It felt like for a while there was always going to be something deeply wrong with the Predator franchise. While the original is a fun testosterone fuelled jungle auctioneer anchored by Arnie’s brand of yelling, the series could never quite capture the magic. Predator 2 made the wise choice to move to the concrete jungle but had little else going for it, Predators was interesting enough but felt like it lived in the originals shadow, both AVP films muddied the lore and the less said about Shane Black’s The Predator the better. But then Dan Tratchenberg was given the keys the series and suddenly things looked up.
Given his success with Prey, which took the series to the era of Comanche warriors for bloodletting fun, and the animated romp Killer of Killers, his next feature in the series comes with some anticipation. Not content to coast on good will he changes the formula again. This time Predator: Badlands follows a predator – Dek (Dimitirus Schuster-Kolomatangi) the runt of his tribe the Yautja – is outcast to Genna a planet known for an unkillable creature that Dek believes will bring his glory, instead he finds a broken synthetic Thia (Elle Fanning) and the two join forces.
It’s not entirely surprising that the series has decided to focus on a predator itself, after all one did team up with humans in the first AVP showing at least some form of nobility to them. But, to rest the entire film on a monster who, let’s be real, has a mouth like lady parts and doesn’t speak a human language is a big ask. That said Tratchenberg, the brilliant make up effects and Shuster-Kolomantangi work hard to make you invest in Dek from his brutal introduction to his burgeoning understanding of what a wolf is. It’s a compelling watch, a sort of Walkabout for one ugly motherfucker.
It’s only natural that a hunter who speaks an alien language and even then is of few words be paired with a chatter box and Elle Fanning’s Thia is a joyful addition to the series. Joining the ranks of other Weyland-Yutani synths, this kind of cross-over could become fodder for lore building but instead Fanning imbues her almost human character with an innocent vulnerability. It’s close to becoming annoying but never falls into it and the burgeoning friendship between the two provides the backbone of what works about Badlands. It’s a film about coming of age, it’s just the coming of age is done by a dreadlocked alien with six fingers.
Tratchenberg has fun building the planet of Genna with some astonishing visual effects, and a truly pulse pounding score by both Sarah Schachner and Benjamin Wallsfisch. It’s got action that is there to thrill you, and it does. One mid-film sequence involving a giant creature, trees and killer vines is particularly entertaining even if Tratchenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison put a little too much stock into a comic monkey-alien that keeps cropping up.
Even so, as the film builds to it’s climax there a palpable sense of fun about the whole thing. It doesn’t feel the need to trot out the theme song, or the one liners of previous movies, instead content to explore this new element of the world that has been built and to see if this experiment pays off. When your franchise is pushing forty, it’s brave to mix things up.
It’ll be controversial, but ambition and trying are not to be sniffed at and should instead be encouraged. This franchise doesn’t bleed, so no, we can’t kill it.
Predator: Badlands is in cinemas from November 7th
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