wrote it, the technology wasn’t there yet. I didn’t have to worry about who would direct it or anything because it was a script that just couldn’t be used."

Rodriguez has proven himself not only as a distinct voice in genre films ("Sin City," "From Dusk Till Dawn," "Planet Terror") but as a master of making big-looking hit films on relatively small budgets. Consider the three "Spy Kids" films, which are loaded with dazzle, action and gizmos; they pulled in a collective $465 million in worldwide gross but not one of them had a budget of more than $38 million.

Rodriguez, a writer/producer/director, is the modern prototype of the nimble, maverick filmmaker. Like his upcoming bizarro family movie "Shorts" (which, by the way, I've seen, and it's great -- more on that to come here at Hero Complex), "Predators" will be shot in his home state of Texas on a lean budget and so far removed from Hollywood that it is doesn't get run through the often bruising machinery of the studio. "Predators" is for 20th Century Fox and "Shorts" is being distributed by Warner Bros., but "Predators" will be clearly defined by Rodriguez and his personal style.      

 “They actually like that," the 41-year-old San Antonio native said. "You’re making it less expensive then they could ever make it here. Its so much leaner. and they get a movie that they can sell as a big movie, they make money off of it, especially since it didn't cost much at all. I get to keep it locked down creatively and, really, the studio is happy with that. It's almost like they get protected from themselves. They know that when some things get taken through the machine they end up overspending and making the movie worse. The movie's not allowed to breathe. That was the case with the ‘Predator’ movie. Just go make it down there in your system. We don’t know how you do it down there but somehow you make these movies very creatively and at a budget.”

The 1987 film "Predator" was directed by John McTiernan and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura as an elite commando team on a rescue mission in the jungles of Guatemala, where they find themselves hunted by an alien. That alien, designed by the effects team led by the late, great Stan Winston, became one of the most memorable creatures in sci-fi film history and the movie became an enduring fan-favorite that ages quite well. There was a 1990 sequel and two-crossovers with the "Alien" franchise (2004 and 2007) with varied ambitions and mixed results, but Rodriguez said the success of the first movie is still a powerful draw.   

“No matter how many ‘Jaws’ movies they make, people never forget how great the first one is. You can always come back to it, people love it and they want to love it. ‘Predator’ is like that too. It’s a great premise, a great character and fans get excited when they think of what can be done with it.”

What's the plot of this new revival? "The story is on the Predator planet and, well, it’s just crazy.

It takes place off-world which is great, and there’s a lot of them out there." And what about the prey? "Let's just say if there were no predators, the humans in this story would probably kill each other."

He said he won't have to stray far from his ranch outside Austin to create the settings he needs.

"It’ll be a mix. A lot of location sets and some green scene. There’s a lot of different places in Texas I have in mind, and we have a great rebate thing there now, only 60% has to be shot in Texas. We’re scouting for locations now. You can find some alien landscapes in Texas for sure. And with the right augmentation, you can make anywhere look like anywhere now."

Rodriguez will be at International Comic-Con in San Diego this month to promote "Shorts" (his panel is July 24 at 1:45 p.m.), and if you're there, you'll want to check it out for sure. I talked to him quite a bit about his other upcoming work ("Machete," "Sin City 2," a fourth "Spy Kids" film, etc.) and you''ll find all that in the weeks to come by checking back here at Hero Complex.

-- Geoff Boucher

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Photo: "Predator." Credit: 20th Century Fox