"Predator: Badlands" - Another MCU-ified Franchise

I don’t have any stakes in the game when it comes to the Predator franchise. I went through a bit of an Alien phase as a kid, but aside from that my investment in this now almost fully integrated series is next to none. I enjoyed Prey quite a bit, as it actually felt like a new idea, and I didn’t see Killer of Killers, so needless to say I don’t really care about Predator. So when I went to my early screening of Predator: Badlands last night that was packed with influencers and superfans who were cheering and clapping every time the Predator so much as punches a tree, there was a part of me that felt like an old man yelling at a cloud.

In Badlands, Newcomer, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi stars as benevolent Predator, Dek, who after being banished from his family’s clan, decides to kill and bring home the universe’s most feared creature as a trophy and statement of power.

I was fortunate enough to get to see this in a brand new, fully restored IMAX theater, so the combination of that, the wonderful mixing of the film, and the fact that I was sitting a mere two feet away from the main left side speaker was enough to nearly shoot me out of my seat anytime anything loud happens in the film. The sound is spectacular and so is the score! It’s one of the more surprising ones this year. There are a lot of Dune inspirations in this film, but the score is perhaps the biggest one. Think Dune crossed with the more bass heavy moments of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  

The dynamic between Koloamatangi and Elle Fanning’s character is by far the best part of the movie. There is a really funny excuse they throw in at the beginning of the film that explains how they can communicate with each other, and it’s a really solid nugget of them leaning into the cheesiness of the whole thing in a genuinely tongue-in-cheek way. I would say that no one probably had more fun making this movie than Dan Trachtenberg, but that was before I watched Elle Fanning’s performance here. Her energy here is totally infectious, and for an actress that could easily phone in a whatever performance just for a big fat check, she more than contributes her fair share of heavy lifting. 

With all of that being said, I really did struggle to get behind much else here. I don’t want to come off as a curmudgeon, but the best way that I can describe my feelings is that if you’ve seen any movie before: you’ve seen Predator: Badlands. There isn’t a single thing about the story here that is surprising in the slightest. People are already hailing the film as something fresh because it makes the Predator a benevolent protagonist, and placed him in what is essentially a buddy road-trip movie with some monsters along the way. But aside from the novelty of “oh this franchise hasn’t already done this overused trope yet”, there was nothing here for me to latch on to. Everything plays out exactly as you’d expect. There’s even a cute little animal sidekick that’s in the movie solely to sell a bunch of toys. The script is so rudimentary and factory processed that not a single moment designed to be “hype and aura” or whatever godforsaken term we’ve assigned to cool things now, just comes off as condescending and tired.

Not that kids weren’t making their blissfully ignorant parents take them to these movies when they were Rated R, but if I can get conspiratorial for a second, I think there’s a bit more to this being PG-13 besides “the blood just isn’t red”...and it’s more than rubbing me the wrong way. First of all, the claim that this was going to be just as violent as the other movies is a huge lie. This is the most neutered we’ve ever seen one of these movies. There’s a scene where they make a big deal of the Predator killing an animal and then holding up its spine because it’s a thing the Predator does, but it’s shot to appeal to the most broad of an age group as possible. And with all of the Alien universe name drops that come with applause break pauses, this reeked to me as yet another MCU-ification of a once beloved STANDALONE franchise. I may have been bothered less by the whole thing if my audience wasn’t so darn vocal about every little thing, and then hadn’t thrown a hissy fit when the end credits didn’t show a xenomorph, but the entire thing just felt like another entry in Disney jiggling keys in front of my face and assuming I’d fall into the trance.

Even visually it reminded me of the beginning of the end of the Marvel franchise. Iffy CGI replacing real locations that only show up once in a blue moon to further highlight how middling the computer effects actually are. Even the work on The Predator himself was spotty at times. Every time one of these movies comes out I know Disney wishes they had never done Davy Jones in 2006, because even twenty years later there hasn’t been a fully formed CGI/Motion Capture character that even holds a candle to him made by the studio. 

People are going to like Predator: Badlands, and that’s totally fine. Nearly every critical and social metric is tracking for this to be a win both this weekend, and in the long term with people. But I just cannot get behind being fed the exact same slop disguised by a different franchise IP with a big fat trademark logo over the opening title card.