WhilePredator: Badlandsmight officially feature some crossover with theAlienfranchise, Dan Trachtenberg’s sequel is still notable for telling aPredatorstory that the rival sci-fi series could never pull off.ThePredatormoviestried their best, but none of the original 1987 movie’s follow-ups could quite recapture the unique blend of intense action, surprisingly brutal gore, and inventive sci-fi storytelling that made the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle sing. That is, until director Dan Trachtenberg’s 2022 prequelPrey.
Preymanaged to live up to the promise ofPredatorwith its stripped-back, deceptively simple story of Amber Midthunder’s Comanche heroine Naru evading the Predator on the Great Plains in 1719.Preywas such a success that Trachtenberg now hastwoPredatormovies coming in 2025, the animated anthologyPredator: Killer of Killersand the live-action sequelPredator: Badlands.AlthoughPredator: Killer of KillersisthePredatormovie viewers have wanted for decades, the first teaser trailer forPredator: Badlandsproves it might be even more exciting for fans of the franchise.
Predator: Badlands Has A Predator As The Main Character
The Franchise’s Monster Becomes Its Protagonist This Time Around
Predator: Badlandsstars Elle Fanning as Thia, a Weyland-Yutani synthetic who teams up with the outcast Yautja Dek to survive on a harsh, remote planet. That’s right,Predator: Badlands revealed its links to theAlienmoviesas early as its first teaser trailer with a shot of Thia’s eyes powering down like David fromPrometheusor Andy fromAlien: Romulus. However, this isn’t even the most exciting aspect of the movie’s plot.
The thing that makesPredator: Badlandstruly special is the fact that Trachtenberg’s movie has a Predator as its hero, not its villain. The series has toyed with this approach before, most notably in the deservedly deridedAlien Vs Predatormovies. In both 2004’sAlien Vs Predatorand 2007’s gorier, somehow worse follow-upAliens Vs Predator: Requiem, comparatively heroic Yautja teamed up with humans to ensure that Xenomorphs didn’t annihilate the population of Earth. However, neither of these plots worked.
1987
80%
1990
29%
2004
21%
2007
12%
2010
65%
2018
34%
2022
94%
The Yautja were nowhere near as threatening as they usually are in these movies, since they were reduced to being clean-up crews for the voracious, monstrous Xenomorphs. As such, it was never all that engaging to see their softer side when their collaboration with humans was clearly just pragmatism. In contrast, what makes thePredatorfranchise’s future so excitingisPredator: Badlandspositioning Dek as its true protagonist.
The Yautja Have Always Been More Relatable Than The Xenomorphs
The Xenomorph Is More Feral And Less Human
While Thia is likely to play a big role by working with Dek, the teaser trailer forPredator: Badlandsmakes it obvious that the Yautja runt is the movie’s lead character. This is a radical departure from the rest of the series, but simultaneously an approach that has been hinted at since the original movie. Even without taking into account tie-in comics and novels, the titular threats from thePredatorseries have always been much more humanized than theAlienfranchise’s otherwise comparable Xenomorph.
If the Xenomorphs are perfect killing machines precisely because they are mindless monsters that can’t be reasoned or even communicated with, the Yautja are a far more human sort of foe.
The Yautja have a society, spaceships, technology, clothing, and an honor code, as well as a complex language with both written and spoken signifiers. If the Xenomorphs are perfect killing machines precisely because they are mindless monsters that can’t be reasoned or even communicated with, the Yautja are a far more human sort of foe. WhilePrometheus’s strangest plot holesimplied the Xenomorph might have always been designed to function as a bioweapon, the Yautja are much more like a tribal species that shares a surprising number of similarities with humanity.
Why The Predator Franchise Always Needed Predator: Badlands
The Series Has Always Humanized Its Villain
Ever since the finale ofPredator, where the eponymous monster took off its mask to fight Dutch as a sign of respect, thePredatorseries has always toyed with the idea of a Yautja protagonist. The human characters in the series are constantly compared to the Yautja. The heroes of the original movie are foreign soldiers invading Central America, so it’s fitting and ironic when they are picked off by another invader with even more advanced technology at their disposal.
Similarly, much likeAlien: Romulus’s storyhumanized Andy more thanPrometheus’s David,Predator: Badlandscan make Thia the first outright heroic synthetic through her collaboration with Dek. Thus, the franchise can prove that the Yautja and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s creations are no less morally complex and redeemable than the human characters of the series, complicating the morality of both franchises in the process. It would be impossible to make anAlienmovie where the Xenomorph is the hero, butPredator: Badlandsseems destined to do exactly that for thePredatorfranchise’s Yautja when Trachtenberg’s sequel arrives.
