Predator: Badlands Puts a Predator Front and Center as Hero

An unmissable thriller. A laser sword-wielding monster to drop jaws. Most major action movie fans look forward to new installments from Marvel and the DC Extended Universe. But with the current saturation of superhero releases in recent years, it’s been all too rare to see a new live-action Predator film come to theaters and, much less, to feature the iconic franchise’s famous homicidal alien hunter as a protagonist.

Released for the first time today, though, 20th Century Studios has shared the first teaser trailer for their new Predator movie: Badlands. And in the 30-second clip, it’s not hard to spot that the upcoming project will be taking an unconventional approach to their monster as its hero.

Predator: Badlands features Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek, a young Predator (also referred to as a Yautja in the film) that has been ostracized from their species and is seeking a way to restore their standing. As a result, the flick will be unlike the typical Predator movie and instead follow the young alien warrior on his adventure as the lead character. And in his corner will be a genetically-engineered android by the name of Thia, played by Elle Fanning.

Sharing a tense bond, Dek and Thia will face “the ultimate adversary”, a monster that “can’t be killed”. While this is all the studio says on its official synopsis, the first teaser trailer suggests that Dek and Thia’s opponent is a giant monster of some kind, far larger than either character. As such, it also bears little resemblance to other monsters featured in the Predator and Alien franchises, offering a hint of how Badlands will be expanding the monsters’ shared universe.

A Deep Dive Into Predator Lore?

For now, not much is known about Badlands beyond the basic premise of an exiled Predator on a redemption arc. While the film is expected to stand on its own in the expansive Predator/Alien universe, early reports have already suggested that at least part of the movie’s story takes place on the Predator homeworld, which has been hinted at many times in previous Predator films but has never been explicitly featured before now.

The first teaser itself offers just a few fleeting moments that offer possible hints about the Predator homeworld as well as their wider society, including glimpses of alien jungles and oceans, glimpses of a Predator settlement or city, and at least two other Predators staring each other down in potential conflict, or already engaged in a ferocious battle.

The teaser also raises the possibility of Badlands further exploring the Predator species’ rich culture and society in a way never seen before in a Predator film, especially given how director and co-writer Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) may be more willing to delve into Predator lore now that the classic monster is their lead. In the critically acclaimed Prey, Trachtenberg and co-writer Patrick Aison took an entirely different approach to Predator lore, stripping the story down to a tense back-and-forth gunfight between a 17th-century lone female Native American tribeswoman and a Predator stranded in the 18th-century American Great Plains.

Prey, though, did manage to provide enough worldbuilding to give the first insights into the Predator species’ language, communication, rituals, religion, and family politics. Badlands, however, has the potential to give audiences more answers, adding context and new knowledge to what Trachtenberg and Aison showed in Prey.

Elle Fanning’s Character Thia is a Mystery, Could Deepen Alien/Predator Connection

In addition to the exiled Predator’s new lore connections, there are many talking points on Badlands related to Elle Fanning’s character, the android Thia. A synthetic creation of the human biotech megacorporation Weyland-Yutani, Thia is shown in the trailer to move with a strange rigidity, speak with cold, detached assurance, and flash a smirk that seems to have a strange mixture of intelligence and malevolence.

Thia’s role in the film, and potential motives, are otherwise not immediately obvious, and with only this first teaser, it’s hard to speculate further than this. However, there’s at least one more thing of note about Thia’s character as a Weyland-Yutani android. In previous Predator movies, Weyland-Yutani’s involvement has always only been referenced and never shown, with the link established first with Predator 2 and later mentioned in Prey and Predator: Bloodlust.

Not until now has a Predator film placed a Weyland-Yutani product in the same scene with Predators as much as it will Badlands and Thia. It will be especially fun for Alien franchise fans to comb over Thia’s lines and interactions for any Weyland-Yutani and Alien crossover details that Trachtenberg and Aison might have slipped in.

Plot, Release Date, Next Teaser

Badlands will be released on November 7, 2024, marking it as one of the potential blockbusters of the sci-fi action movie season for the end of the year. In the months between now and Badlands’ opening day in theaters, audiences can likely expect several more trailers, which would likely feature larger action sequences, more details on Dek’s mission, and reveal the mysterious monster at the center of Thia and Dek’s story.

For now, the first teaser trailer of Badlands does what it needs to do. It whets fans appetites and puts the studio’s plans for the latest Predator movie on display. With a lead duo that seems to promise great character moments for both a laser sword-wielding android and the first-ever lead Predator, Trachtenberg behind the camera for an opportunity to shine, and a hint of deep dives into the Predator mythos, Predator: Badlands could be the shakeup the genre needed.

Whether viewers want to side with a Predator on his quest for honor or simply want to watch an army of laser sword-wielding monsters go at each other, it seems the November 7 hunt is one worth watching.