Pop Culture Happy Hour - Predator: Badlands

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Predator: Badlands is the latest film about an alien race that hunts things using all sorts of space-gadgets. It’s told from the Predator’s perspective. He’s an outcast sent to a hostile planet to hunt down a deadly monster to prove his worth to his people – with Elle Fanning joining as an unlikely ally. It’s from the same team that made Prey. And both Predator movies are much better than they had any right to be.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureTo access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Predator Badlands is the latest iteration of the franchise about an alien race that hunts things using all sorts of space gadgets. It's from the same team that made 2022's prey, which was, like this movie, a much better predator movie than it had any right to be. This time out, we're getting the story from the Predators' Perspective, an outcast sent to a hostile planet to hunt down a deadly monster to prove his worth to his people. El Fanning shows up as an unlikely ally. I am Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Predator Badlands on Popper. Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast leaving the theater.

Hello, Ronald. Hello, Glenn. Also with us is writer Chris Klemick always brings a bit. Hey, Chris. If it bleeds, we can kill it, Glenn. Let's do this. We go. In Predator Badlands, deck, a predator who is kind of the runt of his litter,

goes to the deadly planet of Gennah to hunt down a hideous monster because he's determined to prove to his clan that he's got to, what it takes to really belong to the species of intergalactic badasses that audiences first met back in a 1987 Schwarzenegger movie. In sequels and novels, comics and video games, various predators have faced off against everything from aliens to Batman to recently, a very resourceful young Comanche woman in 2022's prey. This predator, played by Demetrius Schuster Colomitangi, is aided by the top half of an abandoned robot named Thea, played by El Fennig. All that plus lots of lore about the Predators and their whole deal. It's in theaters now. Ronald Young Jr. kick us off.

What'd you think? Man, I really enjoyed this movie, and I did not expect to. I was a big fan of 2022's Prey. I thought it breathed new life into the Predator franchise, especially after the earlier entry. I can't remember the year of The Predator. The Shane Black One. You know exactly what I'm talking about, yes. Especially after that entry, this felt like it took it.

in a positive direction. I have this theory that there's a vision of the future that was established in the 80s that we keep getting remakes out of, your Terminators, your aliens, your predators. And I feel like what I always want to see is a now take on those ideas, which I think was established well in a movie like Alien Romulus, and again, in movies like Prey and also in this one. Action, adventure, lots of fun throughout, very simple plot, easy to follow. And I think, again, if you think about the predators from the predator's perspective, it would be an action-adventure movie for them as opposed to a horror or a thriller in any other sense when you're looking from the humans' perspective.

That's interesting. That's a good point. Yeah. So I enjoyed it. I liked it. All right. Chris, you are our predator correspondent. What do you think?

Yeah, the predator is always the protagonist in these movies, right? The other ones are just trying to survive. of the human characters, of which there are none in this film, Predator Badlands. Our entry points for empathy are just reactive. I'm pretty much with Ronald. I like this movie a lot, but I wanted to love it. It was the three of us talking about Alien Romulus. Yes. Where this movie fell down for me a little bit, although I like the script very much, I like the premise very much, is that it did not replicate that practical effects aesthetic that we talked about being so key to Romulus's success, where the, you know, puppets, miniatures, real sets.

I'm looking at the production notes of this movie, Badlands, and seeing that it was shot much of it on location in New Zealand. And we don't get that, you know, like we're looking at what seemed to me to be, you know, digital jungles, full of hostile creatures, very much like the avatar movies. But, I mean, this movie was only shot a year ago. You know, when you don't have a years-long post-production pipeline

to refine all that stuff, it doesn't look as convincing. And one thing, I know we probably have a diversity of opinions about Predator 87, which you and I watched on Ian Buckwalter's roof some years ago, Glenn. That was probably your first time seeing Predator. Mizzen, that movie was shot. Hell yes.

That's not the phrase I expected to hear about 1987 Predator. I did it. Predator Mizansen, John McTiernan, at the start of his incredible Predator diehard Red October run, you feel that jungle. You feel the discomfort and the hostility of that environment.

You see how uncomfortable Well, every cast and crew member was every minute shooting that movie. And that's what's missing here. You know, like the way that it imagines these super venomous plants that deck are our Yautja hero, I guess, you know, repurposes as his own weapons and one of the sort of cool McGivory, you know, bits in this film. Yacht is the name of the species we learn in this film. Yeah. It's all cool, but it just, it looks like a video game, you know, that smeary digital underlit aesthetic.

It was dark. I didn't like that. It's too dark. Yeah. I mean, I still like this movie. Again, I think the script is really good. I think El Thanning is wonderful. I just, I don't like the way this movie looks.

Okay. Boy, I am not used to addressing a curmudgeon and being the positive guy on the battle or one of the pot of guys in the panel. I had a great time in this. Let's go, Glenn. Yes. To be clear, I care not a whit, not a jot, not a tittle about this IP. And I imagine there's a non-zero percentage of folks out there of listeners who are in that cohort with me. I am here to tell them you're going to have a good time.

Action set pieces on point, humor that is based in behavior and attitude, not quips, not pop culture references. Yes. El Fanning is charming. She is fun. Yes. Solidly built plot-wise, you both mention the plot. Nice efficiency here. We get the intro of the gadgets.

We know the gadgets are going to come back. We meet the various environmental factors and threats like the razor glass and we meet the beasties. In turn, we know they're going to come back. Mostly I like, and this is kind of picking up on what Ronald was saying, that we're not simply iterating this IP and doing versus Godzilla versus Kong, versus Fast and the Furious, we are plopping it down in various times and locations and letting it, you know, run free.

I like that this is a franchise as kind of an extended anthology. I like that approach. My only quibble, speaking of franchises, more endings than Return to the King. Agreed. That is because of its structure, right? When we spend this movie meeting all the various beasties

and various threats in sequence, that is the movie opening up a series of boxes in sequence. And we hit the hour and 30 minute mark. And I was like, man, they have shut none of these boxes. There are so many boxes. So the last 17 minutes is just a series of boxes getting shut. Getting shut in fun ways.

Getting shut in ways that I liked. But there's a lot of them. And I think one of the reasons I never really responded to this franchise over the years. And I don't take any offense at this. But it seemed like it was made for the 14-year-old straight boy. I never was. Why would I take offense to that? Something I couldn't put my finger on as I was watching it,

but then I came home and I read the Richard Lawson Review and the Hollywood Reporter. He called this out in his review. This is kind of a found family, chosen family story, right? Also, not for nothing. Predator has very fraught relationships with his dad. He forms instant, very strong,

non-romantic friendships with badass women. He lives to accessorize, right? I'm not saying, predator is queer now, but I'm not not saying. This director, I have been following his career for going on 20 years now without realizing it because between 2007 and 2012, Dan Tractonberg, this director, was one of the hosts of a video podcast called The Totally Rad Show, which you can probably glean from the title was three dudes talking about movies and video games and comics.

And I like the guy. He was a Philly boy. He graduated from Temple. He was out in L.A. at that time, directing commercial. and short films, and he was a guy who clearly loved science fiction movies, not simply from, like, the fans' perspective, but from a like a technical and storytelling perspective. He talked about wanting to direct science fiction movies one day. And then the show ended, and I just kind of lost track of him. And then, you know, in the meantime, he directed 10 Cloverfield Lane a few years back, which I liked, but I didn't put it together.

It wasn't until 2022's Prey, which I also liked. That's whenever this clicked, I was like, oh, it's that guy. And I just got this weird feeling of pride. I mean, I was like, way to go, sport. I mean, I knew he was doing what he wanted to do always and because parasycial relationships are very weird things. I felt like I kind of had a hand on the ball in some way just because I feel like I like the choices he makes here because there are scenes that clearly have the iconography of the comic book splash page. Right. Whenever a deck like lifts his sword over his head.

after he kills something. It's like, oh, there's the comic book influence. Like, way to go, buddy. Frank Frisetta, baby. It's very Franksouet. Now, I do have a question here because let's go back to this premise here. The filmmakers are making a big thing about how this is the first film told from the predator's perspective. We get a name for the species, the Yautja and their planet, Yautja Prime, and the Predator deck.

We get a lots of predator language that they built out for this movie. We get a kind of rudimentary sense of how the Predator Society works. Ronald, this is a question for you. Is that stuff just for the chrises of this world, or does it add something to the movie? So it's interesting. As someone who loves predator and loves alien and loves how the plots have interacted over time and love the universe generally, I have found that I don't necessarily care about the lore as much. I just care about what's happening in front of me at the time. Like, if Prometheus was a standalone movie, I would probably.

enjoy that. And so I say all that to say watching this and seeing everything that they're establishing, I think is fine for this movie, but it was not something I was craving outside of this movie. I've never been sitting by myself being like, man, I really wonder where they came from, or what language they spoke, or how do they get their cloaking devices? None of those questions are important to me, but they were important to the plot. And I think that they held up well in the movie itself. I was not craving them. I think. too often they are making movies where they're like, hey, don't you want to know where the dinosaurs came from? It's like, we already know. You told us, please don't tell me anything else. Don't give

him a personality. I don't need to know Blue's name. All of that's not important to me whatsoever. But in the movie, I think it was good. Yeah. Since we do get the name of the species, the Yautja, I'm glad that we now have Yautja. So we don't just have to say predators all the time. Okay. I mean, I guess my question is, what does it add to that they're called the Yautja versus what they're called the Predators, I'm going to go on calling the Predators. I'm not about to go calling them the Yautja, because predators are what they are. But they're not the only IP in this movie.

This is, as we talked about before recording, this is kind of a stealth aliens movie. It turns out that the Al-Fennan character isn't just a robot. And this is in the trailer. She's a Wayland-Utani synthetic Android. Now, if that were so maybe five, ten years ago, I'd be thinking about it one way, but this movie arrives on the heels of Alien Earth on FX. It's in the wake of Alien Romulus. last year. It's safe to say that these synths are achieving right now a kind of cultural ubiquity

that is, I think, approaching 2019 James Corden. I think, you know, it's like they got the talk show, they got the carpal karaoke, they're in cats. Do they also need to host the Tonys? The Vulture piece that I published ranking the synths and Androids of the Alien Universe like two months ago is already out of date, already obsolete. Real short shelf life on that one. Is there a lot of milk left in this? Is there blood in the stone? I think so. I think it's there.

Well, okay, here's why I think it's there. I think synths are the perfect kind of vehicle for us to engage this moment right now. When we think about our engagement with technology and with AI, even in this particular movie, we have deconiously calling Tia a tool and using her in that way as he would use a tool. And then eventually their relationship changes. That being said, I think that's a very interesting. way to talk about how we are engaging with technology and in particular AI. And there's a lot of stories that can come of that. And I guess, Glenn, are you asking, are we done with those stories?

Do we need to keep telling those? And I feel like if our relationship with technology continues to change, then there's probably going to be more to mine from the sense in the future. Yeah, I'm asking a more nerdy industry question, I suppose, which is, does this movie feel like in a conversation with Alien Earth and Alien Romulus? Or is it off doing its own thing? And is that a good thing? And is that a good thing or bad thing? Does there need to be a shared universe, I guess, is what I'm asking. This is the first predator film set in the future. All of the other ones are set in the present of when they were released.

Prey was set in the 18th century. So this one is clearly at least a century in the future, right? Because we have interplanetary capitalism and exploitation happening. The Wayland Utani folks are on this planet to capture the callisk. So this is the first one that fast-forward into the 22nd century setting of the way. Alien movies. I think the kinds of films that are more topical about our fears and changing relationship with AI now are more things like her or like after Yang. It's less these genre films because we're already living in that time that all of these 80s and really like 70s when

Alien and Blade Runner was starting to go into production and all that was, you know, we've gotten there and we've sort of surpassed those dire warnings. So I think the films that ask us more and to treat these new life forms really as something other than an oppositional force. Again, like her, like after Yang, where it's like we're going to have an ongoing emotional engagement with these characters and not just sort of a arena-style combat bout with them. I think that's what's more reflective of our relationship with AI now. I think the subtextual freight, if there is any of Predator 87, is that these are off the books, military contractors doing some shady mission down in Central America. working for the CIA. It's not sanctioned.

It's not, you know. So, and I mean, that was feeding off of Iran-Contra and a lot of stuff that was in the culture at the time, you know, but it was not at all related to our relationship with technology or artificial intelligence or any of that. That was always aliens thing. In terms of the shared universe of all of this, I can't believe I'm saying this, but for the first time, I don't really care if they're playing together or not, as long as each entry is good because I feel like the MCU spoiled us.

If you go back and watch, there was so much planning that took place where each scene was interconnected. There's boxes opening in a movie that doesn't close until 10 movies later, all of that. And it's rewarding upon multiple watches. But what we found is that without that type of coordination, if you're not doing that from the point of inception of these films, then what you end up is kind of this messy, kind of connected in the back end universe, which is. isn't working, and I kind of think that's why Marvel hasn't been working in the most recent years.

But if we think about now, what they're doing is just making good things that each are good on their own. I think alien Earth is good on its own. Alien Romulus is good on its own. Predator Badlands and Prey, all good on their own. They don't have to connect. As long as they're good, I think that is fine with me. As a nerd, it'd be nice if they connected, but if they're not going to, then please just make it as good as possible as all I ask. Ronald, I hope there are studio executives listening to your little piece just then, because that's exactly what they need to hear. And they need also ironically, they need to stop listening to us nerds.

Just make good movies. You know, Glenn and I were talking before the movie about the, like, the lore and so. And I mean, there's no lore that you need to know. Like, there is no predator film, not even Predator 2 that requires you to have seen a prior Predator film to enjoy it. They're all pretty self-reliant. No, you get it. You totally get it. All right, well, tell us what you think about Predator Badly.

lands, would you be up for Predator Thin Red Line? Predator Days of Heaven or Predator Tree of Life? We are on Facebook and letterboxed, and letterboxed is where some people might possibly get that feeble Terrence Malick I just made. And that brings us to the end of our show, Chris Klimick, Ronald Young Jr. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for

having me. This has been great. I love you guys. This is super fun. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is great way to support our show and public radio and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free, so please go find out more at plus.npr.npr.org Hour or visit the link in our show notes.

This episode was produced by Mike Katsif and Carly Rubin and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy and Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time.