Predator Badlands: Mark Kermode’s science fiction film review (video).
Mark Kermode’s eyebrow has met its match. Predator: Badlands—the ninth outing for everyone’s favourite trophy-collecting space tourist—lands with a thud, a roar and, whisper it, actual feelings. Dan Trachtenberg (of Prey fame) steers the franchise into a pulp-poetic western on an alien world, with Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi playing Dek, a runt Yautja trying to earn his stripes on the lethal planet Genna. It’s all Frank Frazetta vistas at golden hour, Malick-ish grass swaying ominously, and very large things with very sharp bits. Kermode’s video take (below) clocks the tonal gamble straight away: what if the Predator isn’t the monster under the bed but the scrappy hero trying not to be eaten by whatever is?
Enter Elle Fanning in a nifty dual turn as Weyland-Yutani synthetics Thia and Tessa—sisters in serial numbers if not in temperament. Thia is battered, wry and curious; Tessa is corporate cruelty with a warranty. Trachtenberg and co-writer Patrick Aison give them the film’s human pulse, even if neither is technically human. When Dek and Thia team up to hunt the unkillable Kalisk—part apex creature, part parental nightmare—the film leans hard into odd-couple energy: a teenage space barbarian and a self-repairing android learning trust while improvising weapons out of murder-plants. Somewhere in the distance, the Weyland-Yutani risk team files another expense claim for “catastrophic containment breach”. They must have the nicest stationery.
If you’ve followed the expanded lore, you’ll enjoy the care taken with Yautja culture. There’s a constructed language, rites of passage, even a family drama nasty enough to make Succession look like a church picnic. Dek’s father Njohrr (also voiced by Schuster-Koloamatangi) is Old Testament with mandibles, and the opening betrayal properly stings. The visual effects brigade—ILM, Wētā FX, the usual Avengers of post-production—paint Genna as a living hazard course. Almost every shot is touched by FX, but the suit work and motion-capture give Dek a tactile presence; the half-mask flexes, the eyes read, and you get that odd sensation of rooting for the chap who’d once have ripped your spine out for a conversation piece.
Kermode notes the franchise pivot: Badlands is PG-13 in the States (a first for the mainline series), so the arterial fireworks are dialled down. What you get instead is kinetic clarity and inventive peril—set-pieces built on geography and problem-solving rather than pure splatter. There’s still bite (sometimes literally), but the emphasis is on myth and momentum. A late power-loader dust-up winks at Aliens without turning into a greatest-hits reel, and Oliver Dumont and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score tilts from elegy to engine-rumble with real swagger.
Fanning’s two-hander is catnip for performance spotters; Thia’s dry humour keeps the film buoyant, while Tessa’s corporate zealotry would downsize a nursery. Reuben De Jong’s looming Njohrr and Mike Homik’s soulful Kwei add welcome texture to Yautja family politics, and there’s even a mascot in the making with Bud, a native beastie who marks Dek as clan and promptly steals scenes like a sticky-fingered gremlin. By the time the third act brings father issues, corporate hubris and mother-of-all-showdowns into the same blast radius, you may find yourself unironically moved by a Predator’s rite of passage. Put that in your thermal vision and smoke it.
The marketing machine has been busy—IMAX, RealD 3D, Hall H razzle—and early notices are warm enough to fog a helmet. Rotten Tomatoes is grinning, CinemaScore is handing out its best grade for the franchise, and the box office is striding rather than skulking. There’s even a Marvel prequel comic on the way because of course there is. Trachtenberg hints at one more chapter to round out his unofficial trilogy, and the name “Dutch” keeps being whispered like a camp-fire legend. If that rematch happens, bring earplugs for the applause.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we admire any series that dares evolve past its own catchphrases. Badlands doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as slap spikes on it, hurl it down a canyon and teach it poetry on the way. As Kermode notes, making the Predator the protagonist risks defanging the beast; Trachtenberg’s trick is to give the fangs purpose. The hunt’s still the hunt. It just means something again.
