Josh Reviews Predator: Badlands
Predator: Badlands centers on a Predator (now canonically called a Yautja) named Dek. Dek longs to be a warrior, but he’s small for a Yautja, and despite the training by his older brother Kwei, their father rejects him from their clan. So Dek heads to the dangerous world of Genna to hunt a supposedly unkillable creature called a Kalisk as a way to prove his worth. There Dek encounters the damanged Weyland-Yutani synthetic Thia (Elle Fanning), whose legs were torn off during a Kalisk attack. Though Dek insists that Yautja hunt alone, he eventually (and reluctantly) accepts Thia’s help, and the two set off in search of the Kalisk…
Dan Trachtenberg directed the 2022 film Prey, which blew me away. I think it was easily the strongest Predator film since the 1987 original. Following the success of Prey, Mr. Trachtenberg undertook two projects. First came the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, an anthology of stories that presented different versions of the core idea of Prey: dropping a Predator into an action story set in a different time-period. At the same time, Mr. Trachtenberg was working on this film, which would move the franchise forward in time and tell a sci-fi/action story. I was excited to see what spin Mr. Trachtenberg would bring to a more familiar type of Predator movie than Prey (which was set in the 1700’s and centered on a young Comanche movie).
The result is… fine. Predator: Badlands is a fun action movie. There are some cool moments, some awesome action beats, some memorable imagery. I like the idea of centering the story on a Predator (with the Predator as the hero rather than the villain), and I love the idea of crossing the Predator and Alien universes and pairing a Predator up with a Weyland-Yutani synthetic.
But there’s nothing in this movie that makes it special the way Prey was special. The story of the friendship between Dek and Thia is fine, but it’s superficial (and it follows well-trodden odd-couple movie storytelling beats). Compare this with, say, how invested I was in the bond between Ripley and Hicks, or Ripley and Newt, in Aliens. The characters just don’t feel as interesting here; their dialogue and banter isn’t clever or funny enough.
While Prey felt new and fresh, Badlands feels familiar. I’ve read a lot of press about how innovative it was to make a Predator a hero in one of these films — and I do love that — but does no one remember that that happened already in 2004’s Alien vs. Predator? The idea of an alien planet filled with dangers as a Predator hunting ground was already established in 2010’s Predators. And so on.
(I’m going to keep this review light on spoilers, but if you want to go into this film totally unspoiled, you might want to stop reading here. If you’d like to read on, I’m going to dig in a little deeper…)
The film got off to a rough start, in my opinion, with the opening scenes on the Predator homeworld, with Dek’s sparring with his brother Kwei. I could not tell these characters apart. They looked too similar, and the fight in the cave was too dark, so I had a hard time following the fight and understanding who was who. Even their voices sounded too similar. (It seems like basic storytelling to me that these characters should be more strongly differentiated.) Visiting the Predator homeworld should be awesome, but this mostly barren place felt underwhelming to me.
Once Dek got to Genna, though, things picked up. I enjoyed his fights with various vicious plants and animals, and I enjoyed the pairing of Dek and Thia. Elle Fanning does a great job as Thia. She’s a far more joyous and chatty android than any of the previous synthetics we’ve seen in other Alien movies! That was a fun choice.
I think cutting back to Thia’s “sister” Tessa was a mistake, though. That stuff of her and the other generic-looking synthetics was boring. (Were all those other synthetics CGI? They looked very strange and fake to me. Wouldn’t it have been cooler had those synthetics been played by an interesting actor and given more life?) I think it would have been more dramatic to keep us with Dek and Thia and their journey, and only encountering Tessa when they did. (Also, I spent much of the movie totally confused about the timeline. When Dek meets Thia, she tells him she’s been on the planet for two years. I assumed that meant she’d been damaged and alone for two years. So I was surprised and confused when a few minutes later we saw Tessa getting found and repaired. It took me forever to figure out that the movie must have meant us to understand that Thia and Tessa were working together on the planet for two years, and that the attack that separated them must have just happened a day or two earlier. Maybe I’m dense, but I really think the movie should have done a better job clarifying that.) (Also, and I know I shouldn’t criticize a movie for not being what I wanted it to be, but wouldn’t the story be more interesting if Thia HAD been alone and damaged for two years? That’d be more compelling as a character arc, seeing this broken and lonely character healing and bonding with Dek.)
I loved the look of Dek. They did a great job creating a design that looks completely “right” as a Predator, and yet also feels unique and memorable as this new character. I thought the prosthetics on his face looked particularly great. Very cool looking (his mandibles looked awesome) and believably real. I loved the way the actor’s eyes shone through so strongly. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, the actor in the Predator suit, does a great job bringing this character to life. My only complaint about Dek is that his voice never felt quite right to me. It felt a little too generic; I wanted to get a little more sense of this character coming through in the voice. (It’s a new approach for a Predator movie to have a Predator do so much talking! I wasn’t sure about that approach at first, but I liked it as a clever change of pace. I just wish the voice felt more unique or convincing to me.) I was also impressed how well they pulled off Thia’s legless character. I totally believed it throughout the film. (I loved seeing Dek carrying Thia around as a backpack, sort of like how Chewie carried Threepio in The Empire Strikes Back.)
For all the criticism (mostly well-deserved) of the two Alien vs. Predator movies from the aughts, I still think it’s cool to see the Alien and Predator movie universes mushed together. Seeing a Weyland-Yutani synthetic from the Alien movies here in a Predator movie made me very happy, and I felt it worked great. And I LOVED seeing the Predator fight an iconic something-I-won’t-spoil from the Alien franchise in the finale!! That was fun and cool. (I wish that fight had gone on even longer.)
It was interesting seeing the Yautja name now canonized on-screen. I believe that term was first coined by author Steve Perry back in 1994, in his novelization of Dark Horse’s wonderful original Alien vs. Predator comic book series. Wile I didn’t ever need to see these creatures be called anything other than Predators, and while bringing in made-up sci-fi names can teeter on the edge of being silly, it’s also sort of cool to finally see some on-screen development of the Predators and their culture. And I love that screenwriter Patrick Aison respected the canon of the comic books and novels. That’s a nice choice. I do wish I was more interested in the actual Predator homeworld and culture that we see here in this film. Strangely (and disappointingly), that was my least favorite part of the animated Killer of Killers, and it wasn’t nearly as impressive or interesting as I’d hoped here. I wanted to see lots of cool tech and creatures, and a planet swarming with Predators! But what we got was just a mostly abandoned dusty town set in what look like souped up versions of Vasquez Rocks. And Dek’s father was such a boring, one-note villain. I’d have liked to have seen more depth of culture and reason to why his father makes the choices he does. Instead he just seems like a fanatic.
There’s no post-credits scene, but the last scene before the credits teases where this series could go next. It’s a fun note to end the movie on, and it does leave me curious, but I can’t say I’m desperate to see a direct sequel to this film.
So this was fun and I’m sure I’ll enjoy re-watching this in the future, but it wasn’t the home-run I’d hoped it would be based on the greatness of Prey. Instead, it’s a flawed film with some cool bits… just like most of the other Predator sequels!
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