What do you think about the first trailer for Shane Black's The Predator? It certainly gave us a few more details about the plot than we'd had previously, even if it was a little murky on that front. (It's apparently a more coherent cut than the previous trailer shown at CinemaCon, suggesting the studio is still ironing out potential wrinkles.) But until a full official trailer hits (this was the "teaser") or the film itself arrives this fall, we're left with a brief synopsis and this first video, so we'll break down everything we know below.

Written by Black and his Monster Squad co-writer Fred Dekker, and starring Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Alfie Allen, Thomas Jane, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, and Yvonne Strahovski, The Predator opens September 14th.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Predator, followed by new images

From the outer reaches of space to the small-town streets of suburbia, the hunt comes home in Shane Black’s explosive reinvention of the Predator series. Now, the universe’s most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before, having genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species. When a young boy accidentally triggers their return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race.

So that synopsis goes a long way towards setting up the basics: Tremblay's Rory McKenna makes a mistake and accidentally calls the Predators to Earth, where mercenaries and a science teacher (?) have to defend suburbia from lethal aliens born, bred, and equipped to hunt. The teaser trailer didn't give us a whole lot more than that, but there are some details, starting with the McKennas.

McKenna Family

In a departure from the norm, Black's movie seems to be set during Halloween rather than Christmas for once as you can tell by the kids in costumes walking around a suburban neighborhood. Though we don't see her on screen in this trailer, Strahovski apparently plays the mother to Tremblay's Rory. He's described as "a troubled boy who is accidentally drawn into the conflict with the fierce alien creatures by his father — her ex-husband — played by Holbrook." So now that we have the McKenna family all squared away, what remains to be seen is exactly what happens to them throughout The Predator.

This trailer opens with Rory opening a package from a courier in Mexico that's meant for Quinn, his father. Rory's clearly into tech and robotics and all sorts of cool/nerdy stuff, as evidenced by the cluttered workshop with toy robots, gizmos, and Popular Mechanics magazines strewn about. So imagine his surprise and delight when he unveils what seems to be a piece of alien/Predator tech in the package itself.

Though the trailer makes it seem like Rory himself triggers the return of the Predators to Earth, the video shows the alien ship apparently crash-landing out in the wilderness, so I'm going to go ahead and guess that these two scenes aren't directly connected.

Instead, I'll posit that Quinn's run-ins with the Predator and his pals happens earlier in the film and it's only later that Rory's life is put in danger. Dad to the rescue!

First Contact

One reason Quinn isn't around to keep Rory from poking through his things is that he's under inquiry about his encounter with the alien hunter(s). The trailer shows someone who appears to be Quinn approaching the alien ship's crash site and discovers a scratched-up Predator mask. Quinn also confesses to seeing an alien during his mission and seems pretty cool and calm about it; Brown's "government agent" seems to agree. (Just don't call him "the new Bill Duke.")

Through the interrogation/debriefing, we learn that Quinn's mercenary/assassin team was "torn to pieces" by something; perhaps he was the only survivor. That makes him not only a potential threat to national security, but the best possible chance for the government to capture, subdue, and study these aliens in order to learn from their tech and, of course, their weaponry. These plot points are all between the lines, but as the trailer teases, the government folk are probably not concerned with defending civilians and are more than happy to throw as many expendable bodies at the Predators as is necessary to acquire their tech.

Those expendables likely include Rhodes, Key, Allen, and more folks who haven't popped up in the trailer just yet. (A reminder that, in addition to Strahovski, we've yet to see the likes of Thomas Jane, Jake Busey, and Edward James Olmos. Don't expect to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch return.)

Speaking of Jane, he previously shared some details that clarify this bus scene a bit:

“We play these veterans from like Afghanistan, Iraq war or whatever. But we’re all fucking crazy so we go to the VA hospital to get our meds. We’re all like shellshocked, PTSD…soldiers. We’re at the VA hospital and we’re in group therapy and of course, somebody flips out…this is backstory, I don’t think we really see this…somebody flips out and we all get arrested and get thrown onto the bus to go down to the hospital and they throw this other guy on the bus too.

 

And he’s a guy they’ve actually marked to kill him because he’s seen a UFO, he’s seen the Predator ships come down so they lock him up and throw him in with us lunatics. They’re going to take that bus, drive it down to a ditch and shoot us all just to get rid of this one guy. But, of course, we take the bus over and we’re all like “fuck that man, let’s go kill these fucking Predators ourselves” and we’re just crazy enough to believe that this guy really did see a UFO and there’s these aliens out there. So that’s kinda cool!”

Because Science

From this image alone, it seems like the government agency has managed to capture the Predator. So maybe Quinn's new band of mercenaries was successful and maybe Rory's accidental activation of the alien tech was a sort of distress beacon that called the dead/disabled Predator's pals back to Earth. Maybe this particular Predator is dead and was recovered from the crash by the government, or perhaps it's just subdued and biding its time before wreaking havoc in the lab facility.

We know that some study of the alien species is being done, though just how far up the chain Munn's Casey Bracket is remains to be seen. She certainly seems like more than a "science teacher" since she warns Quinn that the Predators are "attempting hybridization" and "upgrading on every planet they visit", meaning they take in the attributes that make strong hunters. Pretty advanced knowledge for a mere "science teacher."

Battle for Lawrence A. Gordon Middle School

At some point, the battle spills out into the suburban streets and gets into some close-quarter combat in Rory's middle school. This could very well be the final action set piece for the film, and it's quite possible that this is where Black's meta commentary will come into play rather than just delivering a straight-up action movie. Oh, and you should probably expect more than one Predator, as Thomas Jane revealed previously:

“[It] has that kind of Shane Black humour. We had a blast. It was funny. You know the Predators, they looked…you know they didn’t fuck those up. They’re still Predators and they’re pretty much the same Predator as always. I think it might be great.”

Will the McKenna family survive intact? How many of the mercenaries will bite the dust? Will Rory become Predator Jr.? Time will tell!

Until then, feel free to leave your best suggestions in the comments!