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By this point, the interstellar hunters known as Yautja have appeared in several movies, comics, and video games. Yet, each Predator movie follows the same basic structure: we’re introduced to human protagonists, we see them get killed by a mysterious force, and it’s not until late in the film that we finally see the ugly motherf—-r in its full glory.
Not so for upcoming new entry Predator: Badlands, which is seemingly changing up the usual formula. This film puts the Predator “front and center, leading the charge,” according to director Dan Trachtenberg in an interview with Empire.
“He’s still badass, but there’s something there that touches you emotionally, too,” Trachtenberg trased. “Creating a character you connect with, but are also super-intimidated by, has been challenging. But exciting.”
That last part stands out, as the Predator franchise isn’t historically known for the emotional depth of their main characters. The heroes of the original 1987 film worked better as hunks of American exceptionalism who get torn apart by a bigger threat than they do as people with interiority. Danny Glover finds bits of depth to his overwhelmed L.A. cop in Predator 2 (1990), but both 2010’s Predators and 2018’s The Predator go back to macho men spouting one-liners and sneering at one another.
In fact, the only properly rich hero in the franchise thus far came from Trachtenberg’s first outing in the series, Prey (2022). As played by Amber Midthunder, Comanche warrior Naru wants to prove herself to her tribe and move out from under the shadow of her brother. Her plight gets even more rich when European colonizers arrive, a sign of the battle to come.
For Trachtenberg, the complexity of Prey‘s hero meant that he had to continue pushing the franchise forward in its next entry. The director needed to “find another essential piece of cinema that does what Prey did spiritually—pushing the franchise’s boundaries, letting us root for a hero we rarely get to root for—but in a different way. And that transformed into this big idea of rooting for the Predator.”
With a change in focus also comes a change in setting. At this point, we still don’t know much about the plot of Predator: Badlands. However, we do know that it takes place on a wasted world in the far future and will star Elle Fanning. That description might bring to mind Predators, which followed a group of human tough guys stranded on a planet used as a Yautja hunting ground. But where that film had an ensemble cast with character actors such as Walton Goggins and Mahershala Ali, Badlands will involve a pair of sisters.
“She faced intense challenges on this movie—dramatically, physically, logistically,” Trachtenberg says of his lead human. He doesn’t say more, but we can’t help but wonder if those challenges relate to the movie’s shift in focus. If the Predator is the hero here, does that mean Fanning will have to do the stuff usually done by the antagonist, ripping out spines and skinning victims?
Well, probably not. But it will be exciting to see how these human sisters challenge our Yautja protagonist.
Predator: Badlands releases on Nov. 7, 2025.
The post Predator Badlands Will Make a Big Change to the Predator Movie Formula appeared first on Den of Geek.
