When Dan Trachtenberg revitalized the Predator franchise in 2022 with the amazing Prey, one sentiment rang out loud and clear across the pop culture world: Damn, it would have been cool to see this on a big screen. Now, after a brief journey through animation with the also-excellent Predator: Killer of Killers, Trachtenberg is granting our wish.
Predator: Badlands emerges from the promise of this theatrical release arrangement fully formed, a near-perfect cinematic organism designed with maximalism in mind. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s packed with gnarly kills—and it truly wants you to feel every bone-crunching moment in your bones. This is the Predator theatrical experience we’ve been waiting for.
The hero of Predator: Badlands is Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young Predator (or Yautja, as they call themselves) who’s the runt of his clan, outcast from his home planet on a quest to prove his worth with the ultimate kill. He thinks he’s found it on Genna, a wild planet where everything is trying to kill him—and where an unkillable monster even Predators are afraid to fight lurks. If he succeeds, it would be an unprecedented victory for his people, but Dek has nothing but a crashed ship, few weapons, and very little knowledge of what he’s facing. His only hope might be teaming up with Thia (Elle Fanning), a lost Weyland-Yutani synth programmed with knowledge of Genna’s wildlife, who’s determined to get back to her “sister,” Tessa (also Elle Fanning).
What hits you first, even before Thia arrives, is Genna itself—a vast expanse of jungles and plains, mountains and rivers that seem to hold something deadly and terrifying in every leaf, crevice, and stream. There are caterpillars that explode, blades of grass that can shred you like daggers, and even living vines that won’t stop multiplying. It’s a stunning showcase of sci-fi imagination, but it also all has a purpose, as careful viewers will soon discover.
Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison clearly always had the big screen in mind when developing Genna’s untamable, vicious landscapes—but that’s not all they’re working with here. Once Thia arrives in the story, they take a page out of Predator star and legendary screenwriter Shane Black’s book and make Badlands into something of a buddy movie. Dek is, naturally, convinced he has to go it alone to prove he’s a real Yautja worthy of all the honors of his people, and only grudgingly puts up with Thia because she’s useful to him. I say grudgingly because she also has no legs (long story), almost never stops talking, and is so bubbly you’d think she just walked out of a romantic comedy. It doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does from moment one, and Fanning and Schuster-Koloamatangi are astoundingly good as dual leads who have to carry a film without a single human character in it.
But it’s not just the odd-couple nature of the two leads that makes Badlands work. Dek and Thia are surrounded on all sides by opportunities for adventure—from lumbering creatures moving across razorblade meadows to an unexpected bond with a creature they just call “Bud”—but the film never feels like it’s just throwing random ingredients into the mix. It’s a quest movie in the fine tradition of everything from Conan the Barbarian to The Fellowship of the Ring, and that means each of these seemingly random encounters has meaning. Aison’s script infuses each moment with humor, life, and depth that will matter eventually—maybe in five minutes or maybe in an hour. Through it all, helped along by the knack for pacing Trachtenberg showed in Prey, you get the feeling that you’re in good hands, that these filmmakers are lovingly crafting not just a gleeful big-screen experience but a well-constructed thriller in which every detail counts. Literally every blade of (razor) grass matters in this film.
In dual roles as Thia and Tessa, Fanning shines, but it’s arguably Schuster-Koloamatangi who has the harder job here—and rises to meet it. Hidden under prosthetics, fangs, and yellow eyes, he is nevertheless a tremendous well of emotional depth and subtle physicality. Both Dek and Thia are on a journey in this film beyond the physical trip they must make. They’re each grappling with the reality that the communities to which they thought they were contributing might be actively hostile to their existence, and in order to survive, they might have to build a community of their very own. It’s a simple emotional leap—one that any fan of action movies about ragtag heroes will enjoy—but it’s done so well, and with such care, that it never feels thin or predictable.
By the time of its gripping, wonderfully creative, action-packed finale, Predator: Badlands has firmly established itself as one of the best genre movies of the year—a sci-fi action spectacle that lives up to its big-screen billing. It’s a blast, and it’ll leave you instantly wanting Trachtenberg to keep steering this franchise for another decade or more.
Predator: Badlands is in theaters November 7.
https://ift.tt/liqXM9v https://ift.tt/wNf5cSD
No comments:
Post a Comment