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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cPredator\u201d and I got off on the wrong foot. I\u2019m not talking about the new movie, but rather the 1987 original, and by extension the whole franchise. I rented the film hoping to enjoy some action-movie interaction between two future governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. Unfortunately, there was little to no interaction between the two, and Ventura\u2019s character got picked off by the Predator earlier than I would have liked. I spent the rest of the movie sulking, and never really became a fan of the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flash forward to 2025. I wasn\u2019t really looking forward to \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d in and of itself, but after the dismal October we just had at the domestic box office, I\u2019ll take a hit wherever I can get it. Which is probably why I liked the movie as much as I did. There\u2019s not a lot for me here, but I needed to get excited about \u201csomething,\u201d so the film\u2019s greatest strength may be its good timing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), an aspiring young Predator (or \u201cYautja\u201d) on the faraway planet of Yautja Prime. Dek desperately wants to go on a successful hunt to earn the approval of his father Njohrr (Reuben De Jong), as well as\u2026 living privileges, because Yautjas that don\u2019t complete successful hunts are put to death. Njohrr wants relative runt Dek put down anyway, but he flees to the planet Genna, home to the most high-value trophy in the known universe, the Kalisk. He vows to not return without killing the Kalisk for himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek doesn\u2019t fare well on the hostile Genna, but an opportunity presents itself in the form of Thia (Elle Fanning), a synthetic human that had been part of a party trying to find and exploit the Kalisk for their corporate overlords (I won\u2019t say which corporation, but it\u2019s a big deal). The Kalisk overpowered Thia\u2019s team, leaving her as the sole survivor, and she\u2019s worse for wear, missing the entire lower half of her body. She and Dek make a deal: he\u2019ll help her get her body back and help her reunite with her also-damaged \u201csister\u201d Tessa (also Fanning) and she\u2019ll help him take down the Kalisk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek and Thia start off as uneasy allies, but as they overcome obstacles together, their bond turns into friendship. All this despite Thia being half of a smart-alecky robot and Dek coming from a race that forbids emotions. Which presents kind of a huge problem for me, in that neither character is from a race that I feel is worth preserving. Thia is so artificial that there\u2019s literally another of her, and even though we ultimately see that there\u2019s some good in Dek, sorry, the universe would probably be better off without kill-obsessed Predators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know I\u2019m supposed to like \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d because of the way the alien and the robot learn what it means to be human. Honestly, I was rolling my eyes at those parts. I like the movie because Thia\u2019s jokes were hitting for me and I liked the action. The upside of all the characters being either robots or aliens is that the film can be as violent as it wants and still get a PG-13 rating as long as all the gore is in the form of either sparks or slime. \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d is fine as an action movie for people who could use a half-decent action movie, but just as with Thia\u2019s body, don\u2019t expect it to be more than \u201chalf\u201d decent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the way, I later found another movie from 1987 with both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. In this one, their characters do interact. They even go head-to-head with one another in a fight, where one presumably kills the other. That movie is called \u201cThe Running Man.\u201d And wouldn\u2019t you know it, there\u2019s a new version of that property coming out on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong sci-fi violence. Its running time is 107 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver \u201cPredator\u201d and I got off on the wrong foot. I\u2019m not talking about the new movie, but rather the 1987 original, and by extension the whole… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"13","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMTFcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjUtMTEtMTNUMjAyOTQ4LjI4MC53ZWJwP2ZpdD02OTElMkMxMDI0JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTW92aWUgUmV2aWV3ICYjODIxMTsgUHJlZGF0b3I6IEJhZGxhbmRzIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.UVkmfF6L1Qtb5ltiBTCWX1m0_crKdFGMFSREFiYveCcMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":58914,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-2025-11-13T202948.280.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[12533],"class_list":["post-58913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review-predator-badlands"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58915,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58913\/revisions\/58915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}