The Reel Rejects - PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025) IS A HUGE SWING THAT ACTUALLY WORKS! MOVIE REVIEW!!

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

DAN TRACHTENBERGH DELIVERS THE UNEXPECTED!! Predator Badlands Full Movie Reaction Watch Along:   / thereelrejects   Gift Someone (Or Yourself) A Stranger Things Reject Nation Tee! https://shorturl.at/hekk2 Prey Reaction    • PREY MOVIE REACTION!! First Time Watching ...   Predator Killer Of Killers Reaction    • PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS IS FREAKIN' KI...   Prey (aaron's reaction)    • PREY (2022) MOVIE REACTION!! FIRST TIME WA...   Predator: Badlands Reaction, Recap, Commentary, Analysis, & Spoiler Review! Greg Alba & Aaron Alexander dive into Predator: Badlands (2025) — the newest entry in the Predator franchise, following Prey, Predators, The Predator, and the original 1987 classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. This film returns the series to brutal survival-horror roots with new lore, new Yautja tech, and some of the wildest kills in the franchise. We break down the story, cinematography, creature design, character arcs, and how this fits into the evolving Predator timeline. We discuss the new Badlands setting, the human characters, the Yautja hierarchy, the updated mask/armor tech, callbacks to Naru (Prey), Dutch (Predator 1987), Royce (Predators 2010), Quinn (The Predator 2018), and where Disney/Hulu might be taking this franchise next. We talk about the best scenes, tense standoffs, survival sequences, Predator POV shots, trophy rituals, plasma caster upgrades, cloaking variations, and everything that makes this creature one of cinema’s most iconic hunters. Plus — speculation on future Predator movies, crossovers, timeline placement, and how Predator: Badlands affects theories about the Yautja code of honor, interspecies hunts, and the growing expanded universe. Follow Aaron On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealaaronalexander/?hl=en Intense Suspense by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Follow Us On Socials:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/  Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@reelrejects?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/reelrejects Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ Music Used In Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Happy Alley by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

let's thank ourselves and reward ourselves by watching predator the badlands well ladies and gentlemen we have just watched predator bad lands if you're listening to this review on apple and or Spotify please give us a one star rating we need a balance of scales too many five stars and also leave a like on this video while you're here aaron you have binged alien here you have binge predator here we'll keep a predator focus primarily of course since this is a predator film now this is the first one to focus on the predator as a protagonist with that they also changed kind of the genre and experience and structure what did you think of the changes I thought the changes were really smart. I feel like utilizing the mythology and the history of what we already know about predators and flipping it on its head to allow a story type and structure that allows the predator to be the protagonist. So it's really smart, you know, not changing what we know as the predators as a whole, but focusing on the fact that obviously with a race of beings, there will be people. people that are stronger and considered more weak and we follow somebody who is essentially an

underdog of his own society and by giving him something to prove really gets us on his side, especially in a setting that seems so dangerous and allowing it to breathe in a way that doesn't feel like it's rushing by too fast but feels authentic for the type of story that we're in. I thought it was really well done. I thought it was great. What about you? Oh, thank you. Yes.

I feel like he kind of did the, I feel like they kind of did something that seemed a little bit unfathomable. I expected it to just pretty much be a predator movie, but flipped, you know, like the predator would be the main character and he'd be up against something else and it would just be like a predator movie, you know?

Because of predator movies, the general structure of it is they go into an environment some foreign creature shows up they got to fight they got to figure out how to kill this foreign creature and they learn their ways and they have a big showdown with it that's not this movie no not at all it's a found family movie it's kind of a buddy comedy movie and it's like a video game meets anime meets comic books with all kinds of sci-fi inspirations star Wars, Dune, and you got like the fantastical side of like Lord of the Rings, even a bit of like a Skull Island vibe. Yeah. A little guardian to there. Yeah, yeah.

When Yacha has his walkman out. He's hitting on Thea the whole time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's got that, because it's got that humor as well. So it surprised me because it's essentially

utilizing a lot of the tropes you see in this kind of story with, you know, you could just take a brooding guy on a mission who's like, do I don't have a heart, you know, I ain't weak. I don't need no buddy. Yeah, I don't need a buddy. Then you got like, you know, sensitive, precocious child character. Oh, lucky. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And they really mess with the, the tropes. So it was a little bit. it was a little trope heavy in this sense so sometimes it was a little bit I don't want to use the word generic because that sounds like an undercut of the experience it was it by the numbers because it seemed like it was honoring tropes and it also seemed like it was having fun with it because a lot of times we would point something out or say something then the character would say exactly you know so it was there was a sense of familiarity about it. Yeah, yeah. But it was earnest in its execution. It was having fun with the way they handled it. So I thought it was cool because it had the tribalistic survival elemental side.

When the predators are often known for their weaponry, their armor, their tech. And you literally, it's weird to do the movie where you take the yacha. and you strip him from everything we kind of associate with the predator and you focus on the skills and the heart that one must accrue from observation and that's how you find a way to make your predator human whilst being through the eyes you know yeah no i think they they did a great job of that and also it's our first time spending with a predator that hasn't not like the world's most like uh proficient dialogue and he's not having home monologues but you are having a way in to be able to talk to him and understand him that makes sense

within the framework of what we know a predator to be and I feel like being able to do that and capitalizing on the fact that he is our main character by giving him a sense of humor and giving him something to fight for

is this was really well done and got you to sympathize with him yeah i like the fact that this movie's plot was simple which allowed there to be room to explore these these big set pieces while also allowing those set pieces to give character and understanding into our our main guide deck and without having him necessarily to talk a whole lot like obviously he has dialogue scenes but it's more so the action that speaks to his character more than it is the words that he's saying yeah absolutely and whoever plays deck let's look that up it's go to it's go to imdebel i have the i mdb right here look up the

i md bizzle predator bad lands there's a computer right in front of me we're a phone society what are computers oh he also played the father of the voice of the father okay so i wonder if there's like they're separate if there's like a voice actor and uh performance actor so there's the deck father voice this guy demetrius schister but who did the body of deck because i think he did too really oh he's the voice of the father that's what they're saying yeah and he's the actor of him oh that's really cool yeah i thought he did a really really good job and i imagine they had to probably do some vfx obviously with the face with the mouth and the eyes but the enhancements were very seamless.

And they were smart to give him big eyes. That way you can really get into the. The eyes are the soul to the character. That's the thing that I often talk about where with avatar work and kind of lose me a little bit, when you have actors in mocap, or not mocap, but performance capture, and then you digital their eyes,

it's like, oh, you kind of lose some of the actor then when you do that. You know, because that's the, that's the, that's the, That's the way to the soul is the eyes. Yeah. And they utilize his eyes so well. And the agoneness of like the brother, the distinguishedness, and the flip of not having like a cane and able thing, but also driving home kind of the ruthlessness and having a bit of that change of generational trauma.

Yeah. Yeah. He's going to change the ways here. It was smart along with like this. We kept talking about how beautiful the effects are. It was gorgeous looking film. And it's actually shot, like composed. You know what I mean?

I think a lot of the times movies are now lacking this kind of dynamic flourishes and the way they're shot. And especially a movie like this, CGI heavy, this could have just like a volume movie. But it actually, you know, had a lot of good contrast and a lot of good pop and a lot of good environment usage and very composed, calculated shots on when to go, handheld, when to go wide, when to go close up, when to go extreme with your

close-ups. I thought the usage of conveying emotion in those subtler ways was really, really well done. How do you feel about El Fanning? Thea. I thought she was great. I think she was a really

fun counterbalance to a character like Deck who was largely serious in one-tracked mind. And she brought this for like a better term, humanity to the movie and giving him a sense of companionship, teaching him there are ways outside of the ways he was necessarily taught and challenging his views, which is, you know, within this sort of setting is one of the few ways you can get someone like that to grow. And even though they didn't have a ton of heart-to-heart scenes,

I feel like the experience of what we went through makes it believable how he would go from wanting to hunt this thing, one-track mind, to then embracing it as its new clan. Yeah. I thought that was very beautiful. I think that yeah, she definitely did a good job representing that hopeful, sort of

optimistic or sensitivity to the situation and to Dex. Yeah. Yeah, they're both shades of learning to accept their feelings because you have

tessa you have tessa on one side who also is imbued with feelings but rejects the process of learning from the feelings yeah instead shuts off the heart the way how deck kind of was and both deck and the uh are all about learning to understand the power of the emotions you know because they woke up our predator fucking make him a sissy Pussy Predator This is why he's got that mouth All that shaking With them flaps, dude

We're R-rated while this movie's Yeah, that was fun, man I mean, if I had a couple of criticisms Because I don't feel like the movies Without these criticisms Like I like the arc of deck I like the I like the arc of deck

I like the heart I love the I think the action's really well done you get a variety of actions of like different action set pieces often fighting the environments learning how to use the environments I think is really cool and the different types

of hand-to-hand combat versus creature combat like a really good usage a lot of this feels birth from imagining action sequences and lacing a plot throughout you know and really huge credit

that Dan Tractonbury for him able to do three predator films and all feel completely different from each other. You know, you would think there's like thematic similarities, but they also feel like they could be directed by three different directors. True, true. Yeah, there are thematic similarities, especially between our girlfriend Prey and a dude with deck here,

both of them being like underestimated, having to go on some sort of, Adventures by their tribe, yeah. Yeah, and then I don't think there's like a thing. This pray feels pretty complete as a story, but obviously this kind of teasing the idea of a sequel, but them going on some major journey to then come out chains on the other side. And I'm like, is there any of that in Killer of Killers?

Maybe some. I think the last guy was a bit of an underdog, if I remember correctly. Yeah, the plain guy. Little vignettes. Yeah, the plane guy and the other guy was the brother who, was rejected and ostracized away from his clan

while his brother was emperor that's right that's right but yeah I think that even watching it I didn't feel like the sense of lack per se

because obviously with animation you get this you get so much room to play and then obviously play with physics and the way the predator

can move in the environment and I didn't feel any sense of like oh this is limited I felt like feels even more grounded in a sense,

even in its fantasticalness. But yeah, I think it's really impressive. Dan Trachnberg's both love for this franchise and his diversity as a filmmaker in his visual presentation. And the visual presentation, along with the makeup as well. That part. Phenomenal. Like, phenomenal.

It was very believable. And it's so hard to pull off this cell, honestly. Predator is a main character after a franchise where they're not. it's really hard and now it's like oh it kind of puts the predator in a different light you know like you really see the humanity and I'm like oh it would be cool to get

more of it of the predator as this is how you keep the franchise fresh if you're able to do that you know I've never read any of the predator comics but I got to imagine there's comics there's got to be Yakcha who are main characters right like there's the only way you can really pull that off you can't all just be human fighting a predator

and the predator dies but I do however I do think there are some things that I do wish were enhanced. Okay. Because I do like L. Fanning's portrayal.

I do think, though, that because there was never really a villain that actually felt truly threatening or imposing to our main character, I never really got a sense

of true danger or feeling. And I think that's kind of essential, even though it's a completely different thing, I feel like that's kind of essential for a predator experience. You know, that's the whole point when a human versus a predator

is like, oh man, it's going to be really hard for this human to kill this predator. That's what makes it effective and stakes and danger. And while it was constantly fun and I always appreciated the storytelling and I really did think this was a great experience,

I do think it lacked in the stakes department after it fights the callisk and then it doesn't really feel like there's much, I didn't really feel the danger for this guy. He's fighting synthetics you know he's going to defeat this robot yeah like of course he'll come out on top it's like

it's like the way you know how the human will come out on top in the predator movies but you still got to feel that those stakes and I don't really I didn't really feel the stakes or the physical he didn't really seem like he was getting physically hurt you know like he would have the times of his heel but like when the human gets hurt in these movies it's like fucking they're limping

and shit and so I do think it kind of liked in that and then by the time you know he would have to kill his father it was like a cool setup, but I think it didn't have that much attention or focus on that. So then it just felt like they had to bookend it to that and get to there. And I wish there was a little bit more of a cathartic build. And maybe you guys felt it. Maybe you felt it. I mean, I thought it was a really good scene and a good moment and requisite. However, I do think there's a little bit of lack of narrative build to that. Yeah. So I think that's where some of it's, shortcomings come into play that i do think can be perfected in a sequel yeah i i agree with your your points here i feel like the callus the way was introduced felt a little abrupt and i was like oh he just like made a fire and now already it's here we could have done that really at any point

i guess but the fact that it was done at this site and i feel like maybe to add to some of those stakes is like maybe you know we could have had that battle it could have been losing the wayland people could have came in earlier before they had that moment of recognition. He then fights the callus again in the third act before real in the shuffle of that realizing that oh this is actually the mom and there's a sense of kinship here

because that's only real threat to him in the entire film. Yeah, that's what I mean after he killed after fought the callusk and then you realize oh the real bad guy it's going to be these whaling people. I don't really feel like anyone's in real danger. It's just kind of just became a fun movie.

you know but i i do i did crave the stakes so i would actually this is going to sound like a slight against it because i really did think this was a great movie and to my understanding this is i think this is the highest critic rotten tomatoes rating of the three oh really i would actually but i would still probably put this at number three for me uh really i really liked it a lot i thought it was really great and it's definitely one of the higher predator movies for me and you know like again dan tract and three out of three fucking killed it that i definitely didn't have is like my my quam with killer of killers is like it it lacked in the horror department you know and i wish it had a little

bit more of that horror this but so i think prey is just like perfect in that i think pray is the best one he's done and i love that he brought stuff to killer killers that was not in this or prey and saying for this there's so much like they're so different like i love as it's like as tractenberg trilogy so far i think as a as a total story though i would probably put this at number i would probably put this at i don't know actually it would be it's either two or three it's definitely not about it's definitely not about prey it's either it's either second or third um but right now i'm kind of feeling third even though i really did think this was an awesome fucking movie yeah and then that's then that's by by default as well because obviously we've had other predator

movies that dan trackenberg didn't do you know i feel like this is above predator two for me and um yeah there's like predator one than the dan track number but i praise my personal favorite i you know i know some people call it call it like a fucking sin to say it's not above predator uh but i i like pray more than predator one i would agree with you i think predator one's still a great film but yeah of like prey prey is a great film it's a great underdog story it's a great cultural story it's a great

yeah underdog story but yeah all of them are all of them are great honestly I feel like for me killer of killers may be the most impressive one because of the way that they're all able to to rope in those stories the diversity of the different

type of predators the way it brings in other things from the franchise and it's like a of letter to people that are fans of the Predator franchise. So I think it's definitely really awesome in this department. I think the greatest thing that Dan Chalkenberg did for both Prey and Badlands is he made it

accessible for newer fans to come into this world without feeling like they need to know all of this lore. Yeah, you don't even know any of any. Yeah, it's true. You can go into either one of them at any point. Yeah, it doesn't. You can watch them at, there's no order. You've got to watch pray or predator to Badlands. It's a good point. Yeah, I think

I think you could probably do the same for the most part for killer of killers except for like the end of it. But those are like more Easter eggs for fans than it is like narrative importance. Yeah, I mean, where would you put this one amongst his three? It's probably two for me.

Okay. Probably two. And yeah, I haven't rewatched out of a minute. But I remember really, really liking it. I think it's great. All three of them are great. But yeah, I would say this is probably two for me. I feel like I would sooner put this on

just because of the pure action of it, then I would pray. Okay. All right. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah, a lot of people consider this your favorite. And the other thing, too, is, you know,

and he's working with themes and familiarity a lot more with the Predator franchise, the strengths in prey and in Killer of Killers. Whereas this, it is what I love about this one, it's the biggest swing. As much as it's very trope-heavy and its beats and stuff and its execution. very trope heavy it is the biggest swing and the biggest thing where you tell someone like i don't know if you can do that and he and he he proved you can do it and so yeah i i think it's it's incredibly impressive that he pulled that they pulled this off him and his whole team and i would love this i would love to see a sequel this i think they can make that i think they can make one i i didn't really find

this one like suspenseful you know no it's more like it was more fun than it was suspenseful yeah and i think you could do a sequel that is very suspenseful. For sure. Or a little bit more intense, you know? Yeah. And I kind of love that emotion for that. So, yeah, these are our thoughts on Predator Badlands. I would like

to know before we completely walk out of here. What? I want to see, like, what all three were. I want to guess. You want to just guess the Badlands? I guess Badlands, yeah.

All right, what do you want to guess for critics? I already, I know I've seen it before, so I don't really want to guess, but what do you... I'm going to say Badlands is a 90th... No, I want to say Badlands is 89. Okay. And for critics, and then for audiences, I'm going to say 95. Let's find out.

Oh, I was close. Oh, it was right for audiences. Hell yeah. And I was close for critics. I said 89. It was 86. So what did Pray get? I don't know if Pray would have his...

Pray would have more. audience reviews. Is it how? There's a streaming, yeah. Yeah, there's 10,000. And there were a fucking idiotic back then who were like, no, they were literally like, oh, I mean, funny

Predator, how should do that? Yeah. I remember that, but that was like the thing. Yeah. And let's see, Predator, Killer of killers. I can't imagine there's anywhere near the out. It's only a thousand reviews. So great, though.

God, that's such a good underrated film. Damn. All three great predator movies. he's the man to spearhead this franchise man guys what did you think about predator killer of killers that's a good one too what do you think about predator badlands your thoughts down below Aaron thanks for joining emwa or letting me join you

however you choose to view this yeah buddy see you guys soon reject nation this is