15. Predator: Badlands, dir. Dan Trachtenberg
That shaved sides haircut is so hot now that even Predators go for it, huh?
The Predator franchise was a miserable embarrassment just five years ago. Until Dan Trachtenberg, this was a franchise consisted of one classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, one direct sequel that I think I'm alone in enjoying, and a lot of sequels that are better off forgotten. It took over thirty years to figure out what to do with the Predator as a movie monster again. 2022's Prey was both the first time these movies had anything interesting to say since the Eighties, and also a tight exciting thriller about a young woman proving herself to be a better predator (lower case) than the Predator (proper noun).
Predator: Badlands is structurally the same movie as Prey, just starring an actual alien this time. It is amazing that there have been seven of these movies and nobody thought to have a Predator be like... an actual character for my entire lifetime. The new lead even has a respectful rivalry with a sibling as our previous Comanche heroine. Both characters wind up in the wilds of either the Great Plains or a comic book barbarian planet, and have to use nature's tools of tricks to face off against White human colonizers. I'm more than fine with repeating a plot structure if it works, and Prey worked. Let's just do it again but bigger, louder, and more Heavy Metal-ish. Sequels can be good! We got three Knives Out movies using who-done-it mysteries as cultural criticism and that franchise peaked in 2025.
The big difference is that Prey is a solo affair, the movie's lead had only a dog to hunt with her, but Badlands is a movie about a building an RPG party. Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a scrawny little Predator (or "Yuatja" to use the franchise name for the species) who has to prove himself to his warrior race family, and chooses to go to the most awful planet full of the most dangerous creatures in order to earn his place. Very quickly Dek is overwhelmed by the local flora and fauna who are level 99 enemies, even his fancy Yuatja tool-kit is insufficient for this world. The only way to survive is by teaming up with a half-ruined Weyland-Yutani android, Thia (Elle Fanning) and an adorable little monkey guy, Bud (Rohinal Ravinesh Narayan). Yuatja are not terribly friendly as a species, as seen with their usual propensity to murder action stars in the jungle, so it takes awhile for Dek to open up and team up with this new crew. There's not a lot of depth to him, this is basically a movie starring a hulking slasher villain, but Elle Fanning and the CG Pokemon fill in the gaps well.
Sure, we have lost a lot of the cultural commentary by removing the Comanche historical element. I won't kid you by saying that Predator: Badlands is as interesting a movie as Prey - it isn't. Badlands is not necessarily a dumb movie, it is as clever a script as Prey, especially towards the end when Dek has to rebuild his Predator arsenal by using the various killer fauna of this death world as video game items. Call it Chekhov's space gizmos. There's a second Elle Fanning-bot who is one of the best villains of 2025. I have not seen Elle Fanning in anything for a minute, last year proved she is a fantastic actress, and she completely nails both of her robot roles. Getting to watch a Predator work as the scrappy underdog is quite the role reversal. Dek pulls off quite the Metal Gear Solid adventure with his friends in the third act.
You could do a lot worse with a popcorn flick franchise sequel in 2025. And what Best Of list is complete without a crowd-pleaser?
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