Yautja Fest - Predator: Badlands (2025)

Preach, we can kill it up. What hella.

It's my understanding that the Yaucha are friends and none, but they are creditor to all at least that's what my Yaucha codec says. That's for twenty two, twenty five, in case you're wondering, if you want to look it up, the page numbers jack for twenty two is my birthday.

So oh that's handy.

Yeah, so I'm hoping that they celebrate my birthday over there on Youcher Prime. Welcome back, midnight viewers to Yaucha Fest, the Ultimate Yaucher Fest, the finale of Yaoucha Fest for now, in that we're here to talk about Predator bad Lands. We've reached the top of the Predator Mountain. HP. Hey, don't buddy, I'm great.

We made it father alone. Can you believe it? How many movies? Seven movies? It almost forty years.

You know, forty years. No, that's funny, it is forty years. But yeah, I thought you were saying like it took us forty years to get here.

No, it was very pleasurable getting here. But I just can't believe we reached the as you said, the finale for now, it's just it's gone by so fast.

The feeling is bittersweet because I've had a really good time to spending time with the Yaucha Loath these twenty weeks. I hope you've all enjoyed it as well. And oh my god, it's a day of review. This movie just came out today and we're on the air. That's because we're VIPs. Now, that's right. We had early access screenings.

HB and I velvet rope everything.

And what we are here to talk about Predator bad Lands. Here's the motherfucking trailer.

Welcome to the most dangerous planet in the universe, where everything is trying to kill you.

I need a hand. You're here to prove yourself hunting something that can't be killed. We might not be alone in this hunt.

Your swan, so bitch digit youlightish.

Predator bad Lands was released today, directed by Dan Tracktenberg, screenplay by Patrick Ason from a story by Dan Tractenberg and Patrick Ayson. They are the team behind Prey, based on characters by who HP.

I don't have that written down. You'll have to pick that up for.

Me, Jim and John Thomas.

I thought you were going to say, Glennon Les Charles Hey.

I remember Okay starring El Fanning, Demetrius Schuster, Kalohamatangi, and El Fanning. It's a dual role.

HP.

Can you believe we're here?

I can't believe it. I'm so excited. This is thrilling.

Did I already say the feeling is bittersweet because I don't want this world to end.

Well, but you know what, I think not to get ahead of ourselves, but I think we can agree, and we've made reference to this in the past couple episodes. The series is in has never been in better hands than in Dan Tractenberg's hands. So it is bittersweet, but there's plenty to look forward to going forward.

Not only is the series in good hands, they're actually feels like there's a Now.

Yeah, really, I let's just let's get into it. There's so much I want to say about this movie, and there's so much I want to get into, but I don't want to bury the lead. You know what I mean?

Okay, go for it.

So do you want me to go into the plot a little bit?

You want to talk about that long a look? I think we should say. I think we're going to spoil this movie. But oh yeah, it's not going to be till the end of the review. They'll be in the show notes. They'll probably be a spoiler warning if you want to jump to that. Because I don't want to spoil this movie for anyone, I'll bury the lead. I loved the movie. I did too, Okay, Okay, we'll just leave it at that, and then we'll just go through

It was.

It was a wonderful experience. I going into it. I was reading a lot of articles about it. I know you. I think you tried to keep yourself isolated from all of that because you wanted to go and fresh, but confess.

I would say to people who are unfavorably comparing this to the Mandalorian, this is a better than the Mandoloren and b I suggest you go watch a film series from the sixties called Lone Wolf and cub Oh. Yeah, so everyone just shunt the fuck up. If it is if people have a problem with this movie echoing another movie, then they're probably not fans of Terminator two, because that's

Yeah. I didn't walk out of Terminator two thinking to myself, Oh, it was just it was this gambit to make Arnold because now Arnold's a big star and he can't be the villain anymore. I walked out of it saying, damn it, James Cameron, he totally subverted what I thought I was going to get with a Terminator movie. And that's exactly I mean. Subverted. Maybe isn't the right word in this case, but it again for a movie that's a PG. The first I believe it's the first PG thirteen in the series.

Was it PG for something?

It was PG thirteen for Something engrossed.

Me out in places. There's no shortage of action, Although they did they did something extremely clever. I say this every review of Attracted Berg movie. They did something extremely clever. There are no humans in this movie.

Yeah, and that's why they could make PG thirteen because all of the violence, most of the violence is directed towards either of these synthetic humans, and they don't have the same milky blood that we've seen in like the alien pictures.

They just these aren't androids. This is not Ash or Bishop. These are Sins, which is a whole sani.

So when it's not when it's not those synthetic creatures being destroyed, it's just a bunch of crazy creatures on this planet Jena. So that's why he can get away with making this a PG thirteen movie, even though there's no shortage of violence and real and gore. But it's again, it's tempered by the fact that none of it is directed towards any actual humans.

HB takes the Yaucher prime. Look, this is the first I guess in Killer of Killers they put the word yaoucha on screen, which is really the first time we see it, but to have it very stamped onto the screen yaoucha prime. Here we are, this is their home world. There's no two ways about it. Like even when we saw what we might have been the Yaucher Prime home world on in Alien Versus Predator Requiem, it wasn't clear. It was just here's a planet, here's a predator picking

We saw a little bit of it at the end of Killer of Killers too, in the gladiatorial arena. That's I would presume that's also a part of Yaoucher Prime.

But see I also did not want to presume at that point that was Youcher Prime, because they hop around to so many planets for so many different activities, that might just be arena planet for them.

Yeah, so this is our really you're right, this is our first real look labeled as such as the I presume it's the Yaoucha homeworld Youcher Prime.

Can I just say one thing about the sub title? Yeah, the subtitle was very neatly displayed in the lower right portion of the screen instead of gigantic and across the entire screen, which every fucking movie does. Now, please everyone stop doing that.

Yeah, it's have.

You noticed that like that started like in The Avengers, Like I noticed that was like it would say, like Los Angeles and it fills in the and like and now every TV show does it, every movie like we can just put it in the low. You don't even need to put it, honestly, if you're showing us a shot in New York.

Yeah, some of that, some of the subtitling, and some of those title cards for they reminded me actually of because I've been watching a lot of Star Trek movies because of Star Trek Fest, a lot of that, Buddy, A lot of that reminded me a little bit of that too, And that to me, that underscored the sci fi thrust of this movie, I guess more than anything.

So what happens, man, come on? So in the more general impressions, because I got a lot, you know, let's.

Get into this because it's all gonna all of our impressions are going to come out. And due course, I think as we talked about this movie, but and I ges forgive if there's any spoilers, well hopefully those will be left to the end here. But I don't think we're spoiling anything at this point that wasn't in the trailer.

First name is Demetrius. Let's call him Demetrius Demetrius.

He is the first actor to play the predator who is shorter than seven feet tall. And that's important because Deck, the main character of this movie, is basically the runt of his family of Yaucha. He has a brother named Quay, and he has this father, this stern patriarch of the klan or the family and horns.

So he's important.

And supposedly the same actor played both roles, played Deck and played the father, or I think he was the most capture. So Deck is the runts of his family. And what we see happen is the father has ordered him to be killed by his brother Quay, because that's the Youcher way, weakness cannot be tolerated in the family. He actually he basically says, because by the way, another big thing is we have seen or heard Yaoucha speak,

To the family he's so worthless as a predator shame.

Prior to the father showing up, the Deck has announced his intention to his brother that he wants to go to this planet of Jenna, which is the most hostile planet apparently that the youcher know of, and his intent is to kill this creature called the Callusk, which is supposed to be the apex predator of all apex predators.

He every predator fears, every youch of fears.

Even their father is afraid of the Callusk. So that's what Deck wants to do it. And by the way, Deck is almost immediately a sympathetic character. Now the thing is, I believe he's one of the first predators where he wasn't actually wearing a mask. It's all done with CG.

You see, starting at the very beginning, where he's trapped and the brother is going to sacrifice him. You see every emotion playing on this CG character's face. He's wounded, he can't believe it, he's terrified, he's filled with rage. And I thought this was going to be the most awkward part of the movie, watching Yaucha speak, and I was used to it so fucking quickly. And to your

They're incredible. He's I thought it was.

I thought it was practical for a lot of the movie, and then to find out none of it was.

You just forget to even think about that. Because as he's speaking, they have these of course, they have these famous mandibles. They kind of expand as he's speaking you can see the skin of the mandibles vibrating with his breath, and it's so compelling and it looks so real that again I thought that maybe it was CG aided practical effects,

And the process of the voice, by the way, because first of all, the language is great, it's jump it's right up there with Klingon Baby, But the thing is they've they seem to have made accommodations for the fact that there are there's a mouth and then mostly a guttural. We've always heard them speaking from deep in their throat to begin with, and there is these mandible flaps outside it.

Yeah, a lot of care went into a the language and b as you said, how they speak and how that all, how their anatomy works as they're speaking. I thought it was fantastic. So in his last dying breath, essentially the brother who's going to be killed by the father, he's turned on the father effectively, and the father just wastes him almost immediately. But in his last move as he's dying, he sends deck, he sets a course for the planet, this planet Jenna, and he takes off before

We imagine we've sided with some predators before, we liked them. During the first Alien Versus Predator that one dude, what was his name.

Wolfe, the one who communicates with.

A Lathan man and then he gets killed by the Alien queen and then all those other cool predators get out. We were cool with them. I know they look if there had been no Xeno morphs in that temple, they would have been full on villains.

But sure, but this it, I guess said. Rooting for them is one thing, but they have sympathy for them. I don't think even in that sequence with Sona Latham, you ever have sympathy. You have a respect for the predator because he recognizes that she's a warrior.

In that movie, I agree, this is unlike anything we've seen before. We're not only taking him as our protagonist, but we're taking him now as a very sympathetic protagonist because he's got family trouble and we've all been there.

And he's there's a the fact that he's basically bullied and he's rejected by the father, and he has a lot to prove and and he's not only I mean, he's picked the worst of the worst as his goal to prove his honor. And by the way, the whole thing of it is he has once he proves that he's worthy of the Klan, that's when he is presented with the cloak, with the invisibility bit that we've all gotten used to. So by the way through this whole movie,

Hey, remember when we reviewed Predators, and the thing that we really liked about Predators was we pulled all our human characters off of Earth and got them into an alien world because the Predators are aliens and we want to go to alien worlds. And then it seems like they were running around Hawaii.

Right, This isn't Hawaii.

This is not Hawaii. This is an alien world and it's not just a pink sky with a couple of planets floating in the atmosphere. This is a strange universe to be to find oneself in.

Yeah, and it becomes obvious almost immediately. Excuse me that he's really overmatched, because I think the first thing that he runs into are these sort of like tree creatures. It looks like how Groot can like elongate his body. It's these tree roots that encircle and attack him, and he goes through a thing with them, and then he comes across these pods.

That This is my favorite part. Well, or at least I'm gonna say that a lot. This is one of my favorite parts because when I'm saying that this is an alien world, not only is this look, here's a bunch of weird stuff that you would find in an

Of them a bowler.

So not only are we given this alien world, but we're given like like an ecosystem at play, Like this animal has figured out if it sees something down in that field, if it drops something, that plant will attack that thing, knock it out, and then it's easy pickens.

Yeah, And in the midst of that sequence where he's trying to edge his way, because you can if you edge back from these pods, they will shrink back. But if you get too close to them, it's like they know the proximity. But in the midst of this, he

Yeah, and she's like, hey, yaucha, you're fucked down there.

Yeah. She's a synth that has basically been created to observe and record all the plant life and the fauna and the flora. And the character is very curious, and it's a nice foil for Deck, who is very taciturn and stoic, as you would expect a youcher.

To be a synth programmed with empathy.

And oh also, if you've seen the trailers, you know that at this point in the movie, she has no legs. There's only half of her. She's trapped there because she has been part of a team that we learn has tried to make contact with this callusk, and her legs

So, oh my god, that's the plot of our movie.

It is. And so he makes it through this. Actually it's actually interesting because you think he's going to get through this, but in fact he does get stung by one of these darts and he's paralyzed. But as this creature, this vulture thing, comes down, she has gotten off from her perch and she kills this thing. She dispatches it in this really brutal way, but just off screen, all you see is her hand with a blade like stabbing

But is sci fi greatness. It is every animated movie from the nineteen seventies wanted to be this. Everybody Ralph Boxhey fumbling attempt at wizards and whatever. This is the landscape I always wanted to see. It is so incredibly frank for Zeta I nearly lost my mind.

It really is.

We also an alien warrior with half of an android on his back, trekking through the most dangerous planet in the universe. What could be better than that? If I was nine years old, I would never stop watching this movie.

So it's like Predator meets a Buddy movie kind of And she, as you said, she is nothing but empathy

But one they're there. One little crossover from Alien Romulus that I loved is that when a synth shuts down or is shut down, their eyes roll in the way that Utani logo pops up in their pupils.

I love that.

It is such a it is, Yeah, that will happen with the corporatization of everything, wherever they can jam a logo. Oh eyeballs perfect, put a logo there.

Yeah. So parallel to this, so Fia has counterpart sister if you will, called Tessa that they are. They work together and it's Thea's goal to get back to Tessa. And meanwhile Tessa in her corterie of her battalion of other sins. By the way, this is very cool. I picked up on this with the course of the movie. So it's all the rest of the Sins are men males, and they're all played by the same guy. So they but it never calls attention to itself. It's they do it so well. So they were so used.

To seeing where we're so used to seeing like a team of faceless thugs that for a little while, that's all you think it is until you start looking at them really and it's the same guy, it's the same model. Basically, WiLAN Utani has sent out their drones.

It's it works gangbusters. It just it felt so genuine and what Whale and Utani, like you said, would actually do. So they her, Tessa and her team are still out to They effectively they want to trap the callusk. That's what their whole scheme is. Whaling New Towani wants to capture the callusk so that they can basically dissect it, an experiment on it, and figure out.

What they want to fucking weaponize whatever they can get their heads on exactly.

This is another in the long line of things that they do that a corporation would do at this point. But so, so they meet up this creature what do they call it, Bud, this little looking thing.

Yeah, Okay, here's where the sort of Mandalorian grogu diysification argument can be made, because what you have is a creature native to the planet who is humanoid enough that it's like a monkey basically, and it interacts with them and provides comic relief, but also is very lethal. Let's say, like we don't meet him in a nice manner. It's

To me, the fact that the one two punch of Prey and Killer of Killers, I have the utmost faith in Dan Tracktenberg, and I have no doubt that he wrote. He and his team of writers wrote the movie that they wanted to write. I don't believe that they were under any sort of pressure by Disney or anybody else to put some to shoehorn in some character like an Ewok just to sell plushies or something. I don't think that's the case.

I know the Hunchback of Notre Dame should have little gargoyle friends. It was another weirdo touch to this movie, like Okay, here's the warrior alien, here's the half android, and now here's this little creature running around with them, Like what could be better? It's so fucking science fiction.

Dek has been forming his own personal clan. He has thea who is helping him to navigate this world and essentially get him to his goal, which is the Callous. And along the way he picks up this creature, this Bud monkey creature with who's actually surprisingly capable in this environment.

Yeah, But before then him and Bud have a scene straight out of Jaws, Remember when oh yeah, he is sitting there with the young Michael, young Michael's copying all of his moves. We get that right here with the Yuca and a little beastie who is just mimicking everything he's doing and like slowly melting his heart because it's fucking adorable.

It is adorable, and you're right, it is one of those things where he they're eating they so they've had this sequence where this creature called like something Bison, this giant kind of rhino, meets a wooly mammoth creature. They've killed it by working together. And then the next sequence is at night, the Deck is eating this creature by the campfire, and he gives a piece to Bud, and that's when Bud mimics what he's doing. Where're trying to act all tough and how can you not? I mean,

He seems to constantly be asking the question, what can I only do in this kind of movie? Let's do that? And then they do it.

Look, he could his next movie could be a Western featuring a yaucha, and I would gladly pay my ten bucks or whatever to go see it, because I have I.

He is, you know what, he could do it without a yauchin. My point is if his next movie was a Western, and it was an actual Western and he had a train sequence, then this guy would go, Okay, what makes train sequences great? What hasn't been done? What can we innovate here? And then he would work to do it, and he would do it.

Yeah. I just think it's it's bold. That's the word that I keep coming back to. It's it's like he's feeling himself, and he's like, all right, now that I've been handed the keys to the kingdom, I've proven myself over the last couple of movies, how can I innovate in this series?

Oh?

I got it. I'm going to make the protagonist the Yaucha instead of being this nameless, faceless for that killer who just lays waste to a bunch of humans. It's just it's incredible to me that he would go in that direction. It would never have occurred to me, fatherm alone, to take the movie in that direction.

Shout out to George Lucas for putting subtitles for Gredo in the canteen of sequence in Star Wars, because the executives fought him on that and they said, what if a kid can't read it? And he said, the parent will read it to them, because he thought they would speak alien languages, and let's start having them speak an alien languages. And that really pays off here. That's I think you can draw a direct line from Gredo to Deck.

Here we should mention you made reference to this earlier. Is that initially Thea is speaking yaoucha back to him when they first meet. But then she does a little in her head and it's a cheap gambit, but it works. She essentially says, all right, now i've i've my programming. Now I will you will hear me speaking You'll hear me speaking yaoucha. But you know it's a universal translator effectively is what she's done. So for the rest of you.

She says, you're universal translator. You're hearing me speak yaoucha, but everyone else will hear what their language, which which immediately made me flash to write Rockney and so Bannon he's a writer on the Twilight Zone. He created SEQUESTDSB and Farscape, and when we were talking about Twilight Zone episodes, he says the one that he was most interested in writing were ones that removed the glass from your television.

Yeah, And it worked. It's one line and you forget about it and for the rest of the movie he is still subtitled and he's still speaking yaoucha, but she's speaking English and you never give it a second thought. The showing that you saw fa them alone was it loud as fuck? I saw this movie in imax, So yeah, I didn't see it in imax, but it was loud, and that's exactly what you want because this is a brutal alien death planet and everything needs to be loud

Now, okay, so he So far, Dan Tracksenberg has made two Predator movies, and each one has had its own composer. So for Prey he had Sarah Shackner, and for Killer of Killers he had Benjamin Waalfish. For bad Lands, it's Sarah Shackner and Benjamin Wallfish together and it is seamless. And I was knocked out by it. Because if ever there was an appropriate use of throat singing for a race of characters in a filmed entertainment, then it's for the Yaucha. And their theme music was fucking awesome.

Very propulsive soundtrack. It worked perfectly. I'd like to cut I'd like to.

Cut some in here so you can listen at home, But so far the soundtrack is completely unavailable.

Really, that's surprising.

I spend all fucking day looking for it.

Not even wow, I've got on Spotify. That's incredible. It's fantastic. It works beautifully with the visuals. I'd be curious to hear it outside of the movie, but in the context of it just it seamlessly blends in with the action, with all the loud, all the explosions, everything that's happening. It's a very loud Like I said, propulsive, for that's the word I can think of, propulsive. It moves everything along. It's tribal at times. The throat singing with the Yaucha's fantastic.

In lieu of listening to the soundtrack to this movie today, I instead listened to Benjamin Walfish's soundtrack to Alien Romulust, which, like this, tends to quote from its source material, there quoting from the original Jerry Goldsmith's score from the first Alien movie. God damn, what a gorgeous score. I'm so excited that there are there are such talented composers coming up.

Ye I mean, look, John Williams is not going to be doing scores forever. Hans Zimmer is not going to be around forever either.

So Dany Elsen is caught in a loop of performing a nightmare before Christmas at the Hollywood Bowl every day for the rest of his life pretty much.

But at one time he was the innovator. Remember the Back One soundtrack.

Oh my god, man, we were fucking Boingo fans and suddenly he's making soundtracks. Holy shit, we're all in.

Good ones and not even I mean Midnight Run is a fantastic It sounds nothing like anything else he's done. But to your point, these guys, these soundtrack composers, men and women, can't do it forever. So there's some interesting work being done and this is really at the forefront.

Please put this soundtrack out. I'm going to go buy it, like I've really thoroughly enjoyed it. It's been a while too since I've listened to a soundtrack while the film is playing. I thought I need to pick this one up.

It just felt like it worked so beautifully with the images. I thought it was a good because that's what you're really the I think the worst trap you can fall into as a composer is if your soundtrack calls too much attention to itself, it takes away from what's happening on screen. That was not the case here. It's loud and brash, just like the movie itself, and it's very organic to the movie.

I thought, HP, let's just say this barrels toward a fantastic conclusion for the movie. Overall, I'm going to say

Yeah, So anyone who doesn't want the ending spoiled just skin up to the end. But we're getting into it.

Yeah. So if you're going by, we'll see you on Monday with another episode of The Tales from the Dark Side, and next Friday, make sure you tune in because that's the snort of our newest Star Trek Fest. Everybody Star Trek. The motion Pictures should tune in then everyone else. Here we go a climax of Predator bad land yep.

So leading up to this, we discover that this character, Bud, this little cute sea monkey looking thing, is actually a baby callusk, and during this sweet scene at the campfire, after Deck gives him a piece of food to an appreciation, this little monkey spits on him.

It marks him.

Dek takes it as an insult at first, but then thea says he's marked you.

Now this, I will say, had this been an R rated movie, the Bud would have pissed on it. Probably, Okay, so critics have it there. I'll give him that he didn't get pissed on, but his spinning and a face was pretty gross.

It's like this blue you see it as a sheen on the predator. So what happens is eventually they make it to the nest of the callusk and the callusk comes back and Deck.

The callusk fit is fucking incredible.

It's incredible because it's this It's essentially like a cross between King Kong and a porcupine. It's a spiky, giant ape like creature that Deck finds out pretty quickly. Has this power to regenerate itself, because he eventually decapitates this creature and you think, oh, that's it.

It's such a great end to the scene. And I thought, look, we've seen it regenerate. But I thought, oh, he's cut its head off. Certainly it's dead.

Now that's gonna be it. But no, Rubid, it comes back together and it's about to basically kill Deck. He's got Deck at its mercy and he sniffs, and that's when you realize. I at least I realized at that point without them calling it out, that creature Bud is a baby callusk, and because he's marked Deck, this callous, this mama callisk, decides how to kill him basically, and

That's essentially what fucking matters which is what the whole movie is about, which is finding your fucking clan and then fucking standing by them.

Yeah. But in the midst of all this, what ends up happening is.

The French trappers arrive, right yeah.

Oh and by the way, the other thing that, if it hasn't already been made clear, and the thing that I loved about this, I just have to say this before I forget about it again, is in Prey we had Nadu who was anxious to prove her worth and her metal to her tribe. That's what we have here, only it's from the Yaoucher perspective. It's amazing.

I did mention Terminator too, right, This is just herke. This is the same story it is, yeah, including the French trappers arriving and fucking shit up here they come now in the future. It's just Waylan new Tani it is. And it's the same exact motivation. Let's just pillage this native land and make fucking money off of it and destroy everything in our path.

That's exactly right. And we learn that Tessa, this counterpart to thea, is everything that she is not. She has no empathy, she has really no emotion. Her whole goal is to trap the callusk and bring it back for Mother. We have Mother, but in the meantime that she traps the predator Deck and now so now she has the callousk and she has Deck on this shuttle that's taking them to the depot where it's going to be sent off world or what have you, and she starts to

Is shocking his brain. It's awful, It really is awful, and his skull blights up like a fucking translucent Christmas tree.

It's it's a again. If you didn't already have empathy for Deck, you surely have empathy for him now, because again it is the French trapper sequence from Prey, where now our protagonist is in the hands of the bad guys who are basically having their way with him, and there's this it's an interesting resolution to this and it's one of those yeah moments where at the beginning when Dek is talking to his brother, there's this little cylindrical thing on the ship and Deck says, oh, you still

In having Okay, hell, let me tell you, let me tell you pal. Yeah, okay. So not only is the child's toy the check off Siaucha child's toy from the opening pays off at the end, and everything pays off, it really does, including when Denk is first stumbling around Genna for the first time. He keeps encountering strange flora and fauna, some of which are like explosive, and during

It's his Dutch moment from the very first movie because we had that sequence where Schwarzenegger is laying these traps for the Predator. He's gotten rid of all the guns everything else. He's gone primal. That's what we have, even down to the fact that he forges armor from the carcass of this space bison that he has killed for food. And at one point thea even says like, what are you wearing and he says, I'm wearing bison. He has

And he it would be a fucking bloodbath if it wasn't a bunch of sense. So that's why it's age.

Yeah, And they go through he between he and THEA. And by the way, Fia never she got her legs, but they were interrupted before it could.

Since we're talking about spoilers, let's talk about this sequence and talk about asking a question, what can we do in this movie that we could never do in any other movie?

Oh?

I know, Let's have Thea's legs, which she has not been able to reattach to her Torso the legs have some sort of homing beacon to where she's being held at this depot. So the legs just walk blindly to where she is. But along the way, the legs have this ability to kick ass. The legs can actually like kill these other synths that are wandering around. And it's this assault that the legs and Deck and this monkey

That this is the most science fiction movie of all time. It's just so ridiculous. At every moment of this movie made me happy. It just kept piling on and I just thought like, by the end, I thought like, it doesn't matter. If this just comes down to two people punching each other in the last few minutes of the movie, I'll be fine with it. And then the Legs started brawling with other synths, and I was like, what am I even watching right now?

It just it all works, and so they're leading this assault against Wailan Utani to free At this point, it's not about him killing the Callus, it's about him freeing the Callous because now he knows that this member of his clan, it's Creature's mother. So this is really his redemptive moment, Deck's redemptive moment. And it all culminates with Tessa, this evil synth piloting what's essentially a giant version of the powerloader from Aliens the Mother Alien battle at the end.

And that's why it's branded Whylan Utah. But it makes me think bank to aliens and that one was branded Caterpillar, and that always made me happy.

Oh that's right, because that's to me, that's more realistic because of course Caterpillar is going to be producing that, yeah.

Is going to outsource to other companies, let's face it.

Yeah. So it's effectively Tessa against against Deck, and it's so again we're in spoiler territory. It looks as if so the Callusk is freed and the cask helps defeat this giant powerloader Tessa, and there's a very sweet moment where the mother Callusk is reunited with the bud or her child, and then in fact there's even a moment where Deck signifies his own attachment to this clan that

Yeah.

You know how we mentioned that Tracktonberg is always innovating in every fucking movie. Here we're seeing in the far funk, far flung future. Remember this takes place in the future, so these are what predators have evolved into now, so they're even the shoulder cannon has been updated. It's not just an energy weapon. This one can freeze shit.

Yeah like and sadly for the callusk like she she shoots this cannon from within the belly of the beast and kills it. I was hoping the thing would still reform itself after being blown to bits.

Essentially, Yeah, me too.

But no such luck. And ultimately they it's all for not because kill.

It is a sad Why you had to bring that back up?

Man?

Sorry? Man, A little wipe a tear away. But at that point, the action cuts back to yaucherr Prime, where now Deck has returned to we think, claim his place with the clan. But that's not actually why he came back. He comes back, he does.

He's coming to claim his place with his clan.

But he brings his It's almost like he doesn't need them because he has his clan, because he's brought Fie up.

That's what I'm saying. He's coming just showing his trophy off and say I don't need you motherfuckers anymore. And I love his trophy.

By the way, his trophy is Tessa's head. He's brought that back to his father and so he's trained it. It's not just l Fanning's head, that's it. It's a it's an android skull, just completely clean, just like a predator would do. That's a great point, and I.

Out this like all the best predator movies includes a predator fixing himself up but performing triage after he's you.

Have that here, Yeah, it's so wonderful, and he does that thing at one point. He we talked about this and Predator too, where he crushes up like tile. He does that with a plant, but even.

Better HP We get a bit of explanation here because he takes a plant and then he scans it to figure out what its properties are and then goes ah and then crushes it up and adds it to his womb. So there you go. They can recognize properties and things we can't.

He does fix himself up, which is to say that he goes through a lot deck doesn't. He's full of wounds by the end of this movie, but he confronts his father and they have their faded battle, and it's actually interesting how it resolves. I mean, he does kill

This old predator, the yaucher of an elderly predator man. This is our second one. We didn't even get to see the face of the first one, but we knew he was old and predator too. At the end or even more so at the end of Aliens Versus Predator when and he gives it the lance instead of being a good dude and taking her off of the stinking world of ours. But here we get senior predator. We get Predator ready for the daycare center.

Yeah.

Yeah, so he's successful in battle. And it's interesting because at some point in the movie this occurred to me. It's just as a fleeting thought, which is all of the Predator are men. We've never ever seen a female Predator. And I don't know the context of why I even thought of that. It just occurred to me that they've all been male.

Right, and the Predator series has been a sausage fest.

It has. So he's triumphant over his father, and then all the other Predators who have been watching this crazy, what's that we have?

We don't have a yaucha fest. We've got a sausage fest.

Good call, good punch up signaling this ship that comes down that everybody's freaking out about, and THEA says, what's that?

What's going on?

Who is that?

And do you know him? Do you know them?

No? Yeah? Yeah?

Are they friends of yours?

No?

It's my mother, it's and that is the that's the cut that there's no I will say this like people who are It essentially functions as a post credit scene without making you wait for the post credit scene, because what happens is after he's triumphant over his father, we get the title card Predator bad Lands blah blah blah, and then it goes immediately to this what amounts to a post credit scene where the Mother's ship touches down, and then we have a hard cut to the credits, and the credits roll.

But no past credit scenes. Don't waste your time.

Yeah, I wasted my time. I waited for a while before.

Yeah.

And then and because this was an early screening, there wasn't a lot of info on like I'm searching, does Predator Badlands have a post credit scene, and everything I could find basically said no, it happens pretty immediately, so don't waste your time. And that's effectively what happened. But

That's right. All the other Yauta fucking started freaking out when that ship came over the horizon. Oh boy, that's very tantalizing. And I'd like to point out a couple of other things. It's Bud who kills the dad, bites his fucking head off. He gets revenge for his mom. That's nice.

The other things he said, Bud has grown since they left Jenna. He's now it's like again, it's a little like a groot. He's now probably the size of a gorilla, like a large gorilla. He hasn't hit full puberty yet or full maturity.

But he's big enough to easily fit a youch's head in his mouth.

And so I I really I hope that he sticks. I mean, as much as I love seeing where Dan Tracktenberg's imagination and creativity take us, I want to spend more time with these characters. I really enjoyed my time with the and Deck and Bud. I want to see more of that.

What about alone? I think what I want is the Mother's ship to open, the mother ship literally and literal mothership, and her assistant to come out to harold her arrival. And that's Dutch, old Dutch.

No, that's going to be the next animated picture. I'm convinced that's the way they're going to bring Dutch back to the series. It's got to be animated.

I want Nahue, I want Schwarzenegger. I want Demetrius and el Fanning here. I want a monster mash here, a monster rally.

So are we meant to believe that Sonaw Latham's character wasn't cryogenically frozen because she didn't actually kill a predator?

I guess it depends on who owns that actual movie and whether or not they really want to canonize it because we haven't. I mean, I guess we've seen it. Have we seen anything really from those movies pop up as canon and the rest of the Tracktenburg not at all? Yes, I will say bets there.

Speaking of one of the little easter eggs is when they're on when they're poking around own Deck's ship, obviously there's god was going to be a row of skulls on a door, and that's going to prompt people like me to go, what am I seeing anything? First of all, there was a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull, which makes you think they've been doing this for millions of years.

Secondly, makes me think we're going to get a total frank Ze movie at some point, baby with a predator, right cold spear stabbing dinosaurs.

I will say. One of the skulls on the wall and I looked this up looks suspiciously like the alien from Independence Day.

Oh yeah, trailer.

I saw it.

It was a reflash of it. I went, oh, the Independence Day, so hopefully over we're air.

Please not unless you're going to bring back the president there and have it be something triumphant.

Not unless you're going to have a time travel movie where they pick up a dinosaur and then go forward in time where they meet Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park and Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day.

There you go, Dan Tracktenberg. If you're listening, there's your pitch.

Don't even need to need they don't even need sense. I can't recommend this movie enough. I guess to wrap it up, this was fucking great. I had a great time watching this movie.

It was fun. And the thing of it is I the Predator. The Predator series, I think, especially some of the best ones, like like the first one in Prey and even The Predator has an element of this. They have the best ones have something for everybody, I think, but I can I can see if some of these not doesn't have an affinity for the more horror based aspects, because some of these movies do play like horror movies

It's a culmination of forty years and two separate franchises, and I think it works completely as a standalone film. As you said, I think you could come in and watch this movie cold and just get it.

Yeah, just get it. It's better if you understand what's come before and you know how this really diverges from what we've seen before. Again, I was thinking it would have been so easy for him to just knock off another predator meets group of mercenaries, group of whatever. But this isn't it, And I applaud that. Again. I think

Yeah, I agree, that's that's an app comparison. If Dave Filoni was talented and did anything, you'd say that anything interesting with those instead of just another fetch quest. That's all Dave Filoni knows, fetch quests. We got to go get the mystical thing of blah blah blah. Let's go team okay, and now we got to go get the mystical thing of blah blah blah. Let's go get that. Oh no, the sith again. Anyway. Two things I'll say about this movie insummation. I think for all the kick

Yeah, it's the action. It's really wall to wall action. I mean, there's a lot of bonding and scenes with the character is getting to know each other, but there's a ton of action. We've left out several big action sequences that I if you're gonna look, if you're gonna see this movie, I would encourage you. I wish I

There we are. That's the end. Until next time, Where can people find you? To looking for? You HP all right.

I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with Father Malone. Here I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast. And if that weren't enough, I have a band campsite, hpmusicplace, dot bandcamp dot com.

Go to all those places immediately. As for me, usually on Mondays I do find them malone S weekly round Up, but I'm on hiatus right now, So this Monday will be a Tesma dark Side, and then the week after I'll be back with talk of I don't know, Frankenstein and shit. I have actually seen a ton of movies recently. I just they've just been bad. I've been watching a lot of TV anyway. As I, as I said earlier, turn in next Friday for our latest fest. It's not

We can kill it, shut it out there?

What time hell are you