With Prey, Dan Trachtenberg brought a thrillingly lethal edge back to the Predator saga, and he continues sharpening it with Predator: Badlands.
Whereas his prior film was a lean, mean, direct-to-streaming venture set in the past, his follow-up (November 7, in theaters) is an operatic big-screen adventure that leapfrogs into tomorrow and, to a significant extent, flips the script à la Terminator 2 by making its alien bounty hunter a sympathetic protagonist on a multi-pronged quest to prove he’s worthy of joining his clan, to seek revenge against those who’ve wronged him, and—most unexpected of all—to learn that there’s strength in numbers.
Pairing its fanged extraterrestrial assassin with a superbly funny Elle Fanning, it’s the series’ second-best installment and a rousing start to what appears to be a grand new franchise future.
On the home world of the Yautja (the technical name for the Predators), Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) squares off against his older brother Kwei (Mike Homik) in an attempt to demonstrate his mettle.
He falls short, but even in defeat, he’s allowed to choose an interplanetary target to kill—a rite of passage that will let him earn his cloak (i.e., invisibility tech) and, with it, a place in their family. Determined to show his father that he’s not a “runt,” Dek opts to hunt a famed beast known as the Kalisk on the “death planet” of Genna. This is foolhardy, but he nonetheless gets his chance at glory when his dad (also Schuster-Koloamatangi) arrives and orders Kwei to kill him, only to see his brother defend him against his murderous pops—who, before Dek is sent off in Kwei’s ship, callously beheads his son.
For the Yautjas, it’s kill or be killed, and that ethos serves Dek well on Genna, where he’s immediately attacked by long, vicious branch-like tentacles. With no helmet and a scant few weapons at his disposal—most of his armaments, including his trademark shoulder-cannon, remain on the ship he abandoned before crashing to the surface—Dek ventures onward and, in a field full of knockout-thorn plants, he meets, and is saved from a dragon-y creature by, Thia (Fanning), who’s spent the past few weeks tied up in a giant nest.
Thia is as chipper as she is formidable, and Fanning’s ebullience is the engine that drives Predator: Badlands’ humor, her bright, sunshiny demeanor and curiosity about Dek serving as a funny counterpoint to the Predator’s surly single-mindedness about his hunt and attendant belief that he must accomplish it alone. Though reluctant, Dek strikes a deal: for directions to the Kalisk, he’ll take Thia along as his “tool”—a loophole he uses to justify teaming up with her—so she can retrieve what was taken from her by the brute: her legs.
Thia, it’s quickly revealed, is a synthetic owned and operated by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the nefarious outfit from the Alien franchise, and she too is on Genna—with an army of synths, including Tessa (also Fanning), her paired artificial partner—to locate the Kalisk.
Given Weyland-Yutani’s history of collecting fearsome E.T.s for use as bioweapons, it’s not difficult to discern the nature of Thia’s mission. Predator: Badlands, however, is more concerned with her relationship to Dek, who’s resolved to establish his badass bona fides without any assistance. Unfortunately for him, a run-in with a Bone Bison in a field of razor grass demands that he work with not just Thia but also a monkey-ish creature (whom Thia later dubs “Bud”) that comes to their assistance and, afterwards, takes a liking to Dek, even spitting on him as a way of marking him as part of his clan.
Trachtenberg’s opening set piece is marred by the dull CGI murkiness that’s usually the province of Netflix, yet the remainder of his action is majestic and electric, and he and cinematographer Jeff Cutter intersperse their fearsome chaos with panoramas of Genna that would be right at home in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine.
Unlike the stripped-down Prey, Predator: Badlands is big and burly, with Dek facing off against a variety of imposing adversaries that peak with the Kalisk, a four-legged goliath whose toughness comes from the fact that it can instantly regenerate any severed body part—a trait that’s obviously of interest to Weyland-Yutani. Dek’s skirmish against his coveted trophy, which takes place as Thia strives to reconnect her legs to her torso, is a dynamic high point. Still, it’s merely a prelude to ensuing showdowns, all of which pivot around the revelation that Dek’s most fearsome rival is, in fact, the ruthless Tessa.
Predator: Badlands is rife with tensions between siblings, comrades, and parents and children (including Weyland-Yutani’s supercomputer MU/TH/UR), and at a certain point, it becomes apparent that Dek’s destiny is to grasp the value of togetherness and fashion his own makeshift family.
Trachtenberg’s story (written by Patrick Aison and Brian Duffield) is a common machine with slightly unique bells and whistles, and what sells it is the odd-couple chemistry between Fanning and Schuster-Koloamatangi, who despite not speaking the same on-screen language (she uses English; he communicates in subtitled Yautja-ese) create a winning rapport that grows more endearing as the proceedings barrel toward a final clash that boasts major Aliens vibes.
Whether or not Predator: Badlands is intent on setting up another round of Alien vs. Predator affairs, Trachtenberg’s intertwining of the two classic cine-series further enhances the scope and scale of his latest.
To a greater extent than Hulu’s recent animated Predator: Killer of Killers anthology, the film successfully breaks from its predecessors’ mold by pivoting its tale around the nominal villain (rather than the humans it’s after), and the director’s main accomplishment (of many) is to humanize the Predator without sacrificing his unswerving deadliness.
Dek is a fully developed three-dimensional antihero, and Schuster-Koloamatangi’s expressive eyes and body language do much to convey the motivating feelings raging beneath his monstrous hide.
As both a noble and evil android, Fanning is even more captivating, delivering delightful yin-yang performances that speak to the material’s fixation on the (biological vs. hand-picked) ties that bind. Her turns, ultimately, are as exciting as any of Predator: Badlands’ slam-bang centerpieces—and verify, as did Ian Holm and Michael Fassbender before her, that there are few sci-fi roles as rewarding as a Weyland-Yutani ‘bot.
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