Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

I would not likely have had much interest in Predator: Badlands based on its own premise alone, if not for the fact that it was directed and co-written by Dan Trachtenberg, who directed and co-wrote the quite pleasantly surprising Prey (2022)—easily the best film in the Predator franchise. Okay, fine: full disclosure, Prey was only the second straight-up Predator film I ever saw, and I saw the original, 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film so long ago I don’t even really remember it. But, I feel confident of this perspective based on critical consensus on al these films, which is generally a reliable barometer of quality. I guess I should say that “by all accounts” Prey was the best film in the franchise. It’s certainly remains the best of those I have seen.

The definition of which “Predator” films I have seen is a little murky, however, as is the degree to which Predator: Badlands should be regarded as a crossover with the (far superior) Alien franchise. The two Alien vs. Predator films are widely not regarded as canon in either franchise, the first of those being the sort of so-bad-it’s-good that I still never bothered to see its 2007 follow-up, which thus makes that one to date the only major film featuring a xenomorph that I have never seen.

Predator: Badlands has no further connection to the Alien vs. Predator films, however, beyond its inclusion of “synthetics” manufactured by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, two of which are played by Elle Fanning, without whom this film would not have worked at all. There are no xenomorphs in this film, but Weyland-Yutani and its synthetics are very overt pulls from the Alien universe, and I remain unconvinced that it was necessary. Certainly plenty of other science fiction franchises have their own forms of robot characters; why not Predator? Trachtenberg goes one step further by making the Kalisk, the impossible-to-kill monster on Genna, the planet on which most of the action takes place, the “specimen” that Weyland-Yutani is seeking to capture and bring home for its bioweapons division—just as had been the xenomorphs before it, though they get no mention here.

I did enjoy Predator: Badlands, and the critical response to it has been roughly equivalent to Prey, but I very much prefer Prey. That one had a far more efficient self-containment, within only the Predator franchise, but with what I found to be a far more novel premise: the earliest Predator sent to Earth, who winds up doing battle with North American Indigenous people of the early 18th-century—and specifically, a young woman. Predator: Badlands does a lot that has never been done in a previous Predator movie, but it’s all stuff that has already been done in other film sequels: turning the villain into the hero (which we’ve now seen in many films, from Terminator 2: Judgment Day to M3GAN 2.0); giving robots human feelings; turning a dangerous creature into something merely misunderstood. Even the manner in which the villain is destroyed in Terminator 2 has a very direct echo in this film.

Which is to say: Predator: Badlands is plenty entertaining, but lacks the cultural depth of its predecessor, and is certainly less rewatchable. There is a great deal of action in Badlands, which was a big selling point—for a film like this, I will go the uncharacteristic route of saying it could have used more relentless action, based on how it’s being sold to audiences. This film also features the first Predator ever to be given a name: Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), who is immediately emblematic of the “weakness” the must be “culled” from a “Yautja” clan (Yautja being the name given to the Predator species). He is much smaller in stature than others of his kind, and when his older brother protects him from being killed by their father, their father kills the brother instead. Dek then goes on to Genna, seeking the apex predator no one has ever captured on the widely lethal planet, and planning to bring it back home as a trophy to prove his worth, and also seek revenge against his father.

It’s a lot of detail, much of which is revealed in the cold open before the opening title. All this “honor” talk among the Yautja is just another form of machoism that I have little interest in, the rest of the film slowly inching Dek away from that mindset notwithstanding. But if he returns with an even slightly altered idea of honorable behavior, to a fictional culture created specifically to be loyal to such ideas to the death, what then? Badlands doesn’t really bother with these questions. Perhaps another film in the Predator universe will, but I’m not sure how interested I’ll be.

All the Weyland-Yutani stuff aside, it’s when Dek discovers the synth Thia (Elle Fanning) that Badlands gets really interesting. This film actually has no human characters at all, as the Earth mission to Genna is comprised entirely of synths (all played by only two people: Fanning, or Cameron Brown, who plays all the “drone synths” who ultimately serve as this film’s version of Star Trek “red shirts”—nameless and easily destroyed). Thia has had a run-in with the Kalisk, and her body from the waist down is missing. Dek spends much of the film carrying Thia’s upper half on his back (this also being a clear reference to C3PO in The Empire Strikes Back). One of the better parts of Badlands is when Thia’s upper half and her lower half, still separated, work as a team fighting off the aforementioned drone synths.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of Predator: Badlands is the creature design—not so much that of Dek, who looks basically like the many other Yautja we’ve already seen, but that of the many alien species on the planet Genna, from carnivorous plants to animals, to even razor sharp blades of grass. This film is also packed with visual effects, and while I can’t say the CGI particularly wowed me, it was pretty decent. At the very least, unlike far too many other CGI-heavy films, it doesn’t look distractingly artificial.

Badlands has further twists that are not necessarily had to see coming, but at least it’s an exciting ride while it’s in motion. Dek and Thia befriend a small, monkey-like creature that later proves to be an important detail on which the plot turns; Thia names him “Bud” and he’s weirdly cute, like a cross between a chimp and a bulldog. To Badland’s credit, a great deal of impressive work went into its production, from the creation of an entire language for the Yautja by linguist Britton Watkins, to very believable animal behaviors specific to different fictional species. I’d have liked a bit more originality in the story beyond “twists” that are just rearrangements of well-trodden ideas from other films, but anyone with a thing for sci-fi action films with detailed world building is going to have a good time here.

*Teamwork makes the dream work in* Predator: Badlands.

Overall: B