How Dan Trachtenberg Transformed Cinema’s Most Iconic Monster into Someone Worth Rooting For
There’s something unexpectedly moving about watching a Predator care.
My wife got a free movie card yesterday—good for ten films—and we wasted no time putting it to use today. We caught the first screening of Predator: Badlands, Dan Trachtenberg’s audacious new entry in the franchise, rated NC-16 here in Singapore. After years of primarily streaming since the pandemic, stepping into that darkened theater for an early morning show felt almost ceremonial. Given our country’s historically strict approach to content regulation—where films can still be edited, censored, or refused classification if they’re deemed prejudicial to national interests or offensive to various communities—I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d be getting the full, uncut version. Thankfully, it appears we did.
What unfolded over the next two hours wasn’t just another creature feature. It was something far more ambitious: a film that dared to make us empathize with the universe’s most fearsome hunter.
The Radical Reimagining
Predator: Badlands is the ninth installment in the Predator franchise, directed by Dan Trachtenberg and written by Patrick Aison. But what sets it apart from every entry that came before is its fundamental shift in perspective. For the first time in the franchise’s history, a Predator—or Yautja, as the species is properly known—serves as the protagonist.
The film centers on Dek, a young Yautja outcast played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who crash-lands on Genna, a hostile alien world that’s basically space Australia—everything on this planet either wants to kill you or eat you, and sometimes both. The opening establishes him watching his father kill his brother Kwei before being sent on what becomes his hero’s journey. What could have been a simple revenge tale becomes something far more nuanced—a meditation on honor, belonging, and what it truly means to be strong.
The gamble Trachtenberg took here is staggering. The Predator has been cinema’s ultimate killing machine for nearly four decades. These aren’t creatures we’re supposed to relate to; they’re meant to terrify us. Yet within the first ten minutes, the audience already knows so much more about the Yautja, already finds ways to connect with Dek on an emotional level, and already has reason to root for the character.
The Yautja Language: A Cultural Deep Dive
One of the film’s most fascinating achievements is its commitment to authenticity in depicting Yautja culture. Trachtenberg hired linguist Britton Watkins, mentored by Paul Frommer (who created the Na’vi language for Avatar), to develop a complete Yautja language with actual grammatical rules and structure, both spoken and written.
Watching Dek speak in his native tongue—with subtitles translating his words—adds an extraordinary layer of immersion. The language features a reverse sentence structure from English, with the object or predicate first, the verb in the middle, and the subject at the end. The clicks and guttural sounds we’ve heard in previous films are woven into something systematic and linguistically coherent.
There’s even social hierarchy built into the language: ‘wul’ is used when addressing someone you disrespect, ‘dau’ for someone you respect, and ‘kai’ for a close friend. Throughout the film, you can track Dek’s emotional journey by how he addresses Thia—from dismissive to respectful to something approaching genuine friendship.
The warrior code itself is equally compelling. The film opens with an entry from the Yautja Codex, confirming that “Yautja are friend and prey to none”. They’re depicted as a violently aggressive culture in the vein of Klingons, worshiping strength and loathing every manifestation of vulnerability. Watching Dek navigate this rigid code while developing emotional connections that his culture would view as weakness creates genuine dramatic tension.
Elle Fanning’s Dual Masterclass
If Schuster-Koloamatangi’s physical performance as Dek is the film’s beating heart, Elle Fanning’s dual role as the synthetic androids Thia and Tessa is its soul.
Thia is discovered by Dek bound to a tree on Genna—or more accurately, her top half is. She was literally ripped in half by the planet’s apex predator while on a specimen-finding mission for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. For much of the runtime, Dek carries Thia’s torso on his back as she chatters enthusiastically, curious about everything from Yautja culture to the planet’s deadly ecosystem.
Fanning infuses both android characters with hints of humanity while also giving them appropriate artificial qualities, so audiences never lose sight of the fact that they are synthetic beings—both eerily human and inhuman in turns. Thia is optimistic, endlessly curious, and surprisingly warm. Tessa, her “sister” android, is colder, more corporate, loyal to the mission above all else.
Fanning admitted she was more nervous playing Tessa than Thia, explaining that Thia’s big personality came naturally while Tessa required carefully avoiding clichés of the “cold robot” archetype. The contrast between the two is stark and beautifully executed. Schuster-Koloamatangi noted that when Fanning was dressed as Tessa in her clean-cut white suit, his body language actually changed—he felt standoffish, as if genuinely encountering someone different.
An unexpected practical element helped sell Thia’s artificiality: Fanning has hypermobile elbows that bend backward unusually far. Given that Thia spends much of the film being flung around and bound to Dek’s back, having “floppy arms” was one of the few moments that didn’t require additional computer effects.
The Alien Connection
Predator: Badlands isn’t just a standalone Predator film—it’s deeply intertwined with the Alien franchise in ways that fundamentally alter both mythologies.
The film is set further in the future than any previous Predator or Alien installment, creating an entirely new status quo for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and a different makeup of the universe to explore. The presence of synthetic androids like Thia and Tessa isn’t just window dressing; it’s a statement about where humanity might be in this timeline.
The most haunting implication is what the film suggests about humanity’s fate. There are no humans in Predator: Badlands—not a single one appears on screen. The synths like Thia and Tessa might represent a future where Weyland-Yutani has become an entity unto itself, with synthetics as its apostles spread across the stars long after humanity’s flame has been snuffed out.
The film reveals that the Company’s AI interface MU/TH/UR continues to send synths across the galaxy looking for creatures they can turn into weapons, just as they did with the xenomorphs. The question lingers: are they still serving humanity’s interests, or has the corporation evolved beyond its creators?
A Buddy Film in Hunter’s Clothing
Director Trachtenberg has described the film as “like Chewbacca and C-3PO: The Movie,” and that comparison is surprisingly apt. What begins as reluctant cooperation—Dek needs Thia’s knowledge of Genna’s fauna and flora, Thia needs Dek to reunite her with her severed legs—gradually transforms into genuine partnership.
There’s something encouragingly radical about the way Dek slowly develops a genuine appreciation for Thia, and both actors make that connection amazingly tangible and profound. The emotional center is astounding given that one actor is buried in a creature suit and the other is intentionally inhabiting an uncanny valley.
The film also introduces Bud, a native creature of Genna that Thia nicknames and that becomes the third member of their unlikely pack. At one point, Thia tells Dek about the concept of a wolf pack being led by an alpha, then explains the word is often misunderstood and misapplied—the true alpha isn’t the toughest or most violent, but the one that does the best job of protecting the rest. It’s a thesis statement for Dek’s arc.
Box Office Triumph Against All Odds
The film opened to a franchise-record $40 million domestically and another $40 million internationally, for an $80 million global debut. This surpassed the previous domestic record held by Alien vs. Predator, which debuted to $38.4 million in 2004.
More impressively, it received an A- CinemaScore—the highest rating in Predator franchise history—and an 85% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The site’s consensus reads: “Director Dan Trachtenberg continues to take the Predator franchise in exciting new directions with Badlands, a rollicking adventure that transforms one of cinema’s most iconic brutes into a hero worth rooting for”.
The film marks the first in the mainline Predator series to receive a PG-13 rating from the MPAA, after its predecessors were all rated R—though here in Singapore, its NC-16 classification means only those 16 and above can view it without supervision.
The Trachtenberg Vision
This is Trachtenberg’s third Predator project, following 2022’s Prey and the 2025 animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers. His influences for Badlands ranged from Frank Frazetta’s artwork and Terrence Malick’s films to Conan the Barbarian, Mad Max 2, Shane, The Book of Eli, Clint Eastwood Westerns, and the video game Shadow of the Colossus.
These influences shine through—the film functions as an even more coded Western than Prey, recalling The Outlaw Josey Wales in its story of an embittered veteran who insists he rides alone but gradually accumulates allies and dependents.
What’s most remarkable is Trachtenberg’s consistency across his Predator entries—they have the obsessive quality of George A. Romero’s zombie pictures, John Woo’s Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups, and Takeshi Kitano’s yakuza thrillers, all of which mined seemingly limitless inspiration from material others had written off as unworthy of serious attention.
Trachtenberg has stated he had three initial Predator films in mind to make: Killer of Killers, Badlands, and a third that he intends to direct if Badlands is successful. Given the film’s reception, that third installment seems all but assured.
Technical Mastery Meets Emotional Depth
According to Trachtenberg, every single shot of the film required visual effects work, handled by an army of vendors including Industrial Light & Magic, Wētā FX, Rising Sun Pictures, Trixter, Important Looking Pirates, The Yard VFX, and Framestore. Yet the film never feels overwhelmed by its digital elements—the world of Genna feels tangible and lived-in, from its razor-sharp grass to its bone bisons to the terrifying Kalisk that serves as Dek’s ultimate target.
The score by Sarah Schachner and Benjamin Wallfisch, who previously worked with Trachtenberg on Prey and Killer of Killers respectively, perfectly balances the franchise’s signature percussion with new emotional themes that underscore the unlikely friendship at the film’s core. And the world-building of Genna itself deserves special mention—it’s a death trap ecosystem where even the grass can kill you, earning its reputation as the galaxy’s most hostile environment.
Final Thoughts: More Than a Hunt
Walking out of that Singapore cinema, I found myself thinking about how rare it is for a blockbuster to surprise me emotionally. Predator: Badlands shouldn’t work—the concept alone sounds like creative desperation. Make the monster the hero? Give him a chatty android sidekick? Strip away all human characters?
Yet Trachtenberg pulls it off with confidence and genuine heart. As one critic noted, it’s “as if James Cameron had made Terminator 2 entirely from the T-800’s point of view”. The film asks us to reconsider what we think we know about these creatures, to see past the dreadlocks and mandibles to something more universal.
The Yautja language adds depth I never expected, making Dek’s culture feel realized rather than sketched. Elle Fanning’s performances as both Thia and Tessa showcase her incredible range—she makes you believe in synthetic beings learning what it means to care, even as they remain distinctly artificial. And the connection between a disgraced hunter and a bisected android somehow becomes one of the year’s most affecting on-screen friendships.
I can’t wait to watch this again when it hits streaming. There’s so much to unpack in the world-building, so many small moments between Dek and Thia that deserve closer attention. For now, I’m just grateful that during our first proper cinema visit in years, we got to experience something this bold and heartfelt.
Predator: Badlands proves that sometimes the most human stories come from characters who are anything but.
Predator: Badlands is currently playing in theaters worldwide. The film stars Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek and Elle Fanning as Thia/Tessa, directed by Dan Trachtenberg from a script by Patrick Aison.
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