With a powerful battle sequence between brothers on the Predator home world of Yautja Prime, Predator Badlands (2025) starts with an operatic bang. The two brothers, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), and the older Kwei (Mike Homik), are training relentlessly. Dek, much smaller than the standard warriors we see in these films, is desperate to prove himself to the clan, and his brother is desperate to help him survive their ruthless culture. After a dramatic confrontation between the brothers and their father, Dek escapes with a quest to hunt the Kalisk, a rumoured unkillable monster on the unforgiving planet of Genna.
Like a live-action version of Scavengers Reign (one of the best shows of the decade), Badlands is all about the environment and the evolutionary marvel of a stranger crash landing on a new planet. With its unique plant and animal kinds that Dek must learn to understand to survive, director and now franchise steward Dan Trachtenberg has developed the first Predator film that actually puts the shoe on the other foot of the Yautja. What allows the film to thrive and stand alongside the John McTiernan original is its exploration of the dense planet of Genna, which brings the story’s intimacy into focus.
Quickly into Dek’s journey through Genna, he stumbles onto and is rescued by Thia, a severed Weyland-Yutani synth played by the effortlessly charming Elle Fanning. Through the overly chatty Thia and the attempting brooding of Dek, the familiar trappings of the mismatched adventure duo, laid on top of the familiar story of the runt of the litter in search of validation from the clan, ground the storytelling. This allows the simple charms and filmmaking craft to flourish inside a franchise that never settled on anything outside of its central figures’ iconic imagery.
Elle Fanning, surrounded by cute and fascinating creatures, has the charm and humour to sustain an entire film herself. A longtime actor who has recently become one of the most in-demand actors in the industry, Fanning pulls double shifts here as Thia and Tessa, two synths exploring the planet and also seeking the Kalisk. Her boundless energy, as Thia, is played in stark contrast to her “sister,” Tessa, a cold and driven synth that plays the role of a killing machine, typically reserved for the film’s resident predator.
But this is not just a Fanning showcase. For too long, the Predator franchise has fallen flat in its characterisation of its iconic hunter. Until Dek and Kwei, we had not had a real conversation between Yautja, an outrageous failure of a franchise that never seemed invested in the science fiction genre that has allowed the Alien franchise to expand and evolve. By opening up the role of the predator as Dek finds his place amongst an unfamiliar world, Badlands is allowed a freedom to morph and change at will. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi does not have much facial real estate to exude personality to an audience, but the deep focus on him allows his fear and uncertainty to ground his journey in a familiarity rarely seen in the franchise.
Never before has the cultural bloodsport that is the heart of the Predator franchise been more sharply critiqued and illuminated as it is here, becoming quickly apparent why Trachtenberg felt there was so much left to say to rapidly pen a trilogy of feature films. A species of hyper-intelligent, hyper-athletic and advanced warriors so uninspired by their own cultural wealth that only the pursuit of a galaxy-spanning hunt can give them purpose. With a simple turn to have a Predator film centre a familiar narrative of the runt of the litter goes out to prove themselves to the pack, we finally see ourselves in the eyes of these once mythical, feeling creatures.
What allows the film to thrive is its cinematic integrity, focusing on a Yautja as a protagonist, staring intently at its face and eyes. Through those eyes, Badlands probes deeper into the worlds and cultures so rarely seen in a franchise a mile long and an inch deep. For too long, filmmakers have focused on the Yautja as an invisible hunter stalking prey, never probing into their real thoughts or struggles, or even giving them a language to communicate.
By striving for incremental IP world-building and narrative exploration over cinematic iconography, Badlands, like Prey (2022) before it, has quiet goals that it easily achieves. With a fully game duo in Fanning and newcomer Schuster-Koloamatangi, Trachtenberg, in a suite of films, takes his place as steward of the once flailing franchise. That he has achieved this not through IP management or navel gazing but by finding a unique balance between narrative exploration and genre entertainment is no small feat, something that should make fans, young and old, stand up and applaud.
Predator Badlands is in theatres now.
Rating Frames 