PREDATOR: BADLANDS

PREDATOR: BADLANDS is a rousing science fiction thriller about a humanoid alien who tries to appease his evil father and gain his approval by hunting a large apex predator on an extremely dangerous planet but needs the help of a female android and a small monkey-like creature when they encounter a group of heartless evil androids. PREDATOR: BADLANDS is a terrific, exciting movie that teaches protecting and equipping the weak and that promote compassion, empathy and helping others to overcome evil, but the movie has lots of strong, intense action violence, scary moments and some scary characters and creatures.

The movie opens with a brief written preface about the Predator race of aliens called the Yautja. The primary goal of these aliens is to hunt, and they hunt alone.

Cut to their home planet. Kwei is the larger older brother of Dek. Dek, the movie’s central character, is the runt of the litter in a clan that removes any sign of weakness. The Yautja think one weak link breaks the chain. Sadly, for Dek, that means he’s subjected to not just being ousted from the clan but being killed.

Kwei and Dek are arguing about Dek’s situation in Kwei’s spaceship. Unexpectedly, Kwei sympathizes with Dek, but warns him that his chances don’t look good, especially since their father already has rejected Dek. Dek chooses a lethal planet called Genna as his hunting ground. He also decides that, to gain their father’s approval and elevate his status, he will hunt a large and allegedly unkillable apex predator called the Kalisk. Kwei is not happy about that. He thinks the Kalisk will kill Dek because Dek is too weak. Dek replies, that, if he dies, which probably is likely, at least he will die with honor.

At that point, their gray-haired father appears. He’s angry and asks why Kwei didn’t kill Dek as he ordered to do. Kwei defies his heartless father. So, their father decides Kwei too must die because to forgive weakness is itself a sign of weakness. So, he tries to kill Kwei, but Kwei defends himself.

Meanwhile, Dek tries to help his brother, but Kwei shoves Dek back into his spaceship and closes the door on him. So, Dek watches helplessly from the ship while Kwei fights his father. Eventually, the father fatally wounds Kwei by thrusting his flaming sword through Kwei’s chest from behind. With his dying breath, Kwei activates his ship to send Dek to Genna.

Dek is knocked out by the spaceship’s sudden movement, and he wakes up on Genna. Immediately on exiting the ship, Dek encounters deadly brown vines that swing form the trees and try to kill and eat him. He fends them off with his blade and guns. A strange monkey-looking creature watches the fight and bonds with Dek. The creature is able to escape the vines by swinging through the trees, but he seems to help Dek fight them.

After fighting off the vines, Dek and the creature come to a clearing. They face new dangers, but get help from a damaged human-looking android, a female named Thia. Thia activates her translator and is able to understand Dek while he can understand her English. Her torso was severed from her robotic legs when she and her android companion, Tessa, encountered a Kalisk. She offers to take Dek to the creature’s lair if Dek will help her get back to Tessa, who disappeared during their fight with the creature. When Dek says he only hunts alone, Thia proposes that he think of her as a tool.

Dek agrees. So, with that, Dek and Thia establish a partnership, and the monkey creature, whom Thia names Bud, accompanies them.

Of course, getting to the Kalisk’s lair and capturing, or even killing the Kalisk is a very difficult proposition. Complications ensue when they come upon Thia’s twin android, Tessa. Thia’s twin decides that she and the androids under her leadership should serve the evil corporation that brought her and Thia to Genna. That means capturing the Kalisk and imprisoning Dek to take both of them to Earth for the company’s experiments and technology creation, including weapons creation.*

The odds are stacked against Dek, Thia and Bud. Will they survive and remain free?

PREDATOR: BADLANDS is a terrific science fiction thriller. It has excitement, thrills, heroic deeds, and lots of heart. Thia teaches Dek to be compassionate and empathetic. Meanwhile, the evil androids, including Tessa, are heartless automatons with not an ounce of sympathy. This conflict provides a marvelous, exhilarating contrast of good versus evil. Also, PREDATOR: BADLANDS has no foul or crude language and no explicit lewd or obscene content.

However, the movie does have lots of strong, action violence, scary moments, and scary creatures. The camera often cuts away from the more gruesome acts of violence, but it does show things like the father’s fiery blade exiting the older brother’s chest. Also, the good guys smash, crush, impale, and behead some of the heartless evil androids. Moreover, the predatory Yautja aliens are scary looking, as are the killer vines and the giant Kalisk monster. For instance, the Yautja have four large menacing teeth on the outside of their mouths, and the Kalisk has rows of scary teeth in its mouth plus a large scary dinosaur-like tail.

In addition, PREDATOR: BADLANDS shows that Dek and Kwei’s father is an evil alien who wants to kill his sons because they’ve disappointed him. Also, the computer program that the evil androids use is named MUTHR, like in the original ALIEN movie.* Thus, the movie’s two parental figures are evil and negative. So much for “honor thy father and mother.”

That said, PREDATOR: BADLANDS has a very strong moral worldview with some redemptive qualities. The movie teaches that protecting and equipping the weak ennobles and elevates the soul. It also aids in one’s survival and one’s triumph over evil.

MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong caution for the intense action violence and scary parts, characters and creatures in PREDATOR: BADLANDS.

* The evil corporation in PREDATOR: BADLANDS is the same as the one in the ALIEN movies, which originally ordered a heartless android to retrieve a dangerous alien specimen at the expense of the human crew of a spaceship called The Nostromo. 20th Century Fox, which is now owned by Disney, decided back in the 1990s to merge the ALIEN and PREDATOR franchises. In the ALIEN MOVIES, the company wanted to use the alien species to develop and sell new weapons, including bio-weapons. In PREDATOR: BADLANDS, the corporation also wants to use the large apex predator, the Kalisk’s, regeneration abilities to regenerate human body parts, including human and android soldiers, as part of the company’s medical and pharmaceutical division.