In Good Hands - Predator: Badlands (+), Reviewed

What is it about the 1987 Predator movie that has made it so compelling for nearly four decades now? Looking back, it felt more like a one-off than any sort of franchise starter; an action film/creature feature hybrid with slasher movie overtones. But whisper "over here" within earshot of most nerds my age...

The connection to the Alien(s) franchise (simply by being made by the same film studio) came afterwards, almost by chance it seems, and in comic form at first, not films. The Aliens vs Predator comics were bold and imaginative, the movies...less so. Like so many 90s "versus" films, they crutched far too much on the spectacle of  two headliners battling each other instead of any grander context, insight or even irony.

Predator: Badlands breaks tradition and precedent in two important ways: first, the alien Predator (or Yautja, as they call themselves) is the protagonist instead of the villain or anti-hero. 

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is puny by Yautja standards, and although the trailers make it clear just how deadly the planet he ends up on is (Genna, described on-screen as a "Death Planet), I was not aware of just how desperate his situation is even before arriving there. 

Secondly, the introduction of Weiland-Yutani, the Earth mega-corporation introduced in 1986's Aliens (and which has just been getting more and more malicious ever since) comes in a way that makes sense: a damaged android named Thia (Elle Fanning), abandoned here during a bio-survey, offers to share what she has learned about Genna and its fauna to help Dek find his prey - the unkillable Kalisk.

And as far as I am concerned, that is all you need to know. 

I will tell you that there is a lot I loved about Badlands:

I love that there is so little dialogue in the first act.

I love that Dek speaks in Yautja for the entire films, despite the fact they drop a universal translator into the mix early on. (The actor comfortably drops lines in this created language during interviews, and has wished it was real so he could talk to others on the set without breaking character... <3 ).

I already adore Elle Fanning (primarily due to The Great), but loved how (for instance) she uses her double jointed elbows to make propping up her severed upper half seem even more inhuman and unnerving. 

I love Schuster-Koloamatangi's performance, and not just for his physicality (which is compelling and fierce!), but the intensity of him delivering lines we can't understand without subtitles, the disdain he conveys even through all the alien makeup and animation, and the insecurity you can sometimes sense behind it.

I love that we cannot say with any certainty when this particular film is set (pre-Alien? post-Alien Resurrection?), and even more, I love that it doesn't really matter. (I will say some of the gear looks shinier than Aliens...)

Some people are upset by the PG-13 rating this film received, but I am all for it: build more fans! Does having a sympathetic creature make this film too Disney? Hell no, wait 'til you see what it does... Despite the fact that this film does not contain a single solitary human being, it still feels as brutal and unforgiving as a Predator movie needs to be.

But Predator: Badlands still somehow manages to work a little pathos in there as well. 

I say 'well done' to director Dan Trachtenberg, who also gave us the excellent Prey in 2022, pitting an extra-big, extra-raw Predator against low-tech indigenous Americans. If you have Disney+ and haven't watched this yet, I urge you to get on it; I think Prey is the best Predator movie since the first one, and I enjoyed a bunch of the others.

Trachtenberg also gave us the first animated Predator feature earlier this very year, Killer of Killers. The girls and I watched it Friday night, and I highly recommend it. In fact, I think it gives an even clearer picture as to where he is taking this franchise.

This film establishes what was suggested in the very first film: that the Yautja have been coming to Earth to hunt for a very, very, long time. Three vignettes pit immensely capable fighters against different hunters in three different settings: the Viking Age, feudal Japan and WWII. The samurai/ninja action of the middle segment is some of the best I have seen depicted, and the creativity of the fights in the Viking piece is jaw-dropping in places. The linking portion that ties the three stories together is the least compelling, but suggests an intriguing future - as does the post-credits scene. (!)

Three movies in, I feel that the Predator franchise has a guiding hand now that the Aliens one never did, each subsequent creator moving further away from the core to put their own stamp on things (and yes, that goes for you too, Ridley!). My hope now is for Trachtenberg to keep his hands on the wheel for as long as possible, and I will be there for every bit of the ride.