A lot of movie franchises could learn a few things from Dan Trachtenberg. The director reinvigorated the Predator series with 2020’s Prey, stripping the sci-fi down to a lean cat-and-mouse thriller and making the best instalment since the 1987 original. His creative animated movie, Predator: Killer of Killers, a surprise release in June this year, playfully imagined the alien wreaking bloody havoc throughout history. Now Predator: Badlands, a much beefier movie than Prey, continues the strong run.
What Trachtenberg does so well is to start with a good ‘What if?’ Where so many franchises grasp for new ways to spin the same old story – something that hobbled the Alien series for decades – or get tied up in overcomplicating the ‘mythology’, Trachtenberg starts with strong scenarios. Here it’s, ‘What if the predator was the hero?’
Badlands begins on the home planet of the Yautja (the predators’ preferred term). Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is the runt of his clan. Yautja do not tolerate weakness, so Dek’s father sentences him to death. Thanks to his brother, Dek is instead sent to an alien planet, where he vows to bring back a supposedly unkillable creature and prove his strength. His plan to fight alone, as is the Yautja way, is upended when he’s forced to accept the help of a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, Thia (Elle Fanning), who has been chopped in half by the very creature Dek is hunting and would quite like her legs back.
It’s steeped in death and gore and massive brutal action sequences
Any worries that this might be a cuddly Predator movie should be allayed. The tone is a little lighter than in most other films in the series, but it’s still steeped in death and gore and massive brutal action sequences. The opening seconds wittily make clear that everything in this world wants to eat you. Dek’s teaming with Thia is classic mismatched buddy movie. She’s programmed to be empathetic to every living creature. He’d initially do anything to be rid of her, but they both have the same goal and no way to achieve it alone.
It cleverly pulls at the supposed laws of the series in a way that makes it more interesting without diluting the fearsome nature of the title character. Trachtenberg is making the franchise richer with every instalment. And if the film’s final shot is any reliable indication, he’s far from finished.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Nov 7.