Predator: Badlands Teaser Introduces an Unstoppable Adversary

Live-action Predator movies are, thankfully, not very common, and it’s even rarer for one of them to focus on the eponymous monsters as protagonists rather than villainous alien hunters. 20th Century Studios changed that today by releasing the first teaser trailer for the upcoming film Predator: Badlands.

The new movie will follow a young Predator cast out from his community, played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. He is joined on his journey by a Weyland-Yutani android played by Elle Fanning, who is named Thia. Dek and Thia are forced to team up to face “the ultimate adversary, a creature that can’t be killed.” The monster the trailer shows has been described as an enormous beast that’s entirely new to both the Predator and Alien franchises.

Plot and World-Building

In terms of narrative, Badlands will be another stand-alone addition to the Predator/Alien shared universe, but some early indications suggest the film will do some major world-building. Insider reporting has it that a good chunk of the movie will take place on the Predator home world, which has never been shown or named in any of the previous films. There are glimpses of alien flora and Predator villages in the teaser, as well as multiple Predators in a standoff and on the hunt.

The first trailer for Predator: Badlands introduces the lead character, Dek

Director and co-writer Dan Trachtenberg also appears intent on building on the lore of the Predator films in this new chapter, whereas his 2022 entry Prey took a more stripped-back approach to the species’ society and culture. In the case of Prey, the filmmakers focused on two characters’ fight for survival in the 18th-century American Great Plains. Prey may have been a “first contact” film, but it eschewed traditional worldbuilding in favor of survivalist thrills. In contrast, Badlands is teasing information on the species’ customs, language, and hierarchies.

There’s also the fact that Thia is an android and Dek is a Predator, which should be of great interest to Alien fans who get a kick out of spotting Easter eggs from the franchise that often overlap with Predator lore. Fanning’s character is a product of Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the megacorporation in the Alien series and which also plays a role in the Predator series, and she seems to provide a foil to Dek’s primitive brutality and hunt-focused lifestyle.

Director Dan Trachtenberg is Returning for the Feature Film

Trachtenberg is another promising development since he previously directed Prey, the last Predator film that got critical and commercial acclaim for being a worthy addition to the series. Badlands already has a strong selling point in the director returning for the sequel, as he likely has the most attachment to it.

In addition to working on Badlands, Trachtenberg is producing an animated series about the Predators called Predator: Killer of Killers. The anthology will explore the mythology of the species as it moves from one hunt to another over different periods. It’s set to be released on Hulu on June 6, the same platform that streamed Prey in the United States.

Key Scenes in the First Trailer

The teaser trailer doesn’t give much away, plot-wise, but it does show some tantalizing scenes. Fans get some close-ups of Predators dueling in ceremonial armor with each other and Dek sneaking through an alien landscape. There are shots of Fanning’s character Thia using futuristic weapons and a quick glimpse of the creature the film’s marketing has been billing as “the ultimate adversary, a creature that can’t be killed.” As with all first trailers, it’s all designed to hook viewers, and there’s not a lot of substance, but the first teaser trailer for Predator: Badlands accomplishes what it set out to do.

There’s a lot of significance in this teaser by being a Predator story that’s not about humans and which follows one of the titular characters. It might not be a total departure from the Predator formula, but it’s a solid shake-up, and by making the monster the central figure in its own story, Badlands promises a little more nuance to its characters and themes than some of the more action-focused Predator movies.

Theatrical Release

The full feature film is scheduled for release on November 7, so there’s still plenty of time between now and then for 20th Century Studios to follow up on the first teaser with another trailer that might reveal more story details, get across the scope of the action, and also show a bit more of the unkillable beast that Dek is facing in the story.