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Predator: Badlands' image of a broken robot on the back of an intimidating beast is a pretty fantastic one, although it's not entirely new to science fiction. But don't worry, the director of the upcoming film in the Predator franchise is well aware of this fact, and actually, he's even leaning into it. Yes, Dan Trachtenberg knows you're gonna draw comparisons between the lead characters Dek and Thia to two of Star Wars' most iconic characters.

"I've made the comparison that it's like Chewbacca and C-3PO: The Movie," Trachtenberg said in a recent interview with SFX Magazine, published online by GamesRadar. That said, there's a key difference between the golden translator droid famoulsy played by Anthony Daniels and the mysterious android that elle Fanning will be potratying in Badlands. 

"But C-3PO is the nervous Nellie," the Prey director continued, "The fun of Thia is that she is really unflappable [...] She is positive under any circumstance. You get a flavor of that personality in the trailer when she pops into frame after slicing and dicing some crazy creatures. That is a really fun character to be stuck with a Predator, a Yautja that is a real hard ass and doesn't really want to talk too much, and is more like Clint Eastwood or Mad Max, or Conan even. So they're made for a really fun pairing and something that we haven't seen in Predator, but also in the Alien franchise."

We gotta say - that latter description of the titular Predator Dek, who will be the first Yautja in the franchise that audiences root for (or the first one they're supposed to root for, in any case), does sound an awful lot like our beloved Chewie, and not just because of the 'no talking' thing. Taht said, it makes a ton of sense that his leless sidekick would be a lot more of a badass than R2's best buddy from the Star Wars universe.

She was built by Weyland-Yutani, after all. 

Predator: Badlands marches into theaters NOvember 7.

The two greatest sci-fi monsters of all time are crash-landing in the heart of pop culture once again, and Popverse is here to tell you how to survive. Explore the interconnected Alien and Predator universe with:

• Popverse's Alien watch order
• Popverse's Predator watch order
• Popverse's Alien timeline
  

...and more. Keep your eyes peeled and remember, if anybody can hear you scream in space, it's us.