Dr. Casey Brackett was an evolutionary biologist in The Predator, played by Olivia Munn. The government had placed her on call for years in case of contact with alien life, and Project Stargazer flew her to its dam laboratory to examine a captured hunter whose genes contained human DNA. When the creature woke and escaped, Stargazer ordered her killed, and she ended up on the run with Quinn McKenna and the military patients called the Loonies. She worked out that the hunters were collecting DNA to improve their own species, helped protect McKenna's son Rory, and was one of the few people left alive after the fight with the Upgrade Predator.
Biography
Earlier Life
Casey Brackett grew up around the military. In the novelization, her father and grandfather were both soldiers, and she lived on military bases as a child. When she was six she wrote to President Bill Clinton, explaining that she loved animals and asking to be called if NASA ever found an animal in space. The White House found the letter charming, and it stayed on file in the Oval Office. At twelve her mother showed her the film Silkwood so she would understand that the truth always had enemies, and science became her way of looking for answers.
Brackett became a science professor at Berkeley, teaching evolutionary biology, the study of how living things change and adapt over time. A paper she wrote on hybrid strains put her on a government short list, and a computer search matched her name to the childhood letter. About two years before the events of the film she was recruited and signed a non-disclosure agreement, agreeing to be on call in case of contact. Outside the university she taught self-defense, practiced at a shooting range, and owned several dogs, including Summer and Teddy. She was grading student papers in a dog park when federal agents led by Agent Church approached her with a coded line about stargazing and drove her away with a CIA file on a Class 4 incursion near Monterrey, Mexico.
Project Stargazer
A helicopter carried Brackett to the Stargazer base, a laboratory hidden inside a hydroelectric dam behind the front of a water reclamation plant. She recognized the armed guards as mercenaries, not regular soldiers. After she signed a rider to her agreement, an elevator disguised as a shed took her down into the complex, where Dr. Sean Keyes greeted her and told her she had basically written the book on evolutionary biology. Keyes showed her recovered alien technology, then took her through decontamination into the main lab, where CIA agent Will Traeger was waiting beside the sedated Fugitive Predator.
Brackett objected to the name Predator at once. In her view, an animal that killed to survive was a predator, while one that tracked prey for enjoyment was a sport hunter. She studied the creature's anatomy, from the slope of its forehead to its face, and Keyes showed her the test results, which had found human DNA in its genes after ten separate runs. She asked about the missing helmet and second gauntlet, and when she learned that the captive had been found by a sniper named McKenna, she asked to question him before Stargazer had him declared insane. Near the examination table she noticed a vial of clear fluid taken from the creature's body.
Escape From The Dam
A second alien ship was approaching Earth when the captive Fugitive Predator woke up and broke free. Brackett grabbed a tranquilizer rifle and ordered everyone out of the lab. The creature killed Church, Keyes, and most of the staff and guards while she was trapped in the decontamination chamber, where the system forced her to strip. In the novelization her rifle failed to fire when she aimed it at the hunter, but it only tilted its head at her, mandibles spread, and walked past. She later explained that she had been naked and unarmed, so it had not treated her as a threat.
Instead of escaping, Brackett took the vial of fluid and followed the creature's green blood up onto the roof of the Stargazer dam. She chased it along the catwalks and fired a dart at it, then jumped down onto the roof of the prison bus carrying McKenna and the Loonies. Traeger's men reported that they had her in sight, and Stargazer ordered her eliminated for what she had seen and for the missing vial. McKenna rode a stolen motorcycle through the mercenary who was about to shoot her, and the Loonies took the unconscious biologist with them.
Joining The Loonies
Brackett woke up in a motel room at a biker festival, surrounded by small objects the Loonies had set out to make her feel comfortable, including a foil unicorn made by Nettles. She grabbed a gun from the table and pulled the trigger, which won one of the men a bet. McKenna convinced her to stay by telling her that Stargazer had planned to shoot her at the dam. She had read his file and understood that the government needed someone to blame for the deaths in Mexico, and that a former sniper with post-traumatic stress made a convenient choice.
Brackett explained that she was a biologist on call for contact with alien life, and she warned them that the escaped hunter was searching for missing equipment. McKenna admitted that he had taken the creature's gear and mailed it home, and they realized it was heading for his family in Georgia. The group drove to the house of his estranged wife, Emily McKenna, and learned that their son Rory had gone trick-or-treating in the alien helmet. The other Loonies first refused to join the search, but they followed after McKenna left with Brackett.
The Search For Rory
Brackett rode with McKenna in Emily's car through the Halloween crowds, and they followed police radio reports to the school field where Rory had run. Two Predator hounds were closing on the boy. Brackett fired at them with the soldiers, then picked Rory up and carried him while the others fought. When Nebraska Williams shot one hound in the head and left it brain-damaged, Brackett took a sample from the animal, and she suggested that the hunters' dreadlocks might be sensory receptors similar to a cat's whiskers.
The group followed the Fugitive Predator into Gordon Middle School, where they offered to return its gear. Before any exchange could happen, the much larger Upgrade Predator arrived and killed the first hunter. Brackett and the soldiers fell back through the building while the two hunters fought. The survivors escaped in the motor home, and Brackett described how the larger creature had grown an exoskeleton under its skin, and paid no attention to the humans while it killed the first.
The Hybrid Theory And The Barn
Inside the motor home, Brackett studied the stolen fluid under a portable microscope with Nettles beside her. She found that it was more than spinal fluid and concluded that the hunters were upgrading themselves. In her theory, the trophies they took on many worlds were a way of collecting survival traits from the strongest and most dangerous species, and the human DNA in the captive was evidence of deliberate hybridization. In the novelization she also pointed out that a stargazer is a type of orchid, a plant bred as a hybrid. She suggested to McKenna that Rory's autism, which let him understand the alien technology, might be the next step in human evolution.
Traeger's helicopter found the group near an old farm. His men tied Brackett up in the barn and questioned her, and Traeger explained his own theory that the hunters were gathering human DNA before climate change made Earth uninhabitable, part of their long and violent history with humans. He took Rory to locate the crashed ship after the boy drew a map to it. In the novelization, the brain-damaged hound brought back a grenade the Loonies had dropped, and Brackett pulled the pin and killed the guard who was about to shoot her. Nebraska freed her, and she left with McKenna and the Loonies to rescue Rory.
The Hunt At The Crash Site
At the crashed ship, Brackett watched from cover as the Upgrade killed several of Traeger's mercenaries. Through a translation unit the hunter announced that it would destroy the vessel, chose McKenna as its prize, and offered the humans a head start. In the novelization, Brackett called out to ask whether its offer of a time advantage meant a head start. The surviving humans fled into the woods together, and in the novelization she held Rory's hand during the run and took an explosive cuff from the Predator equipment Traeger had brought in a duffel bag.
She led the group toward the explosives Lynch had set to cover their retreat, and they used the clearing as a trap. The Upgrade survived the explosions, gunfire, and flames, then killed Baxley and fatally wounded Coyle before the two friends shot each other. Traeger tried to fire a hunter's shoulder cannon and killed himself with it. After the fight the hunter caught up with the group, threw McKenna aside, and carried Rory off. Brackett realized that the creature had never wanted the father, and that it was taking the boy as the next step in human evolution.
The Upgrade Ship
The Upgrade took off with Rory inside its ship. McKenna, Nebraska, and Nettles climbed onto the hull, where a force field killed Nettles, and Nebraska slid into a turbine and brought the ship down. Brackett followed with the M4 carbine she had picked up in the clearing and fired its underbarrel launcher at the ship, and the jet wash from the engines knocked her off her feet. She reached the wreck as McKenna went after the hunter, and she used the cloak of the first hunter's wrist gauntlet to hide in a tree above the fight.
When the Upgrade closed in on McKenna, Brackett dropped from the branches onto its back, shot it in the head, and slashed at its dreadlocks with the gauntlet's wrist blades. The hunter threw her into the swamp. She found an explosive cuff and threw it to McKenna, who fired it from the Upgrade's severed arm, and together with Rory they killed the hunter with its own weapons. Afterward she knelt with McKenna and Rory while they buried small objects that had belonged to each of the dead Loonies, placed Nettles's foil unicorn with them, and left with the two of them at dawn.
Personality And Traits
Brackett was sharp, blunt, and impatient with people who wasted her time. She corrected Traeger on the meaning of predator within minutes of meeting him, and she sent off unwanted admirers with crude jokes. In the novelization she admitted that she did not much like people and had few close friends, but she trusted dogs because they did not lie or have hidden motives. Her curiosity often outweighed her caution, and she chased the escaped hunter across the Stargazer dam with a tranquilizer rifle when everyone else was running away.
She was also brave under pressure and loyal once she had chosen a side. Although she was a scientist and not a soldier, she fought beside the Loonies, carried Rory away from the hounds, and stayed with the group after she had the chance to leave. She treated Rory as intelligent rather than broken, and she showed real affection for the men who had protected her, saving Nettles's unicorn and placing it with the objects buried in their memory.
Skills And Equipment
Brackett's main skill was science. She identified the escaped creature as a sport hunter, recognized the human DNA results as a sign of hybridization, studied the hound's dreadlocks and the stolen fluid, and worked out the Upgrade's purpose before anyone else. She also took Rory's abilities seriously and connected his talent for the alien technology to her ideas about evolution. In the novelization she had experience with hazmat suits, self-defense, and target shooting, and she knew the difference between regular soldiers and mercenaries from growing up on military bases.
At the Stargazer dam she used a tranquilizer rifle from a wall rack in the lab, and she fired it at the escaped hunter from the catwalks. Her main weapon in the film was a Colt M4A1 carbine chambered in 5.56x45mm, with a collapsible stock and the carry handle removed. It was fitted with a Spike's Tactical Havoc Launcher, a 37mm launcher with a nine-inch barrel mounted under the carbine's barrel. During the final fight she used that launcher to damage the Upgrade Predator's ship. Coyle carried the same carbine and launcher combination. The Internet Movie Firearms Database identifies these weapons and the others she handled in the film.
For a sidearm, Brackett briefly used a Beretta Px4 Storm pistol in 9x19mm when the group confronted the Predators outside the school. She also carried a Glock 17 pistol. Over the course of the film she handled a Heckler & Koch MP5A3 submachine gun, a KRISS Vector made by TDI, and a Winchester Model 1300 Defender shotgun. In the novelization she had a handgun beside her in the motor home, used a grenade in the barn, and wore the first hunter's wrist gauntlet, using its cloak and blades against the Upgrade before she supplied the explosive cuff that McKenna used to kill it.
Behind The Scenes
Olivia Munn played Casey Brackett. The Hollywood Reporter announced her casting in November 2016, a month after Boyd Holbrook replaced Benicio del Toro as McKenna. Shane Black directed the film from a script he wrote with Fred Dekker, and it was released by 20th Century Fox in September 2018. The novelization by Christopher Golden and Mark Morris, published by Titan Books, adds material the film does not show, including Brackett's dogs, her teaching at Berkeley, and her family's military background.
Shortly before the film was locked, Munn learned that Steven Wilder Striegel, a friend of Black's cast in a small part without an audition, was a registered sex offender. His footage showed his character flirting with Brackett. Munn raised the issue with Fox, and the studio cut his footage, as Variety and the Los Angeles Times reported in September 2018. Black later issued a public apology. Munn told The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Tonight that she had felt isolated during the press tour, while co-star Sterling K. Brown publicly supported her.
Famous Quotes
- "I wrote a letter to the president when I was six."
- "That's not a predator, that's a sports hunter."
- "You are one beautiful motherfucker."
- "You wanna know if someone fucked an alien?"
- "Not my space animal."
- "If I'm right, they're trying to upgrade themselves."
- "Getting the fuck out of here is my middle name."
- "He said he wanted McKenna. The next step in the evolutionary chain. Not you. Your son."
Conclusion
Casey Brackett was the evolutionary biologist Project Stargazer recruited to study a captured hunter, and the scientist who worked out why the hunters were taking human DNA. After the Fugitive escaped and Stargazer tried to kill her, she joined McKenna and the Loonies, helped save Rory from the hounds, and followed the group through the barn, the crash site, and the woods. Nettles, Nebraska, Lynch, Baxley, and Coyle died during the hunt, and Traeger died by his own stolen weapon. Brackett survived the Upgrade's death beside McKenna and Rory and left with them at dawn. She was not with them later, when scientists in a government lab opened the pod the Fugitive had brought to Earth and found the Predator Killer suit, which McKenna and Rory watched form around a technician.
Appearances
- The Predator (2018)
- The Predator novelization by Christopher Golden and Mark Morris (Titan Books, 2018)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Predator Hunt Survivors
