{"id":50452,"date":"2025-11-06T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=50452"},"modified":"2025-11-16T00:14:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T05:14:01","slug":"predator-badlands-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/06\/predator-badlands-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Predator: Badlands [2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>An inexperienced Predator seeks to earn his honor on a dangerous planet, with the help of a Weyland-Yutani synthetic in Dan Trachtenberg\u2019s just freakin\u2019 awesome Predator: Badlands.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To be as direct as the film, Predator: Badlands is badass. Chock full of awesome weapons and vehicles, a zoo full of great creatures, and a heap of amazingly choreographed fight sequences, if you have the heart of a 13-year-old boy (whether deep in your chest or hidden in the basement), you\u2019ll cheer. Badlands taps into a pure popcorn level of giddy enjoyment, like digging into an awesome comic book adventure, with Dan Trachenberg directing with a zip from Patric Aison\u2019s economical script.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Prey (also written by Aison), Dan Trachtenberg revived the faltered franchise with essentially a remake of the first film, but set three hundred years ago as a young Native American fought the titular alien of the Yautja species. This year\u2019s animated Killer of Killers<\/a> on Hulu continued his brilliance with the series as three warriors across Earth\u2019s history fought their own. Now, with Badlands, Trachtenberg switches it up further by following a young Yautja as he seeks to prove himself on his own quest. And what a quest!\u00a0 Across 107 minutes, Trachtenberg stuffs the film full of one awesome creature, tech, weapon, and\/or action sequence after another with a surprising amount of character to boot. We root for the young warrior, and root hard. It\u2019s not often the critic-only screenings of a film have hoots and hollers at big moments, but it happened at mine.<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, who are we rooting for? For the first time on film, we\u2019re following a Yautja as a protagonist. Dek is the run of his clan, small and seen as weak. It\u2019s awesome to see a Predator who isn\u2019t at the top of his game, fully skilled and ready to take on Arnold. After his father, riding up a freakin\u2019 SLED MADE OF BONES, demands that Dek be killed, Dek ends up on the planet of Ganna. Ganna is one hell of a setting, stuffed with flora and fauna ready to try to kill, maim, and gut anything that moves. He\u2019s out to take down a notorious monster, an \u201cunkillable\u201d creature covered with quills and loaded with more teeth than a nest full of Xenomorphs. Along the way, he meets Thia, a synthetic from Alien<\/a>\u2019s Weyland-Yutani Corp, missing her legs from her own encounter with the creature. Side note: even with the W-Y connection, there are no shoved-in obvious and eye-rolling easter eggs to the shared franchise. This is not a sly Alien Versus Predator 3.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It plays like a video game. In a good way. With \u201clevels\u201d across forests, water areas, a Weyland-Yutani base, and others, Dek figures out how to use and get past the obstacles and boss monsters. Heck, Thia even functions as a guide, sending him to places, filling in lore and details. But more than just an extended quest and chase, Badland\u2019s makes a turn halfway through that brings a great shift, allowing the set-ups in the first half to pay off in satisfying ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it is a deeply satisfying film. It\u2019s a rush of pure excitement of comic book action. While he\u2019s missing a good chunk of them (let\u2019s not make it too easy), Dek has a great cache of weapons, both of the Predator variety and from his resourcefulness in the field. He fights an increasingly wild set of creatures and environments (mostly CG, but it\u2019s damned good CG. It\u2019s from WETA workshop after all); it\u2019s a bulging bestiary of monsters trying to eat him in every moment. It all comes together with a heap of truly awesome fight sequences. From 10 Cloverfield Lane to Prey to Badlands, Trachtenberg has shown he knows how to stage a scene, creating an amazing tension and wow-factor. The combination of Jeff Cutter\u2019s cinematography combines with Vincent Boullon\u2019s fight choreography astounds (one word that will matter to those who know: legs). Badlands\u2019s heaps of action build up as it goes to a hell of a fist-pumping climax. These sequences are a triumph of action editing, ramping up the bloody, gooey goodness of a great fight. Yes, bloody. True, the movie is PG-13, but don\u2019t let that stop you: as it\u2019s all monsters and robots, there is more wiggle room in the \u201clower\u201d rating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Elle Fanning shines, showing her considerable charisma and keen performance choices in making a motormouth droid, she\u2019s missing her legs and not her always running mouth; charming instead of annoying. She\u2019s gifted with a dual role with another synthetic of Tessa, oozing a chilling menace.\u00a0 Across from her is Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek. He gives an awesome physical acting performance. It\u2019s not a silent performance, but it could be in how well he\u2019s able to physicalize all of Dek\u2019s fights and fears. But he does get to talk, selling the created Yautja language for the film with the ease of a born speaker. Alec Gillis\u2019s fantastic monster suit fits like a glove, coming as real as if it’s his own skin.\u00a0 For the first time, the face is motion capture with CG overlay, allowing a new level of expressiveness for the alien.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Predator: Badlands is a bullet of a film, exploding from the pistol and slamming full speed into a giant monster, splattering goo and guts. Dan Trachenberg is three for three for his films in the Predator franchise with Prey, Killer of Killers, and now Badlands, re-inventing and absolutely delivering on the concepts in crowd-rousing ways. Badlands isn’t a deep film, but it’s popcorn entertainment of the best kind; a blast of energy with so much cool stuff and sequences that it’ll make the 13-year-old in all of us grin.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An inexperienced Predator seeks to earn his honor on a dangerous planet, with the help of a Weyland-Yutani synthetic in Dan Trachtenberg\u2019s just freakin\u2019 awesome Predator: Badlands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,477,1458],"class_list":["post-50452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-horror","tag-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50628,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50452\/revisions\/50628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}