Images courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Review by Jon Donnis
Predator: Badlands arrives with a fair bit of expectation tucked under its armour, and you can see why. Dan Trachtenberg knows how to make this universe feel gritty, textured and alive, and the seventh entry has a bold confidence from its opening moments. What you get is a strange mix of spectacle, character work and franchise reinvention that sometimes thrills and sometimes makes you sigh.
The story follows Dek, a Yautja runt who has never had his father's approval and ends up exiled to the savage world of Genna. The film wastes no time plunging you into its nastier corners. You feel the sting of its hostile flora and the weight of its thick atmosphere. Dek's reluctant partnership with Thia, a damaged Weyland Yutani synthetic played with real feeling by Elle Fanning, gives the film its strongest thread. Their odd bond grows as they face the Kalisk, a regenerating apex brute that gives the film its best action beats. The moment Dek finally squares off with the creature, loses, survives and winds up in corporate captivity is handled with a surprising amount of heart, helped along by Dimitrius Schuster Koloamatangi's quiet determination.
Visually, the film is a treat. There is a lovely blend of practical work and digital support, and Genna's wide open vistas look properly dangerous. The fights are tight, clear and loaded with impact. Even the buddy elements land more often than not, helped along by the amusing presence of Bud, the native creature that ends up tying the plot together.
The trouble arrives when you step back and look at what this means for the franchise. The script leans heavily on familiar genre beats. You can feel when a scene is echoing something from other sci fi adventures rather than carving out something fresh. More than that, the film shifts the Predator from a menacing force into something closer to a sympathetic underdog. It puts the whole thing in buddy film territory, and the tonal drift will not sit well with older fans. Calling it softened might be a little generous. It feels as if the film is trying to reshape the mythology into something more palatable for a modern audience, and the result does blunt the creature's historic edge.
The adventure works, but the franchise framing does not always help it.
Predator: Badlands is a good time, and on its own merits it would be an even better one. The problem is that it sits in the shadow of a creature that once defined a genre. This film turns that monster into a troubled youngster working through family baggage, and the comparison to the brutal 1987 original does it no favours. Think small nervous dog versus powerful beast and you get the idea.
It is entertaining. It has heart. It has strong action. It is also the wrong fit for the badge on the poster. For that reason, a fair score is 7 out of 10.
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