According to American author and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Perhaps no one knows this more than Dek, the predator, in Predator: Badlands.
Portrayed as an aggressive, angry creature with a thirst to prove himself and be more elite, audiences now see Dek alone and without friends or allies. Ultimately, Dek gains a more open mind and shows compassion to his friends.
Released on Nov. 7, Predator: Badlands is the ninth film in the Predator series and the first of its kind. All of its predecessors were based around human and predator interaction, while this new movie focused on the predator himself and the clan/family he is a part of.
According to IMDB, The New Predator Badlands has a 7.6 out of 10 rating, showing that the movie was successful in its launch, with people going to see it a lot and loving it.
This is great news due to the fact that this movie differs from the previous ones made. It’s awesome to see that people are open to new changes in a series that’s been around for quite some time.
This new perspective is a really big deal because this is only movie that had a predator’s perspective. This perspective was part of the movie Alien vs. Predator, and viewers briefly saw some in the recent animated series, Predator: Killer of Killers. This is the first movie that we strictly see from Predator’s life.
OH senior Aaron Hospes said, “It was really unique because it’s from the Predator’s perspective, unlike the other movies where they’re the antagonist. This one was the protagonist.”
Throughout the Predator Badlands movie, you get to see more of the Predator culture and how things are. You get to see the strict standards of how their culture is run and their priorities when they address their weak blood. Showing how the Predator in the Badlands movie was a lone, and they’ve focused more on how he was instead of everything around him, and how he was supposed to be a full Yautja.
Although he hadn’t seen much of the other movies, “I really like the movie as far as him going to claim a prize and then overthrowing his dad,” OH senior Will Jones said. “It felt kinda simplistic.”
Considering how Dek is going through the movie trying to prove himself to be a Yautja and so he can get revenge on his father is absolute Cinema, and having to go against a bunch of robot androids, and all the animals that he’s fighting on the planet, my brother would sacrifice himself just to save Dek.
Through this movie, the fight scenes in general were cinematic and beautiful to watch, with the precise killing styles that the Predators possess. We see a lot of how his clan trains once he has landed on the planet Gemma, where he has his first interaction with tree branches that move through the forest to attack him.
The one big question that should be answered is why did Dek’s mom appear in the last few seconds of the movie? One thing to know is that the predators were known to be Hermaphrodites, which means they can switch gender when needed. But after the xenomorph invasion, they lost the ability to do that.
The thing with the Yautja culture is that only the strongest males are allowed to reproduce. Maybe that is why Dek’s mom shows up at the end of the movie, to prove the strength he showed well to fight the two elite predators and his father, or his mom is there to kill him for being a traitor and killing his own dad.
At the end of the movie, the one twist that some people are getting hyped up for is that Dek’s mom will possibly be involved in the next movie, which could be very interesting and exciting to see in the Predator universe.
My name is Gavin Baker, I'm a senior at OHS and this is my first year as a Journalist. I enjoy playing racing games, playing airsoft and racing my Traxxas RC car. You can contact me by emailing 42Fifty@sd308.org.
