A good hunter always knows when to evolve and adapt to changing terrain, but even so, you have to be impressed about how many new tricks the Predator franchise has managed to aquire in just a few years under the scope-like eye of Dan Trachtenberg. Starting with the stripped-back Prey in 2022 that took the series to it’s roots and had a member of the Yautja square off with a determined Comanche girl in 1719, the director expanded the Predator universe exponentially with the animated anthology film, Predator: Killer Of Killers.
Well now Trachtenberg is hoping to push the boundaries of the game preserve once more with Predator: Badlands, an entry that takes possibly the biggest swings of all – making the Predator an honest to goodness, card-carrying leading man, rather than the hulking meanie that’s stalked so many tough guy trophies in the past. Has the director once again pulled off the inpredible for the third time running; or has he discovered to our dismay that if it leads, we can kill it?
In the distant future on the harsh planet of Yautja Prime, we peek in on some family drama that’s occurring within a Predator clan. It seems that the tyrannical father of Yautja siblings Kwei and Dek has had enough of the fact that his younger son is a runt of the litter and that his very existence brings dishonor to his hunting party. As – like most of his savage kind – he’s something of a massive prick, he tasks Kwei to kill his younger brother and purge the perceived weakness from the tribe, but in an act of defiance, Dek is instead sent by his elder bro to the planet Genna which is known in Yautja circles as The Death Planet.
If a Predator names something “the Death Planet”, you know that they’re not fucking around, but a determined Dek realises that if he manages to locate an unkillable beast known as a Kalisk and brings back its head, he’ll regain his honor and earn a shot at revenge against his old man. Thus, the young Yautja forms a one-Predator hunting party and sets out across a world crammed with lethal wildlife and fauna to score himself his impossible trophy, but he soon discovers that he’s not the only one who has targeted Genna for personal gain.
Encountering a damaged, legless synthetic named Thia, who’s empathy levels have been turned way up by her ordeal, Dek fires up an uneasy alliance thanks to her detailed data banks on the planet and it’s kill crazy food chain. However, as he forges on towards his toothy goal, he soon finds himself reluctantly questioning the ruthless, Yautja creed he’s lived by all of his life. Further complicating things is a synthetic-led expedition from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (yes, that Weyland-Yutani Corporation) that’s being directed by Thia’s far less friendly “sister”, Tessa and are also hunting the Kalisk. Can Dek stand against an army of synthetics and a towering beast that can heal from virtually any wound with only half a chatty android and a doe-eyed native of Genna for company?
If the concept of a Predator being the main character of a film and going on a violent, yet PG-13 rated journey that ultimately teaches him to stop being a toxic, macho, bastard causes you to recoil in horror, I would strongly suggest that you reconfigure your views on what a Predator movie should be – because Badlands may be pound for pound the most relentlessly enjoyable installment since the first film. Yes, in his tireless efforts to keep making the kind of Predator content I’ve been desperate to seen since I was eleven-years old, Dan Trachtenberg may have seemingly created an “anti-Predator” movie, but by flipping the entire franchise on its deadlocked head, he’s once again created an entry that enriches a franchise to a fantastic degree.
Giving us things that we’ve never had in live action Predator films before, Trachtenberg pushes his world building talents to the very limit to throw in more detailed looks at Yautja culture, their very own language (think Klingon but five times more guttural) and a mandibled leading man who actually has to emote and be a legitimate character rather than just a ferocious heavy. Beyond additions to Yautja lore, we even get a potentially disasterous, bizarre buddy movie team up with Elle Fanning’s mangled, yet perpetually chirpy, synth who delivers large amounts of comic relief and even a cute, alien sidekick named “Bud” to round things out. But possibly most damaging of all is the family friendly rating that attached itself to a franchise infamous for ripped out spines and flayed corpses. However, much to Trachtenberg’s infinite credit, it not only works, it flourishes and even though I’m coming to this review as a die hard Pred fan from day one, it’s overwhelmingly obvious that the director still adores the alien hunters as he’s now thrillingly three for three. Those changes to the franchise I mentioned? They all prove to be winners mainly because Trachtenberg makes them all intrinsically part of the plot (yes, even Bud) and strengthens the emotional core if the film to something approaching the found-family values of a Guardians Of The Galaxy film. Even that weaker rating is skillfully maneuvered as the Predator still manages to rip his opponents limb from limb, but as its aliens or synthetics he’s hacking through and not fleshy human bodies, the violence level is consistent with the other films even if the gore is not.
However, the (possibly forcibly removed) backbone of the film is undoubtedly the chemistry between Fanning’s synthetic and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s permanently pissed-off Dek and the fact that the movie (much like the original) plays like a super-lean sci-fi actioner that barely pauses for breath. We literally are hurled from one desperate fight for survival to another as we rapidly discover that Genna is essentially a death metal version of Pandora from Avatar and the inclusion of the demonically capitalist Weyland-Yutani Corporation and their army of white blooded synths proves to be an incredibly intelligent piece of cross-pollination by essentially once again merging with the Alien franchise (Pulse rifles! Super power loaders! MU/TH/UR!), without actually throwing any Xenomorphs into the mix.
The result is a magnificent chunk of heavy metal adventure that not only pushes the boundaries of the universe as far as it can go, but still offers the promise of yet more to come (surely the end-of-film coda suggests that Dek is unsurprisingly a child of divorce).
In numerous interviews, Trachtenberg has hinted that he’s got one more crazy idea for a Predator movie and I truly believe that it’s our duty as intelligent beings to ensure this happens, because if the man can resurrect and revolutionise a dying franchise by delivering three utter bangers in four years, he deserves carte blanche to do whatever he wants with those one ugly motherfuckers.
Along with Prey and Killer Of Killers, Predator: Badlands delivers franchise altering changes that somehow not only work, but continue to infuse a nearly forty year old film series with more life than you could possibly hope for. Whether the future of the Predator includes a rematch with the Alien, another leap in time or even a return for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch, I’m willing to instantly believe that Trachtenberg can make it completely work and the sooner we can return to Yutja Prime the better.
In the words of Dek himself, bring it home.
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We Have Issues 
Disney aborts another into the sewage.
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