Predator: Badlands marked the return of the Predator saga to theaters after a seven-year absence. It’s true that we had premieres like Predator: The Prey any Predator: Killer of killersbut both are films released directly on Disney+.
Dan Trachtenberg has had a clear purpose since 2022: revitalizing the franchise and, in the process, expanding the mythology of the yautja, the ruthless species of predators who venture across the cosmos in search of the largest possible prey.
Predator: Badlands maintains this premise, presenting Deck (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a yautja belonging to a clan that considers him weak, which makes him, among other things, go in search of a creature that no other yautja has managed to defeat: the Kalisk.
To do this, Dek travels to Gennaa hostile planet where practically everything is lethal. There he will find unlikely allies, such as Thia (Elle Fanning) a synthetic of Weyland-Yutani which, in itself, establishes a future connection between the sagas Foreigner and Predator. But that’s not it let’s talk spoilers.
How are yautja created? Predator: Badlands offers clues about this
In addition to Dek, Thia’s Weyland-Yutani group is also on the Kalisk trail in Predator: Badlands. The presence of the yautja leads them to ransack their ship in search of weapons to defeat the creature, as terrestrial weapons prove insufficient.
TessaThia’s “twin”, leads the Weyland-Yutnani group. At a certain point in the film, they capture Dek and, before sending him away, they try to interrogate him to find out how some Yautja devices work.
Dek convinces Thia to tell her interrogator that the object she is holding in her hands is a map and that she must look inside to read it. As he does so, the mechanism explodes and, well, releases a festival of white liquid as it destroys the synthetic material.
When freed, Dek tells an indignant Thia that the object is a “yautja children’s toy“, which is quite disturbing. Add to that Dek’s mother’s final entrance into the scene, and perhaps Predator: Badlands is hinting at a future plot that shows how yautja are created.
Predator: Badlands It continues in theaters, where it has already accumulated $136.3 million worldwide. What will be the franchise’s next stop after this return to the big screen?
About The Author
