When Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi first auditioned for “ Predator: Badlands ,” he didn’t know he was trying out to play the first of the titular aliens to be the hero, instead of a villain, in the 38-year-old franchise. In fact, he didn’t know he was auditioning for a “Predator” film at all. He wasn’t even provided with any written lines.

“All it said was ‘a creature,’” Schuster-Koloamatangi says. “The little character brief just said, ‘It’s all up to your interpretation.’”

The 24-year-old actor has had to rely on his own imagination. As a kid in Auckland, New Zealand, he relished going to his local cinema and drank in movies as often as he could. But as the child of a Tongan father and Samoan mother, “I grew up not really seeing too many Polynesians on screen,” he says. “I didn’t

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