FilmsScifi

Predator Badlands trailer: Elle Fanning and a teenage Yautja walk into a Terrence Malick film.

Grab your heat vision goggles and your trophy polish, folks — the galaxy’s most antisocial big-game hunter is back, and this time, he’s the sensitive one. Yes, Predator: Badlands is coming to a cinema near you this November, and it’s aiming for the heart as much as the spine. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (who previously brought unexpected gravitas to Prey), this latest instalment in the ever-morphing Predator franchise promises fewer muscle-bound commandos yelling “Get to the choppa!” and more soulful meditations on what it means to be a young alien trying to find yourself… preferably through dismemberment.

Set in the distant future on the Predators’ home planet, Badlands takes us somewhere we’ve never really been before — inside their world, culture, and, yes, possibly even their feelings. Our hero, Dek, played by the impressively named Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is a runt Predator — smaller, scrappier, and just a bit too thoughtful for his tribe’s “rip and roar” social scene. After being booted out of the clan for not meeting the usual head-counting quota, he ends up teaming up with Elle Fanning’s Thia — a legless Weyland-Yutani synthetic who’s probably having just as rough a time fitting in. It’s a classic odd couple road trip… if your road trip involves heat-seeking spears, interstellar deserts, and a language invented by the Avatar linguist.

Yes, that’s right — the film features a fully fleshed-out Predator tongue, both written and spoken, which the cast reportedly had to learn phonetically. Somewhere out there, Duolingo’s little green owl is weeping softly into its textbook. And because no Predator film would be complete without a healthy dose of corporate evil, the immortal Weyland-Yutani Corporation has slithered its way into this story too. Apparently even in the farthest corners of space, HR still has a form for that.

Fanning, playing not one but two synths — the empathetic Thia and her perfectly preserved nemesis Tessa — looks to be having the sort of existential breakdown that makes her one of the best young actresses working today. Expect quiet conversations about mortality, morality, and machine rights… punctuated by the occasional invisible dreadlocked warrior decapitating someone mid-monologue.

Visually, Badlands looks like someone tossed Mad Max: Fury Road, Shadow of the Colossus, and a Frank Frazetta painting into a blender, then poured the resulting neon dust over a Malick film. It’s all wide skies, alien ruins, and melancholic silence broken only by the click-click of alien mandibles and the occasional Wilhelm scream. Jeff Cutter’s cinematography and Wētā FX’s creature design make this the most tactile, lived-in Predator world yet — half mythic frontier, half alien therapy session.

Thematically, Trachtenberg has called it a “spiritual western.” Translation: it’s going to be about lonely killers learning not to be lonely killers anymore. Which is lovely, though one suspects the Predator’s version of a heart-to-heart will still involve several hearts and some manner of perforation.

And because this is a Disney-owned franchise now (pause to let that sink in), there’s a degree of polish and confidence here that suggests they’re not just tossing this one to the streaming void. It’s coming to IMAX and 3D, meaning you’ll soon be able to see every lovingly rendered drop of extraterrestrial blood fly right past your face. Family fun, as always.

Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we’ve seen many an alien franchise reinvent itself — often badly. But Badlands has that rarest of qualities: self-awareness without irony. It’s trying something new. It’s taking the galaxy’s scariest hunter and giving him depth, dignity, and probably a tragic backstory involving honour codes and bioluminescent sandstorms.

So polish your armour, brush up on your Yautja, and mark 7th November 2025 on your hunting calendar. Because this autumn, Predator: Badlands might just do the impossible — make you cry for a creature whose idea of a love language is ripping out your spine.

(And yes, before you ask, there’s still plenty of thermal vision. Some traditions must be preserved.)

ColonelFrog

Colonel Frog is a long time science fiction and fantasy fan. He loves reading novels in the field, and he also enjoys watching movies (as well as reading lots of other genre books).

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