Predator: Badlands, new minor but fun chapter in the SF saga

After Prey and Killer of Killers, director Dan Trachtenberg continues to play with the Predator mythology, in a rather inconsistent but amusing film.

“Its regenerative capacity is extraordinary. enthuses a character from Predator: Badlands facing the Kalisk, one of the extra-terrestrial mega-monsters at the heart of the plot, a sort of enormous porcupine capable of regrowing its limbs immediately after they have been severed by its adversaries. This “regeneration”, which allows the beast to sit at the very top of the food chain, also functions, of course, as a metaphor for the destiny of Hollywood franchises, which we know can mutate and survive all fashions and all eras. Perhaps we should even go so far as to hear in this line director Dan Trachtenberg’s ecstatic commentary on his own work and the way he knew “regenerate” the myth of Predatorthanks to the rave reception from Preyreleased on Disney+ three years ago. Since John McTiernan’s inaugural masterpiece in 1987, the saga seemed not to know what to do with itself, trying to reinvent itself, most of the time in a very clumsy way, between unloved or forgettable sequels and cheap crossovers with the universe Alien.

By propelling in Prey the predator from space in the middle of 18th century Comanche territory, Trachtenberg was able to reinject a little new blood (neon green blood, of course) into a saga that most people didn’t believe in. He followed up last summer with the animated Predator: Killer of Killers (still on Disney+) and today brings back the Rasta-looking ET hunter to the big screen with this Predator: Badlandsthe whole concept of which lies in an inversion of perspective like Maleficent : what if the antagonist of the previous parts became the hero of the film? What if we saw the world through our eyes and our feelings?

Prey is the best film in the Predator franchise since Predator 2 (review)

The star of Badlands is therefore a young predator, or Yautja (as they are called), named Dek, who must prove his worth to his family by going to hunt, on the planet Genna, aka “the planet of death”, an adversary deemed unbeatable, the Kalisk (you know, the one with extraordinary regenerative abilities). There, the apprentice hunter will meet two “twin” androids, Thia and Tessa (both played by Elle Fanning): one cheerful and very talkative, like C-3PO, who will find herself traveling on Dek’s back (she lost her legs along the way), the other much less friendly, who circumstances will push to become the Predator’s predator.

It is therefore, as it should be, a story of prey and hunter, but where the positions of the different protagonists are constantly reconfigured. And where, above all, Trachtenberg enjoys enlarging the contours of the mythology Predatormythology which has the advantage of being extremely summary in origin, and to which he can therefore easily add lots of additional layers, a whole folklore made up of weapons of war, various items, tribal rituals, alien fauna and flora revealing themselves according to a logic of world building very inventive and playful, with its very aggressive vines, its explosive plants, its cutting herbs and its moon bugs (much tougher than their name suggests).

This is the best part of the film, the almost childish pleasure that the director takes in creating his little world, drawing his universe, even if it means coloring outside the lines. A quality which is also the obvious limit of BadlandsTrachtenberg tending to mix things up a little too broadly, embracing a mess of references, from Star Wars has Avatar passing through Conan the Barbarian and the last Planet of the Apes. We are very far, light years away, from the visceral, primitive purity of McTiernan. This “catch-all” side is in any case contained in the very DNA of the project, which definitely teases a new future Alien vs. Predatorthrough the mention of Weyland-Yutani, the corporation of the universe ofAlien for which the two “synthetics” played by Elle Fanning work here.

Trachtenberg, after having played the card of the “lean” approach and the return to the sources in Preyand that of the big brutal release in Killer of Killershere is clearly aimed at a wider audience, with its sometimes childish humor, the gentle emphasis on violence, a somewhat inflated tendency towards anthropomorphism (a height in the first episode of the saga entirely free of the human presence) and the edifying aspect of what is basically a nice initiatory story, the learning by a horrible bloodthirsty creature of the virtues of solidarity and substitute families. So many elements that we manage to forget during the screening thanks to Trachtenberg’s fairly nimble execution, but which risk offending purists and uncompromising nostalgics. Nostalgic who, on the other hand, will perhaps be rubbed in the wrong direction by the latest rumors, speaking of a potential return of Schwarzenegger in the saga. Invent cute new creatures, bring back old veterans… All means are good for regeneration.

Predator: Badlandsby Dan Trachtenberg, with Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi… At the cinema on November 5.