The Predator: Badlands Trailer Finally Finds A Way To Expand The Legendary Sci-Fi Series

1987's "Predator" is one of the most clever and successful genre mash-up movies ever made. It brings together the "men on a mission" war film, the creature feature horror movie, and a high-concept sci-fi premise, and it does so in a way that feels completely natural and streamlined. Thanks to it having such promise in its conceptual ideas, the resulting "Predator" franchise could've gone any number of ways, and that's pretty much exactly what happened. "Predator 2" switched into urban cop thriller mode, "Predators" flipped the script of the first movie by throwing human warriors into an alien jungle, "The Predator" doubled down on the sci-fi elements, and "Prey" introduced the idea of people from Earth's past encountering a Yautja (something that the animated "Killer of Killers" triples down on). Even the crossover "Alien vs Predator" movies focused less on the titular monster mashups and more on the plight of hapless humans caught in between two deadly species.

All of this is to say that the "Predator" property has never really embraced its creature feature roots before. This makes sense; the Yautja have been portrayed as autonomous, highly intelligent, and even somewhat honorable beings, not organisms that simply live to kill and propagate like the Xenomorph. Yet, Stan Winston's design for the Predator has birthed one of the coolest movie monsters ever, and it seems a missed opportunity to not try and follow that thread. Sure, there have been hints at the Yautja fighting other alien creatures, and two of the "Predator" sequels featured the Predator Hounds, but this feels inadequate for a series now eight-odd movies deep. Fortunately, the final trailer for Dan Trachtenberg's "Predator: Badlands" seems to rectify this issue, as it's fully set on a totally alien world that isn't inhabited by the Yautja or humans. As the trailer promises. we may finally be getting our "Predator" creature feature at last.

Up to now, there's been a lot of chatter surrounding "Predator: Badlands" and its connections to the "Alien" franchise. Of course, it's very exciting that Elle Fanning is playing Thia, a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, thereby once again tying the "Predator" and "Alien" properties together. It's also very cool that Fanning will apparently be playing other synths in the movie, too, as the latest trailer shows. Yet, all of this crossover talk and speculation surrounding Fanning's role has overshadowed what appears to be more of the main attraction in the film, which is the lead Yautja, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), going up against a gauntlet of deadly beasties on a remote planet.

The new "Badlands" trailer puts this conflict front and center, as we see Dek (decked out with a cool vehicle that looks like a cross between a speeder bike and a lounge chair) encounter a menagerie of threats across what Thia calls "the most dangerous planet in the universe." We see a giant tentacled orb thingy stalking through the forest, an elephant-like monster, a flying pterodactyl-type thing, a spiked plant that explodes, a colossus with several rows of teeth, and of course, other synthetics and Yautja. This still-unnamed planet looks like a cross between Skull Island from the "King Kong" films and Pandora from the "Avatar" franchise, rife as it is with deadly alien creatures. Although "Badlands" looks distinctly like it belongs in the "Predator" films, the "Avatar" comparison feels apt given how both properties are owned by 20th Century Studios. One could say that "Badlands" might end up looking and feeling like a nastier, more violent "Avatar." As such, this is yet another example of the "Predator" brand expanding not just in tone and form, but in aesthetic, too.

Over at Warner Bros., the MonsterVerse has been built up over the last decade and change as the U.S.' answer to the Toho kaiju cycles, with Godzilla, Kong, Mothra, and other giant monsters menacing the Earth. Up until now, though, the Xenomorphs and Yautja have mostly been enough for the "Alien" and "Predator" franchises, but each successive sequel has introduced some variation on the creatures, if not an outright new one. (Think the Alien Queen from "Aliens" or the Super Predator from "The Predator.") "Alien" films like "Prometheus" have even introduced the idea of a black fluid that can mutate beings into new monsters. So, given this growing roster of creatures, could 20th Century Studios be expanding the shared "Alien" and "Predator" universe into a full-blown CreatureVerse?

Most recently, FX's "Alien: Earth" introduced several new deadly creatures into the franchises' lore, and it's still not been revealed where the doomed spaceship Maginot picked these beasties up from. If "Alien" were a property on its own, one could assume that the ship found these creatures on Origae-6 (or a planet like it), where the black mutagen has infected the local flora and fauna. Yet, now we have this unnamed planet from "Badlands" in the mix. Could these creatures perhaps have originated there? After all, the giant tentacled orb in the "Badlands" trailer looks a helluva lot like T.Ocellus, the tentacled eyeball creature who made a splash in "Alien: Earth" season 1. Moreover, it seems the Weyland-Yutani corporation is aggressively pursuing its interest of capturing bioweapons there, too, what with all the Elle Fannings and whatnot. We don't even know when in the "Alien"/"Predator" timeline(s) "Badlands" takes place. Could it be concurrent with "Alien: Earth," making it the first "Predator" film to be set further into the future?

Whatever the case may be, there's no doubt that very exciting things are happening within both franchises. If Trachtenberg's previous "Predator" films are any indication, we are in store for even more surprises when "Predator: Badlands" hits theaters on November 7, 2025.