Predator: Badlands Review | Dan Trachtenberg Continues to Find Winning Formula

Dan Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison do the unthinkable in Predator: Badlands: they make the Predator the hero. He’s a ruthless hunter, but over the course of the film, the battle-scarred outcast learns that strength comes from who you fight with. Equal parts thrilling, funny, and unexpectedly moving, Badlands reinvents the franchise without dulling its claws.

Predator: Badlands Overview

Like Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands proves he knows how to revive an ’80s sci-fi legend. He expands the mythology without pandering to nostalgia or disrespecting what came before.

Here, Trachtenberg and writer Aison take a bold swing: they make the Predator, now called Dek, the hero. Dek is the runt of his clan, desperate to prove himself and win his father’s approval. To do so, he travels to the deadliest planet in the galaxy, hunting its most enormous creature to claim a trophy worthy of respect.

After crash-landing, Dek reluctantly teams up with Thia, a curious Synthetic played by Elle Fanning, and Bud, an eager ape-like alien. Together, they confront a Weyland-Yutani synth outpost led by Thia’s sister, Tessa—also played by Fanning. The dual performance is one of the film’s highlights. Thia is chatty, self-aware, and full of wonder. Tessa is cold, precise, and ruthlessly loyal to her mission.

The “Death Planet” itself is a visual marvel, packed with monstrous life and breathtaking scale. Trachtenberg uses scope and pacing to sell its danger. Despite a PG-13 rating, Badlands never feels tame. The action is visceral and inventive, though a few third-act scenes get visually cluttered.

Trachtenberg adds to the complexity by only showing Dek speak in his native language, and no humans appear in the film. Even so, Badlands never lacks emotion. Thia’s longing to reconnect with her sister and Dek’s evolving bond with his companions give the story surprising warmth.

Bud’s comic moments occasionally push the limit, but Trachtenberg reins them in before they derail the tone. Despite a few pacing dips when the trio separates, Predator: Badlands is a bold, emotional, and satisfying evolution of a classic franchise.

Check out Trachtenberg’s first foray with the Predator franchise, Prey, streaming on Hulu.

The Runt

Dek may be massive by human standards, but among the Yautja, he’s a runt and a stain on his family’s honor. His father, Njohrr, rules with ritualistic cruelty and orders Dek’s brother, Kwei, to kill him and restore their bloodline’s pride. But Dek refuses to die quietly. Determined to prove himself, he vows to hunt the most terrifying creature on the deadliest planet in the galaxy.

Kwei, torn between duty and loyalty, begs their father to let Dek earn his place through combat. Njohrr can’t be reasoned with and answers with a blade to Kwei’s chest. As he bleeds out, Kwei initiates a launch sequence that blasts Dek into space, sending him hurtling toward Genna — the so-called “Death Planet.” It’s a brutal, mythic exile that sets the tone for Dek’s arc: a warrior stripped of rank, forced to survive through cunning rather than strength.

On Genna, every species is deadlier than the last. Dek is once again the smallest predator in a land built to kill him. His hunt begins as an act of vengeance, but soon becomes something more. Thia, a Synthetic survivor, challenges his entire worldview. She tells him that real leaders don’t rule through killing — they protect their own. Dek, ever the proud hunter, hilariously misreads her lesson, declaring that he’ll “lead by killing” instead.

That exchange captures what Badlands does best: it finds humanity — or something close to it—in a creature built for slaughter.

Tools to survive in the Badlands

After crash-landing on Genna, Dek quickly learns the planet itself is hostile. The trees lash out like predators, the grass slices skin like razors, and the local wildlife makes even a Yautja look small. His mission is clear: find and kill the Kalisk, the apex monster that rules this savage ecosystem.

Along the way, he discovers Thia, a stranded Synthetic missing her lower half, crawling and trapped amid flora. Despite her vulnerability, Thia knows the planet’s terrain and whispers of the Kalisk’s domain. She bargains for survival, convincing Dek to carry her on his back. It’s a pragmatic alliance, not a friendship.

Their uneasy duo becomes a trio with the arrival of Bud, an ape-like scavenger with more enthusiasm than sense. Dek and Bud’s rivalry begins over scraps of food, but respect eventually forms between them. Still, Dek keeps his distance. To him, relying on others is a weakness. His clan taught him that true strength comes from killing alone, not from compassion, and certainly not from partnership.

Thia, meanwhile, is desperate to connect. Among the newer Alien spin-offs, she feels the most human of the Synths — witty, curious, and painfully self-aware. But she has her own agenda: finding her sister, Tessa, and she’s not above using Dek to do it. When Thia helps him escape from a Weyland-Yutani facility run by Tessa’s forces, something shifts. For the first time, Dek fights not for glory or vengeance, but for his pack. Armed with Thia’s knowledge and his hard-won understanding of Genna’s ecology, Dek turns the planet itself into a weapon against the machines hunting them.

Predator: Badlands Final Thoughts

Predator: Badlands is the rare franchise revival that dares to evolve its monster. Trachtenberg and Aison strip the Predator mythos down to its primal core, then rebuild it around empathy, survival, and unlikely kinship. Dek’s journey from exiled runt to reluctant protector reframes the Yautja not as mindless hunters, but as beings capable of loyalty and growth.

Elle Fanning delivers standout dual performances as Thia and Tessa, embodying the film’s central tension between control and compassion. Trachtenberg balances that emotion with muscular, inventive action that feels earned rather than obligatory.

Even when the pacing stumbles or the third-act chaos blurs the visuals, Badlands maintains its pulse. It’s a lean, muscular piece of sci-fi storytelling that understands what made Predator iconic.

By turning the galaxy’s fiercest killer into an underdog worth rooting for, Predator: Badlands gives new life to the franchise.