Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a runt in the Yautja tribe.  Desperate to gain his father’s approval, he sets out to the planet Genna to hunt and kill the Kalisk and bring back its head as a war trophy. 

Dan Trachtenberg returns to the world of Predator with Predator: Badlands, a standalone follow-up to his widely acclaimed historical entry, Prey (2022), for Twentieth Century Studios.  After audience and critical backlash from weaseling out of giving Trachtenberg’s first outing a theatrical run, the now fully Disney-incorporated studio took Badlands wide on over 3,700 screens.  The film, written by Patrick Aison who broke the story along with Trachtenberg, runs 107 minutes, just short enough to not wear out its welcome but long enough that it must overcomplicate the rather simple seek and destroy concept of the franchise which it does through a slight reinvention and subversion of expectations to mixed success.   

In their attempt to elevate and legitimize this series, Trachtenberg and Aison set the first act of their film on Yautja Prime where we follow Dek and his brother, Kwei (Michael Homik, voiced by Stefan Grube), speaking in their alien tongue.  From there, the film pivots to Genna with Dek alone in what seems to be a single-hander following the stranger in a strange land with Jeff Cutter’s camera never too far behind.  Oddly enough, there are no real camera tricks employed across this first act and Cutter shoots it in a rather generic way, devoid of personality or point of view.  The audacity of Badlands is expended all on the page instead of the screen, which sets up a frightening expectation for audiences who are understandably not looking forward to spending another hour with the heavily CGI-made-up Dek wandering aimlessly and alone through various CGI landscapes. It is almost an out of body experience once the complete and utter artificiality is noticed, and makes for one of the most depressing realizations of the state of modern film that this digital slop is being passed off to audiences.

Just as the film approaches the bailing out point of no return for audiences, Thia (Elle Fanning), a dismembered Weyland-Yutani Corporation synthetic, is introduced allowing for some depth on a character level as Dek now has someone to converse with even if he is a creature of few words and connecting this film more directly into the shared Alien and Predator universe.  The void from his silence is quickly filled by her introduction, however, Fanning is saddled with a strange brand of humor that continues to give the entire film the sensation of watching a video game cut scene as she peddles in what can also be equally fairly described as Disney/Marvel quippy jokes and banter.  It is not the normal one liners that go hand in hand with action films, and can be seen as a bit of a homage to the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Ur text Predator (1987), but a cloying modern, chipper style that feels antithetical to the brand. As the thin narrative begins to unfold, it does deepen enough to begin to feel like an actual story, and through a bit of narrative Stockholm Syndrome we find ourselves warming up to this unlikely pair of protagonists, but the film still requires us to care about either a synthetic or a predator and without any truly human characters, this conceit struggles to find real traction. 

Where the film excels, though, is in the final act when Trachtenberg is able to flex his skills as an action director.  Across the first two acts, there were a smattering of smaller set pieces which introduced Dek to the various perils of Genna so that he could later wield them in his fight against the Kalisk.  This is all building to a much larger showdown as Dek faces off against the synthetic soldiers (Cameron Brown) of Weyland-Yutani Corporation on their research base.  It is nice to see all of these environmental elements come back together as it gives some late justification to the sequences early on where Dek was falling victim to the creatures of Genna.  While exciting in the moment, the finale still ultimately hinges on if we have been able to connect emotionally with Dek, and it will prove to be a bridge too far as there just is not enough evidence in the front two thirds of this film for us to care if he is successful on his mission or not.  The closest thing is that a victory for Dek will also result in a victory for Thia, and despite having an incredibly poorly written character, Fanning is able to nevertheless charm her way into the audience’s good graces. 

Part of what made Prey so fresh and exciting was that it transported the Predator into a new time and place, and, having been stripped down to the base elements of the lore, it almost did not feel like a Predator film; a similar feat Trachtenberg pulled off with his earlier 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016).  The big subversion here is that Badlands asks us to view the Predator as the protagonist by pitting him up against beasts and monsters with status affecting powers far exceeding the limits of Dek’s brute strength and plasma sword.  Couple that narrative hurdle with the watering down of one of the most brutal franchises to a more accessible PG13 rating, the shoehorning in of an overcomplicated universe – though, notably, this entry does not require much if any prior knowledge of either the Predator or Alien franchises – and the introduction of quippy little Disney-isms such as Bud (Ravi Narayan), an emotive, blue, alien creature designed for the toy makers, Badlands lands with a dull thud.  Trachtenberg does seem like he was afforded more latitude than most franchise filmmakers under the watchful gaze of The Mouse, but the money-making potential behind each creative decision within the context of the film can easily been seen through leaving audiences to feel like simply the sum of their ticket price more so than any other film this year.