The Amengi - The Race Who Enslaved The Predators (Predator Lore)
9,900If you’re familiar with Alien vs. Predator Galaxy, it should come as no surprise that I’d be interested in exploring more of those could-have-beens. But unlike some of our other videos, this isn’t an alternate script. It’s a look at an alternate design that has eventually been retconned into something completely different. And the road that this particular retcon has took really fascinates me.
Once upon a time Stan Winston wasn’t involved in the creature design for Predator. He stepped in at the 11th hour and he and his team helped created one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time. But before that, Steve Johnson and Boss Film Studio were the ones at the helm of the creature design, with Jean Claude Van Damme inside the suit.
I wont go into a breakdown of the behind-the-scenes regarding that particular design, but the Van Damme Predator has been something of a curiosity ever since. Some fans mistake Predators’ River Ghost as an homage to this design – it's not, that was deliberately inspired by the Guyver armour – but the red special effects version of the original suit did get a shout-out during the trick-or-treat scenes in The Predator.
But did you know that that design is now known as an Amengi? No? And what the hell are the Amengi? Unless you’re a collector of NECA’s action figures, or a reader of the worse of the expanded universe, chances are this is something new to you.
Alien vs. Predator Galaxy once again turned to Declan Loftus to visualize a fight between the Amengi and the Predator for this video, which we're also using as the cover image!
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/website/articles/the-amengi/