Badlands’ Just Feasted on Its Comic-Con Audience

After the new Predator: Badlands trailer Fox released earlier this week, a Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con seemed unnecessary. That trailer had incredible action, massive creatures, super high-tech weapons, and Elle Fanning as an android being worn as a backpack. We are fully seated. What more could a fan of the franchise want?

Well, apparently, a lot more, as Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg was joined by Fanning and others to show fans even more from their November 7 film. Fifteen minutes more, actually. The group showed a rough, unfinished version of the film’s opening, and it’s much more emotional and moving than we expected. This thing promises to be one of the best Predator movies ever, right there alongside Trachtenberg’s last live-action film, Prey.

We won’t spoil every little thing, but suffice to say, this isn’t the movie we were expecting. We start with the lead Predator Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) traversing a desolate planet and using his tech to climb up a cliff. At the top, he enters a massive cave where someone is waiting. It’s his brother, and a massive battle begins. This is supposed to be what proves Dek is worthy of his Predator legacy, but he loses.

To make up for the loss, the brother suggests he picks a dangerous prey out in the universe and bring it home. Dek chooses an unkillable evil that’s dangerous; even their father is scared of it. “That’s the one,” Dek says, knowing that if he doesn’t succeed, he’ll die.

Their father arrives, and Dek is anxious to tell him about his decision. The father laughs; he has no confidence in his son, and in fact had told the brother to kill him. Just as that’s about to happen, the brother frees Dek and locks him in their spaceship… at which point the father murders the brother for disobeying. He then shoots Dek off, probably to his doom. Or is it?

Oh, and this is all subtitled in Yautja, the native languge of the Predator.

Are there still more surprises in Predator: Badlands? Will there be further connections to the Alien franchise? And will this movie, or Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, leave the November 7 release date the two now share? We’ll find out soon.

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