The Predator franchise hunts for a wild team-up adventure, and finds it
Sometimes, the deeper a film franchise explores its lore, the more the lack of mystery renders new entries as overwritten, overexplained, and uninteresting (see Maleficent, Star Wars, Halloween, Alien, etc.). Every bit of old and new intellectual property is vulnerable to this type of universe-building, since there’s a lot of money to be made in juicing a franchise for all its worth. Not all of lore-exploring is bad, however. There are many exceptions, and after 2018’s disappointing Shane Black vehicle, The Predator, the Predator franchise has been successfully growing its cinematic universe since 2022 under the helm of writer/director Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane, Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers). Predator: Badlands is the most adventurous and (intentionally) funny entry in the series, and it’s also the most distinct departure from the adult-oriented, extremely violent nature of its predecessors. Badlands stretches the tonal scope of what a Predator movie can include and feel like. With 2022’s Prey maintaining the franchise’s grittiness and simple setups (albeit taking place on the Great Plains in the early 1700s), and this year’s animated Predator: Killer of Killers expanding the Predator narrative pallet in inventive and ultra-gory ways, Badlands is an additional and promising franchise track: a character-oriented Star Wars-esque adventure. Continue reading “Film Review: “Predator: Badlands””