For nearly four decades, the Predator has been the thing hunting you through the trees, the invisible death with the clicking mandibles and the shoulder cannon. Dan Trachtenberg just took that entire premise and flipped it upside down. “Predator: Badlands” hit theaters this week, and its boldest, most fascinating swing is right there in its DNA: this time, the Yautja is the hero. After resurrecting the franchise from the dead with the lean, brilliant “Prey,” Trachtenberg has doubled down on his creative gamble, and the result is easily the most daring thing this series has ever attempted.
The film follows Dek, played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, a runt and an outcast from the Yautja home world who sets out to prove himself by hunting an apex creature called the Kalisk on a brutally hostile planet. Along the way he forms an unlikely alliance with Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani android played by Elle Fanning, who also appears as a second synthetic named Tessa. That partnership, a warrior raised on a culture of solitary killing learning to trust a machine built by a corporation from a completely different nightmare, is the beating heart of the movie. As the seventh Predator installment and a direct follow-up to both “Prey” and the animated “Predator: Killer of Killers,” it also quietly threads the Alien franchise into its world through that Weyland-Yutani connection. Warning: beyond this point there are spoilers for “Predator: Badlands” and its place in the wider Predator and Alien universe.
Its boldest, most fascinating swing is right there in its DNA: this time, the Yautja is the hero.”
Making the Predator a protagonist is the kind of idea that could have gone catastrophically wrong, and the only reason it works is because Trachtenberg has banked so much goodwill. “Prey” was a genuine revelation, a stripped-down period piece that reminded everyone why this creature was terrifying in the first place, and it bought the director the trust to try something this strange. Building a whole film around empathizing with the monster, understanding its culture, its hierarchy, and its capacity for something like growth, is a fundamental reimagining of what a Predator story can be. It asks us to root for the hunter, and remarkably, it earns it.
Fanning is the secret weapon here, pulling double duty as two different synthetics and giving the film its emotional and comedic center. The dynamic between Dek and Thia carries the whole enterprise, an odd-couple pairing across an enormous cultural and literal divide, and it gives Trachtenberg room to explore themes of belonging and worth that the franchise has never really touched. This is not a movie interested in simply stacking up kills, it is interested in why the killing matters and what it costs, and that thematic ambition is what separates it from the disposable sequels that nearly buried this series in the first place.
The world-building is where the film flexes hardest. Taking us to Yautja Prime and building out an entire alien ecosystem, complete with a terrifying new apex creature in the Kalisk, expands the mythology in ways that feel genuinely fresh rather than obligatory. And that Weyland-Yutani thread is the tease that has franchise fans buzzing, a deliberate bridge between the Predator world and the Alien universe that suggests a much larger crossover ambition simmering under the surface. Trachtenberg is clearly building toward something bigger, and he is laying the track with real care.
The critical response has backed up the ambition, with reviews landing in strongly positive territory and the consensus crediting Trachtenberg for steering the franchise in exciting new directions. That is the whole story of this creative era, honestly. A series that spent years as a punchline, cranking out forgettable sequels and crossover cash grabs, has been transformed into one of the most interesting franchises in blockbuster filmmaking, all because a director with a genuine vision took it seriously.
“Badlands” is not a safe movie, and that is exactly why it works. It bets everything on the radical notion that the monster can be the hero, and it wins. The hunt has evolved, and for the first time in a long time, there is nowhere this franchise cannot go.
What do you think? Does making the Predator the protagonist deepen the mythology in a way the franchise desperately needed, or does it risk defanging the monster that made these movies scary? Is the Weyland-Yutani connection a genuine sign that a full Alien versus Predator crossover is being rebuilt the right way this time? And has Dan Trachtenberg officially become the most valuable filmmaker in blockbuster horror after resurrecting this franchise twice over?
See you on the next binge!
