The new Predator flick from Prey director Dan Trachtenberg respects its roots while gearing up for an intriguing future.
I would bet decent money (well, decent money for a writer, so a few bucks) that protagonists of Predator: Badlands and the surviving heroes of Alien: Romulus cross paths before too long. It’s a vibe thing more than anything else. Romulus is the gnarlier of the two, but they both seem pitched at a teen-to-young-adult audience, they both seem to speaking a similar thematic language when it comes to questions about the sins of our forebears and the cost of living in a society that doesn’t value you as a person. Plus, I think the meet cute between the two androids, Romulus‘ Andy (David Jonson) and Badlands‘ Thia (Elle Fanning) would be freakin’ adorable.
They’re both Weyland-Yutani products, after all, Badlands firmly cementing the Alien and Predator universes after years of treating the actual Alien Vs Predator movies as an unfortunate side-trip. Badlands also cements the word “Yautja” as the proper term for the titular extraterrestrial hunter, the term having arisen out of ancillary works. And indeed, a Yautja is our protagonist here: Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), whose off on the death world of Genna to bag him a Kalisk – the biggest, baddest, animal on the rock. By contrast, Dek is the weakest of his clan, and he’s driven by the need to show up his bully dad, who murdered his brother when the latter was trying to protect our boy.
Thia comes into the picture when Dek rescues her from a pterodactyl nest – or half of her at least, Thia being legless and spending a good chunk of the film strapped to Dek’s back. Unnervingly chipper for someone who’s been bisected, she’s part of an all-synthetic mission to capture the Kalisk for Weyland-Yutani’s infamous Bioweapons Division. Fanning also plays Thia’s “sister”, Tessa, who is much more clear-eyed about their mission, and much, much more ruthless.
What unfolds is a kind of sci-fi wilderness adventure, with the pair (plus a cute little CGI critter dubbed Bud, who manages to be charming rather than grating) learning to trust each other, and at the same time figuring out that they might find a place in the universe that doesn’t need them to betray their values. It’s almost a buddy comedy, as a few pundits have noted, and while we’ve had one or two “heroic” Predators in the past on screen, we’ve never had one that feels like a fully rounded character in his own right. And while the action is great and the alien production design top notch, that more than anything else makes me hope director Dan Trachtenberg’s mooted third film gets here sooner rather than later.
Predator: Badlands is in cinemas from November 6.
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