PREDATOR: BADLANDS Review: The Unlikely Return of the Buddy Action Flick
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.
Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is considered the runt of his clan, a weakling failure specimen of a son that his father Njohrr (also Schuster-Koloamatangi), would rather see killed off than given the chance to prove himself as a hunter. He orders the elder son, Kwei (Mike Homik), to do his dirty work, but the elder brother instead sends his baby bro to the planet Genna, where the Yautja youngling will attempt a coming-of-age tradition to take down the supposedly unkillable Kalisk, a creature that even his father is afraid of facing. Dek believes that if he can bring back a Kalisk skull as a trophy that he will finally earn his father’s respect and a rightful place in the Yautja clan, a mission that anyone who has encountered an overbearing blowhard like Njohrr knows is a futile desire, but that’s for Dek to figure out on his own.
This approach completely flips the Predator franchise’s established rules on its head, because not only is the usual antagonist in the position of protagonist, but the all-powerful Yautja is now totally outclassed on Genna, rightfully nicknamed “the death planet.” It’s a bit of an on-the-nose nickname, but everything on Genna is trying to kill you. The grass is made of razor, the trees all attack like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, some bugs can be used like hand grenades, giant creatures above the trees will try to eat you, and regenerative flowers shoot tranquilizer darts. Dek is in over his dreadlocked head, but he luckily crosses paths with Thia (a terminally delightful Elle Fanning), a bisected Weyland-Yutani synthetic (yes, like in Alien), who has learned everything about the planet’s environment and is willing to be the Cub to his Lone Wolf if he agrees to help take her back to her legs.
Dek and Thia make for a fantastic odd couple, with Dek only agreeing to her terms after viewing her as a literal tool, and Thia being chipper and chatty in contrast to Dek’s stoicism. It’s not long after they set out on their journey that Dek utilizes vines to strap Thia to him like a makeshift backpack, not unlike, as film critic Rendy Jones rightfully pointed out, the Predator/Alien version of Banjo-Kazooie. Or, yanno, Luke and Yoda if that’s more your style. On the surface, their relationship often borders on twee, but between killing horrifying sci-fi creatures and genuine conversations about their “lives” (the quotations are for Thia), something deeper forges through. Predator: Badlands wholly embraces the simplistic setup to its “maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way” ethos, and uses it like a tool to tell a far more meaningful story about the literal life-saving importance of learning how to work with people who come from different backgrounds than you do, even if it’s a painfully adorable monkey alien death monster sidekick named Bud (Rohinal Nayaran).
The Yautja are raised to see traits like forgiveness, grief, desire, and sensitivity as weakness, but the longer Dek is away from his planet and the influence of people like his father, the more he is able to recognize that perhaps there’s another way to be a powerful hunter. After all, as Thia explains to him, the alpha in a pack of wolves is not the one who kills the most, but the one who does the most to protect the pack. But that’s not to say Dek completely abandons his physical training, as Predator: Badlands is as violent and action-packed as it is emotionally mature. There are plenty of scenes that will have you shouting “HELL YEAH, BROTHER” at the screen, and thanks to these alien creatures bleeding colors that aren’t the same as humans, Trachtenberg stretches the limits of violence permitted in a PG-13 movie, not unlike the way Samurai Jack could get away with cutting off limbs and heads because the monsters leaked black liquid. It’s absolutely still a sci-fi horror action thriller, but it’s also a coming-of-age story with the perfect ratio of comedy and drama to stay true to the genre. How Trachtenberg pulls off the balancing act is nothing short of a miracle.
Predator: Badlands is the kind of audacious, whip-smart blockbuster filmmaking that we desperately need these days, where the unique vision of someone who obviously loves making movies is allowed to make the damn film instead of compromising their vision to appeal to whatever data points they think will provide the best return on investment. For as much as people keep desperately trying to squeeze the blood out of the “it feels just like the 1980s!” stone, Predator: Badlands actually does it by becoming the exact type of movie that a kid from that decade would watch due to its not-an-R-rating that completely changes their brain chemistry forever. The kind of movies that I’m sure Trachtenberg was mainlining in his younger years himself. Like Prey before it, Predator: Badlands proves that big-budget sci-fi doesn’t have to play it safe or become a greatest hits of the franchise entries that came before it.
For the love of Yautja, please see this in the theater so Trachtenberg can keep making these movies, because Predator: Badlands is one of the most entertaining films of 2025.
