There aren't any big reveals or shocking twists in Predator: Badlands. There are no Xenomorphs, no surprise cameos, and no teasing post-credits scenes. There aren't any major Easter eggs even – unlike in Prey, which saw its protagonist wield the gun used by Danny Glover in Predator 2, and another character claim that if the titular baddie bleeds, they can kill it. I'm kind of baffled, then, as to why the marketing for the movie was so needlessly coy – and I wish that I, and several fans, hadn't tried to fill in the gaps before it was released.
You see, Dan Trachtenberg's latest offering in the Predator franchise is a good movie. I'd be lying if I said I didn't prefer my entries on the darker side, but this Mandolarian-esque take on the source material is undeniably fun as it swaps horror for humor and centers a genuinely fantastic performance by Elle Fanning as sassy, sociable synth Thia. But, thanks to all the wild speculation about potential comic book links and more doing the rounds in the run-up to the movie's release, I couldn't help but walk away a little disappointed in how simple and self-contained it was. Sometimes we fans are to blame for unfairly projecting an idea of a film onto the film itself, and judging it on those make-believe merits rather than enjoying it for what it is. I don't necessarily think so here.
See-no Xenomorphs
For some reason, Predator: Badlands has been so shrouded in mystery it may as well have been wearing a combat cloak, with its trailers being more of a showcase of its vibes and visuals than plot. For months, Fanning and her co-star Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who plays Yautja protagonist Dek, were the only actors linked to the project, which led many to wonder whether some were deliberately being kept secret. Might Arnold Schwarzenegger be coming back? Did that Predator: Killer of Killers scene mean Prey's Naru is in the movie? Turns out, it's just because there are only about seven actors in the whole movie and one of those performances is voice only, while another is motion capture.
Of course, there's the fact that Fanning's Thia is a Weyland-Yutani bot, too, which had many wondering just how much it'd crossover with Alien. Xenomorphs, the gooey extraterrestrials in Ridley Scott's sci-fi series, are widely referred to as the deadliest creatures in the galaxy, so when we learned that Badlands would follow Dek as he set out to find the ultimate adversary in order to prove himself to his clan, I'll admit it seemed entirely plausible he'd be tracking down a Xenomorph. "You're hunting something that can't be killed," Thia tells Dek in the official teaser. And who would regard the big-skulled beasties as the universe's most formidable foes more so than a Weyland-Yutani droid? Said adversary ends up being the fabled Kalisk, native to the planet Genna, but with no mention of it in the promos, who could've known?
There was all the 'Broken Tusk' stuff, too. When the final trailer dropped, eagle-eyed viewers pointed out that Dek's lower left fang was damaged – just like Yeyinde/Broken Tusk's in Dark Horse's Predator graphic novels. Yeyinde lost his tooth in a fight against a Xenomorph. So it's not hard to see why I, along with so many others, thought Predator: Badlands could be a covert Alien vs. Predator movie – or be setting one up, at the very least. (In the movie, Dek recalls injuring his mandible while saving his brother Kwei from something when they were young, but he doesn't elaborate on what actually went down). It wouldn't be the first time Trachtenberg, who helmed 2016's 10 Cloverfield Lane, was a part of a mystery-laden franchise that encouraged sci-fi nerd-sleuthing as a sort of viral marketing…
If it needs, we can... fill it?
Certain behind-the-scenes comments haven't helped, either. "After Prey came out, and I started thinking about sequel stuff, there were three ideas that I had. Killers is one, Badlands is two and the third one is something else," Trachtenberg previously told SFX magazine. "The reason why I felt possessed to make them and sort of why I rushed – I did two at once because I could do, I could multitask with animation – was because I was so eager to get to the third thing."
Back when he was promoting Alien: Romulus in December 2024, filmmaker Fede Alvarez was asked by Deadline whether he'd be interested in developing an Alien vs. Predator movie, to which he replied with a grin: "I don't know, it depends on how well this does and if people want to still see that. I think, maybe, it's something I have to co-direct with my buddy Dan. Maybe we should do something like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did with From Dusk Till Dawn. We can do that; I direct one half, he directs the other."
It seems pretty clear that there have been talks about doing an Alien vs. Predator project, with Trachtenberg even telling GamesRadar+ that Badlands' connection between the two will likely "grow into a bigger thing" in the future.
But it's a bit of a bummer to hear such things so late in the day, when 20th Century Studios have been stoking fan theories the entire time. "We just took Weyland-Yutani, we just took the synths, and we thought there was just something a little bit more elegant about that," Trachtenberg added. "It's cooler, to me, that it's just these little different touch points that make it all feel like a connected universe." It is, arguably. I'd just wish I'd known beforehand and hadn't gone in expecting something entirely different.
Predator: Badlands is in cinemas now. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2025 and beyond or our guide to watching the Predator movies in order.
