PREDATOR: BADLANDS Review: The Unlikely Return of the Buddy Action Flick
Dan Trachtenberg’s latest is a valiant and violent addition to the franchise.
Three movies in, Dan Trachtenberg has more than proved why he was the deserving heir to the throne of the Predator franchise. All three of his films are leagues ahead of the sequels, reboots, and spinoffs that have disappointed audiences (and inspired staunch, cult-like defenders) that came before it, because his affection for the Yautja and the world that surrounds them is one rooted in honesty and a genuine understanding of why people fell in love with 1987’s Predator in the first place, which includes the mind-boggling nonsense surrounding its themes of macho bravado. Folks often forget that the “Dillon! You son of a bitch,” handshake-flex between Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and Carl Weathers’ Dillon that has been memed to death happens less than five minutes into the film’s runtime. This is a series that has always been defined by the borderline camp presentation of masculinity, but until now, that examination has predominantly been plasmacaster laser-focused on human beings.
In John McTiernan’s Predator, sweaty, beefy ’80s action guys meet their match by facing off against a high-tech alien with a mouth only H.R. Giger could love. Years later, Trachtenberg’s Prey flipped the script by following a Comanche woman who isn’t permitted to be a hunter due to her gender, but takes down the deadliest hunter in the universe after the men of her tribe fail to do so. Now Predator: Badlands takes it all one step further by turning the franchise’s macho roots into a story about how compassion and community might be the most badass traits of all.
The hunter society of the Yautja and their brutal, regressive ideology to be “prey to none, friend to none, predator to all,” are just as hilariously short-sighted as we are. These are highly intelligent beings who have perfected advanced weaponry beyond our wildest imaginations and still determine a Yautja’s “worth” by whether or not they bring home the carcasses of those alien to them as a trophy, not unlike rich weirdos with heavy machinery who pose with dead animals after big game hunting as if they really did something difficult by murdering a lion with a bullet traveling at 2,500 feet per second. These so-called predators may be powerful, but their way of life is, well, toxic, and has resulted in a life of isolation on a desolate planet where everyone seems to hate each other, communicates exclusively in villainous threats from behind masks, and passes the time between hunts by beating the shit out of each other just to feel something.