Following his successful first entry into the Predator franchise in 2022 with Prey (a fresh take on the concept that featured an 18th Century Comanche woman taking on a member of the Yautja, better known to us as Predators), Dan Trachtenberg has returned to the big screen with Predator: Badlands. This time, we’re back in the far future, in days when the Weyland-Yutani corporation (of the Alien franchise) is extending its tendrils of power into the depths of space. It’s a fun action flick that takes place on a fully-realized alien death world, featuring minimal characters, and it’s a great ride. 

The film opens on Yautja Prime, as young warrior Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) prepares for the hunt that will prove his worthiness to be given the Predators’ famous cloaking device. His brother Kwei appears to help him prepare, and the two engage in a duel that Dek is unable to win, but he proves his fighting spirit by refusing to yield. The two warriors’ father, Njohrr, appears on the scene and derides Kwei for failing to kill Dek, the runt of the clan, as he was ordered. Kwei is slain by their father as Dek, aboard his ship, is auto-launched to the “death planet” of Genna, where the unkillable beast Kalisk resides, with Dek intending to bring back the Kalisk’s head as his trophy and prove his father wrong, ensuring that Kwei’s death was not in vain. Dek crashes on the planet and soon meets a polite, personable Weyland-Yutani android named Thia (Elle Fanning). Although he initially refuses her assistance in navigating the treacherous flora and fauna of Genna as the Yautja code requires them to hunt alone, he is able to compartmentalize her as a “tool” and self-justify accepting her help. Attaching Thia’s upper half to his back to act as guide (her lower half was previously torn off by the Kalisk), the two set out to take down the great beast, all while Thia’s twin “sister” Tessa (Fanning again) reboots and resumes her mission of capturing the Kalisk for the company’s bio-weapons research division. 

There’s a lot to like here. Thia and Dek make for a really fun pair of characters, with her (uncharacteristic for a W-Y synth) helpful, bubbly, and jovial attitude playing against his brusque, narrow-minded, laser-focused mentality to comedic success. For a character whose face is entirely prosthetic, Dek also conveys a fair amount of emotion, expressing vulnerability, surprise, and grief, and that this works despite the fact that this is a Predator we’re talking about is a strong mark in the film’s favor. Fanning, as the person with a human face (even if there are no humans at all in the movie overall), has to do most of the emotional heavy lifting, but she carries it off, and her performance here has me pretty excited to see her again later this year in Sentimental Value, even if that’s going to be a very different film from this one tonally. She gets to join the ever-growing ranks of 2025 features that happen to be about twins or otherwise feature dual performances: twice the Michael B. Jordan in Sinners, double Dylan O’Briens in Twinless, Robert Pattinson as Mickeys 17 and 18 in Mickey 17, Theo James as “good” and evil twins in The Monkey, the Mias Goth in Frankenstein, and [redacted spoiler] in Superman. Fanning’s turn as the less-likable android Tessa is fun to see, especially given that Thia’s dialogue about her “sister” is praiseworthy and ebullient because of Thia’s personality, and we expect that Tessa will be like her, but when we do finally meet her, she’s ruthless, tactical, and efficient.

It’s a real change of pace to move the point of view from that of the human characters—who are always potentially prey to the Predators that give the franchise its name—to one of the Yautja instead, and that choice brings with it an interesting perspective flip on both them and the W-Y androids. Dek and Kwei’s father Njohrr is representative of a fairly bog standard “alien warrior race” archetype: shows preference among his brood for his strongest offspring, toxically belittles his weaker offspring to the point of attempting to cull said child from the bloodline, spends most of his screentime talking about “honor,” clans, rites of passage, etc. Despite this upbringing, Kwei sees the inner strength in Dek, and has never forgotten that Dek saved his life when they were younger, and in so doing breaks through his familial and cultural programming, rebelling against their father in order to give Dek the chance to prove himself. Thia and Tessa are specifically noted to have been designed and manufactured to be more “sensitive” than most synths, but despite this, Tessa is ultimately completely loyal to the corporation, once again represented in the form of an interface with “MU/TH/UR.” Humans are special because we have the ability to unlearn the ideologies that we receive, passively and actively, from our guardians and our environments; many people never slip out of these bonds, but many more do, and becoming more empathetic and kind is growth. Kwei, as the brother of the Yautja half of our protagonist duo, exceeded his programming; Tessa, as the sister of the synth half, never does, even though it’s clear that Thia is capable of (and undergoes) this evolution. The creations of humanity, made in the image of humanity, demonstrate less of that humanity in comparison to the scaly, scary menace with mandibles. 

This is a well constructed screenplay. In addition to the movie being about two beings exceeding and transcending their programming (both literal and cultural), it’s also worth noting that the parallels between the two sibling pairs extend to both of them being threatened by a parental figure. Kwei dies defending Dek from Njhorr, as failure to perform up to their father’s standards is a death sentence. The same is true for Tessa, who is threatened by MU/TH/UR (say it out loud if you haven’t seen an Alien movie in a while) with “decommissioning” if she fails to secure the Kalisk sample. Beyond that, it’s structured pretty similarly to Prey in that we get just the right amount of planting and payoff for all of the things that Dek learns during the course of his hunt and how he uses the resources around him to achieve his goals. That skeletal symmetry in each of Trachtenberg’s outings belies the vast aesthetic and environment differences that make Badlands feel fresh and new. The creature (and malevolent flora) designs are a lot of fun, and the whole thing feels very real and immersive. There are some moments of summer blockbuster cheese (despite the film’s autumn release), with the most groanworthy element for my viewing companion being the appearance of Dek’s mother in the film’s final sequel bait moment, while I think I was most distracted by the way that Dek tames an acid-spitting snake to sit on his shoulder like the typical Predator gun. It’s goofy, but the movie takes itself mostly seriously, with positive results. It still includes an Aliens-inspired mech-on-monster fight, but it refrains from reusing (read: misusing) that sequence’s pivotal line, which is more restraint than a certain other movie I could mention. Worth seeing on the big screen! 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond