Predator: Badlands and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Studios
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg
The Predator franchise may not have an entry as critically acclaimed as the original Alien, but its track record is far stronger than that of the Xenomorphs who have, at best, three good movies and a decent TV show after all is said and done. Predator, meanwhile, managed to claw itself back from the brink of irrelevance after the atrocious 2018 film with solid features like Prey from 2022 and that animated thing on Hulu that people seem to have liked. Now it’s time for Disney to double down on the franchise with a big sci-fi action movie focusing on the Predator itself instead of whoever is caught in its crosshairs. Can The Predator carry a movie all by itself on its muscular shoulders, or will this fall flatter than Shane Black’s messy reinvention of the character? Let’s find out!!
Somewhere out in space, there is a planet of aliens who like to hunt. Presumably, they do other things, but for the most part they’re either hunting or training for the next hunt; as is the case with Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who may be a bit scrawnier than his big burly dad (Reuben De Jong) and his equally burly brother (Mike Homik), but he’s confident that chasing down the most dangerous of creature in the galaxy and returning with its skull will make him a man in the eyes of his people. It becomes clear, however, that he may be in over his head when literally everything on the planet tries to eat him; all except for a cute little alien creature (Rohinal Narayan) and half a synthetic named Thia (Elle Fanning) who got separated from her bottom half by the very creature that Dek is trying to hunt down. Perhaps a few erstwhile allies will make this hunt go a bit smoother, but little does Dek know that the real danger he will face on this planet comes from the most dangerous game of all as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation have their own sinister agenda for everyone involved in Dek’s quest. Will Dek become a true Predator by the standards of his people and return in glory and triumph? What are the Weyland-Yutani thugs after on this planet, and is Thia being truthful about her role in all of this? Are you sure you don’t just wanna pop over to Earth and grab a human for your big Manhood-Hunt? I mean, there’s always a chance you’ll run into a Schwarzenegger down there, but the odds are much better there than they are on this planet!
However good the word of mouth was going into this movie, I was not expecting a lot. It was surely going to be competently put together, much like the director’s previous entry in this series, but putting the focus on The Predator, or as their species are called in this film, Yautja, was definitely an uphill battle. Fortunately, the filmmakers found a way to make it work beyond even my most optimistic expectations with a strong script, a fantastically realized protagonist, and action that is genuinely unique and impressively put together. It’s not perfectly executed as shifting from a horror sci-fi action film to something more akin to a Star Wars movie ends up grinding a few gears, but the ambition to grow beyond the confines of the previous films is what makes this so brilliant and opens up the world to all sorts of fantastic possibilities. There are, of course, always some drawbacks to turning a series of movies into a proper modern franchise, and I can understand if many are disappointed that we are going further away from The Predator’s horror roots, but I think that, as much as Prey was a breath of fresh air after the Shane Black disaster, it was more or less a return to the formula; one that has served well for all the other Predator movies, but for everything that it did right, it didn’t do much different. Besides, we can always go back to the more horror-oriented approach as this movie makes it clear that Yautja are still total jerks, but after seeing what can be done when we look at this character in a different light, I think it’d be a shame to rush right back to its comfort zone.
That’s not to say that this is so radical a departure that it’s unrecognizable as a Predator movie as the film does indulge in some sneaky hunting while set on one of the better jungle planets in recent memory, and the main character, Dek, certainly gets more than a couple moments to feel utterly helpless against the hostile creatures out to eat his face. Still, the character has much more agency than your usual Predator hero as he’s proactively working towards a goal instead of reacting to an unexpected threat, which works to flesh out his character as well as develop the themes that the movie is trying to get across. However, this is where we butt up against the film’s most glaring flaw, which is its overarching narrative. There was some hay about the movie being PG-13, and while it’s not an issue as far as the action and gore which is as close to an R as I’ve seen from a movie with this rating, but it does feel overly simplified to fit that teen-blockbuster mold. The supporting cast is where a lot of this comes across, as Dek remains compelling all the way through, but the disapproving looks from Elle Fanning and the overly cute alien sidekick remove much of the subtlety from the hero’s journey. Also, while I’m the last person who will chide a movie for adding levity, much of the humor here feels out of place and only serves to undercut the seriousness of Dek’s situation and the danger he’s constantly willing to put himself through in order to reach his goals. You get a taste of what this movie could have been with the Yautja scenes early on and the way that some of the action scenes play out when everyone is being quiet and focusing on the fight, but whenever things calm down it starts to feel more and more like a modern live-action Disney movie; slick and well put together, but never willing to do anything unexpected or particularly interesting.
There’s also too much Weyland-Yutani for my taste, and what we get of them falls far short of what we should expect from such an iconic villainous entity; presumably another sacrifice to the PG-13 mindset. A simple nod to the Alien franchise would have been sufficient and all I was expecting from the trailer, but the entire second half of the movie is handed over to them and their villainy feels far too broadly sketched; acting less like the scathing criticism of capitalistic excess and more like an offshoot of Cobra from some lost GI Joe sequel. It doesn’t feel necessary to have such a human enemy on hand when we’re this far out in space, and having them occupy so much space makes the Predator feel much smaller in his own movie.
This is a film where you have to take the good with the bad. It’s a great premise that’s well executed, especially when the focus stays squarely on The Predator, but I suppose that making this kind of movie in this cinematic landscape all but requires overstuffing it with recognizable IPs and at least a few merchandising opportunities. Perhaps these are the things that will ultimately get general audiences to flock to the theaters, and it never truly undercuts how well the rest of the movie is executed and how many genuinely interesting creative decisions were made throughout. Still, I can’t help but wonder what a much less franchise focused approached would have led to and how much of what is in here I would happily cut out to replace with simply more scenes of Dek surviving in this harsh environment, but regardless of all that, it’s a fantastic movie worth checking out if you have the chance. I certainly found it to be one of the better surprises of the year, though hopefully they take the right lessons from this and don’t just stick the Xenomorph in the next one to maximize brand recognition.
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