Trying to prove his worth, a predator heads to the galaxy’s most dangerous planet to hunt its most dangerous creature—and finds some unexpected help along the way. Predator: Badlands is the first Predator movie to have a PG-13 rating, but it’s still plenty violent. And that poses its own peril for families.
On Earth, Dek would be, quite literally, a big deal: The NFL would select the mandibled predator in the first round, whether he could catch or not. Organized crime would try to hire him as an assassin. And no one would dare bully him in school.
But on his home planet, Yautja Prime, Dek’s a little pipsqueak. He’d be the last guy picked in kickball. He’d be shoved into lockers. If Yautja Prime had high schools, he’d almost certainly be a member of the audio/visual team.
And while that background might set him up for success on Earth—perhaps prepping him to be a CEO of a major tech company or, even better, a Christian movie reviewer—Yautja Prime isn’t so kind to those who fail to pass physical muster.
Dek, by the standards of the Yautja, is a runt. Runts are weak. And weakness must be culled.
Dek knows he’s got something to prove. So he tells his much bigger brother, Kwei, that he plans to go to the galaxy’s most dangerous planet (Genna) and bag its most dangerous critter (the Kalisk). No Yautja has ever done it, and Dek hopes to be the first—or die trying.
His father just wants him to die.
Dad makes an unexpected visit and tells Kwei to kill his brother. Kwei, in a very un-Yautja-like mood of mercy, frees Dek instead. So their father kills Kwei. “To forgive weakness is to show weakness,” he says. He’d love to make it a two-fer killing, but Dek’s already on his way to Genna, trapped aboard his brother’s ship that Kwei pre-programmed to go there.
But once Dek lands on the planet, he realizes that he’ll need to deal with more than just the formidable Kalisk. He must fight killer birds, killer slugs, killer vines, killer caterpillars. (They don’t call Genna the “Planet of Death” for nothing.)
Too bad that Yautja always work alone. The predator could use a little help.
Dek finds a little of that help in Thia—a sentient, humanoid synthetic that lost her legs during her own run-in with the Kalisk. And while Dek insists that he doesn’t need a partner, he classifies Thia as more of a tool than a helpmate. The two pick up another fellow traveler—a strange, monkey-like being that Thia names “Bud”—and march through the forests and plains of Genna, forming a formidable team.
Over time (and very much against his Yautja upbringing) Dek begins to develop a certain kinship with his companions. While I seriously doubt that Dek has ever read the Bible, he grows to see the wisdom in Ecclesiastes 4:12: “And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
If Predator: Badlands has some sort of overarching moral, it’d be the importance of that threefold cord. Life is so much easier (and more enjoyable) if you have someone to share it with, even if that someone is a legless robot or a terrifying mandibled hunter.
None, unless you count a very brief reference to billions of light cycles (a nod to a very old universe), and the fact that aliens are a part of the movie.
Dek and Thia eventually do find Thia’s legs, which occasionally scamper around by themselves in some rather tight pants. Those scenes are about as sensuous as a bag of potatoes, but I mention it here in the interest of covering our bases.
Predator movies have always been rated R … until now. Predator: Badlands squeaks into theaters with a PG-13 rating. Why? Because it doesn’t shed a drop of human blood.
Some may consider that a technicality: We see plenty of non-human blood and goop splattered here. Yautjas battle murder-minded creatures (and each other), and they lose lots of their antifreeze-colored blood. Some also lose hands, arms and heads. Dek painfully cauterizes several wounds. And that’s all just part of the Yautja culture: When Thia asks Dek what his favorite part of a fight was, he reminisces, “When I jammed its heart with my sword and caused its blood to run down my face.”
All the human-looking creatures in Badlands are synthetics, or “synths”—essentially robots that shed milky “blood.” Loads of them are permanently, um, decommissioned: Limbs and heads are torn off and sometimes crushed under boot heels. They’re shot (in one case leaving a huge gaping wound that we can see through) and stabbed and blown up, and, in one case, eaten. But the synths don’t seem to have nerve endings, so when they are “killed” or ripped apart, they bear their demise with nothing worse than a bit of exasperation.
Thia is a good example of Badlands’ curious dichotomy between bodily carnage and stoic reserve. She’s as chipper as a synth can be, even though she’s missing her legs (a bit of what looks like her robotic-equivalent spine dangles out of her torso). She’s dropped and tossed about, and she sometimes seems to enjoy it. And when they find her wayward legs, she undergoes a bit of clinical, bloodless surgery to bring the two halves of her body together.
We meet Thia’s “sister” synth, Tessa, who had her own brutal run-in with the Kalisk. Her wounds, while less dire than Thia’s, look more human—and thus more painful and visceral. She’s soon patched up, but even that procedure can feel uncomfortable.
The homebodies of Genna don’t escape without injury, either. One massive animal, a “bone bison,” is sliced in half from horn-to-tail. (It’s later cooked and eaten.) A terrifying tree-dwelling creature nearly devours a couple of characters before Dek dispatches it. A flying creature is stabbed repeatedly off camera, though we see its blood gush and spatter. An eel-like creature is incinerated. One monster blows up. Bugs explode, too. Living vines are ripped, crushed and annihilated (though they try to do their share of annihilation themselves). One creature loses parts of its body repeatedly, only to have those parts quickly regenerate. Special grenades cause creatures, or, parts of creatures, to freeze.
We see the carnage left behind by a rampaging Kalisk. Plants shoot poisonous thorns, one of which painfully lodges in Dek’s neck. Dek’s spacecraft crashes to the planet’s surface. Dek and Kwei participate in a long, frenetic and potentially deadly training duel. We see several small creatures eat one another. Family members fight and sometimes kill one another.
One use of the s-word, and that’s it.
None.
Both Dek and Thia act selfishly at times. The corporation that sent Thia, Tessa and the other synths to Genna—the Weyland-Yutani Corporation best known for its role in the Alien films—is merciless in trying to achieve its own nefarious goals.
A creature sort of spits on Dek, a sign that the critter is initiating Dek into its own clan.
When Dek tells Thia about his desire to kill the fearsome Kalisk—and stresses his need to hunt alone in order to prove himself to the Yautja—Thia gives Dek a nature lesson. She tells him about a creature on Earth called the wolf. Wolves hunt in packs, she says, and the pack’s leader, the Alpha, isn’t the one that kills the most. It’s the one that “best protects the pack.”
Dek, like a stubborn preschooler, announces that he wants to be an Alpha, too—but only by killing the most.
Dek doesn’t stay in that stubborn spot, though. Through his adventures on Genna, he learns that he doesn’t need to embrace just one definition of strength. He doesn’t need to cling to just one notion of clan. He becomes more than a killer: He becomes a protector.
And that gives Predator: Badlands a curious thread of decency we wouldn’t normally expect from a Predator movie.
Predator films tend to be blood-drenched horror flicks where simply surviving is the greatest “good” possible. Certainly, the Yautja civilization’s own ethos is predicated on one incredibly simple premise: Kill or be killed. Prey upon others or become prey yourself.
Badlands tells us that the Yautjas have it all wrong. To survive is not enough. To care for others? That’s the ticket.
Thematically, that makes Badlands a kinder, gentler sort of Predator movie. Its PG-13 rating emphasizes that. But while Dek eventually sees the benefit, and perhaps even the beauty, of having a few friends, he’s still a stone-cold predator—bred and taught to kill. And Badlands still retains much of that ethos, too.
Even though Badlands doesn’t have any actual people to kill, we see plenty of people-like synths find their digital doom—and in a variety of violent, sometimes grotesque ways. And the carnage extends to other alien characters and critters as well.
Predator: Badlands is more navigable than other films in the franchise. It’s got more heart and less actual blood. But given how wildly problematic those other Predator movies have been, that’s not necessarily saying much. Despite the movie’s PG-13 rating, take a tip from Dek on Genna: Approach this one with caution.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
