PREDATOR: BADLANDS. Whether regarding the Constitution or movie franchises, originalism is a trap, suffocating innovation and imagination against our natural impulse to learn, adapt and evolve with our environment and others in it.
Doubtless, the internet is already rife with complaints over the departures Predator Badlands takes from the formula that’s been mostly lucrative, though not always as entertaining as it could be. But director Dan Trachenberg has, in his three wildly different Predator projects, shown a deft hand at exploring possibilities and subverting the expectations within this corner of the sci-fi/action universe. As a result, Predator Badlands is mandibles-deep in joyful nerd lore, tightly paced with action sequences and tension, and somehow, amid the decapitations, heartwarming.
When Arnold Schwartzenegger and Carl Weathers locked fists for 1987’s Predator, the novelty of the creature — a vanishing, planet-hopping sport hunter with alien weapons and inexplicable fishnets who’s come to Earth for trophy skulls and spines — did a lot of lifting. Well, that and the barrage of bullets. Predator 2 (1990), starring Danny Glover, dropped the same single-minded and nigh invulnerable monster into an overheated Los Angeles resembling a Fox News fever dream of inner-city violence. Predators (2010) drew together a smorgasbord of dangerous types for the mysterious creature to prove itself against. The Predator (2018), while again pitting soldiers against an upgraded alien and its attending pets, was surprising insofar as I didn’t expect a Predator movie to be so bent on misrepresenting mental illness and autism. What a journey.
And in this house, we do not speak of either Alien vs. Predator movie (*spits on ground).
Trachenberg’s Prey (2022) was an invigorating jump back in time to the early 1700s and Comanche land, where an underestimated young woman (Amber Midthunder) goes up against the high-tech villain. Beyond the incredible action, the story is gripping and emotionally compelling, simultaneously enormous in terms of the historical moment of colonization and focused within the tight circle of characters and the heroine’s personal arc. And while I did not expect to be drawn into animated action (stunts and physical fight choreography forever), Tachenberg’s Killer of Killers (2025) is an absolute treat in three parts, again as much for the story as the visual spectacle.
But even in these recent installments, the idea of increasingly massive and inarguably better armed hunters proving themselves according to ancient custom by killing humans feels like punching down. After all, predators though we are, in comparison, even our baddest representatives are basically housecats. One wonders if bringing a human skull back to the home planet isn’t a bit like a Trump son snagging a giraffe tail on a preserve.
Predator Badlands begins on the unforgiving landscape Yautja Prime, where runt of the litter Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Kolomatangi) is frustrated by his inability to best his big brother Kwei (Michael Homik) or win his father’s (Reuben de Jong) respect. The latter might come if he can earn membership to his clan by bagging the unkillable Kalisk on the deadly planet of Genna. When Dad kills Kwei for refusing to kill his weak little brother, Dek is launched toward Genna and all the flora and fauna that want to maim, paralyze and eat him. While he at first resists picking up Thia (an inhumanly cheerful and unflappable Elle Fanning), the busted Weyland-Yutani Corp. android (because we are firmly in the Alien universe) that offers her help navigating the dangers, he accepts her as a tool and the two set off to find his Kalisk and her twin robot bestie Tessa.
To my joy, the subtitles I have longed for these decades have arrived. And with Dek as our protagonist instead of the boogeyman, the Yautja/Predator is at last a character with all kinds of possibilities and depth, even humor and grief. Schuster-Kolomatangi approaches Doug Jones-level physicality, and the makeup and CG effects allow for impressive expression. The mask and inscrutability that made the alien so Boba Fett cool in previous movies is gone (well, so is Boba Fett’s these days) and so are the advanced weapons. Instead, we get a reversal in which the hunter has to adapt to other tools, including connections with others. (Were toxic Yautja-linity and corporations the real monsters all along?)
If that sounds a little too soft for you, well, enjoy the laying waste to androids, enormous monsters, laser-edged swords and clever, brutal battles. And adapt. PG13. 107M. BROADWAY (3D).
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
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This article appears in Green-and-Gold Washing on the Menu?.