Prove Yourself to the Clan

Had you said five years ago that the Predator series would become a major, blockbuster franchise, people probably would have stared at you incredulously. While the series has had its highs and lows, it has never seemed like true, blockbuster fare. Its most successful film, comparing budget to Box Office performance, is still the original Predator, which made back nearly 6 times its relatively paltry $15 Mil production costs. The other sequels all struggled to break even or make much of a mark at all. Hell, the franchise was in such dire straights that by 2022 Disney didn’t even release the next entry in the franchise in theaters, instead putting Prey out on HuluOriginally created as a joint streaming service between the major U.S. broadcast networks, Hulu has grown to be a solid alternative to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, even as it learns harder on its collection of shows from Fox and FX since Disney purchased a majority stake in the service. instead.

You could hear the studio execs practically screaming when Prey then went on to become a critical and audience darling, being hailed as one of the best films in the franchise, perhaps even better than the original Predator. All of that was thanks to director Dan Trachtenberg and his creative team, and, credit where it’s due, Disney did learn one very valuable lesson from that: let Dan Trachtenberg make whatever he wants in the Predator franchise. He’s been in charge ever since, and the movies have all been great.

His follow-up to Prey was Predator: Killer of Killers, the franchise’s first animated film as well as the first anthology title in the series. That film pushed the world building of the franchise even further than the 18th Century set Prey. While it was also released direct to Hulu, you could tell that was meant to slake thirst and get people interested in the next film. Less than a year later, out came Predator: Badlands, straight to theaters for a much hype, and very much anticipated, blockbuster run. And now, with the early receipts in, Disney’s gambit seems to have paid off. Predator: Badlands has a series-high debut of $80 Mil its opening weekend, and is expected to a whole lot more as it rides early, favorable critical reception through the late Fall season.

Even then, though, the question remains if Trachtenberg could work his magic once again. Just because the hype was real, and people were interested in seeing this film, that doesn’t mean the movie is actually any good. Thankfully, though, Predator: Badlands is another creative win for the director and his team. It’s a film that dares to put one of the predators, or Yautja as they call themselves, front and center as the hero of the film, not the shadowy villain, and then constructs a story around him. This is new ground for the franchise, in a way, even if the story that it builds does feel like it hits familiar beats. Still, overall this is a strong film with great creative decisions that isn’t just fun on its own, it also spells good things for the future of the franchise.

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, buried under extensive makeup and CGI) is the runt of his clan, the youngest and smallest of his father’s children. His father thinks Dek is a waste of space, a weakness the clan should excised, although Dek’s brother, Kwei (played by Mike Homik, voiced by Stefan Grube), has always had Dek’s back. Kwei wants Dek to go on his hunt and earn his “cloak” (his invisibility tech), and for this hunt Dek has already chosen the Kalisk, the deadliest creature the Yautja know of. In defending his brother, though, Kwei puts his own life on the line, dying at the hands of their father (Reuben de Jong), but not before sending Dek off to the planet Genna to fight the Kalisk.

Genna, though, is a deadly place. Every creature on the surface is a predator, and everything wants to kill Dek. Exploring the surface, and finding that everything wants to kill him, Dek gains an unlikely ally in Thia (Ell Fanning), a Weyland-Yutani synth. Thia previously saw the Kalisk and lived to tell about it, although she also lost her legs in the process during the encounter. Thia needs Dek’s help to get back to her people, especially her “sister”, Tessa (also Fanning), who she is paired with in their work studying Genna. Dek needs Thia’s help in understanding the dangers of Genna. Only by working together will they both survive… that is if the many dangers from the planet, and Weyland-Yutani, don’t kill them first.

The smartest decision that Predator: Badlands makes is putting Dek in as the protagonist of the film. We’ve seen plenty of people go head to head against a Yautja before and we know that these aliens are among the deadliest killers in the universe. If you fight a Yautja and live then you must have been very lucky, and very good. By putting a Yautja in as the protagonist, it says two things. First, because Dek struggles to survive on the planet that shows just how dangerous the planet really is. Secondly, it also promises a different kind of story in the universe than we’ve seen before.

The first point is entirely true as Genna does seem like the kind of place that would kill any of our usual protagonists before they even had a chance to get their boots on. The Governator’s Dutch was smart, strong, and capable, but I doubt he would have survived long against all the dangers of Genna, and Danny Glover’s Harrigan would have been smashed into meat paste before he could have even noted that he was too old for this shit. The movie sells us on the fact that Genna is unforgiving and deadly all thanks to how much Dek struggles.

The second point, about this being a different kind of story, maybe doesn’t land quite as well. Yes, we are finally getting a story about a Yautja, but I would argue that Dek’s story isn’t really all that different from Naru’s in Prey. Both were the undervalued hunters in their clan, he because he’s the smallest of his Yautja brethren and she because she was female. Both find something to hunt so deadly no one else in their clan is capable of killing it. Both go out into unfamiliar territory to bag the beast and, in the process, learn a lot about themselves and how far they are willing to go for honor. The details do get changed up between the two, but deep down Dek fits into the kind of mythology Trachtenberg is building without really straining the formula at all.

Not that I think this is a bad thing, per se. Just because this film feels familiar (to a point where Dek even does what I would call a “reverse Predator”) that doesn’t make it flawed. As a gateway into the Yautja culture, Dek is a good subject for us to study. He’s more relatable than some of his clan, with goals we can understand. Being the underdog makes him someone we can root for, and since he’s not hunting humans we actually want to see him succeed, in some form, on his quest to prove himself. Were he bigger, stronger, and more like a normal Yautja we probably wouldn’t like him as much or want to root for him. Not yet, anyway.

Of course, some fans have complained that this is the first film in the franchise with a PG-13 rating. I can understand that concern as this is a somewhat lighter, maybe even more Blockbuster-friendly, version of the franchise. It doesn’t feature humans getting ripped apart, and no one really cusses in the film, but I think setting and story dictate that a lot more than just a need for a PG-13 rating. Dek fights aliens and androids, and he speaks his own language. In the context of the film, the gore and violence fits the setting, and if the MPAA decided this didn’t need an R rating because human spines weren’t ripped out that doesn’t make this film any worse. It just means more people can see it and then, just maybe, their parents will let them see the bloodier movies afterwards.

Plus, Predator: Badlands is a lot of fun. The film pairs Dek up with Thia (and eventually another creature as well) and it lets him make something of an unlikely clan. The film provides plenty of action, along with a bit of humor, to keep things lively and interesting. You enjoy watching Dek’s progression through the film as he learns what it means to not just be a killer but also a leader. He gains people, learns to trust, and fights for what he actually believes in. This might be more growth than your average Predator fan would expect from one of these films, or these creatures, but Dek is the runt and he can make his own, very different, path. The film reflects the hero more than the needs of the fanbase, and I can respect that.

As my wife commented when we left the theater, “I shouldn’t have enjoyed that as much as I did,” and I can understand where she was coming from. She’s not a Predator fan, but over the last three films – Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers, and now Predator: Badlands – she’s grown to enjoy this franchise a lot. Trachtenberg is onto something, and his formula attracts new eyes and gets new people engaged with the franchise. It’s not surprising that Predator: Badlands is on track to become the most successful film in the franchise. If anything, the only surprising thing about it is that it took this long for someone to finally get the franchise right.