Predator: Badlands
2025-11-05
Ottawa, ON

It's... fine. It's hard to go in with high expectations, because attempts at improving on what's one of the greatest action/horror hybrids ever made have proven to be feeble. I have to question the decision to make the Predator character here less ominously threatening. Him being so badass is a huge part of the appeal of the original, but in this one he essentially meets his match, which I can't really see as anything other than a buzzkill. I kinda liked the monsterverse / Jurassic Park approach to the large scale combat, but it's just funny that the Predator doesn't have much to do with it. There's more Alien influence here than I expected. And it's pretty easy to read this as a cash grab — Elle Fanning, and whoever was playing the clone army of synthetics, was just about the only casting they had to do.

Watched at Landmark Kanata in IMAX. Early access screening. They gave out keychains of the Predator at the end. No posters.