Prédateur: Badlands

The recent films have completely lost the suffocating horror and nerve-wracking tension that defined the first two entries. It feels like the writers no longer understand the true essence of the Yautja. In the original film, it wasn't just a mindless killer - it was a calculating hunter. Remember how it used its toxic dart to paralyze its prey before firing the plasma caster? Its weapon wasn't just for destruction; it could adjust its power and precision. That level of detail made the Yautja terrifying - a cold, silent, methodical predator who hunted one victim at a time, unseen, and only revealed itself when absolutely necessary or when its cloaking device was damaged.

Sadly, that cold-blooded patience and ritualistic style of hunting are gone in the newer installments. The creature feels more like a generic monster than the disciplined hunter that once embodied fear and intelligence. I truly hope Jim and John Thomas return to write, and that John McTiernan steps back into the director's chair. Only they can restore the primal fear, intensity, and cinematic tension that made Predator legendary.

Hey. Visually all there. But remember when Star Wars started throwing in gags? I mean here we go again. More pandering and less epic. And for what? Contrived relationships and nerfed villains. And yes we get it: "copy right copy right trademarked" did anyone else catch that? C'mon guys, I just want to watch a movie.

Whose idea was it to turn Predator into a beat-for-beat Disney-style adventure film? This is Predator in name only. There is virtually none of the horror, tension, or atmosphere from the original. It feels like a cardboard cutout, generic kids movie. It may as well have been a Disney Channel original.

I could not believe they included every stereotype: the quirky, annoying sidekick who asks endless questions while traveling, the cutesy creature the audience is supposed to adore, the forced found-family dynamic, and the overtly evil villains with shallow motivations. It's seriously reminded me of like this straight to dvd kids movies my parents bought for me when I was a kid. Unbelievable.

Let's be honest this is just a mix of Jurassic park, Avatar, Starwars all wrapped into one. With a predator falling in love with new pronoun. Hollywood really you need to wake up and go back to the 80s and 90s. We're just getting directors because they come from a certain place and not looking at true cinema.

So after the Disneyfication of Star Wars and Alien, we finally get around to the abject ruination of the beloved Predator series. True, Shane Black came mighty close with The Predator back in 2018 and best not mention Alien v. Predator: Requiem at all but, in the excellent wake of Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, hopes were extremely high for whatever Dan Trachtenberg would come up with next.

And then this. Predator meets the Mickey Mouse club or Predator and Stitch. Whatever, you get the picture. What we have been dished up here is the very furthest thing we could possibly have been given from the Predator we know and love.

I won't go into the depressing details of what we actually have to endure for the sake of the poor suckers who are going to spend their hard earned sheckles seeing this mess but I just need to say that Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi give it their best... and that's about it. Too much CGI, not enough horror and absolutely no tension.

This is gonna take a lot of coming back from....