Predator: Badlands, 2025.
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg.
Starring Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi.
SYNOPSIS:
Predator: Badlands was another strong showing in a franchise that I admit has surprised me with its ability to keep me engaged with various kinds of stories. The digital copy of the film comes with a smattering of bonus features.
I’ve always found the Predator species, officially now known as Youtja, as a one-dimensional choice to focus movies on, but last summer’s Predator: Killer of Killers changed my mind, as did last fall’s Predator: Badlands. (And, yes, 2022’s Prey helped too.)
Of course, the presence of other characters is what helps make this kind of movie interesting, and in Badlands, we have a crossover with the Alien franchise to help sweeten the story.
Badlands focuses on Dek, a Yautja runt whose warlord father wants him dead, at the hands of his brother, after Dek expressed a desire to hunt an apex predator known as the Kalisk on the planet Genna. His brother defies their father, and Dek ends up taking the journey anyway.
When he gets there, Dek runs into Thia, a Weyland-Yutani android missing the lower half of her body. They become an unlikely pair after Thia offers to help Dek track the Kalisk, since she needs to rendezvous with others from the corporation who are on the planet.
Along the way, they meet a friendly little creature that Thia names Bud, who helps them during their journey. In the meantime, Tessa, another Weyland-Yutani android who functions as Thia’s “sister” and was damaged too, is retrieved by other androids who fix her.
The corporation wants the Kalisk for its bio-weapons division, of course, which leads to conflict between Dek and his crew and the Weyland-Yutani group. While the plot is fairly predictable, Thia is a fun character who plays off Dek’s fierce seriousness well, resulting in a bouncy little story that ends with the potential for a sequel.
I’m also wondering if this film may tie in with the streaming series Alien: Earth, which reveals other alien species that Weyland-Yutani is interested in, beyond the Giger-created monster we all know and love. Maybe not every franchise needs to be a cinematic universe in the Marvel mold, but I think it would be fun for the larger Predator and Alien story worlds to come together for a larger overarching storyline that spans TV and film.
As far as I know, the digital version of Predator: Badlands offers the same set of extras you’ll find on the physical 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs, including a batch of featurettes that run about 23 minutes in total, a commentary track, and several deleted and pre-visualization scenes.
First up are the featurettes:
• Embodying the Predator (5 minutes): This is a quick look at the various practical and digital techniques used to bring the Predator to life in this modern era.
• Authentic Synthetics (6 minutes): Elle Fanning plays both of the androids, so she compares and contrasts the two characters here.
• Building the Badlands (6 minutes): A look at how the planet Genna was created from real-world locations.
• Dek of the Yautja (6 minutes): Director Dan Trachtenberg guides this overview of the evolution of the Predators’ culture. They’re basically Klingons, so, like I said earlier, you need other characters to really carry a Predator movie.
Trachtenberg is joined by producer Ben Rosenblatt, director of photography Jeff Cutter, and stunt coordinator Jacob Tomuri for the commentary track, which is an informative discussion of the making of the film.
Finally, the deleted and pre-viz scenes are available with and without commentary. There are six total, and they give a nice look at the pre-production process for the film as well as the various ways it was trimmed for the final result.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
