Abandoned by his clan for being under-sized, fledgling predator Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) arrives on planet Genna to prove himself by hunting its most dangerous denizen.
Unfamiliar and unready for the planet’s dangers, Dek is forced to ally himself with a damaged android, Thia (Elle Fanning), who is trying to get back to her expedition.
Despite my love for Prey, I was neutral on Badlands before I saw it. Great reviews and a rainy day gave me a reason to check it out.
While Prey stands on its own as a movie, Badlands is an even more extreme break from the series
From the beginning, when it opens with Yautja proverb, the film is clear in its intentions to completely reorient the viewer’s expectations - unless this is their entry point into the film, in which case this just acts as scene-setting.
In the years I have reviewed this blog, I have reviewed many franchises. One of the joys of bingeing a series is following all the ways they change and transform, through different time periods and filmmakers.
What is fascinating about Predator is how these various experiments with the formula have been driven by the same filmmaker, David Trachtenberg.
He seems to approach the Predator with no sense of fealty to what has gone before - he does not dwell on callbacks, or trying to tie back to previous continuity. His approach is almost akin to a public domain property, taking the titular character as a starting point and pasting it into the middle of a blank canvas.
One of the most striking things about Badlands is that it features a completely new score - with no reference to Alan Silvestri’s iconic theme.
The one overt reference (if you want to call it that) is the presence of evil corporation Weyland-Yutani from the Alien franchise - but that connection is immaterial to their role as the antagonists of this story.
The film’s greatest success is finding a way into the titular character’s psyche. Dek never evokes the iconic mystery of Kevin Peter Hall - instead he is a flawed, green warrior - closer to the blundering soldiers of the 1987 original than their nemesis.
Stripped of his technology, and stuck in an environment where his natural strengths mean nothing, Dek is a fish out of water.
The situation forces Dek to stop being a lone wolf, and to accept help - first from Thia, and then a young indigenous alien who looks up to him.
The final film is more of a survival drama, with a finale that feels indebted to the one-man-army template laid down by original Predator star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Indeed, Deck’s improvised assault on the villains feels like a spiritual sequel to Arnie’s ambush of the Predator in that first movie.
It is a really fun movie, made more exciting by the sense that it gives the franchise endless opportunities to reinvent and expand its canvas - it is a model more series (cough, Star Wars, James Bond) should take inspiration from.
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