Predator: Badlands' Far-Future Setting Raises A Fascinating Alien Question

"Predator: Badlands" is many things. It's the third entry in the series from director Dan Trachtenberg, whose willingness to take bold risks has boosted the franchise from absolute dregs to one of the most shockingly consistent and acclaimed in Disney's catalog. It's a throwback to '70s and '80s popcorn genre adventure flicks, evoking "Conan the Barbarian" and "Star Wars" in equal measure. But of most interest to the lore sickos out there, it's the first large-scale crossover of the "Predator" and "Alien" franchises outside of those two early 2000s movies where they kicked the crap out of each other.

There's a lot of "Alien" DNA here, and not just in the purple goop Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) rips out of the Bone Bison. The deadly planet he ventures to for his hunt, Genna, also features an all-synth Weyland-Yutani research team, who commune with a governing supercomputer AI called Mother (stylized this time as MU/TH/UR, in a divergence from its written title in the original "Alien" film). And while these details aren't explored in any great depth, there are some fascinating hints here that could have massive implications for the "Alien" lore — a franchise that Trachtenberg's has said publicly occurs entirely before the events of "Badlands."

We all know the brand synergy here isn't strong enough for these to be more than Easter eggs and arbitrary style choices. There is no Kevin Feige, no Dave Filoni, carefully guiding "Predator: Badlands" and "Alien: Earth" to beautifully coalesce in "Predalien: Infinity War" seven years from now. But where's the fun in that? Instead of writing it off, let's dig deeper, because I think there may be an AI conspiracy buried in "Predator: Badlands" that goes all the way to the top.

I think Mother may be running the entire Weyland-Yutani corporation.

In the "Alien" movies, Weyland-Yutani is your classic sci-fi megacorp — a massive conglomerate just as interstate in exoplanetary colonization as it is in extraterrestrial bioweapons and synthetic life. This year's "Alien: Earth" explores Weyland-Yutani in some detail, including the very human leadership at the top. The FX series also brought back the Mother computer, which has always appeared to simply be a mouthpiece for corporate directives.

But then, in the middle of "Predator: Badlands," something very strange happens. The cold-hearted android Tessa (Elle Fanning), in a conversation with her much kinder "sister" Thia (also Elle Fanning), references the reason they have far more advanced emotional capacities than the other, more robotic synths. "Do you know why Mother gave us feelings?" she asks Thia.

Yes. You read that right (or, you know, heard it). Mother, aka MU/TH/UR, gave them feelings. At first blush it doesn't sound that strange. If MU/TH/UR is overseeing the mission, the AI may have decided she needed a couple of more sensitive agents to properly understand Genna's various species. She could have flipped a switch. Only, Tessa and Thia are far more different from the other androids than it appears at first. In addition to their feelings, they are repeatedly demonstrated to be notably more advanced in terms of combat skill, strategic reasoning, and logic.

In the "Alien" movies, the mental and emotional capacities of a synthetic are determined by the hardware, with newer, more advanced models showing more "human" capabilities (typically). It's not just a setting you can turn on. Which means that if "Mother" really is the one who made them like this, she has a lot more decision-making power in the company than it seems.

Dan Trachtenberg has said that "Badlands" was intentionally set "well into the future" of both the "Predator" and "Alien" franchises, so as to sidestep any need to directly interface with continuity. That means that the canonical connections between the film and, say, "Alien: Earth" are mostly just vibes, and they likely won't become anything more. It's also possible that Tessa's reference to Mother giving her and Thia feelings was a simple turn of phrase.

But again, where's the fun in that? The far-future setting of "Predator: Badlands" makes it easy to imagine that Weyland-Yutani — a company that's always been focused on AI and synthetic life — could have eventually been overtaken by the very tech it made its fortune building.

Giving MU/TH/UR more agency as an authority figure in the story has another effect, which is more grounded in the film itself. "Badlands" is primarily a film about family — how to deal with your born family when they're the absolute worst, and why it's worthwhile to seek out found family. Mother treats Tessa and Thia much like Dek's father treats him and his brother Kwei (Mike Homik), as extensions of herself, to be discarded if they stray too far from the chosen path or demonstrate "defective" behavior. Fortunately, Dek and Thia are there to pick each other when their parents are being toxic as all hell.