Predator: Badlands
Image From IMDB
Predator Badlands (2025)
Having enjoyed Dan Trachtenberg’s previous two Predator Movies, the absolutely fantastic Prey, and the highly creative and brutal Killer of Killers, I was quietly optimistic about Predator: Badlands, despite being concerned at some of the choices made. The main two being the Predator as the lead protagonist, and the PG13 rating. While I found the movie to be ok(ish) unfortunately, my concerns weren’t unfounded.
Predator: Badlands follows the story of Dek, the runt of the Predator litter. After his brother is killed by his father while trying to protect him, Dek is flies to a distant planet to kill a legendary unkillable movie, and prove to his savage father that he’s worthy of being a member of the clan. Along the way he teams up with a chatterbox legless robot, and a monkey, while being pursued by an army of androids.
I wrote in length on my Medium page about the difficulties in making the Predator a PG13 so I won’t repeat much of it here, but Predator: Badlands doesn’t feel like a Predator movie. Everything you love from previous instalments isn’t in this movie. He’s not a ruthless killing machine. He doesn’t hunt and kill the human characters. He rarely uses any of his weapons, has no cloaking device, or heat sensor, or mystery about him. He does have a monkey friend by the end of the movie though.
Dek’s story is ok if it didn’t have the trimmings around it. Badlands is still a story of survival, but there’s no tension, and it’s more difficult to be worried about a Predator than a human being. They try to humanise Dek with his runt size, broken tooth, and loss of his brother, but it isn’t the same.
The planet the adventure is set on looks cool. It’s kind of like Pandora’s evil twin. Everything in nature wants to kill everything else, but that all disappears in the second half of the movie as the more military aspects take over.
I hate being this negative about the film as it is ok. It’s just, I wanted so much more given the last two films. Dek is kind of weak as the lead character. The android sidekick is annoying. The pet alien monkey is a pet alien monkey in a Predator movie?!
The main villain is either the father, who isn’t in the whole movie, the unkillable beast that the Predator doesn’t kill and befriends instead, or the annoying androids not sister sidekick who is absolutely no match for Dek. I feel like some beats were missing as he goes from somewhat hopeless to badass with the only growth being him endorsing friendship. Maybe that’s overly critical, I’m not sure.
This movie wasn’t made for me. They clearly wanted to make a film that appealed to a much wider audience than original Predator fans, and judging by the Box Office that choice has paid off for them. But, this movie will be forgotten about soon enough. It’s Disney’s Starwars Marvel’s Predator, and that doesn’t work for me.
