Predator: Badlands review: frontline Yautja, frontline feelings

In recent years, the Predator franchise has found a new home. Being acquired by Disney through larger horizontal integration with 21st Century Fox, the series had a new studio, but now it needed a vision.

In comes Dan Trachtenberg, the appointed found father of the Predator property in its modern iterations. While obviously not being there at its beginnings, he's proved to have an understanding of what makes these gory Yautja hunting rituals entertaining on the silver screen, and has steered far clear of what made them start to flop. With what is now his third go at directing one of these movies (and his second released in 2025, following Predator: Killer of Killers), Trachtenberg gives us Predator: Badlands. Third time's the charm, as they say.

It's a stark change of direction; one that takes us far into the future and places a Yautja in the driver's seat. Our protagonist here is Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a small soldier on the verge of having his status among the Predator ranks terminated, along with his life. Determined to prove his worth to the 'weakness means death' ontology of his bloodline, Dek seeks out the galaxy's most formidable creature - the Kalisk.

A centre-stage Predator certainly sounds weird; how exactly do you root for the guy killing all the people and ripping their spines out in celebration? Well, Dan Trachtenberg knows this franchise inside and out, and he understands that the logic of this trophy-hunting, warmongering species is a little daft. We're given an unmasked frontline Yautja who isn't so blindly stricken by his clan's philosophies and learns that being a one man army isn't really all that emotionally rewarding.

While he takes stage in a similar mindset to his on-screen ancestors, Dek grows throughout the story to find a new family. It's here we meet Elle Fanning and her dialectic of characters Thia and Tessa, entering Badlands into the bizarre but welcome pantheon of 2025 flicks with lead actors playing dual roles. Thia befriends the Yautja somewhat, teaming up begrudgingly to help each other make ends meet (in Thia's case, literally).

In many ways, Badlands is a pastiche of all that came before it. The film feels like Predator's answer to The Mandalorian with its Disney-era Star Wars humour and charm that's even complete with a cutesy Grogu-like companion harbouring some great potential. The plot is also very Monster Hunter-adjacent — a sentiment shared by Trachtenberg himself as a lover of the gaming franchise — and fittingly gives due care to make the inhabited planet of Genna feel biologically full, with all its critters, whether they be the bottom-feeders or apex predators, being pretty detailed and inspired.

Badlands also weaves into its narrative some water-testing for the franchise's future, as a central antagonistic force winds up being none other than the Weyland-Yutani corporation of the Alien franchise and Thia's hardline android sister Tessa. It's not the first time these two series have butted heads, but it's the first in quite a long while since the admittedly disastrous and unintelligible Alien vs. Predator duology.

This change of pace and more humourous approach to the franchise is a little hard to navigate compared to the other Predator films, and a Yautja cracking jokes isn't something I'm totally on board with. Still, the other characters bring a lot of delightfully funny moments to ease the tension of a life or death scenario, whether it be Elle Fanning's Thia and her synthetic wit, or the visual gags with the ape-like creature named Bud that joins the two on their journey.

The series' tone is absolutely different here, further added to with the film's story being oddly sweet. We watch a Yautja learn to dissent the savage and cold reality of his upbringing and allow himself to be emotional, to have friends, and to have hope. Dek enjoys things even as his life hangs in the balance of his quest, and having the titular Predator feel entirely emotionally separate to his ancestors helps the change in angle find its footing.

Another shift that worried fans is the age rating, now only a 12A in the UK and thus stripping back the gory brutalities brought to the series by the Yautjas' hunts. Thankfully, a solution was found and this film certainly does not pull any punches in its action. Instead of slicing through and exploding the heads of humans and soldiers, there is actually not a single human being in Badlands, with every foe being an android or deadly creature of Genna's complex ecosystem. Gore seems to be perfectly acceptable to the BBFC when the monsters are gushing out what resembles mint ice cream or Fanta rather than blood.

Initial concerns aside, Dan Trachtenberg knows how to make these movies now, and he's mastered the craft of keeping the franchise interesting after it dragged itself through the past two decades with facsimiles and boring repetitions. A protagonist Predator sounds strange, and it is, but it winds up being really fun once you get past the growing pains. The franchise feels warmer, more optimistic, more 'punk-rock' as 2025's Superman called it, and this change in tone gives us what might be the franchise's best since its inception, even if it feels a bit different.