Predator Badlands puts you behind the mask — 8 lovable androids out of 10
I'll put my cards on the table before I say a word about the movie: I'm a fan boy when it comes to Alien and Predator. Have been forever. So when I tell you I liked this one, you should run it through that filter, the same way I'm running my own score through it down at the bottom. A fan can be the best judge of whether a thing honors what came before, and the worst judge of whether it's actually good. I'm trying to be both here.
What got me right away is the angle. For decades the Predator has been the thing in the dark, the hunter, the threat you're running from. This time you're riding along with one. The whole story is told from the Yautja point of view, a young outcast of the species, and getting to sit behind the mask instead of in front of it is the freshest the franchise has felt in a long while.
#A whole planet that wants you dead
The setting is the part I keep coming back to. They drop you on a world where everything around you can kill you, and I mean everything, the wildlife, the plants, the terrain itself. It turns the movie into part survival story, part nature documentary from hell. Every new corner of the place introduces some fresh way to die, and watching our guy learn the rules of a planet that's actively trying to eat him is just plain fun.
The creature and world design carries a lot of that. It feels like an actual ecosystem, not a backdrop, the kind of place where the danger has its own logic and you start respecting it the same way the main character has to.
#The android steals more of the movie than I expected
I won't spoil how it plays out, but the heart of the thing turns out to be the bond between the young Predator and an android who ends up along for the ride. That relationship is where the rating unit comes from. The android is genuinely lovable, the warm center of a movie that could've been all teeth and no soul. Pairing the most fearsome hunter in sci-fi with a sweet synthetic shouldn't work as well as it does, and the back-and-forth between them is what lifts it above a straight action picture.
And the action delivers, to be clear. The hunts and the fights are exactly what you show up for. But it's the odd-couple heart underneath that makes it stick.
#The verdict
Eight lovable androids out of 10, and here's me keeping myself honest about that number. I know I'm a fan. I know a fresh coat of paint on something I already love can buy a half point it didn't fully earn. So I sat on it, and I still land at an 8, because the POV swap actually pays off, the world is a genuine character, and the heart is real and not bolted on. I'm docking myself the climb to a 9 on purpose, as a tax on my own bias, but make no mistake, I had a great time. If you've ever loved this universe, this one's a gift. And if you haven't, it might be the friendliest door into it there's ever been.