I can\u2019t speak for all professional film critics, but personally, I live by a set of rules. You never make up your mind about a movie before you see it. You never walk out of a movie, no matter how bad it is. And here\u2019s a big one that\u2019s going to be relevant in just a second: You never call a movie \u201cone of the best of the year\u201d unless the year is, at least, mostly over. Otherwise, how could you know?<\/p>\n
Well folks, it\u2019s early November and I\u2019m calling it: Dan Trachtenberg\u2019s \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d<\/a> is one of the best movies of the year. This probably shouldn\u2019t be a shock, since Trachtenberg\u2019s \u201cPredator\u201d prequel \u201cPrey\u201d was one of the best movies of 2022. After 40 years of filmmakers trying and struggling to turn \u201cPredator\u201d into a consistently successful sci-fi franchise, Trachtenberg finally cracked the code. The premise is that aliens hunt humans for sport, but that\u2019s not what the stories are really about. Dan Trachtenberg understands that the best \u201cPredator\u201d films are macho tales about how machismo is bullcrap.<\/p>\n In John McTiernan\u2019s original \u201cPredator,\u201d musclebound male action archetypes are powerless in the face of a superior hunter, who happens to be an alien with a vaginal face. Trachtenberg\u2019s \u201cPrey\u201d was about a Comanche woman who wasn\u2019t allowed to be a hunter, but hunted and killed the universe\u2019s (allegedly) deadliest hunter anyway. \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d continues in this tradition, challenging regressive masculine values by telling a glorious and gripping story about why caring about people is killer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n On the surface, \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d breaks all the franchise\u2019s rules \u2014 for the first time, a Predator is the protagonist. Not just that, we finally get some subtitles when he talks, so we learn useful information about the Yautja alien species and their culture. It turns out they\u2019re just angry, violent jerks who live without compassion, friendship or self-sacrifice, like weekend warriors who watch pissy YouTube videos and accept every toxic thing they\u2019re told. The Yautja are so obsessed with strength that they even kill the runts of their litter, which is a problem for our hero, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), because he\u2019s the runt.<\/p>\n To save his life, and prove his worth to an emotionally distant and murderous father, Dek decides his big hunt \u2014 a coming of age ritual to the Yautja \u2014 will be the biggest ever. His trophy will be the Kalisk, an allegedly unkillable monster living on a planet where everything is cartoonishly lethal. The trees are trying to kill you. The grass is trying to kill you. The caterpillars are literally hand grenades. Dek is, to put it mildly, out of his depth. To put it less mildly, he\u2019s screwed with a rusty chainsaw.<\/p>\n Dek wants to prove he\u2019s a Yautja through and through, but to survive, he\u2019ll have to find his own path. He stumbles across a cheerful, chatty android named Thia (Elle Fanning) who knows all the local flora and fauna, and whose legs were ripped off by [checks notes] the local flora and fauna. She wants her legs back, but her legs are in the Kalisk\u2019s lair, so she offers to guide Dek there. Whoops! Yautja aren\u2019t allowed to make alliances. Thia convinces Dek that, since she\u2019s a robot, she\u2019s nothing more than a tool, and he\u2019s allowed to have tools, so he should carry her torso around like a North Face backpack. And thus their quest begins.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a structural simplicity to \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d that belies its depths. It\u2019s one of those classical adventures where the journey, and just stick with me on this, is more important than the destination. Will our stoic hero learn a valuable lesson about friendship from a comic relief sidekick and a cute CGI animal, in an expensive blockbuster produced by the Disney Corporation? Yes, let\u2019s not pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d (20th Century Studios)<\/p>\n But Dan Trachtenberg \u2014 working from a stellar screenplay by Patrick Aison and Brian Duffield \u2014 uses this familiarity to explore something new. \u201cPredator\u201d is, again, a macho tale about how machismo is bullcrap. Dek doesn\u2019t find a new family and give up killing things. He learns you can kill things better if you have friends who like killing too. He never gives up on his quest for violent self-improvement. He is, always, a Predator, and \u201cBadlands\u201d is, always, a Predator movie. It just argues that strength doesn\u2019t come from toxic masculinity, and you can build a better warrior \u2014 and a better action movie \u2014 by doing what the best \u201cPredator\u201d movies did in the past. Trachtenberg once again embraces a formula while summarily rejecting that formula\u2019s typical message.<\/p>\n None of this would work if Elle Fanning, in particular, didn\u2019t do some real heavy lifting. Which is ironic, since her character gets toted around like carry-on luggage. This is the type of character who could easily ruin an action movie, the sort of comic relief, heart of gold sidekick who usually doesn\u2019t have much to contribute. But Thia is a genuinely funny character, and her sensitivity is nuanced, so she\u2019s a welcome addition to the dynamic. She\u2019s productive, not only offering useful information but also carrying her own in fights (sometimes in bizarre ways). Without Thia, and without a performance as complex as Elle Fanning\u2019s, \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d doesn\u2019t work. The way Fanning modulates between naive fascination and grim annoyance would, in a universe where films like \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d were serious awards contenders, be celebrated at the end of the year.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s not lose sight of the fact that \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d is also frickin\u2019 weird. Dan Trachtenberg doesn\u2019t let the straightforward plot get in the way of his bizarre imagination. There\u2019s a terrifying eel monster that spits acid who is, and I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m saying this, a very good boy and deserves a treat. It\u2019s a testament to excellent blockbuster filmmaking that you find yourself emotionally attached to something wholly ridiculous, and by the end of \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d it\u2019s hard not to get swept up in the moment. I felt things watching \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d that I never felt while watching a lot of so-called \u201cserious\u201d Oscar nominees.<\/p>\n \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d tinkers with the formula fans are used to, but it\u2019s a fantastic \u201cPredator\u201d movie anyway, capturing the thrills and themes that make the series special while successfully stretching out the canvas, revealing all-new details. This is wickedly exciting filmmaking. The rare, flashy studio blockbuster that doesn\u2019t read like a laundry list of creative compromises, where the money went to telling a story about fascinating characters and putting them in impossible, gorgeous, and horrifically violent situations. Like \u201cPrey\u201d before it, \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d is mainstream sci-fi filmmaking at its zenith, and it\u2019s proof \u2014 in an era where proof is hard to find \u2014 that big, expensive action spectacles don\u2019t have to suck. Indeed, they can still totally frickin\u2019 rule.<\/p>\n \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d opens exclusively in theaters on Nov. 7.<\/p>\n The post \u2018Predator: Badlands\u2019 Review: Empathetic Monster Mash Is One of the Best Movies of the Year<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can\u2019t speak for all professional film critics, but personally, I live by a set of rules. You never make up your mind about a movie before you see it. You never walk out of a movie, no matter how bad it is. And here\u2019s a big one that\u2019s going to be relevant in just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2127283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[346422,365483,406542,362908,402508,381050],"class_list":["post-2135731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-badlands","tag-dan-trachtenberg","tag-dimitrius-schuster-koloamatangi","tag-elle-fanning","tag-predator-movie","tag-trachtenberg"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Writer-Will-Tracy-on-Yorgos-Lanthimos-Latest-Trip.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2135732,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135731\/revisions\/2135732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2127283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n