Predator: Badlands keeps the momentum from Prey going with an interesting, subversive take on itself.
Mild spoilers, you’ve been warned. Do yourself a favour and just watch the movie.
Predator is a funny ol’ series where the usual franchising tricks simply don’t work. Having a Yautja (i.e. a Predator) as the big bad is a fantastic hook – how are pathetic human beings meant to go up against a super-advanced alien species that are literally bred to kill? The problem is that it can only be done once before it gets old. That immediately takes the sting out of any potential sequels.
Director Dan Trachtenberg’s genuine love for the series allows him to effectively lean into the elements that make for a great Predator movie: It’s stupid (complimentary), entertaining, and you can project whatever you want onto these fictional creatures, so direct sequels aren’t really necessary.
Take Prey, for example. That is a movie that’s essentially a young Native American woman’s bloody bildungsroman, and the Yautja, while technically the antagonist, is merely the foil for her journey. Now that is a great deconstruction of the Predator premise.
It’d be redundant to do the same thing again, so Trachtenberg takes the aforementioned deconstruction one step further with Predator: Badlands by not only making a Yautja the main character of the movie, but by having the galaxy’s deadliest hunter (or so we’re told) be nothing more than an annoying runt – literally.
Badlands follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, MVP #1), the ‘runt’ of his Yautja clan, who is to be culled for being weak and a disgrace to his family. He manages to escape to Genna, one of the most imaginative – and dangerous – fictional planets depicted on the big screen, and resolves to bring back the head of an ‘unkillable’ beast called the Kalisk to prove his worth to both his clan and father.
If that premise sounds familiar, well, it is because it’s something we’ve seen plenty of times. But Trachtenberg takes this familiar premise and tells one hell of a story with a surprising amount of pathos and subversiveness, so much so that I was wondering, “wait, Predator movies are sentimental now?”
There’s something wonderfully stupid about how an alien species that’s been around for millennia and armed with super-advanced technology can only function in a society where self-worth and ‘healthy’ relationships are built upon aggressively murdering everything in sight. Since the Yautja are simple-minded (again, complimentary), Dek ain’t arriving at some big emotional breakthrough without some much-needed assistance. That’s where Elle Fanning (MVP #2) comes in as Thia, a Weyland-Yutani synth (calm down, Alien fanboys) sent to Genna on an expedition to study all its living creatures.
Whereas Dek is all about projecting toughness and alpha male dickhead energy, Thia is chippy, optimistic, and resourceful – even though her legs were ripped off by the Kalisk. There’s a brilliant yin-yang to Fanning and Schuster-Koloamatangi’s performances that just pops off the screen. At some points it feels like you’re watching a buddy comedy rather than a Predator movie, yet it still all works because a) it’s all ridiculous, and b) there’s some unexpected poignancy in watching a synth help a Yautja discover something resembling empathy and grief as they break down what the idea of ‘family’ and ‘weakness’ means to them during the quieter moments. It’s a damn shame that Fanning and Schuster-Koloamatangi’s performances won’t get recognised by any awards organisation because they’re doing some great work in Badlands.
The whole ‘family’ theme isn’t exactly subtle and lacks the smooth Trojan Horsing other directors are able to pull off but it works just fine in Badlands because, well, it’s a Predator movie and it’s underplayed well enough to feel naturalistic. There’s a surprising amount of ideas and concepts crammed into Badlands, yet it clocks in at a lean 107 minutes. The script is so well structured that nothing feels unearned or out of place. In no other movie will there be moments where a synth and a Yautja have emotional breakthroughs involving grief and melancholy over those they deem as family.
If you’re here for the brutal action and creative set pieces, then you’ll be pleased because the movie is stuffed with them. We’ve often been told how the Yautja are some of the smartest hunters in the galaxy, and this time, we actually get to see Dek showcase some of this intelligence. Every brutal encounter and setback on Genna becomes a lesson for him, and by the time we get to the final set pieces, you can easily buy how this runt has become the king of shit mountain he always thought he was. Main characters learning and showing us what they’re good at, that’s always compelling to watch.
Hiring a Predator lover like Trachtenberg to be the custodian of the whole franchise rather than some well-paid IP slop maker has been a genius move because he gets what makes these movies special. In Prey and now Badlands, Trachenberg has convincingly shown that there’s more underneath the mask than we initially thought. If this is the trajectory we’re on for Predator, I can’t wait to see what he cooks up next.