★★★ (3 out of 4)
One of the zippiest surprises of the fall movie season is the jackpot success of “Predator: Badlands,” which just opened No. 1 at box-office with $40 million, reaching $80 million worldwide. That’s a franchise best, people, overtaking the previous record held by 2004’s “Alien vs Predator.” Better yet, this standalone movie is a wowza blast of sci-fi fireworks. And get this—it’s rated PG-13, considered a wussie play by the cool kids who sniff at anything not rated R.
Does “Predator: Badlands” have the juice to keep audiences coming back to the multiplex for weeks to come? I’m thinking, hell yeah! And here’s why: “Badlands” is the ninth film in the “Predator” franchise that started in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and it feels fetus fresh as if the dew is still on it. The miracle worker is director Dan Trachtenberg, who’s made a “Predator” movie for those who’ve never seen a “Predator “movie. So jump in and let it rip.
Series newbie Elle Fanning knocks it out of the park as a legless robot—they call them synthetics or synths—who wants her stems back. Fanning is a surefire Oscar contender this year for her lovely dramatic turn in “Sentimental Value.” Her “Predator” role as Thia is hardly Academy material, though Sigourney Weaver got the snobs to notice in “Aliens.” But “Badlands” is Fanning’s debut as a badass—she even plays her evil synthetic sister Tessa—which makes her double dynamite.
We meet Thia on the death planet of Genna where her team of synths from the evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which some may recall from the “Alien” universe, has been nearly destroyed trying to capture the Kalisk. It’s a virtually unkillable apex predator known for its super-strength and regenerative abilities, which the corporate suits want to harness for themselves and a tidy profit.
Enter our hero, a predator from the Yautja race who’s landed on Genna to bag that Kalisk. His name is Dek and he’s played—with amazingly expressiveness since only his eyes show beneath his monster mask—by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, a seven-foot-three-inch New Zealander. Dek has a story of his own to tell. As the runt of the Yautja litter, Dek needs to prove himself to his tyrannical father, also played by Schuster-Koloamatangi.
How’s that for a first? As Trachtenberg puts it: “The movie wasn’t really like, ‘Let’s do Predator but from the Predator’s P.O.V.;’ it was taking the creature and putting him on a journey that was like what the humans in the movies go through. So it’s really an inversion of the premise.”
And a damn good one, as Dek hoists Thia on his back and they both set out to prove they should not ever be underestimated. Thia sasses him right off the bat about his double rows of choppers: “Which does the chewing,” she asks, “your outside fangs or your inside teeth?” What a treat it is to have Fanning around, channeling Carole Lombard, Judy Holliday and other comic divas from nearly a century ago, to kick the usual macho posturing to the curb.
Does 'Predator: Badlands' have the juice to keep audiences coming back to the multiplex for weeks to come? I’m thinking, hell yeah!
There is also humor in the visuals with Thia’s disconnected legs karate-chopping like hell when a corporate villain comes along. And it's a fun twist to see Thia and Dek befriend a native creature, whom Thia nicknames "Bud," and even form a truce with the Kalisk after Dek bites his head off. He regenerates, remember?
Despite some shoddy special effects, a tendency to get a little cutesy with Bud, and a few violent plot swerves that strain credulity along with the PG-13 rating, “Predator: Badlands” works like a charm. And I can’t believe I’m saying this...I wouldn’t mind a sequel.