Sci-Fi Watch: Predator - Badlands (2025)

Watched:  04/24/2026

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dan Trachtenberg

Well, this was kind of a perfect Friday night movie.  And kind of why they invented PG-13.  

I kind of love that somehow the legacy of Alien has somehow turned into "yes, but limited-autonomy for superhuman AI beings".  I like squicky xenomorphs, too.  But they don't exactly carry a story.  And whatever merging we now have between Blade Runner, Alien and Predator is not the worst thing in the world.  It's allowed for all kinds of paths for exploration.  

I'll just say: if you can give me a movie with a humanoid lead, a robot pal and their murderous space-dog - all against alien landscapes and skies?  Shit, man.  I don't really feel like I need to explore deep themes or what it says about the human condition at that point.  This is raw popcorn entertainment.  And, somehow along the way, this movie is not incredibly stupid, all while admittedly being more than a bit unironically goofy.  Way to thread the needle, movie!

I don't want to oversell it.  I probably like Prey a tad more for it's raw intensity and Amber Midthunder showing star power.  And for being such a breath of fresh air for a franchise I'd lost interest in a long, long time ago.  

But, man, I'll say it.  This movie was just fun, and after a long work week, this fit the bill.

I haven't seen much of Elle Fanning as an adult, but what a delight she is.*  And credit to Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi for bringing real life to a character while buried entirely within a Predator costume.  Guy really brought Dek to life.  It seems the performance artist behind Bud - the third of the trio, was Ravi Narayan, and the guy who played approximately 100 copies of himself was Cameron Brown (someone sign this guy up to play Jamie Madrox).  

Anyway, if you're feeling like Predator fiction that really expands the culture we've mostly seen implied, I'd recommend this one.

And, yes, of course I got the references to prior films.  It was not subtle.

*I just found out they made a movie of the book Galveston, which Fanning appears in.  I thought the book was pretty good.