Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands is the latest film about an alien race that hunts things using all sorts of space-gadgets. It’s told from the Predator’s perspective. He’s an outcast sent to a hostile planet to hunt down a deadly monster to prove his worth to his people – with Elle Fanning joining as an unlikely ally. It’s from the same team that made Prey. And both Predator movies are much better than they had any right to be. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. http://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from iXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at ixl.com/NPR.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Predator: Badlands is the latest iteration of the franchise about an alien race that hunts things using all sorts of space gadgets. It's from the same team that made 2022's Prey, which was, like this movie, a much better Predator movie than it had any right to be. This time out, we're getting the story from the Predator's perspective, an outcast sent to a hostile planet to hunt down a deadly monster to prove his worth to his people. L. Fanning shows up as an unlikely ally. I am Glen Weldon, and today we're talking about Predator: Badlands on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  This message comes from iXL. The first few weeks back at school set the tone for the rest of the year. iXL is designed to help kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. Covering pre-K through 12th grade, iXL offers personalized, interactive practice in math, language arts, and science. One subscription covers everything for all the kids in your home. Receive an exclusive 20% discount on an iXL membership at ixl.com/NPR.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at go.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  This message comes from AT&T. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with eligible trade-in. It has the ultimate pro camera system and a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Connecting changes everything. Requires trade-in of $230 or more and eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Joining me today is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast Leaving the Theater. Hello, Ronald. Hello, Glenn. Also with us is writer Chris Klemick, always brings a bit. Hey, Chris. If it bleeds, we can kill it, Glenn. Let's do this. In Predator: Badlands, Dec, a predator who's kind of the runt of his litter, goes to the deadly planet of Genna to hunt down a hideous monster because he's determined to prove to his clan that he's got what it takes to really belong to the species of intergalactic badasses that audiences first met back in a 1987 Schwarzenegger movie. In sequels and novels, comics and video games, various predators have faced off against

• 3:08Speaker 01

  everything from Aliens to Batman to, recently, a very resourceful young Comanche woman in 2022's Prey. This predator, played by Demetrius Schuster-Kolmatangi, is aided by the top half of an abandoned robot named Thea, played by Elle Fanning. All that, plus lots of lore about the Predators and their whole deal. It's in theaters now. Ronald Young Jr. kick us off. What'd you think?

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Man, I really enjoyed this movie, and I did not expect to. I was a big fan of 2022's Prey. I thought it breathed new life into the Predator franchise, especially after the earlier entry. I can't remember the year of the Predator.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  The Predator, the same black one.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  You know exactly what I'm talking about, yes. Especially after that entry, this felt like it took it in a positive direction. I have this theory that there's a vision of the future that was established in the 80s that we keep getting remakes out of. Your Terminators, your Aliens, your Predators. And I feel like what I always want to see is a now take on those. Ideas, which I think was established well in a movie like Alien Romulus. And again, in movies like Prey and also in this one. Action adventure, lots of fun throughout, very simple plot, easy to follow. And I think again, if you think about the Predators from the Predators perspective, it would be an action adventure movie for them as opposed to a horror or a thriller.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  In any other sense, when you're looking from the humans perspective.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  That's interesting. That's a good point. Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  So I enjoyed it. I liked it.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  All right, Chris, you are our Predator correspondent. What'd you think?

• 4:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Predator is always the protagonist in these movies, right? The other ones are just trying to survive. The human characters, of which there are none in this film Predator Badlands, our entry points for empathy are just reactive. I'm pretty much with Ronald. I like this movie a lot, but I wanted to love it. It was the three of us talking about Alien Romulus.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Where this movie fell down for me a little bit, although I like the script very much. I like the premise very much, is that it did not replicate that practical effects aesthetic that we talked about being so key to Romulus's success, where the, you know, puppets, miniatures, real sets. I'm looking at the production notes of this movie Badlands and seeing that it was shot much of it on location in New Zealand. And we don't get that, you know, like we're looking at what seemed to me to be, you know, digital jungles full of hostile creatures, very much like the Avatar movies. But I mean, this movie was only shot a year ago, you know, when you don't have a years-long post-production pipeline to refine all that stuff. It doesn't look as convincing. And one thing, I know we probably have a diversity of opinions about Predator 87,

• 5:50Speaker 05

  which you and I watched on Ian Buckwalter's roof some years ago, Glenn. I don't, that was probably your first time seeing Predator. Mizzen Sen. That movie was shot, hell, yes.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  The phrase I expected to hear about 1987 Predator.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  I did it. Predator Mizzen Sen, John McTiernan at the start of his incredible. Predator Die Hard Red October Run, you feel that jungle. You feel the discomfort and the hostility of that environment. You see how uncomfortable every cast and crew member was every minute shooting that movie. And that's what's missing here, you know, like the way that it imagines these super venomous plants that Dec, our Ya'atja hero, I guess, you know, repurposes as his own weapons and one of the sort of cool MacGyver-y, you know, bits in this film.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Ya'atja's the name of the species we learn in this film, yep.

• 6:38Speaker 05

  It's all cool, but it just, it looks like a video game, you know, that smeary, digital, underlit aesthetic.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  It was dark. I didn't like that.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  It's too dark, yeah. I mean, I still like this movie. Again, I think the script is really good. I think Elle Fanning is wonderful. I just, I don't like the way this movie looks.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Okay. Boy, I am not used to addressing a curmudgeon and being the positive guy on Battle, or one of the positive guys in the battle. I had a great time in this. Yes, go Glenn, yes. To be clear, I care not a whit, not a jot, not a tittle about this IP. And I imagine there's a non-zero percentage of folks out there, of listeners who are in that cohort with me, I am here to tell them, you're gonna have a good time.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Action set pieces on point, humor that is based in behavior and attitude, not quips, not pop culture references.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Elle Fanning is charming. She is fun.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Solidly built plot wise. You both mentioned the plot. Nice efficiency here. We get the intro of the gadgets. We know the gadgets are gonna come back. We meet the various environmental factors and threats like the razor glass and we meet the beasties. In turn, we know they're gonna come back. Mostly, I like, and this is kind of picking up on what Ronald was saying, that we're not simply iterating this IP and doing versus Godzilla, versus Kong, versus Fast and the Furious. We are plopping it down in various times and locations and letting it, you know, run free. I like that this is a franchise as kind of an extended anthology. I like that approach. My only quibble, speaking of franchises, more endings than Return of the King.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Agreed.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Because. Of its structure, right? When we spend this movie, meeting all the various beasties and various threats in sequence, that is the movie opening up a series of boxes in sequence. And we hit the hour and 30 minute mark, and I was like, man, they have shut none of these boxes. There are so many boxes. So the last 17 minutes is just

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Just a series of boxes getting shut, getting shut in fun ways, getting shut in ways that I liked, but there's a lot of them. And I think one of the reasons I never really responded to this franchise over the years, and I don't take any offense to this, but it seemed like it was made for the 14 year old straight boy. I never was.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Why would I take offense to that?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Something I couldn't put my finger on as I was watching it, but then I came home and I read the Richard Lawson review in the Hollywood Reporter. He called this out in his review. This is kind of a found family, chosen family story, right? Also, not for nothing, Predator has very fraught relationships with his dad. He forms instant, very strong, non-romantic friendships with badass women. He lives to accessorize, right? I'm not saying Predator is queer now, but I'm not not saying. This director, I've been following his career for going on 20 years now without realizing it, because between 2007 and 2012, Dan Trachtenberg, this director, was one of the hosts of a

• 9:32Speaker 01

  video podcast called The Totally Rad Show, which you can probably glean from the title, was three dudes talking about movies and video games and comics. And I liked the guy. He was a Philly boy. He graduated from Temple. He was out in LA at that time directing commercials and short films. And he was a guy who clearly loved science fiction movies, not simply from like the fans perspective, but from like a technical and storytelling perspective. He talked about wanting to direct science fiction movies one day. And then the show ended and I just kind of lost track of him. And then, you know, in the meantime, he directed 10 Cloverfield Lane a few years back, which I liked, but I didn't put it together. It wasn't until 2022's Prey, which I also liked, that's whenever this clicked. I was like, oh, it's that guy.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And I just got this weird feeling of pride. I mean, it was like, way to go, sport. I mean, I knew he was doing what he wanted to do always. And because parasocial relationships are Very weird things. I felt like I kinda had a hand on the ball in some way, just because I feel like I like the choices he makes here because there are scenes that clearly have the iconography of the comic book splash page, right? Whenever a Deck lifts his sword over his head after he kills something, it's like, oh, there's the comic book influence. Like, way to go, buddy.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Frank Frazetta, baby.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  It's very Frank Frazetta. Now, I do have a question here, because let's go back to this premise here. The filmmakers are making a big thing about how this is the first film told from the Predator's perspective. We get a name for the species, the Ya'acha, and their planet, Ya'acha Prime, and the Predator, Deck. And we get lots of Predator language that they built out for this movie. We get a kind of rudimentary sense of how the Predator society works. Ronald, this is a question for you. Is that stuff just for the Chris's of this world, or does it add something to the movie?

• 11:21Speaker 04

  So it's interesting, as someone who loves Predator and loves Alien and loves how the plots have interacted over time and love the universe generally, I have found that I don't necessarily care about the lore as much. I just care about what's happening in front of me at the time. Like, if Prometheus was a standalone movie, I would probably enjoy that. And so I say all that to say, watching this and seeing everything that they're establishing, I think is fine for this movie, but it was not something I was craving outside of this movie. I've never been sitting by myself being like, man, I really wonder where they came from, or what language they spoke, or how do they get their

• 12:03Speaker 04

  cloaking devices? None of those questions are important to me, but they were important to the plot, and I think that they held up well in the movie itself. I was not craving them. I think too often they are making movies where they're like, hey, don't you want to know where the dinosaurs came from? It's like, you already know, you told us. Please don't tell me anything else. Don't give them a personality. I don't need to know Blue's name. All of that's not important to me whatsoever. But in the movie, I think it was good.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  Yep. Since we do get the name of the species, the Ya'acha, I'm glad that we now we now have Ya'acha, so we don't just have to say Predators all the time. The time.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Okay. I mean, I guess my question is, what does it add to that they're called the Yautja versus what they're called the Predators? I'm gonna go on calling them the Predators. I'm not about to go the Yautja because Predators are what they are. But they're not the only IP in this movie. This is, as we talked about before recording, this is kind of a stealth aliens movie. It turns out that the authentic character isn't just a robot, and this is in the trailer. She's a Wayland Utani synthetic android. Now, if that were so maybe five, 10 years ago, I'd be thinking about it one way, but this movie arrives on the heels of Alien Earth on FX. It's in the wake of Alien Romulus last year. It's safe to say that these synths are achieving right now a kind of cultural ubiquity that is, I think, approaching 2019 James Corden.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  I think, you know, they got the talk show, they got the carpool karaoke, they're in Cats. Do they also need to host the Tonys?

• 13:29Speaker 05

  The the vulture piece that I published ranking the synths and androids of the alien universe like two months ago is already out of date. Already obsolete. Real, real short shelf life on that one.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Is there a lot of milk left in this on the like, is there blood in the stone like?

• 13:45Speaker 04

  I think so. I think it's there. Well, okay, here's why I think it's there. I think synths are the perfect kind of vehicle for us to engage this moment right now when we think about our engagement with technology and with AI. Even in this particular movie, we have that continuously calling Thea a tool and using her in that way as he would use a tool. And then eventually their relationship changes. That being said, I think that's a very interesting way to talk about how we are engaging with technology and in particular AI. And there's a lot of stories that can come of that. And I guess, Glenn, are you asking, are we done with those stories? Do we need to keep telling those? And I feel like if our relationship with technology continues to change, that there's probably going to be more to mine from the synths in the future.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm asking a more nerdy industry question, I suppose, which is, does this movie feel like it's in conversation with Alien Earth and Alien Romulus? Or is it off doing its own thing? And is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does there need to be a shared universe, I guess, is what I'm asking.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  This is the first Predator film set in the future. All of the other ones are set in the present of when they were released. Prey was set in the 18th century. You know, so this one is clearly at least a century in the future, right? Because we have interplanetary capitalism and exploitation happening. The Weyland-Yutani folks are on this planet to capture the Calisk. So this is the first one that fast forwards into the, you know, 22nd century setting of the Alien movies. I think the kinds of films that are more topical about our fears and changing relationship with AI now are more things like Her or like After Yang. It's less these genre films because we're already living in that time that all of these,

• 15:24Speaker 05

  you know, 80s and really like 70s when, you know, Alien and Blade Runner was starting to go into production and all that was, you know, we've gotten there and we've sort of surpassed those dire warnings. So I think the films that ask us more to treat these new life forms really as something other than an oppositional force. Again, like Her, like After Yang, where it's like, we're going to have an ongoing emotional engagement with these characters and not just sort of a, you know, arena style combat bout with them. I think that's what's more reflective of our relationship with AI now. I think the subtextual freight, if there is any of Predator 87, is that, you know,

• 16:05Speaker 05

  these are off the books military contractors doing some shady mission down in Central America, working for the CIA. It's not sanctioned, it's not, you know, so, and I mean, that was feeding off of Iran -Contra and a lot of stuff that was in the culture at the time, you know, but it was not at all related to our relationship with technology or artificial intelligence or any of that. That was always Aliens thing.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  In terms of the shared universe of all of this, I can't believe I'm saying this, but for the first time, I don't really care if they're playing together or not, as long as each entry is good. Because I feel like the MCU spoiled us. If you go back and watch, there was so much planning that took place where each scene was interconnected. There's boxes opening in a movie that doesn't close until 10 movies later, all of that. And it's rewarding upon multiple watches. But what we found is that without that type of coordination, if you're not doing that from the point of inception of these films, then what you end up is kind of this messy, kind of connected in the back end universe, which isn't working.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  And I kind of think that's why Marvel hasn't been working in the most recent years. But if we think about now, what they're doing is just making good things that each are good on their own. I think Alien Earth is good on its own. Alien Romulus is good on its own. Predator: Badlands and Prey, all good on their own. They don't have to connect. As long as they're good, I think that is fine with me. As a nerd, it'd be nice if they connected, but if they're not going to, then please just make it as good as possible is all I ask.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Ronald, I hope there are studio executives listening to your little piece just then, because that's exactly what they need to hear. And they need, also ironically, they need to stop listening to us nerds. Just make good movies.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  You know, Glenn and I were talking before the movie about the like, the lore and stuff. And I mean, there's no lore that you need to know. There is no Predator film, not even Predator 2, that requires you to have seen a prior Predator film to enjoy it. They're all pretty self-reliant.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  No, you get it. You totally get it. All right. Well, tell us what you think about Predator: Badlands. Would you be up for Predator: Thin Red Line, Predator: Days of Heaven, or Predator: Tree of Life? We are on Facebook and Letterboxd, and Letterboxd is where some people might possibly get that feeble Terrence Malick joke I just made. And that brings us to the end of our show. Chris Klimick, Ronald Young Jr., thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. This has been great. I love you guys. This is, this is super fun. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour, or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Mike Katsef and Carly Rubin and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you

• 18:45Speaker 01

  for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.