Predator: Badlands Changes Everything for the Franchise
Some people just get it. Dan Trachtenberg, architect of the Predator franchise of late, director of Prey, Killer of Killers, and the newest entry into the Yautja saga, Predator: Badlands, gets it. Trachtenberg took a basic concept that had been tread and retread over almost 40 years and tells stories from a fresh perspective. In Prey, Trachtenberg flipped the script by making the hero a young girl and setting the story in the past, where humans didn’t have access to technology. This contrasted with earlier Predator films, where the Yautja often hunted combat-trained men, from special forces operatives like Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) or Royce (Adrian Brody) to LAPD Officers like Mike Harrigan (Donald Glover), who all had access to guns. Killer of Killers explored that concept a little further and featured heroes from different periods in history. With Predator: Badlands, he flips the script again and tells a story from the Yautja’s perspective, with no humans at all. Well, sort of. Trachtenberg cheats a little by including a synth, those white-blooded synthetic humanoids from the Alien franchise, and pairs the hero with a comic foil to give us the buddy cop movie set in space we never knew we needed.
ALSO READ:
Predator: Killer of Killers on Disney+ Is Poetry in Action
Alien: Earth Is Must-Watch Sci-Fi and a Franchise Game Changer
Elle Fanning as Thia and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek in 'Predator: Badlands' (2025)
Badlands features Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a somewhat undersized Yautja who needs to prove himself to his clan and a disapproving father who isn’t winning any Father of the Year awards. He makes his way to Genna, dubbed the Death Planet because its flora and fauna are basically out to kill everyone, and hunt down the fabled Kalisk, an unkillable apex predator. On Genna, he crosses paths with Thia (Elle Fanning), a synth who has had an unfortunate run-in with the planet’s inhabitants and could use Dek’s help to get around. It’s a winning combination — Dek’s dour demeanor and Thia’s bright-eyed cheerfulness create a delightful and entertaining dynamic. Badlands is a Predator story unlike any other, infused with humor, cute moments, and an actual story arc that sees Dek grow from his obstinate determination to being the first Yautja to break from tradition. The film opens with a passage from the Yautja Codex, which reads:
Yautja are prey to none,
friend to none,
predator to all.
As seen in past Predator films, the Yautja famously and proudly hunt alone. Dek only accepts Thia’s assistance by rationalizing that she’s merely a tool, no different from his sword or one of a Yautja’s vast arsenal of weapons. Thia isn’t alive, after all; she’s just a robot. It would be no different from using a Roomba or a cell phone. Sure, Dek.
But the most interesting part of Predator: Badlands is that it’s a clever rebuke of toxic masculinity, recognizing the entirety of Yautja culture as an extraterrestrial bastion of the patriarchy where feelings are signs of weakness and asking for help is unthinkable. But the Yautja are actually real jerks — the mid-credits of Killer of Killers revealed that even though they appear to act honorably towards those who beat them or survive their hunts, they end up enslaving them, anyway. The same traits that the Yautja value are the same attitudes pushed by proponents of the manosphere that, on the surface, appear to be harmless or even commendable: strength, toughness, and independence. But it’s a strength that punishes the weak; a toughness that shuns empathy and emotion; and an independence that isolates. Dek’s view of Thia as a tool is thinly veiled misogyny, the same mentality of men who don’t view women as equals but as objects to be used or discarded. The unsubtle point is driven home when Thia tells Dek of a great hunter from Earth called the wolf, which hunts in packs led by a leader, called the ‘alpha’. This inspires Dek to want to become an alpha (male), too, and kill everything in sight. But Thia gently tells him that the alpha isn’t the wolf that kills the most, but the one that protects the pack. It’s a redefinition of the patriarchal male ideal, helped along by Thia, who is programmed to feel emotion in order to better understand the creatures of Genna.
When Dek lands on the planet, he isn’t interested in understanding its inhabitants. Everything is prey, just something to be killed or used on his quest to take down the Kalisk. This has always been the Yautja way. Badlands does something no other Predator film has done by taking Dek on a journey of growth and self-discovery, and managing to make one of pop culture's great villains into a genuine hero. Fanning does double duty as Thia and an identical synth named Tessa, who have disparate personalities reminiscent of David Jonsson’s character flip as Andy in Alien: Romulus. If Thia is a ray of sunshine, Tessa is all business, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s good little soldier who will do what needs to be done in order to complete her mission. Tessa is Thia’s dark mirror, who uses emotion and understanding to exploit, a female equivalent to Yautja’s toxic masculinity, if you will. It goes without saying that Weyland-Yutani is up to no good and doing evil corporation things like it does in Alien: Earth. It’s no accident that on a planet populated by things that can kill you, the most sinister thing is still corporate greed.
Trachtenberg rewrites the rules of the Predator franchise. The Yautja are no longer nameless adversaries who hunt down humans and other species for sport, but also heroes capable of growth and development. Some elements of Badlands are reminiscent of the video game Monster Hunter and the sword and sorcery film from the '80s, The Beastmaster. Trachtenberg builds worlds beyond Predator’s original, limited premise, expanding on the Yautja’s culture and homeworld as well as other planets and creatures in the galaxy. Just as Alien: Earth introduced hair-raising new creepy-crawlies that match or even exceed the xenomorph in fear factor, Badlands serves up an outstanding menagerie of alien lifeforms, not least of which is the nigh indestructible Kalisk.
Weyland-Yutani’s prominent role in the film establishes once and for all that 20th Century Fox’s two biggest sci-fi properties share one universe, and it’s expanding faster than the Big Bang. The latest entries into this shared universe have all been home runs, from Romulus to Alien: Earth and from Prey to Killer of Killers, it’s been a rising crescendo of science fiction goodness. Each of those stories has endings that leave the door open for the next chapter, and Badlands is no different. Trachtenberg is batting 1.00 so far, and it’s tough not to get excited for whatever new story comes next.
