Why did no one ever think to humanize Predators before? I’ve literally been waiting since 1987. Not “pins and needles” waiting, mind you. I don’t find Predators in general half as interesting as xenomorph aliens. And one if the reasons why is Predators simply strike me as muscle-heads. They come to kill; they don’t play fair. Big whoop. Realizing these guys have a culture and a language and a code of honor is all new stuff to me. And I dig it. Predators are like Klingons. Ok, I get that … now.
Tell me more.
Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, that’s a big name for a guy you’re never going to recognize outside a Predator suit) is the Wilbur of Predators, runty and weak. He’s a walking inferiority complex. And it’s no wonder why – dad thinks he’s weak. Dek is gonna show ‘em all by going to the death planet and hunting its apex predator, the Kalisk. Easier said than done as dad has decided that weakness means clan vulnerability and has ordered Dek’s older brother to kill Dek.
One dead family member later …
Dek arrives at death planet and would love to reflect upon what just happened except for two things: 1) He needs his prize Kalisk and 2) everything on the planet immediately tries to kill him. It’s not called death planet for nothing. First the trees have a go at him, what with their Groot-like tentacle protrusions. Then the “birds” and the “flowers” team up to try to clear the Deks. The flying beasts trigger a poison grenade-like response in the flowers. Luckily for Dek, there’s half an android who has got his back. The legless synthetic, Thia (Elle Fanning), is clearly better at backs than other parts.
This “friendship” is an immediate coup for the entire franchise. With Thia and Dek teaming up, we learn more about the Yautja (Predator species) in thirty-eight seconds than we learned in the past thirty-eight years of film. OH! This is who they are. This is why they’re dicks. And, double OH! They can play nice and ally over commonalities if they desire. The summit between half a cyborg and this Predator runt
not only made the film for me; this made the entire franchise for me. I now get to see Predators as something other than, well, predators.
Now the questions become: How can this Yautja runt defeat a creature that rules death planet? And what else is going on with Thia? (And get a load of Thia’s lower half; why it has a mind of its own.)
Until Dan Trachtenberg showed up, all I really knew about Predators was that they were an advanced and very ugly race of aliens who showed up on your planet, hunted for sport, took trophies, and left. Hunting for sport is dick behavior. You don’t have to be a tree-hugger to consider such dick behavior, either. The producers of Predator films deliberately withheld details about Predators so that we’d always consider them dicks. The thing they seem to have missed is that easy villains are boring villains. In Predator: Badlands, the Predator is our hero (!?) We care about Dek and his family problems. “Well, no wonder,” we say “this guy is a homicidal jerk. His entire society is about domination and aggression and murder. How do we get him to appreciate other life forms and communications?” Well, this little adventure seems an ideal trigger.
There once lived a Predator named Dek
His home life: an advanced trainwreck
Yet redemption could be had
By impressing dear old dad
While making a trophy of Godzilla, what the heck?
Rated PG-13, 107 Minutes
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Writer: Patrick Aison, Dan Trachtenberg, Jim Thomas
Genre: Awwwwww, Predators have feelings
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People with a respect for Warrior Code
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you’re against needless violence, this ain’t gonna help
