{"id":274563,"date":"2025-11-10T16:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274563\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T16:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:50:09","slug":"predator-badlands-exiled-hunters-rogue-androids-and-unkillable-monsters-discuss-with-spoilers-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274563\/","title":{"rendered":"Predator: Badlands \u2013 exiled hunters, rogue androids and unkillable monsters \u2013 discuss with spoilers | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Predator: Badlands is the kind of movie that offers hope Hollywood has finally moved on from the bad old days of crossover cinema. Batman v Superman, Godzilla vs Kong, and the Alien<\/a> vs Predator movies all imagined that the only thing you had to do to get bums on multiplex seats was to pair up two logos with recognisable silhouettes and watch the greenbacks roll in.<\/p>\n

This new film, though, manages the rare feat of cross-pollinating between two decades-old sci-fi sagas, and somehow adding depth and emotional texture<\/a> to both. Predator suddenly feels like a space where we discover that even within a society of ritualised trophy violence and hereditary warrior pride, there\u2019s room to rebel. Alien is reimagined as a universe in which synthetic beings aren\u2019t just sinister corporate automata, reprogrammed dolts or soft-voiced laboratory philosophers, but something more familiar: entities who can malfunction in ways that look suspiciously like a soul attempting to coalesce in the digital ether.<\/p>\n

What emerges is a surprisingly expansive film about rejecting the story you were handed, whether it was coded into your circuitry or screamed at you across generations. A runt Predator decides he will not be his father\u2019s disappointment, a damaged android quietly refuses to spend her remaining operational hours as an obedient instrument of dead-eyed destruction. A monster deciding to hunt is not the point. The result is that rare thing, a franchise film that widens the frame. Here\u2019s how it does it.<\/p>\n

The mask slips on Yautja Prime<\/p>\n

Badlands introduces Dek, a young warrior from an exiled clan. Marked for death by his own father as a runt who will only damage the bloodline, he sets out to redeem himself by hunting and killing the near-legendary Kalisk, an invulnerable monster that is also the apex predator of the dangerously lethal world of Genna.<\/p>\n

From its opening scene, in which Dek has to watch as his dad decapitates the young Yautja\u2019s brother for allowing him to flee, it\u2019s clear that this is no longer simply the unyielding warrior cult seen in previous films; Predator society is brittle, status-obsessed and terrified of weakness. And, as we find out, it can be rebelled against just as easily as humankind\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The synthetic who learned to chooseRobot wars \u2026 Elle Fanning as Thia. Photograph: 20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

Soon the film introduces Thia, one of two near-identical Weyland-Yutani androids, played by Elle Fanning. She and her team are on Genna because the Kalisk\u2019s regenerative biology is exactly the sort of weaponisable miracle tissue the corporation believes it can stabilise, study and make cold hard cash from. (Clearly Weyland-Yutani is still meddling in biology it doesn\u2019t understand, centuries after the Ripley-era Alien films and TV show.)<\/p>\n

Despite initially deceiving Dek so she can be reunited with her mission, her team and, crucially, her severed lower half, Thia is soon doing something no corporate-owned synthetic is supposed to do: acting with apparent humanity. She prioritises Dek\u2019s life over the company\u2019s aims and turns against her own \u201csister\u201d, cold-eyed twin android Tessa.<\/p>\n

This is hardly the first time we\u2019ve seen a good-hearted synth in the Alien saga. But unlike, say, David Jonsson\u2019s Andy in Alien: Romulus or Lance Henriksen\u2019s Bishop in Aliens, Thia hasn\u2019t been programmed to act with a conscience. So what\u2019s going on here? Is director Dan Trachtenberg suggesting that the very process of breaking down has handed her a moral code? Does it tell us something intriguing about artificial intelligence? Or is it simply the creeping Disneyfication of Alien, where even your corporate murder-droids are contractually obliged to have a warm emotional centre and a hug-arc?<\/p>\n

The Kalisk is not the monsterChasing monsters? \u2026 Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek. Photograph: 20th Century Studios\/AP<\/p>\n

Badlands sets up Genna\u2019s \u2018big bad\u2019 as something terrible, a monster so unstoppable that bringing home its head represents Dek\u2019s last chance to prove his worth to Yautja society. But the film\u2019s key reveal is not that the creature can regenerate; it\u2019s that it can care. The Kalisk doesn\u2019t stalk, taunt or toy with prey. It doesn\u2019t have a corporate aesthetic and it isn\u2019t really hunting anyone. Instead, its prime instinct is to protect. The moment the enormous creature pauses, registers the scent of its child on Dek and chooses not to kill him is the moment the film quietly flips its own narrative arc into reverse. Our hero hasn\u2019t been chasing a monster; he has been harassing a parent. Yautja society appears to teach that strength and honour can only be proved by capturing or killing those weaker than oneself. But the toughest creature it has ever come across is only interested in love.<\/p>\n

Genna is not PandoraFormidable team \u2026 Thia and Dek. Photograph: 20th Century Studios\/AP<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see why some critics have looked at the Kalisk\u2019s homeworld \u2013 with its intricate predator-prey hierarchies and flora that behaves like a planetary self-defence system \u2013 and made comparisons with Avatar. But there is nothing wise and mystical about this relentless and indifferent kill-or-be-killed biome. Genna isn\u2019t teaching lessons or nurturing souls; it\u2019s just trying to survive. If the Yautja are out to prove themselves as the universe\u2019s greatest hunters, the planet is out to remind them that Genna barely noticed they arrived and has already begun the process of returning them to mulch. This is a closed loop where everything eats and is eaten in turn.<\/p>\n

When Dek adapts his weapons to mimic the planet\u2019s biology, it is a practical submission to a system that could not care less about him. It\u2019s also the moment he begins to realise there are relationships other than the one between hunter and prey, leading to the film\u2019s finale in which Dek arrives home with his new \u201cfamily\u201d to take revenge on his dad. Did you buy this sudden perspective shift or did it feel like the film is opportunistically looking up from the cosmic gore and machismo of the previous hour to say: \u201cActually, we have a message\u201d?<\/p>\n

A universe defined by the importance of free will\u2018A creature does what it must\u2019 \u2013 Predator: Badlands. Photograph: 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.\/PA<\/p>\n

Much has been made of the potential for Badlands to spark a new shared Alien\/Predator continuity, with Trachtenberg admitting in interviews to having been inspired by Marvel. And yet if the film offers a way for these universes to coexist, it\u2019s by aligning their worldviews. Predator films have always centred on dominance, hierarchy and the blood-stained meritocracy of the \u201cworthy\u201d hunter. Alien, by contrast, has traditionally insisted that biology is fate: a creature does what it must, a company does what it will, and everyone else gets crunched. Badlands destabilises all of this. It suggests that a trophy-beast can be a parent, a synthetic can be disobedient and a born-and-bred hunter can simply walk away.<\/p>\n

By the end of the film, the Kalisk is someone\u2019s mum, Dek has abandoned his entire civilisation and Thia fancies anything over the prospect of returning to corporate servitude. We are not defined by others \u2013 we decide our own identities, and that might just be a mantra worthy of cutting through all cultures, whether human, alien, android or gigantic, death-defying apex megafauna. Or maybe Trachtenberg just killed both Alien and Predator franchises by nonchalantly jumping the shark straight into the mythological glue that was holding both together. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Predator: Badlands is the kind of movie that offers hope Hollywood has finally moved on from the bad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-274563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}