The newest Predator film, Predator: Badlands, looks like it's reinvigorating the franchise all over again, by also making the entire thing into a low-key Alien movie. While the previous trailer teased that Elle Fanning’s character Thia is an android built by Weyland-Yutani from the Alien franchise, the newest full-length trailer establishes that fact much more clearly. And, in the grand tradition of Weyland-Yutani robots, it looks like Thia will be partially dismembered, but taken along for the ride anyway.
In the new trailer for Predator: Badlands, we see that this unlikely team-up movie will find Thia losing all her limbs, but getting strapped to the back of a young Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) on its first hunt. While the image of Thia strapped to the back of a monster might make you think of Chewbacca strapping a dismembered C-3PO to his furry person in The Empire Strikes Back, it also seems like Badlands is paying a more direct homage to another Weyland-Yutani robot: David (Michael Fassbender) from Ridley Scott’s 2011 Alien prequel film Prometheus.
At the end of Prometheus, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) decided to rescue the severed head of the Weyland robot known as David. And, just like Thia in this trailer, David had a sardonic sense of humor combined with a manipulative personality streak. Thia is giving off similar vibes in this trailer, seemingly both taunting Dek, but also getting this young Predator warrior to do what she wants. Again, this is more of an Alien franchise/Prometheus thing than a Predator thing, which makes one wonder if a more real crossover is coming sometime in the very near future. Or, if this film contains more hidden references to the Alien canon than simply the presence of a Weyland-Yutani robot.
On top of all of that, there’s still one very big mystery about Badlands that this trailer doesn’t fully explain. Earlier reports about the movie have indicated that Fanning is playing dual roles in Badlands. This could suggest she’s simply playing other versions of the same model of android. Or, perhaps a human version of the robot we see in the trailer. Right now, the second version of Thia is not totally clear in either trailer, and we’ve only really met the main version who teams up with Dek.
Will Thia end up being the low-key hero of the movie? Are there any humans in this movie at all? Will director Dan Trachtenberg tie together the loose ends from Prey and the recently-released animated film, Killer of Killers?
Hopefully, we’ll get answers to all of these questions when Predator: Badlands hits theaters. But, more interestingly, the movie will perhaps reveal a larger world of Alien/Predator shared canon, which we haven’t really seen since the crossover days of the early aughts.
