Predator: Badlands (2025): Two for the deadly road
2025 • Dan Trachtenberg • 2.39:1 • Jump to Gallery ↓
Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands tells the story of a junior and weaker member of a Yautja clan who is violently exiled by his ruthless father. Eager to earn his warrior status and prove his worth, he journeys to the legendary, hostile planet Genna to hunt the Kalisk: an unkillable apex beast, according to his kind. After his ship crashes and he loses most of his high-tech hunting equipment, he is forced to form an unlikely alliance with a Weyland-Yutani synthetic humanoid who was stranded after her corporate expedition was slaughtered by the same beast.
Shifting the point of view to that of the Predator, the new entry in the sci-fi franchise also moves as far away as possible from Earth, on a planet with a large floral and faunal diversity, where all of it is deadly. Relying heavily on CGI to equate the unknown with danger, the film is almost episodic in nature, moving from one survival battle to the next and introducing a series of unexpected challenges in each new setting.
A buddy road trip with the mechanics of a survival story, Predator: Badlands adds layers to the franchise’s mythos while relying on classic narrative tropes to build up its emotional core. The result is a violent space western about strange bedfellows lost in an even stranger land.
Technical Specs:
- The Story: A young Predator cast out by his clan embarks on a dangerous journey across a hostile alien world, forming an unlikely alliance that forces him to redefine strength, survival, and what it means to become a hunter.
- Actors: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Ravi Narayan, Michael Homick, Stefan Grube.
- Director: Dan Trachtenberg
- Year: 2025
- Cinematographer: Jeff Cutter
- Origin: American Cinema
- Aspect Ratios: 2.39:1
- Genre: Action / Sci-Fi / Horror
