Predator: Badlands – Exclusive Look at Elle Fanning Bringing Alien Vibes to New Arena

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

So, a robot from the Alien franchise and a Predator from Predator walk into a movie together. If that sounds like the setup of an old Dark Horse comic from the 1990s, in which Batman fought the Predator and xenomorphs at different times, the reality of Predator: Badlands isn’t too far off.

The new film from director Dan Trachtenberg is very much a gift to longtime fans of both franchises, but it’s not a gratuitous team-up movie for the sake of team-ups. Instead Badlands tells a new, action-packed science fiction story that could in many ways be a fresh start for both sagas. For those who loved Trachtenberg’s 2022 film Prey, a unique historical approach to the Predator mythos set in 18th-century Comanche lands, Badlands is… well, nothing like that at all. Rather this film represents a new truth about the possibilities of big, well-loved IP-driven worlds: there’s always a fresh way to approach the familiar.

“Everyone has the same ambition, and maybe I’ll fail,” Trachtenberg tells us while reflecting on his desire to flip the Predator franchise’s formula on its head. “Everyone who does this sort of thing is trying to make a sequel entertaining for everyone, but also furthering a story when we’re so far into a series.” Yet few have completely inverted their saga’s core concept wherein the recurring big bad of the series, here an apex alien predator, is now both the hero and the prey.

Set deeper into the future than any previous installment of the Alien and Predator franchises, Badlands is positioning itself not just to be the breakout sci-fi hit of fall 2025 but also a jumpstart for a new kind of shared universe. And for the stars and the director, the trick is all about making an impossibly big movie feel small, relatable, and intimately human. Which is a pretty nifty feat when there’s not a single human being on the screen. Welcome to a future of only aliens and AI synthetics.

A Dynamic Duo 

The heart and soul of Predator: Badlands is not-so-secretly centered around an unlikely partnership between a young Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) and a Weyland-Yutani synth they call Thia (Elle Fanning). As trailers have revealed, Dek is carrying a damaged Thia around on his back for much of the movie after both sentient beings end up on a planet that even the Predator species of Yautja fear. According to Trachtenberg and his stars, this image defines the basic ethos of the film.

“This is very new for the Predator franchise,” Fanning explains. “I think oftentimes you don’t feel like you’re creating something new or doing something people haven’t seen before. That’s a hard thing. But I think we all kind of felt that this had a special feeling. I mean, there’s obviously a little C-3PO and Chewbacca thing there!” 

Fanning is referencing the fact that having her robot character strapped to the back of a sci-fi monster like Dek evokes a similar image in the third act of The Empire Strikes Back, when a disassembled version of the droid C-3PO is rigged up to the back of a legendary Wookiee. And what is a small part of that Star Wars film, Trachtenberg admits, is a large inspiration for the character dynamic of Badlands.

“When I was thinking about this, I was also thinking, ‘What if there was a Chewbacca movie?’’’ Trachtenberg says. “This is what the purpose of this or any other franchise is: to do things like this.”

Due to the irony of this pairing—where science fiction’s most fearsome hunter carries a shattered robot on its back like she’s a sack of old potatoes—the secret production title for Predator: Badlands became “Backpack.” And while it may seem that Fanning and Trachtenberg are joking around about the imagery, Trachtenberg makes it clear that the aesthetics inspire him as much as a story’s literary concepts. Hence, like his previous film in the franchise, Prey, the image of Dek and Thia was an artistic, visual choice from which the rest of Badlands’ inception sprang.

“I just loved the silhouette of it,” Trachtenberg says. “That’s something I’m drawn to. It’s a really great, dynamic silhouette. I love the silhouette of Mad Max and his dog in Road Warrior, which is why Naru had a dog in Prey. I love the iconography of that. I love Monster Squad; the silhouette of the kids with Frankenstein in the sunset. What is the iconography of the movie? Everything starts with that.”

A Real Hang Out Movie

Although Predator: Badlands is a VFX-heavy film, actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi makes it clear that nearly everything you see, including him carrying Fanning around his neck, is very much real.

“She was literally on my back,” Schuster-Koloamatangi says with a laugh. “I did have wires and stuff, to be honest. But a lot of it was yes, carrying her on my back. I didn’t think much of it when I read the script, but then when we got on set, it was like, ‘Wow, I’m really carrying her around!’”

Fanning echoes the physicality of the characters and makes it clear that what you see on the screen is very much what was filmed, including during the stunts:

“He was carrying me most of the time, and we were flying through the air together while still being hooked up,” Fanning says. “There were definitely physical challenges, but it was very exciting too, because something that’s always enticed me about the Predator franchise is that it’s not a monster that’s CGI. It’s someone that’s physically there, in the suit, that’s tangible.” 

Unlike previous interactions of the franchise, Schuster-Koloamatangi’s Dek is seen in much more detail than the larger and older Predators that came before him. In a sense, Predator: Badlands is the first Predator movie of its kind, simply because the titular alien hunter is portrayed as a sympathetic protagonist, one who’s been effectively exiled from his clan because he’s viewed as the runt. It’s a Predator movie actually about the Predator.

“In a lot of the previous installments of the Predator, you only see him come in periodically throughout the film, and then right at the end, it’s the final battle,” Schuster-Koloamatangi says. “So there’s not a lot of emotional depth required. But for this film, since it’s a unique take on the Predator and he’s seen throughout the entirety of the film, there had to be a different way to convey those emotions.”

For this reason, Schuster-Koloamatangi’s face was physically exposed throughout the filming, despite being inside the large Predator suit. This technique was called an “open cowl,” which allowed the VFX team to use Schuster-Koloamatangi’s real facial expressions as a guide for the CGI Predator face added later. The actor points out that this lets Badlands tell the story as “authentically” as possible, but it also created a kind of theatricality to his performance that he hadn’t expected. 

“Prepping for this character felt like theater,”  Schuster-Koloamatangi explains. “A lot of the way I use my face, it had to be big. The movements have to be exaggerated a lot. It’s like stage whispers, you’re doing everything big, so that everything is big and people can see it and understand it.”

Furthermore, as tough and talented as Schuster-Koloamatangi is in real life, he wants to set the record straight on one strange bit of Google misinformation that’s out there. Despite what some search results might tell you, he’s not over seven feet tall like a real-life Predator. “I don’t know where that came from,” he says with a laugh. “I’m only six-foot!” 

A Robot By Any Other Name

Another open secret of Badlands is the fact that Fanning isn’t playing just one Weyland-Yutani android, but rather more than one version of the same model. In addition to Thia, Fanning reveals she also gave life to another robot, Tessa, who is the opposite of Thia in almost every way. 

“With Thia and Tessa, it’s like, how are we going to make them very distinct and different?” Fanning explains. “With Thia, she’s broken, she’s had time up in this nest to see the world in a different way, and she has an empathy about her. She’s quirky and spunky, and she wants someone to talk to. She has this comedic tone and a really fun personality. But with Tessa, I think you can imagine she’s quite the opposite. She’s more practical and scientific.” 

By this point, longtime fans of both Alien and Predator must be wondering why is the robot in this Predator movie specifically from the Alien universe? It’s been 18 years since the last Alien vs. Predator movie hit theaters, and the two franchises haven’t co-mingled like this since then. Aside from some brand synergy for 20th Century Studios, what motivated Trachtenberg to bring another franchise into his new Predator movie?

“I started thinking about a monster and a robot together, and that felt very cool. And then I thought, ‘I know someone who makes robots, and that is spiritually linked to this franchise,’” Trachtenberg says. “They share a world. They share a studio. How cool would it be to do that, and there also be no xenomorph in the movie?”

The decision to make Thia and Tessa both Weyland-Yutani synthetics is obviously quite cool, but for Fanning, it also meant there was a rich tradition to draw upon for her performance. From Ian Holm’s sinister Ash in the original 1979 Alien to David Jonsson’s more enigmatic Andy in 2024’s Alien: Romulus, Fanning took it all in and relished in the shifty, duplicitous nature of this breed of sci-fi synth. 

“Sometimes they’re not always up to good,” Fanning says of the history of Weyland-Yutani’s artificial lifeforms. “You don’t quite know if they’re good or bad.”

While Badlands was filming, Fanning tells us that the cast and crew went to see Alien: Romulus. And while she admits that she took a “little inspiration” from Jonsson’s Andy in that film, she also doubles down on the fact that because Badlands takes place so far into the future of both franchises, Thia and Tessa are basically the most advanced models of Weyland-Yutani robots ever.

“These synths are highly, highly developed,” Fanning says. “Much more than we’ve seen before.”

A New Kind of Franchise 

By teaming up a Yautja apex predator with a Weyland-Yutani android,  Badlands must clearly be leading to some kind of larger plan, right? Is Trachtenberg guiding 20th Century Studios into a bigger shared universe, one which culminates in a major crossover event?

So far there have been hints that that is very much the case. Not only did Prey heroine Naru (Amber Midthunder) show up in the final moments of the animated anthology film Predator: Killer of Killers, but after that movie hit streaming earlier this year, it was also revealed that the Yautja had Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) likewise preserved in suspended animation. This all seems to suggest that, like the MCU or the DCU, we’re headed to a convergence point.

Yet while Trachtenberg asserts that he does have a vision, he doesn’t view Badlands—or Prey or Killer of Killers—as puzzle pieces in a larger tapestry. Instead he wants each film to be accessible to anyone, regardless of what they know about Dutch Schaefer’s Vietnam service or the precious cargo on LV-426.

“It’s not Alien versus Predator,” the director insists. “Maybe one day we will get there in an elegant way, but not in a gimmicky way where we’re just taking all the action figures and smashing them together. Maybe we get there if that’s where the stories aspired to go and they make things better for each other.” 

If this strategy sounds newish, Trachtenberg’s essentially already proven he knows how to do it. Both Prey and Killer of Killers require zero previous knowledge of the Predator franchise, and with Badlands, any connectivity to the larger world is, from Trachtenberg’s point of view, a bonus. The last thing he wants the audience to think about in Badlands is doing any homework. With its standalone pedigree, could the Predator approach to worldbuilding be the new standard for big IPs? Is this the geek universe healing from the overly wrought juggernaut of the MCU? Trachtenberg says things aren’t quite that black and white.

“I think everything needs to feel like it’s an awesome movie,” Trachtenberg says. “I think that’s what we’ve loved from recent Marvels to old Star Wars. I saw Empire before I saw Star Wars growing up. I think that’s fine. But, you know, I think even Marvel movies can seem like there’s a lot more homework involved. And they’re aware of it and dealing with it. But look at Doctor Strange, that was very deep into the MCU and could absolutely be seen on its own. There are always these pockets where everyone recognizes the value of something, and not be too worried about making it something that isn’t as tethered to continuity.”

Trachtenberg says his favorite bit of movie continuity ever is in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) when Indy (Harrison Ford) passes by a wall-drawing of the Ark of the Covenant, a reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark. When questioned if he’s sure that’s what it is, he says flatly, “Pretty sure.” For Trachtenberg, that “pretty sure” was a “gift of a movie moment.” And it’s that kind of connectivity he’s striving for in the Predator franchise. 

With that said, he does have a loose plan. “Before Killer of Killers or Badlands, I wrote for the studio a little universe bible of what we could be doing, all the different things, all the different kinds of movies that could be,” Trachtenberg confirms. However, he is also aware that he’s not the first filmmaker to plan for a future that is far from set in stone. “I break no new ground by saying this. We have to make one movie at a time.”

Fanning also posits that Badlands is an extremely accessible project, one she thinks appeals to all demographics, regardless of whether you think you like movies about murderous extraterrestrials.

“This story in particular can really open the world to a whole new audience of newcomers,” Fanning says. “Not to say these movies weren’t open in the past. I think Sigourney Weaver has a lot of female audience members in Alien. Definitely me. But the Predator world may not necessarily be something that the female audience always goes to see. But I’m hoping that this one is universal. And I think a new crowd can discover it for the first time.”

Badlands represents a bit of an elegant paradigm shift in massive, studio-owned IPs. Trachtenberg may have a plan, but he’s clearly willing to discover new ideas along the way. And if the audience discovers they love Elle Fanning as a certain bisected, Weyland-Yutani robot, then it’s possible the future of the converging franchise isn’t just continuing, but beginning all over again. 

Predator: Badlands opens in theaters on Nov. 7.