The Midnight Boys • Nov. 7 • 1 hr 7 min Much like James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Badlands takes a classic movie villain and flips the archetype on its head. However, it’s a much greater challenge to transform a vicious, unintelligible alien into a hero than it is to do the same with a humanoid Terminator (who’s played by Schwarzenegger, no less). Badlands makes a concerted effort to further establish a culture for the Yautja, beginning with a fully constructed language developed by linguist Britton Watkins. It used to be that you could never understand a Predator beyond its love for the hunt. Now, the audience has the chance to learn how these alien warriors think, feel, and communicate. And Badlands also combines practical effects with VFX to turn Dek into a more emotive, lifelike being, with Schuster-Koloamatangi wearing a practical suit and Weta FX animating his alien face through motion capture. Badlands is sneakily the Predator franchise’s third crossover with the Alien film series, and the first since 2007’s disastrous Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. It avoids the pitfall of simply mashing up the franchises’ two iconic creatures—which happened quite literally in the case of Requiem and its inclusion of the Yautja-Xenomorph hybrid known as … the PredAlien . Instead, Badlands ignores the Alien franchise’s central figure altogether and borrows only the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Ever in search of deadly aliens to weaponize, Weyland-Yutani happens to be on Genna hunting the same apex predator Dek is after, the Kalisk. The inclusion of Weyland-Yutani makes for a much more subtle crossover that adds a savvy bit of world-building to Badlands without serving as a distraction. It also provides a path to forming the unlikely dynamic duo at the heart of the film, as Dek reluctantly teams up with a damaged Weyland-Yutani synth named Thia (Elle Fanning) to locate the Kalisk. In a pairing inspired by Chewbacca carrying C-3PO in The Empire Strikes Back, Dek wears Thia like a backpack as they traverse the deadly terrains of Genna. Fanning delivers a delightful dual performance as she plays the kind, bubbly Thia along with her menacing sister synth, Tessa, who leads the militaristic group of Weyland-Yutani synths that seek to exploit the Kalisk’s lethal potential. At its core, Badlands has a simple, familiar premise. It’s an underdog story, like Prey, that centers on an underestimated hero who’s determined to prove their worth against all odds. But it makes the most of that setup, yielding another fun entry in the franchise, which Trachtenberg has invigorated with each subsequent release after decades of flops and missed creative opportunities. Although Prey, Killer of Killers, and Badlands are stand-alone films, they all leave room for possible sequels. Killer of Killers is the clearest attempt at developing an interconnected Predator cinematic universe, via a post-credits scene featuring glimpses of Prey’s Naru, Predator 2’s Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover), and Predator’s Dutch. The trio of heroes are all in cryosleep, held captive by the Yautja and stored alongside the other champions who defeated a Predator. Trachtenberg has expressed interest in working on more Predator projects, but at the moment it isn’t clear what’s in store for the franchise. The stand-alone nature of these recent Predator films is part of why they’ve worked so well, and an attempt to establish yet another interconnected cinematic universe in a media landscape full of them could prove to be a mistake. Just like this summer’s Alien: Earth TV series, Badlands is a prime example of how to explore a character as familiar as the Predator in new ways. The film has opened up all sorts of narrative possibilities to continue developing the Yautja as a more central focus, whether with Dek or another protagonist. Whatever happens next, Trachtenberg has proved once again that there’s still plenty of life left in this franchise almost 40 years after its inception. Source: https://www.theringer.com/2025/11/07/movies/predator-badlands-franchise-evolution-dan-trachtenberg