How Well Do You Know Predator: Badlands?

Learn More About Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands, directed and co-written by Dan Trachtenberg, reinvents the long-running franchise by making a Yautja the hero for the first time. The film follows Dek, a young Predator cast out by his own clan, as he crash-lands on the deadly planet Genna and sets out to hunt the Kalisk, a legendary creature that has never been killed.

Along the way, Dek reluctantly teams up with Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic played by Elle Fanning, who also plays Thia’s colder, more mission-focused twin, Tessa, in a bit of clever dual casting. Rounding out the found family is Bud, an infant Kalisk who imprints on Dek and Thia early in the film and quickly becomes the emotional and comedic heart of the story, despite being fully capable of tearing apart synthetic soldiers.

The film is a direct continuation of the creative direction Trachtenberg set with 2022’s Prey, which reinvigorated the franchise after years of diminishing returns, and the animated anthology Killers of Killers. That approach has clearly paid off: Badlands became the highest-grossing Predator film ever made based on domestic box office, pulling in over $135 million worldwide and topping the box office on release.

The Predator franchise itself dates back to 1987, when Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the original film, directed by John McTiernan on a $15 million budget that went on to gross nearly $100 million worldwide. Schwarzenegger did not return for the 1990 sequel, and the franchise has expanded through multiple sequels, crossovers with the Alien franchise, and now, with Badlands, its first-ever Predator protagonist.

Critics and audiences alike responded well to the film’s willingness to make a Predator genuinely sympathetic without sacrificing the franchise’s trademark brutality, and Trachtenberg has hinted at more stories set in this corner of the universe. Whatever comes next, Genna has proven to be fertile ground for reinventing a nearly 40-year-old franchise.

Think you know Badlands as well as you thought? Test your knowledge above, then take our character quiz to find out whether you are more Dek, Thia, or Bud.

Trachtenberg has been open about wanting Badlands to feel like a survival adventure story as much as a monster movie, drawing comparisons to films like The Revenant in terms of its focus on one character clawing through a hostile environment. That approach extends to the film’s visual language too, leaning on Genna’s alien wildlife and terrain to create obstacles that are just as dangerous as the Kalisk itself, rather than treating the planet as empty set dressing between action beats.

The film also continues a trend Trachtenberg started with Prey: centering the story on an outsider protagonist who has something to prove, rather than a seasoned, hyper-competent hero. Dek’s status as a runt cast out by his own clan gives the film emotional stakes beyond the usual hunt-or-be-hunted formula, and pairing him with Thia, a synthetic slowly discovering her own capacity for empathy, gives Badlands a found-family throughline that is fairly unusual for the franchise.