With the Disney takeover of 20th Century Studios, is it any surprise that the Predator franchise would somehow get, well, a little Disneyfied? Predator: Badlands is to the Predator franchise what Fast Five was to the Fast & Furious franchise—it’s a reframing of old characters that plows ahead in a different manner than the films that came before it. Like Fast Five, Predator: Badlands is unmistakably enjoyable and a ton of fun, but it seems less dangerous and more family-friendly in its operations. (More on that later.)
First off, it’s evident that director Dan Trachtenberg—who helmed two standout Predator installments in Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers—has a vast appreciation for Predator and Yautja (the official name for these hunters) lore, and there’s no doubt that he brings untold respect to his franchise entries. Along with screenwriter Patrick Aison, Trachtenberg also doesn’t shoehorn in flip references to previous films, no “You are one ugly motherfucker” or “If it bleeds, we can kill it” callbacks; this story was meant to stand on its own, and it does. That alone gives Predator: Badlands a leg up, as we can see him trying new things in this world without insulting prior canon. We experience this immediately as we enter the story on the Yautja homeworld, with the runt of a Yautja clan working hard to prove his mettle.
By any measure on their world, Dek (Demetrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is deficient, seen as weak by his brother Kwei (Mike Homik) and, most notably, their father, Njohrr (Schuster-Koloamatangi in a dual role). We’re introduced to all three of them amid darkly-lit action and an almost Klingon-like adherence to honor, bravery, and strength—which none of them believe Dek possesses. Trachtenberg humanizes the Yautja with language (developed by linguist Britton Watkins) and emotion, two characteristics I don’t recall from previous films in this franchise.
In establishing these three, the conflict comes quickly and easily, with Dek planning on going to a dangerous planet to bring back the skull of a legendary beast and prove his worth, while Njohrr chastises Kwei for not carrying out his assignment—the assassination of Dek himself. “Weakness must be culled,” Njohrr says, intent on eliminating his own son for the sake of the clan. Yeah, harsh, innit? Before too long, Dek finds himself escaping his homeworld with a destination set for Genna, an inhospitable planet that is actively trying to kill anything that sets foot upon it.
Calling Genna “inhospitable” doesn’t even begin to describe the peril any visitor puts themselves in just by being on its surface. Trachtenberg has said in interviews that every shot in this film required the use of visual effects; I don’t blame him, as the sights we see are the impossible brought to life. Plants that seem to activate and breathe just before expelling poison needles into any passerby that dares disturb it, with a winged, Pteranodon-like bird circling and waiting for something to get shot; outsized worm-like things that spit acid; and the upper half of a sentient android named Thia (Elle Fanning).
Her introduction hails the beginning of Predator: Badlands as a buddy movie, the language barrier handwaved away by her onboard universal translator function. While Dek is a Yautja of few words, Thia could be likened to Harvey Guillén’s Perrito in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, wanting to know anything and everything about Dek. Elle Fanning plays her as a talkative, inquisitive ray of sunshine, quite contrary to Demetrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s Dek, a dark, menacing, and calculating fish out of water. They’re an odd couple, to be sure, but half the fun is watching Dek carry Thia around like Chewbacca does with C-3PO in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
By now, you can surely see where this is going, and if your head’s tilting quizzically about how the Yautja have been demystified and sort of defanged, that’s all right. Predator: Badlands takes its cues from familiar staples like the aforementioned films, Star Trek, and almost every story that shows a character’s transition from weak to strong, often accompanied by a near-Quixotic, foolhardy task that changes midway once the film’s heart gets exposed. This heart lies in Bud (Rohinal Nayaran), a diminutive, monkey-like creature separated from her family; with the addition of Bud, we start to see that Dek’s Yautja family is slowly being replaced by beings—organic or not—that respect him.
Another factor in Dek’s journey is the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, also known as “The Company” from the Alien franchise. They’ve established an outpost on this hellscape for its weapons development division, and—let me interject here. Seriously, why is Weyland-Yutani always trying to pull some idiotic stunt with its weapons division? Since Ellen Ripley discovered that MU-THUR set the Nostromo down on LV-426 on Company orders nearly 50 years ago (in real-life time) and with what we’ve seen in the outstanding FX series “Alien: Earth,” every endeavor this corporation undertakes to amp up its weapons division results in abject failure and disaster.
Through Weyland-Yutani—and the presence of Thia’s cold, unfeeling synthetic twin “sister,” Tessa (Fanning, also in a dual role)—we experience the ruthlessness of corporatism and capitalism, especially underscored by the fact that there are exactly zero human beings in this movie. Wey-Yu’s outpost is fully staffed by synthetics—whoops, “artificial persons” (sorry, Bishop)—and every decision is made with one objective in mind: Get what Weyland-Yutani wants. It’s a very satisfying bonding of the Alien and Predator franchises, more so than the Alien vs. Predator films, in my opinion; it’s done uniquely, digging into the subtleties of The Company while also hitting you over the head with how pervasive their presence is. (I’ve never believed that Xenomorphs are the villains; from minute one, Weyland-Yutani is the aggressor in every one of these movies. The Xenomorphs are just territorial and pissed off that they’ve been disturbed.)
This PG-13 Predator movie is paced to thrill and reveals an impressive undercurrent of humanity in a world with no humanity at all. While Dek embodies (or at least aspires to) his species’ ideals and ethos, his sympathetic story and eventual rising tend to follow a very tried-and-true arc, with Thia’s banter and lightheartedness bringing levity to this deathtrap of a planet. While Predator: Badlands does take a little bit of the danger and threat of the Yautja away in service of creating an underdog family out of Dek, Thia, and Bud, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Through Thia, we gain insight into what drives the Yautja, and learning about their hierarchies and values adds a new layer to the human-Yautja interactions we’ve seen before. In this light, Predator: Badlands becomes an indispensable part of Yautja lore, offering solid action and providing a fresh, engaging perspective on a nearly 40-year-old franchise.
