Though the Predator franchise owes a lot to its elder brother Alien, it’s titular monster could never command quite the same kind of horror. The Alien is a distinctly unrelatable creature in every facet and stage of development, while the Predator, though vicious, is much more humane in both physiology and anthropology. The Predators have technology, language, culture, and an extremely clear motivation as game hunters -they aren’t so unknowable in concept. It doesn’t mean they can’t and haven’t been scary, but it did make them the easier party to slot into a protagonist-adjacent role when the two franchises were finally brought together in Alien vs. Predator. After that, the next several movies kept them restored to formidable enemy status -most successfully so in Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, the series’ high-point.
But clearly Trachtenberg is very compelled by the Predator as more than the ruthless hunter, and in Predator: Badlands, as far-removed a follow-up in both context and focus as you can get, he centres the Predator as the anchor of the story, explores his world and culture a touch more, depicts him in a starkly relatable and cognizant context -in a way that doesn’t soften the creature as he has been depicted in the past, but adds more depth. All while offering a new perspective on a counterpart general human character at the same time.
The movie follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young inexperienced Predator (we learn that their species name is actually Yautja) considered a ‘runt’ by his clan for his apparent weakness, having failed in a previous hunt. Sentenced to death by his father, he is saved by his elder brother -who dies in Dek’s place as he is sent off-world in a quest of honour to bring back the head of a supposedly unkillable alien called the Kalisk on the hostile planet Genna. Challenged at every turn by the plant and animal life of the impossibly lethal world, Dek soon encounters a damaged android called Thia (Elle Fanning), left behind by a Weyland-Yutani team scavenging the world and exploiting its resources. The two form an unlikely union to find both the Kalisk and Thia’s twin Tessa.
This may be the first time outside of the actual Alien vs. Predator crossovers to openly link those universes through the prominent presence of both the Alien franchise’s distinctive synthetics and its ubiquitous all-powerful Company (even the A.I. MU/TH/UR is seen to be overseeing the operation on Genna and giving the androids their orders). Remarkably though, this doesn’t delineate the film’s story or distract from its focus. Because it feels thematically relevant rather then corporately synergistic (MU/TH/UR is a little bit corporately synergistic). There is a function of commentary for both the characters of Thia and Tessa, who eventually shows up in a fairly predictable capacity. And it is no coincidence that it comes alongside a Predator stripped of most of his usual high-tech weapons -apart from a couple gadgets, Dek has to fend for himself on this world through raw strength. And he can do that, he can survive on his own. But as Thia notes, “who would want to survive on their own.”
Thia is heavily humanized in her role as a companion for Dek, but she is still an artificial intelligence, and in her usefulness in helping him track down the Kalisk she comes across as an interesting metaphor for the useful functions of A.I. -as a tool, which Dek literally refers to her as. Her cognizance aside, she has value for Dek for the information she can provide, but she depends on him as much as he does her. A circumstantially symbiotic relationship, yet one that doesn’t require any offense to Dek’s autonomy or his own capacity to hunt. Tessa meanwhile is A.I. as a tool of capitalist state -exploitative and destructive, seeking to put down the Predator’s powers and substitute them. Indeed, she is what A.I. is more commonly used for in the modern age.
But this isn’t to say that either android steals attention away from Dek -he is the primal focus, and for a largely effects-rendered protagonist (and not a particularly visually appealing one at that) who speaks exclusively in a Yautja language wholly invented for this film, he manages to relate fairly well. Schuster-Koloamatangi, a stuntman, is there the whole time under a motion-capture performance, and you can tell that there is weight to at the very least Dek’s sides of his fights. And of course setting him up as an underdog before he even sets foot on the planet was an easy move but one that does make a difference. As banal as his tragedy is, Trachtenberg communicates it efficiently -and clearly enjoys building more facets of Yautja culture, even if it is largely derivative of other fictional warrior races in sci-fi and fantasy like the Dothraki or the Klingons. Dek and his journey are luckily not so one-dimensional, his rugged individualism challenged as he likewise is forced to more closely understand the nature of this uncompromising planet.
The Badlands are very creative and well-characterized -the monsters and obstacles really unique and the terrain fittingly alien. And the biodiversity here isn't merely aesthetic or circumstantial, it is thematically crucial playing into the climax in a clever way that very dramatically communicates its anti-colonialist screed. No humans appear in this movie, but their machines -both literal and institutional- are an incredibly powerful force as Trachtenberg paints a solid dystopian portrait of capitalist resource suppression; and in relief to that an image of an ecological spectrum poised to fight back.
Some things like the sarcastic comic relief provided by Thia through the film are somewhat jarring in light of the Predator franchise writ large, typically more serious and adult than this instalment -considerably less violent than the median too- is willing to be. Trachtenberg isn't bad at writing the levity, but there is still a sense of safeness to the movie that is a touch disconcerting. It is also a touch on the shallow side in the breadth of its reliance on CG environments -for as interesting as those environments may be the stakes are just a little lessened as a result. And the film's ending is a touch too easy a resolution, necessary though its parameters may be, its execution is underwhelming.
Certainly, Predator: Badlands is no Prey -but Trachtenberg is still a curious and steady hand at the wheel of this series, pushing it into a new direction that is very appropriate; one that in humanizing the Predators more than in any prior film sets an entirely new course for the future. In an era of mass franchise homogeneity that is something to be appreciated.
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