From the start, Predator: Badlands was marketed as a crossover of sorts. The opening trailer makes that explicit: Elle Fanning’s character is revealed to be a Synthetic — one of the androids engineered by Weyland‑Yutani in the Alien universe — so Dan Trachtenberg’s latest sci‑fi adventure functions, in many ways, like a spiritual continuation of the Alien vs. Predator tradition. What the promos didn’t fully prepare viewers for, though, is how deeply the film leans into Alien‑adjacent territory, even while keeping Xenomorphs offscreen.
That emphasis on synths isn’t a drawback. I prefer the Alien films to the Predator entries, and I found Badlands more satisfying than Paul W. S. Anderson’s Alien vs. Predator. Still, it helps to know what to expect before you buy a ticket.
[Ed. note: Full spoilers ahead for the plot of Predator: Badlands.]
Here’s what the trailers omitted: Predator: Badlands is densely populated with Synthetics. Elle Fanning plays Thia, a broken android who bargains with the film’s Predator protagonist for help finding her missing legs, and she also portrays another Synthetic named Tessa. Beyond those two, Weyland‑Yutani dispatches a whole contingent of identically cast Synthetics (portrayed by Cameron Brown) to the hostile world where most of the story unfolds.
In fact, there are more Synthetics in Trachtenberg’s picture than you’d typically see in many entries in the Alien canon — a striking choice for a movie titled Predator: Badlands. One practical reason for the abundance of robots: you can depict large‑scale on‑screen destruction of androids and still remain within a PG‑13 rating. Personally, I don’t mind; seeing synths dismantled by monsters or by Yautja violence is consistently entertaining, whether the assailant is a Xenomorph, a Predator, or a human antagonist.
The film’s setting is another reason it feels like an Alien story. Genna — the savage, alien planet that the Yautja hunter Dek (Dimitrius Schuster‑Koloamatangi) visits to prove himself — is rife with hostile fauna: acid‑spraying eel‑like predators, gargantuan tree beasts with cavernous maws, and other grotesque organisms. Many of the planet’s denizens would not feel out of place in Alien: Earth, which broadened the franchise’s menagerie beyond the classic Xenomorph to include enormous acid‑spitting insects and an unnervingly clever eyeball creature — lifeforms that seem well suited to Genna’s ecosystem.
Several reviewers have likened Predator: Badlands to Scavengers Reign, an animated series defined by evolutionary extremity and constant predation. That comparison makes sense: Genna is a world in which survival is brutal and relentless, and the film’s atmosphere echoes the same grim, ecological imagination that Ridley Scott introduced in 1979.
Ultimately, Predator: Badlands channels a strong Alien vibe — just don’t expect any onslaughts featuring Xenomorphs and Yautja crossing blades. For that, we’ll need a dedicated Alien vs. Predator follow‑up.
Predator: Badlands is in theaters now.
Source: Polygon
