Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg
Written by Patrick Aison, Dan Trachtenberg, and Jim Thomas
The revisioning of the Predator franchise is in full swing and continues to impress. Dan Trachtenberg is revitalizing what was a brand that was stuck in neutral, and now bristles with excitement and fresh turns. In Predator: Badlands, we flip to the Yautja (the name now given to the Predators) point of view. Dek is a young Yautja looking to redeem his honor by claiming a trophy prize from an unkillable creature of legend. On his hunt, he partners with an unlikely android on a planet where every living thing is out to kill them.
At its core, Predator: Badlands is a rite of passage movie. The story oozes of warrior ethos. Honor and glory are bestowed upon the clan’s biggest and strongest members. The Yautja have taken a page out of the Klingon playbook. It is a story so familiar, but this time the trappings are wholly different. We are getting the monster’s eye view in this film. It feels natural, not forced. Fortunately, we get much of the honor and duty messaging out of the way in the first act, paving the way for a rich creature feature and top-shelf world-building.
This movie is a fantastic creature feature, harkening back to the days of Ray Harryhausen. The digital technology is so smooth now that the uncanny valley has largely disappeared. The planet, Genna, that Dek has arrived at has earned the reputation as The Death Planet. Monster after monster is introduced. The entire ecosystem is hyper-aggressive. Even the grass is out to get you. The planet crackles with life, despite all the carnage. The movie presents a brilliant variant of the ascending ladder of predatory creatures, at the introduction of Genna, starting with a bug getting eaten by a bigger bug, and so on and so forth.
What sells the film, though, is not the creatures. The characters are as good as it gets for this franchise.
The Cast of Predator Badlands:
- Elle Fanning plays Thia, a damaged but chatty Weyland-Yutani Corporate synthetic.
- Elle Fanning also plays Tessa, Thia’s “sister” synthetic, who is a mission commander on Genna, and is also looking for the Kalisk.
- Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi plays Dek, a young Yautja (Predator) outcast who has been exiled for being a runt.
- Reuben de Jong plays Njohrr, Dek and Kwei’s hulking and tyrannical father.
- Michael Homik plays Kwei, Dek’s protective older brother.
- Ravi Narayan performs motion capture to play Bud, a curious monkey-like creature on Genna.
- Cameron Brown plays Smyth, a Weyland-Yutani drone synth of which there are dozens operating on the planet.
I will be the Alpha who kills the most…”
Dek, upon learning about alpha wolves from Thia
A Synopsis of Predator: Badlands
Dek and Kwei are brothers and competitors. The younger, smaller Dek spars aggressively with his brother to prove his warrior mettle. Dek announces that for his rite of passage, he will bring back the trophy of the Unkillable Kasik’s head to impress his dismissive father. Kwei has always looked out for his younger brother. When Njorr arrives, he orders Kwei to do the right thing for the family and cull his runt brother from the clan. Kwei, as he always has done, protects his brother and dies in a furious battle with his father. Dek watches helplessly from inside the family spacecraft. The ship automatically launches to Genna, the Planet of Death. Dek will get his chance to prove his worth.
After narrowly surviving the local flora and fauna trying to devour him, a voice calls out for him. It’s Thia, a synthetic human with a language translator to communicate with Yautja. She survived a Kasik attack, torn in half by the great beast. The Kasik tossed her torso far from the battle, far from her research companions. She offers survival guidance to Dek in return for his help in finding her missing legs. He is reluctant at first, but he quickly realizes he has no understanding of this world and reluctantly agrees to help the talkative android when he realizes she could be a useful “tool.”
While hunting a large beast, a curious little creature joins their hunt. It is agile, resilient, adorable, and fascinated with Dek. Thia dubs the creature Bud, forming a questing group. Find the great beast. Dek, for the honor and glory. Thia, to reunite with her companions and her legs. As for Bud… that would be a spoiler to divulge. Thia greatly misses her twin synthetic “sister” Tessa, whom she believes is out looking for her. Tessa is indeed looking for Thia, but does not reciprocate the sisterly bond. Tessa wants to find Thia so that she can catch Dek and, subsequently, the Kasik.
All trails lead to the unkillable creature, to decide all their fates.
Evaluation of Predator: Badlands
Dan Trachtenberg continues to build on the themes of his previous Predator offerings. The honor of the hunt, so prominent in his excellent treatment of Prey, gets flipped. Many of the previous installments suggested the hunter’s code before, but in this outing, the Yautja society is fully explored. The strength of Predator: Badlands lies in its Epic Quest model. Pulling from the likes of Beowulf, Star Wars, The Hobbit, Shang Chi, and The Wizard of Oz, this script could have been penned by Joseph Campbell. Though instead of a questing knight, we have an alien creature with pincer mandibles and dreadlocks. The Kalisk is clearly a dragon analogy: The mythical beast of legend and much hyperbole. The film renders the Kasik beautifully, a truly fearsome creature worthy of the quest.
Who would want to survive on their own?”
Tessa, encouraging Dek to group up
In addition to the fantasy elements, the movie is much more action-hero than horror, and it uses the Marvel M.O. of destroying lots of non-humans to stay in the PG-13 category. It’s still plenty violent, despite the lack of human bloodshed. Predator: Badlands makes up for the lack of gore with a superior story and wonderful character interactions. For many, this is a nerfing of the franchise. Don’t go into this movie expecting a gory horror outing. Think of this as seeing a modern Ray Harryhausen production, full of wonder and amazing monsters.
I recommend Predator: Badlands as a horror gateway film. The story is very approachable (and familiar), and the action is thrilling. The opening brother battle, though, feels like so many other superhero movies (it reminds me a lot of the Black Panther battle with Killmonger). It’s dark with muddy CGI. However, the remainder of the movie is quite inventive in execution.
For those who enjoy thematic easter eggs, there are plenty. My favorite being when Dek pulls off what I will call the reverse Dutch gear-up montage. It’s an unmistakable homage to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s feral preparations from the first movie. That moment made me grin from ear to ear. Also notable… for non-Easter Eggs, Dek doesn’t have access to the “Predator vision” or camo tech on this trip, making it a clear departure from the rest of the franchise.
The Performances:
Elle Fanning’s performances elevate this film. Her portrayal of Thia is endearing and (mostly) innocent, forming an emotional core of the film that is easy to latch onto. She’s funny, sweet, and naive, but has the superior intellect given to her synth model. Her heel turn as Tessa is an excellent contrast. As warm as Thia is, Tessa is cold. There are conversations between the two about their personality programming that help to clarify their differences. Still, it’s curious that Weyland-Yutani would build similar models with different personalities.
Dimitri Schuster-Koloamatangi is a relative newcomer from New Zealand who performs the entire movie with heavy prosthetics, but a green-screened face with motion capture. Perhaps the most outstanding achievement of this film is the amount of facial expression that Dek has. Despite the exotic Yautja features, you can read grief, excitement, annoyance… the full range of human emotion in Dek’s expressions. Truly remarkable. This sells the story.
In my analysis of Alien: Earth, I noted that the greed of corporations like Weyland-Yutani was cutting corners in space exploration. Earth isn’t sending the best and brightest into space anymore. It’s now greed over science. Trachtenberg has picked up the baton from Noah Hawley’s shared-sister-universe and doubled down on that theme. There’s no better example of that than the presence and dispatch of multiple Smyths. Why not send a bunch of Tessa/Thia superior synths? Budget! Smyth must be a very inexpensive model.
Concluding Thoughts
Predator: Badlands walks the tightrope of innovation and familiarity. It contains enough of both to make this a real crowd-pleasing story. It’s thrilling, but not scary. It has fresh ideas, but you will recognize all of the tropes. The plot is easy to decipher, almost to the point of predictability, but it doesn’t bother you if you enjoy an Epic Quest formula.
Naturally, this film is set up for a sequel run. The climax hand delivers the arrival of a literal mothership. Given the skill, craft, love, and success (a $92 million worldwide opening weekend) this franchise is destined for expansion. Let’s hope that it does a better job than say… Riddick. Or (gulp) Alien vs. Predator.
Predator: Badlands is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong sci-fi violence. The movie is currently in wide release throughout the USA and will likely be in theaters for a few weeks, with little competition to get in the way.