Predator: Badlands Is Building to the Ultimate Crossover Movie

This feature contains Predator: Badlands spoilers.

Predator: Badlands began with Dek the runt. He’s he scrawniest member of his Clan and considered so useless that his father orders his brother to kill him. Yet by the time the credits on Badlands roll, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s Dek has faced the Kalisk, defeated his father, and taken his cloak, all of which earn him the title Dek of the Yautja. But those credits have barely even begun when we return to the story and immediately reveal an even greater threat for our noble Predator. No sooner does Dek kill his father than a fleet of ships arrive, led by someone even more dangerous than Dek’s father: his mother.

It’s an amusing cliffhanger that leaves audiences stewing while the rest of the Badlands credits roll. But we might have already been given a glimpse of the future in another post-credit sequence from the other Predator movie that Dan Trachtenberg directed this year: the animated Predator: Killer of Killers. At the end of that movie, a Viking warrior queen named Ursa is captured by Yautja and placed in suspended animation. In the post-credits scene, we see that she’s been stored beside other warriors of antiquity who managed to kill a Yautja. The first of these we see is Naru (Amber Midthunder), the Comanche warrior from Trachtenberg’s Prey. Soon, however, we also glimpse Danny Glover‘s Mike Harrigan from Predator 2 and Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Dutch from the original Predator.

Will Dek fight his mother by enlisting the help of these greats from the franchise’s past?

Our initial gut reaction tells us “no.” Schwarzenegger has long avoided the franchise, to the point that Trachtenberg compares Arnold’s return to the Holy Grail. Every Predator movie since the first has included some part for Dutch to play, and yet its never come to pass. Then there’s the issue of age. Schwarzenegger and Glover are both pushing 80, and the latter is famous for playing a character too old for this shit.

… But then again, both post-credits scenes in Badlands and Killer of Killers seem to be building toward something. Why reveal that Midthunder’s Naru and Schwarzenegger’s Dutch are being kept on ice on the Yautja homeworld if you don’t intend to revisiting that thread? And we already know for certain that Dek and his robo-companion Thia (Elle Fanning) are now back on that planet where they have a lot of angry Yautja after them. Who knows, maybe beside Naru there is also Adrien Brody’s Royce from Predators and maybe Boyd Holbrook’s Quinn from The Predator too?

And already Predator: Badlands pulled off its own impossible feat. Yes, the Predator and Alien worlds have long since been brought together. But with the exception of an occasional video game or Dark Horse Comics issue, they’ve always been bad. Badlands bucks that trend by seamlessly weaving the two worlds in a way that feels natural.

Seriously consider how Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison blend the two franchises with ease, keeping characters and themes true to their respective worlds. Weyland-Yutani remains THE Company, and it approaches the Yautja and the Kalisk in Badlands the same way it did the xenomorph. Thia’s synth sister Tessa may better match the malevolence we’re used to seeing in androids like Ash, David, and, more recently, the Prodigy heavy Kirsh from Alien: Earth. But Thia’s sweetness was predicted by Bishop and Call, making it not at all distracting. Even better, Badlands avoids obnoxious ‘member berries, so while Tessa does use a turbo-loader to battle the Kalisk, she doesn’t say, “Get away from her, you bitch!” thus playing it smarter than Alien Romulus.

Badlands also stays true to the Predator world, even as it expands on it. Dek begins the film adhering to the Yautja principles of hunting and honor. He cares only about himself and the victories he can win. But as the movie goes on, he finds a way to bond with not only Thia, but also the Kalisk and her young. By the end of the film, Dek has rejected his old clan and formed his own.

Obviously Dek’s going to need that clan if he’s going to stand up against his mother. If he can expand that clan to include those who have defeated the Yautja before, even better. It’s a tall order to get all those people together into one group, but if anyone can do it, Dan Trachtenberg can.

Predator: Badlands is now playing in theaters.