[SPOILER WARNING: This article contains full spoilers for Predator: Badlands.]
Alright, fellow hunters, let's sit down and talk about Predator: Badlands. I’ve been sitting with this one for a few days, and honestly? My head is still spinning. After Prey basically saved the franchise from extinction by stripping it back to its primal roots, Dan Trachtenberg had a massive mountain to climb. But I don’t think any of us expected him to climb it by flipping the script entirely and making the Predator... the hero?
The Vibe Shift: From Slasher to Space Opera
First off, let’s address the elephant in the room: the PG-13 rating. I know, I know. We’re used to spinal cords being ripped out in glorious, R-rated 4K. Switching to a "broader audience" felt like a red flag at first—a corporate move to sell more lunchboxes. But once the movie starts, you realize why they did it. This isn't a slasher flick where we're waiting for teenagers to get skewered; it’s a deep-dive character study.
We’re following Dek, and man, my heart actually ached for this guy. In Yautja culture, "weakness" isn't just a flaw; it's a death sentence. Dek is the "runt," a Yautja who doesn't fit the hyper-macho, trophy-collecting mold of his peers. Seeing the opening scenes on Yautja Prime—a world that looks like a brutal, orange-hued industrial nightmare—really set the tone. When his father, N’Yor, tells his brother Kui to cull him during a ritual hunt? That hit heavy. It turned the Predator from a faceless, clicking monster into someone we’re actually rooting for. For the first time in thirty-eight years, I wasn't watching a hunter; I was watching a survivor.
Personal Reaction: Watching Dek struggle to survive the crash on the planet Genna felt less like Predator and more like The Martian meets The Mandalorian. The world-building here is insane. Trachtenberg actually developed a functional Yautja language for this movie. Watching large chunks of the film with just subtitles and clicking sounds should have been boring, but it was actually the most immersive part. It felt like we were finally being let into their secret club, learning their insults and their prayers.
The Weyland-Yutani "Twist" & The "Bud" Factor
I screamed when I saw the Weyland-Yutani logo on the exploration tech. We all did. It’s that Pavlovian response we’ve been conditioned for since 1979. But the choice to make the "human" party actually synthetics (shoutout to Elle Fanning playing the twins, Thea and Tessa—she was eerie, cold, and somehow deeply empathetic) was a stroke of genius. It solved two problems at once: it let the movie keep the "hyper-violence" without hitting that R-rating wall (because blue fluid and wires flying everywhere doesn't count as gore to the MPAA), and it gave Dek someone to talk to who wasn't a screaming victim.
And then there’s "Bud," the baby Kalisk. I’ll be the first to admit it: he’s a play for the Grogu crowd. He’s cute, he’s cuddly, and he’s clearly designed to be a toy. But within the story, Bud represents Dek’s rejection of his father’s "kill or be killed" philosophy. Seeing this armored killing machine gently protecting a "child" of his enemy species gave the hunt actual emotional stakes that a standard body count never could. It’s "Disneyfied," sure, but in a way that makes Dek feel like a three-dimensional person rather than just a guy in a rubber suit.
THAT Ending: "It's My Mother."
Let’s talk about that cliffhanger because I haven't slept since I saw it. Dek goes home, survives the gauntlet, and kills his toxic father in a showdown that felt more like a Shakespearean tragedy than an action movie. He stands there, finally claiming his invisibility tech—the ultimate symbol of Yautja adulthood. He’s won. He’s the Alpha now.
Then the sky turns black.
When Dek looked up at that massive, regal fleet and said, "It's my mother," the theater I was in went dead silent. If you’ve spent any time digging into the Dark Horse comics or the deep-cut lore, you know why this is a tectonic shift. For decades, we’ve assumed the Yautja were a brotherhood of warriors. Badlands just confirmed the long-standing theory: the Yautja are a matriarchy.
The big, scary hunters we’ve seen for thirty years? The Jungle Hunter, the City Hunter, even the Berserkers? They’re just the foot soldiers. They’re the ones sent out to play games. The Females are the ones who actually run the society. They are the politicians, the grand strategists, and the rulers of Yautja Prime. Dek didn't just kill a clan leader; he defied the entire social order. He killed a Male that was likely "selected" by his Mother. He isn't a hero to them—he’s a glitch in the system. A traitor.
A New Era or a Defanged Legend?
Is this the "classic" Predator experience? Absolutely not. If you want the sweaty, muscular tension of Predator (1987), just go rewatch the original. But if you want to see this franchise actually evolve into a galactic saga, Badlands is a massive, gutsy swing that connects. It’s emotional, it’s weirdly beautiful, and it sets up a "Trachtenberg-verse" that feels like it’s building toward something huge.
I’m already seeing theories that the Matriarch is the one running the Killer of Killers tournaments from the animated anthology. Imagine a sequel where Dek has to lead a revolution of "runts" and "outcasts" against the established Matriarchy. We could finally see a team-up of legacy characters—Nuru from Prey, maybe even a grizzled Dutch—joining forces with a Predator to take down the throne.
My Rating: 8.5/10 (Lost 1.5 points because I still miss the R-rated visceral gore—there’s just something about a green-blooded trophy room that PG-13 can't capture—but the lore expansion and that "Mother" reveal more than made up for the lack of flying limbs.)
What do you guys think? Is Dek the "Grogu" of the Predator world, or is he the revolution that Yautja Prime desperately needs? Are you down for the Matriarchy reveal, or does it take away the mystery of the hunters? Let’s argue in the comments.
The hunt is no longer for sport... it's for the throne.
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