Predator: Badlands Box Office Proves Studios Shouldn’t Always Listen to Fans

On first glance, Predator: Badlands sounds like the stuff of studio meddling nightmares. It’s the first entry in its franchise in over 20 years to earn a PG-13 rating; it’s another crossover with the Alien movies, as Elle Fanning puts in a dual performance as Weyland-Yutani synths; and there’s even a cute, cuddly alien that seems perfect for manufacturing as a stuffed animal for Yautja enthusiasts this holiday season.

And yet, not only does Predator: Badlands absolutely rule, but it’s a bonafide box office hit and a proper crowdpleaser. The film brought in an estimated $40 million over the weekend, taking the number one spot and coming in as the highest-grossing movie in the now eight-movie franchise (counting the two Alien vs Predator entries). That is far above Disney’s own estimates going into the weekend, which pegged the floor for a decent opening at $25 million (while rival studios placed it closer to $27 to $30 million). That overperformance is reflected in the A- CinemaScore rating from polled audiences on Friday night, suggesting that most come out of the movie enthusiastic about what they saw. And it would seem the word of mouth is spreading.

The unqualified success of Predator: Badlands should give some fans of the series pause. Director Dan Trachtenberg’s previous outing in the series, 2022’s Prey, gave fans pause because of its female protagonist, the young Comanche woman Naru (Amber Midthunder), who somehow defeated a technologically-advanced Yautja. Nonetheless, it delivered exactly what many fans had generally demanded: a Predator movie set in the distant past with the alien game-hunter coming up against a great civilization of history.

When that film proved excellent, fans quickly demanded more movies in which Yautja appear at different points in human history. Trachtenberg did provide that too, albeit not in live-action. Instead he helmed the animated movie Predator: Killer of Killers, which debuted on Hulu earlier this year as an anthology of previous hunts over the centuries and various cultures of Earth. When that film ended with a tease that the Yautja species had captured past protagonists Naru, Danny Glover‘s Mike Harrigan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Dutch, keeping them on ice, many (including us) have speculated about an impending crossover.

Well, Predator: Badlands is a crossover of sorts, seamlessly blending the Predator and Alien worlds. And it certainly ends with a good reason for Dek of the Yautja (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) to bring in some heavy-hitters for help. But Badlands isn’t really interested in that kind of winking, ‘member-berries fan-service which audiences have come to expect from the last decade of franchised entertainment. And that’s because sometimes, the fans are wrong.

It sounds counter-intuitive to say that fans who live and breathe a particular franchise don’t know what’s best for that series. And we’re used to catechizing newcomers to beloved property, forcing directors and actors to enthuse about their love of the source material. But there’s a difference between presenting knowledge and telling a good story, as anyone who has had a learned professor share an anecdote can tell you.

Moreover, too many fans cannot suspend their love for a character or franchise enough to submit them to the demands of good storytelling. Sometimes they simply want to recreate the feelings they had when they first encountered the franchise, demanding that we just get the same plot beats, more or less, again and again: let’s have another bunch of meatheads run into the jungle and then get ripped apart by a mysterious antagonist who happens to be a Yautja.

There is nothing wrong about a back-to-basics approach. Trachtenberg more or less delivered exactly that with Prey, a movie similar to what many fans had speculated for years about. However, by virtue of having the Comanche warrior that defeats a Predator be a young woman, and an outcast in her society, as opposed to the ’80s definition of an Austrian action god who also inexplicably is an all-American hero in the Reagan years, Trachtenberg defied expectations and made a better film for it. And with Badlands, he avoided the obvious thing to do after Prey—the same story but, say, in feudal Japan—and instead broadened the history-hopping lore in Killer of Killers, and then avoided it altogether for a movie that feels as influenced by ’80s and ’90s buddy comedies as it does ’80s anything to do with a Predator.

This approach is antithetical to what studios have generally been doing over the last eight years, and after Star Wars fans found out that Luke Skywalker wasn’t perfect in The Last Jedi. But the subsequent films and TV shows attempted to satiate those fan demands, films and shows as creatively dull and bankrupt as The Rise of Skywalker or Obi-Wan, or Jurassic World Dominion, have failed to really satisfy anyone.

Look, it’s a fan’s job to love a property. We are, by definition, fanatics about these things, and we’re not required to be logical about it. But it’s a storyteller’s job to create conflict, to put the protagonist through hard times, and to try something new. They have to be creative, which is often outside of a fan’s purview.

As much fun as it is to pitch movie ideas on message boards, and as much it is very much our right to grouch when a new entry doesn’t surprise or entertain us, Predator: Badlands also shows that it’s a creative’s job to tell a good story. And that’s exactly what Dan Trachtenberg did with Badlands, against all of our expectations.

Predator: Badlands is now playing in theaters.