“Predator: Badlands”, the watered-down version full of good feelings from Disney

Clearly, Disney has a lot of ideas. After buying the Fox studio, owner of the “Predator” franchise, the firm released, directly on VOD, “Prey” (2022), where a young Comanche fought against a Predator in 1719 America.

In June of this year, the creature was propelled to the Viking era, in feudal Japan, and during the Second World War in “Predator: Killer of Killers” (2025), a sublime animated film in three segments, reserved for the Disney+ platform.

An unlikely trio

Already responsible for these two very free variations, filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg is back with this new part intended for the big screen. A seventh episode unrelated to the previous ones which takes up the challenge of making a young Predator the protagonist of this story.

Dek, therefore, is pushed by his father to fight against his brother to determine who is the strongest among them. He loses. But his brother decides to spare him, against the logic of the clan. The father kills him in front of Dek who leaves, aboard a ship, for a distant planet, with the aim of bringing back a creature deemed invincible as a trophy and, thus, earning his place in the clan. There, he discovers a hostile environment and crosses paths with a friendly creature and a legless android, Thia (Elle Fanning), who will assist him in his perilous mission.

A little heart that beats

The purpose of “Predator: Badlands” is clear: to move away from the savagery of the first parts to anthropomorphize its Predator, equipped with a language and a little heart that beats beneath its appearance of a big testosterone monster. Through contact with the funny Thia, he learns to escape from the masculinist, clannish, bloodthirsty logic of his evil dad to open up to empathy, mutual aid and protection. With, at the heart of the story, a theme spun around the figure of the mother and a twin android of Thia, Tessa, sent by the Weyland-Yutani company (inherited from the “Alien” saga for those who follow) to exploit the creature that Dek seeks to confront.

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A domesticated Predator

We can be delighted to see sagas evolve with the times. But if this change must take place to the detriment of the very foundations of an already established mythology, we do not see the point. So much so that we no longer know very well, with this “Predator: Badlands”, whether we find ourselves in yet another installment of “Star Wars” (ah, the little creature intended for the youngest audience) or “Jurassic World” (the bestiary of the extraterrestrial planet borders on digital indigestion).

Do we really want to witness the domestication of Predator? The strength of the franchise, especially in these first two episodes, lay in its primitive aspect, its raw violence, watered down in this pure Disney product, an uninterrupted and quite boring sequence of action scenes sprinkled with embarrassing humor.

Note: 2/5

Rafael Wolf/sc

“Predator: Badlands” by Dan Trachtenberg, starring Elle Fanning. To be seen in French-speaking cinemas since November 5, 2025.