When Disney completed the acquisition of 21st Century Fox In 2019, moviegoers largely focused on how the deal would affect Marvel. But this purchase gave Disney access to more than just X-Men And Fantastic Fourand now the company is reshaping one of Fox's oldest franchises to fit its image of teen entertainment. Predator: Badlands eschews horror and gore in favor of a wholesome Star Wars-style movie, complete with its own version of Baby Yoda.
Director Dan Trachtenberg made much more exciting Predator films using lean technology. Extraction and a stylish animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killerswhich were both released as Hulu originals. But its first theatrical film in the series is rated PG-13, eschewing everything but neon green Yautja (aka Predator) blood, milky synthetic fluid and monster guts. Although there is a lot of CGI, there is no real tension.
Part of this is because Badlands flips the usual Predator script by focusing the film on a sympathetic Yautja rather than the humans being hunted by a ruthless killer. Dec (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a young, skinny predator who is considered too weak to live—unless he travels to the extremely hostile “death planet” Gennu and kills a legendary beast called Kalisk.
Upon arrival, Dec quickly teams up with Tia (Elle Fanning), an eager Weyland-Yutani synth who has lost her legs. He also meets Bud, a sort of armadillo-monkey hybrid with a Baby Yoda vibe: cute, helpful, and extremely important to the plot. Instead of focusing on fear and violence, Badlands evokes laughs through the strange dynamic of a chatty synth and a stoic hunter. In another funny scene, Bud annoys Dec by imitating everything he does while getting ready for bed. Tia tries to convince Dec that the most elite hunter is not a lone wolf, but an alpha protecting his pack. All of this is surprisingly useful for a franchise that began with a terrifying stealth hunter killing paramilitary soldiers.
Badlands looks less like the movie “Predator” and more like part Avatar franchise, another property Disney acquired as a result of the Fox merger. It touches on the same themes of questions of what you'll sacrifice for your family – biological or found – and exploitation of the environment, generously rewarding characters who appreciate the beauty of nature and learn to use it respectfully. Just like in “Avatar” None of these themes are particularly deep, and the villains are cartoonishly evil. But for now Avatar delves into the exploration of grief and loss, Badlands quickly moves on to fancier fares. There's an entire fight scene involving Tia's disembodied legs that adds a distinctly cheesy pace to the best action sequence in the film.
Like Avatar Badlands mainly exists to create a lot of impressive computer graphics. The creature designs are excellent: Bad and Kalisk are extremely expressive, and there are plenty of other creatures eager to eat or kill Dec. Genna is a death trap, but a well-designed one, where animals take advantage of the deadly terrain to find creative new ways to eat each other (there's always something in the background eating something else).
Some monsters resemble creatures from Alien: Earthalthough the destruction they cause in Badlands much more superficial than anything presented on the FX show. This similarity is a reminder of the terrifying environment in which Badlands takes place in the USA, and how strange it is to see an almost family-friendly version of it. Badlands It's not a bad movie, but at its core it's made in the style of Disney, a horror story that still has a lot of fangs but lacks any bite.
