by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Elle Fanning, Mike Homik, Rohinal Nayaran, Reuben De Jong, Cameron Brown
Intro:
It zips along at a brisk pace, contains a surprising amount of pathos for a yarn set in this universe, and delivers a rollicking, sci-fi fantasy adventure with plenty of solid action and striking visuals.
After the catastrophic failure of Shane Black’s fitfully amusing but generally moronic The Predator in 2018, the franchise had a bit of an existential crisis. Where do you go after your trashy comedy riff doesn’t quite work? The answer was 2022’s Prey, a back-to-basics yarn that pitted a very primitive looking Predator against a young Comanche woman in 1719. It was, in short, a cracker and had it not been released on Disney+ because of general COVID-19 shenanigans it would have likely been a decent earner. Hell, it did well by whatever arcane metric streaming services use to judge success. So much so that director Dan Trachtenberg was then handed the sweet gig of helming the next Predator film, this time another bold reinvention of the series that goes by the name of Predator: Badlands.
So, does ol’ mate Dan deliver the goods once again or has he flown his shuttle too close to the sun?
Predator: Badlands tells the tale of Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young Predator warrior rejected by his clan for being a runt. Hell, his own father tries to kill him before Dek manages to escape and heads to the death planet of Genna to hunt the allegedly unkillable Kalisk and finally prove his worth. When he arrives on Genna, he’s almost immediately killed by the local narky flora and fauna (which is downright Australian at times) and only starts to get it together when he runs into horizontally bisected synthetic, Thia (Elle Fanning), a product from the “good” people of the Weyland-Yutani corporation. The pair team up for mutual benefit, but Dek soon finds things are a little more complicated than he first expected, and this hunt may not go the way he planned.
The thing about Predator: Badlands is that it takes some big damn swings. Impressively so. Having the Predator be the literal protagonist is such a bold move that you can’t help but be a little in awe of the chutzpah on display here. The problem, however, is that when you start explaining the lore of a character who has traditionally been a rather ambiguous antagonist, you do lose a little of the mystery that made them so interesting in the first place. Dek’s backstory isn’t bad, mind you, but he’s basically your classic hunter archetype from a very traditionally homosapien family unit, just with, you know, a big fangy mouth and dreads.
The plot of Badlands, also, is unlikely to thrill series purists. It’s basically a mismatched buddy adventure, replete with a cute animal sidekick and one-liners. This thing feels like it would have been an animated film from the 1980s and while it’s generally very entertaining, the tonal whiplash from previous entries is absolutely going to stick in some craws. Also, the sheer amount of digital effects make this less “live action” and more “occasionally you’ll see something that exists in the physical realm.”
Still, for all its flaws Badlands is a very engaging story. It zips along at a brisk pace, contains a surprising amount of pathos for a yarn set in this universe, and delivers a rollicking, sci-fi fantasy adventure with plenty of solid action and striking visuals. Just don’t expect much in the way of edge or grit.
While Predator: Badlands doesn’t quite match the best films in the franchise (that would be Predator, Predator 2 and Prey, just quietly), it is an enjoyably fresh take on the material at a time when we’re suffering from the endless deluge of unimaginative retreads and cack-handed nostalgia.
Imperfect but worth watching, Predator: Badlands proves that there’s some glowing green blood left in this series after all.
