2026 Predator: Badlands

• Director: Dan Trachtenberg
• Writers: Patrick Aison and Dan Trachtenberg
• Stars: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Ravi Narayan
• Runtime: 107 minutes (1 hour and 47 minutes)
• YouTube Link for Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iikh-x2W8k

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A young and runty Predator goes on a quest to hunt the ultimate prey on an alien planet. He teams up with a damaged Weyland-Yutani android, and they have dangerous zany adventures on their quest. It’s action, adventure, and science fiction without much mystery or horror. It was pretty entertaining in its own way, but far from the original Predator movie.

Spoilery Synopsis

Yautja are predators. We open on Yautja Prime, where one Predator enters a cave and fights another. They leap around like it’s a videogame and taunt each other. The Yautja, Dek, loses, but survives. He’s not a Yautja yet. The two brothers talk later about old battles. Dek still needs to prove himself in battle in order to join the clan. He choses Genna, the Death Planet. The Kalisk there will be his trophy; even their father fears it. Dek’s got something to prove, and he wants it the hard way.

Dek’s a runt, and his father thinks he should simply be culled. His brother Kwei doesn’t want to kill him and turns against their father, which goes badly for him. Dek’s ship launches, taking him on his hunt.

Dek arrives on the planet Genna, and it’s clear that he’s not very good at flying. He checks out his weapons, and at least he’s prepared those. Even the trees in this place are hostile, so he fights them. Credits roll.

As Dek patches up his wound, he learns about his surroundings. He comes across a broken synthetic who knows his language. She knows he’s hunting the Kalisk, and she offers to help– if he helps her. They soon find themselves working together to survive. She has no legs or bottom half. He doesn’t want a partner, but he can use her as a tool, which is acceptable to him. She’s Thia, and she talks a lot.

Thia tells her story. She and another synth, Tessa, are better attuned to the creatures on this planet. The Kalisk attacked, and they got split up; Thia, literally.

We cut to the synth base, where Tessa is being repaired. She’s fixed up enough to complete her mission, capture new life forms for weapons use. Now, she wants the Kalisk too, threatened with decommission if she fails.

Dek and Thia run into various creatures and both hunt and are hunted. It’s all very action-packed. They make friends with Bud, a Gollum-like sidekick animal that hunts with them. We see that Tessa has arrived with a well-armed crew as they wipe out the vine creatures that Kalisk first encountered. Dek and Thia chat around the campfire and get to know each other better.

Tessa finds and explores Dek’s crashed spaceship. Thia and Dek wander around looking for the Kalisk’s den. Thia finds her legs and signals for her people to come and get her. She warns Dek that they want the Kalisk, and he should leave. He refuses.

Dek goes off on his own while she reattaches her legs, and he soon runs into the Kalisk. He and Thia work together to defend themselves from the giant thing. She is still legless because the mending got interrupted. Dek eventually manages to behead it, but then the head re-attaches itself. It’s… unkillable.

Tessa arrives and freezes the Kalisk, Dek, and everything. She then takes Dek prisoner. Tessa wakes up Thia, who talks about their catch– both the Kalisk and the Yautja. Tessa experiments on Dek, and it looks very painful. Thia doesn’t like the work Tessa is doing and shuts it down . She’s seen things on her trip, and she’s evolved a bit; Tessa’s not into that at all. Thia is “broken” as well and will be deactivated.

Thia and Dek trick one of the drones into letting them loose. Dek escapes and goes to his ship to heal up. He uses what he’s learned about the animals and plants on Genna to build new weapons and traps. He also rejoins Bud, who he recognizes as a baby Kalisk.

Dek then follows the synths to the huge Weyland-Yutani base that’s on the planet. He finds Thai, who is deactivated, but he brings her legs along as a distraction. The Yautja, Bud, and the legs defeat a whole army of drones. Thia’s upper half and lower half fight together as a team.

Tessa, meanwhile, loads the Kalisk onto a transport ship.

Dek and Thia get back together. So did Thia’s two halves. Dek wants to release the Kalisk, Bud’s mother.

But first, Tessa attacks in a big loader-mech (looks familiar, but much bigger). They fight hand-to-machine while Thia works on releasing the big Kalisk. The Kalisk shows up, angry, and makes short work of Tessa’s battlemech and the crunchy snack inside it.

Bud “vouches” to his mother about Dek and Thia, who are all friends now. Suddenly, the Kalisk freezes and explodes, releasing the evil android inside it which she’d swallowed whole. Tessa gets the drop on Thia, but Dek kills her from behind.

Dek returns to Yautja Prime and confronts his father. This time, however, he’s battle experienced and much improved. Dek shows his father who’s boss this time, and he does it without any help. He’s got his own clan now…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s very different from the other Predator (or Alien) films. This one is a much smaller-scale affair, with only two “good” characters, neither of which are human, out on an adventure.

It’s got quite a bit of humor and fun, but there’s so MUCH CGI. It’s like watching a videogame for nearly two hours.

If you like the rest of the series, you’ll probably like this one. If not, there’s probably not much here to sway you.

Kevin’s Commentary

I saw more than one review that said this smells of Disney, who owns the Predator rights, and I’d agree. It’s like an ultra violent Disney adventure movie. They even manage to gain an adorable little monkey-thing companion. How far the original Predator movie and the Alien franchise have fallen.

Still, I warmed to it as the movie went on. I didn’t hate it as much as I expected, and I was pretty entertained overall.