Predator: Badlands is your basic boy-meets-girl movie – if the boy is an intergalactic monster hunter and the girl is half a cyborg leftover from the Alien franchise.

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The third feature film from director Dan Trachtenberg opens with a young runt of a Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) dueling with his brother. Dek doesn’t come out on top, but it’s more of a training exercise than a deathmatch.

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Dek wants to hunt to earn his rightful place in the clan and wash away his reputation as a liability. Their father, however, has other plans. After a brief scuffle, Dek is cast off into space and crash-lands on Genna – affectionately known as “the death planet.”

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There, he encounters all manner of ravenous flora and fauna, along with half a synthetic humanoid named Thia (Elle Fanning). She’s part of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – officially tying this into the Alien universe – sent to hunt the same apex predator as Dek. After convincing him to see her as a tool rather than a threat, they set off together to find the mythical Kalisk. Dek’s doing it for honor. Thia’s doing it to reclaim her legs – and find her missing sister, Tessa.

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The Predator series has always been a monument to 1980s machismo – all sweat, muscles, and mayhem, made iconic by the Arnold Schwarzenegger original. But when Trachtenberg rebooted things with Prey (2022), he flipped the formula, setting the story centuries earlier, centering a Comanche heroine (Amber Midthunder), and injecting the franchise with fresh blood and brains.

Across three films, Trachtenberg has given us three fierce heroines, also including Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane. But what’s truly new about Badlands is Dek himself. Predators have always been solitary creatures – hunters first, everything else a distant second. For the first time, we get one with a personality. And, if you look close enough, eyelashes. 

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Dek is an outcast forced to prove himself in strange new hunting grounds. Instead of clinging to the isolation of his species, he builds a family. He learns, grows, and becomes something unexpected: a Predator with empathy. It’s a risky move in a franchise defined by machismo – but it works. Dek even manages a few well-timed jokes, a touch of humor that feels earned rather than forced.

The film also looks incredible. It’s not quite Avatar-level spectacle, and there are moments when the CGI seams show, but overall it’s dazzling. This is a fully realized digital world with a digital lead (and half of Elle Fanning), yet few films this synthetic feel so alive. Working with a reported $100 million budget, Trachtenberg once again makes a little look like a lot.

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The world-building is exceptional. The creatures are fluid, weird, and captivating, and watching Dek navigate it all is pure cinematic joy – the kind of immersive, communal experience theaters were built for. What cinema needs in 2025 are movies like this: films that combine wonder, action, and spectacle all in one. This is a Movie Theater Movie with a capital M.

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Trachtenberg’s fingerprints are all over the film. There are also echoes of James Cameron – Avatar’s sense of discovery, Aliens’ grit, and T2’s scale and heart. It’s a sequel that expands the mythology without watering it down. He deserves to be seen as part of the next generation of great sci-fi filmmakers, right alongside Denis Villeneuve and Alex Garland.

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Fanning deserves her share of credit, too. Playing both Thia and Tessa, she brings humor, depth, heart, and no small amount of swagger. She continues to make sharp, interesting choices – this one’s another strong entry in a career full of them.

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The other thing Predator: Badlands evokes – and it’s impossible to miss – is Star Wars. And if anyone at Lucasfilm is paying attention, Trachtenberg should be on their shortlist. He understands scale, tension, and heart. And he knows how to make fantasy feel both tactile and engrossing.

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More than anything, Predator: Badlands is the most engaging, accessible, and flat-out fun entry yet in a franchise that’s had its ups and downs. While other long-running series have wilted (looking at you, Halloween and Terminator), Predator keeps evolving – growing smarter, bigger, and bolder.

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See it in a theater, on the biggest screen you can find. You won’t be sorry.