Badlands’ confirms this connection with James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’

The universe of predators does not stop growing and we love it. With Predator: Badlands, the saga seems to have reached a point where the lines between two legendary franchises cross without fear. From the first previews, fans saw that the new film directed by Dan Trachtenberg would not only explore the limits of the franchise itself. It would also establish direct links with Alien. Now, the director himself claims it with a tangible connection to Aliens from 1986, James Cameron’s sequel.

What is the story of Predator: Badlands about?

Predator: Badlands stars Dek, played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, a young Yautja looking to prove to himself that he can carry the legacy and weight of his own hunting culture. On his journey through a world inhabited by the most dangerous creatures in the universe, he is accompanied by Thia, a friendly android from Weyland-Yutani who will teach him new lessons about teamwork.

What begins as a survival adventure takes on overtones of found family and a growth story we’ve never seen before in the Predator franchise. The Yautja is no longer the enemy to overcome and becomes a vulnerable character who inspires concern and sympathy in us.

Predator: Badlands’ connection to Alien

To Happy Sad Confuseddirector Dan Trachtenberg confirmed what the most attentive fans already suspected. Badlands includes a direct reference to Aliens. In the final sequence of the film, a mechanical exoskeleton appears that viewers immediately recognized. “We refer to that machine as the Super Power Loader.”explained the filmmaker. “It was our intention for it to be a direct evolution of the power charger we saw in Aliens,” he said in relation to the machine that Ellen Ripley used in that film to confront the Queen.

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Although Dan did not specify a date within the Predator and Alien chronology, he hinted to Variety that the story takes place at least after the year 2381. When Alien: The Resurrection takes place! That means the events of Badlands could be set in a period after the corporation collapses. Weyland-Yutaniwhich makes sense of the presence of androids like Thia and the existence of a more advanced charger.

The jump from Alien to Aliens

The connection between Predator: Badlands y Alien It is not merely aesthetic; evokes the transformation that James Cameron brought about in his 1986 sequel. If 1979’s Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, had been an exercise in claustrophobic and existential horror, Aliens He turned that anguish into action. Cameron did not betray the essence of the creature of H. R. Gigerbut it placed it in a militarized scenario, where fear was faced with fire and steel. That change in tone, from introspective horror to war epic, forever defined the DNA of the saga and turned it into a cultural reference that still influences new generations of filmmakers.

Cameron’s film functioned as a mirror of the 1980s, dominated by nuclear fear and blind confidence in weapons progress. Badlands establishes a very different dialogue. In that sense, the connection between both films is not only a tribute, but an ideological update of the creature that once symbolized the fear of outer space now faces a more intimate enemy.

Predator: Badlands is now available in theaters as an excellent action-adventure alternative, along with the fact that it is a Predator movie with a plot never experienced before. The die-hard fans of the Yautjas They will have much to comment on, praise and criticize, an ideal scenario in this revival of several of the most successful film franchises of the last century.

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Find out: Director of ‘Predator: Badlands’ explains how the connection with ‘Alien’ arose: It was not planned from the beginning