"Most everyone knows what to expect with a Predator movie. A group of humans get picked off, one by one, by ruthless extraterrestrials known as the Yautja, except for a lucky few who survive based on their own resourcefulness. It's a monster movie franchise dressed up in sci-fi lore, a testosterone-addled excuse for men to bang their action figures together and imagine that they, too, could survive a Predator encounter just as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger did."
"Predator: Badlands asks the impossible question: what if the Predator was the protagonist? After 38 years and nine movies of the Yautja being the most merciless sonuvabitch ever, it seems absurd to even consider it. But after Trachtenberg miraculously rebooted the franchise with Prey, and strengthened his vision of the franchise with his animated spinoff, he's pulled off his greatest magic trick yet with Badlands, a movie that not only manages to make you root for the Yautja, but also delivers the most accessible"
The Predator franchise traditionally centers on humans being hunted by ruthless extraterrestrials called the Yautja, with few survivors relying on resourcefulness. The franchise struggled after its late '80s and '90s blockbuster era and exhausted B-movie potential by crossing over with xenomorphs. Dan Trachtenberg revitalized the series by setting a back-to-basics survival story in 18th-century America and pitting a Comanche woman against a Predator. Predator: Badlands reframes perspective by making a young Yautja, Dek, the protagonist, showing his relationship with protective brother Kwei and the threat of paternal culling, and inviting audience sympathy for the alien.
Read at Inverse
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