Yautja Fest - Predator: Badlands (2025)

Yautja Fest concludes with 'Predator Badlands,' the latest installment in the Predator franchise directed by Dan Trachtenberg. Set on the dangerous planet of Genna, the film follows a young Yautja named Dek, who must prove himself by confronting the apex predator, the Kalisk. Along the way, he forms a team with a half-synthetic named Thia and a small but fierce local creature named Bud. The episode explores the film's numerous action scenes, emotional depth, innovative storytelling, and how it uniquely integrates humor and empathy into a typically brutal franchise.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
04:29 Initial Impressions and Comparisons 
06:00 Sympathy for the Predator
09:45 The Yautja Home World
12:08 Dek's Journey and Family Conflict
23:31 Thea and the Synths
32:01 Building a Ragtag Family 
39:47 Predator Movie Soundtracks and Composers
41:44 Spoiler Alert
48:27 Deck's Transformation and Final Battle 
58:31 Future of the Predator Series 

FATHER MALONE
[e-mail]
patreon.com/fathermalone
@Midnight_Viewing

HP
hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Preach, we can kill it up. What hella.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
So oh that's handy.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
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,

(01:17):
don't buddy, I'm great.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
We made it father alone. Can you believe it? How
many movies? Seven movies? It almost forty years.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
HB and I velvet rope everything.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
And what we are here to talk about Predator bad Lands.
Here's the motherfucking trailer.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
Welcome to the most dangerous planet in the universe, where
everything is trying to kill you.

Speaker 5 (02:47):
I need a hand. You're here to prove yourself hunting
something that can't be killed. We might not be alone

(03:21):
in this hunt.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Your swan, so bitch digit youlightish.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
I don't have that written down. You'll have to pick
that up for.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Me, Jim and John Thomas.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I thought you were going to say, Glennon Les Charles Hey.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I remember Okay starring El Fanning, Demetrius Schuster, Kalohamatangi, and
El Fanning. It's a dual role.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
HP.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Can you believe we're here?

Speaker 3 (04:31):
I can't believe it. I'm so excited. This is thrilling.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Did I already say the feeling is bittersweet because I
don't want this world to end.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Not only is the series in good hands, they're actually
feels like there's a Now.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
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?

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Okay, go for it.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
So do you want me to go into the plot
a little bit?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
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

(05:36):
leave it at that, and then we'll just go through
the movie and talk about it. I could not. I
haven't had that good a time in a theater in
a long time.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
It was.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
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 looked up a lot of information and there was
a lot. There seemed to be not really a backlash,

(06:06):
but there's a lot of people, I think, who got
hung up on this idea that Predator is a Disney property.
And there have been comparisons made for this movie comparing
it to The Mandalorian, which I don't think is entirely
unwarranted when you really think about it, because you have
this main character, this stoic tough main character who has

(06:30):
a sidekicker, in this case, sidekicks that are in some
ways cut the tension a little bit. They're a little cutesy,
they're a little funny. So I don't While I don't
necessarily think that's intentional, I do think that in this case,
it just underscores for me the risk taking of Dan Trachtenberg,

(06:51):
because it would have been easy to give us another
movie where the Predator is on yet another safari, and
we've seen that many times now for the past again
forty years. This is so refreshing. This is the he
jettison the horror elements, which are great, and that's one

(07:11):
of the things I loved about the series up to
this point. But it's really it was so much fun
to go into it and really have him embrace this
sci fi action adventure ethos. That's what I got excited.
Just for that reason.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
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,

(07:48):
then they're probably not fans of Terminator two, because that's
what this movie felt like to me, Terminator two. If
you watch Terminator and Terminator two back to back, you
will realize very quickly Terminator two is just a remake
of Terminator, almost beat for beat, just with a bigger
budget and higher stakes. That's what this is here, folks.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
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,

(08:32):
but it again for a movie that's a PG. The
first I believe it's the first PG thirteen in the series.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Was it PG for something?

Speaker 3 (08:41):
It was PG thirteen for Something engrossed.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
They just these aren't androids. This is not Ash or Bishop.
These are Sins, which is a whole sani.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
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

(09:42):
directed towards any actual humans.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
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

(10:06):
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
up a call, and off he goes. That might have
been a colony somewhere.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, it's have.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
So what happens, man, come on? So in the more
general impressions, because I got a lot, you know, let's.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
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.
What we're dealing with here, it's a family of yaouchcha

(12:12):
and the main character that we're going to follow in
this movie is a Yaoucha named Deck. And by the way,
the actor I'm not going to butcher his name, his.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
First name is Demetrius. Let's call him Demetrius Demetrius.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
So he's important.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
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.

(13:13):
He actually he basically says, because by the way, another
big thing is we have seen or heard Yaoucha speak,
but we haven't seen it to this degree. There's actual
conversations between Yaucha throughout this movie, and it's so the
father is talking about how he actually wanted the brother
to kill the son in his sleep because he can't

(13:36):
tolerate this runt being in the family and leave.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
To the family he's so worthless as a predator shame.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
He every predator fears, every youch of fears.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
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.
It's remarkable the performance that this actor gives through this

(14:37):
CG makeup, if you will, is astounding because the sequence
where he's basically at the father's mercy and he's a
heart beat away from getting killed by his brother, who
eventually turns on the father, and it becomes this battle
where the brother essentially sacrifices himself. But through this whole sequence,

(14:58):
it's almost heartbreaking to watch Deck screaming for his brother,
for mercy, for his brother.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
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

(15:28):
was used to it so fucking quickly. And to your
point about this subtitling. In The Predators, the first time
we got to see a predator actually speak, and what
we got was the predator language, and it would decode
in into English, and they carried that into Killer of Killers,
Like even though we were seeing it in English, the

(15:49):
edges of it were still the Yaucha language that sort
of many lines, the kind that they have on their
detonators on their arms. This one it's just straight, here's
their language. And I admired that so much. I admired
the fact that they spoke in Yaucha and it is
some title as much as it is, and we'll eventually
get some English and a very clever reason for it.

(16:12):
But I just thought it was amazing how quickly I
got used to Yaucha speaking, and and as you said,
the visual effects going on here for his face are
fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
They're incredible. He's I thought it was.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
I thought it was practical for a lot of the movie,
and then to find out none of it was.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
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,

(16:53):
but it's my understanding it was all CG. I haven't
seen any behind the scenes footage, but I assume he's
just wearing some kind of green thing on his head
and they just mapped it all in after the fact.
But it's very realistic.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
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

(17:29):
to begin with, and there is these mandible flaps outside it.
So you're getting not just this alien language, but how
an alien would speak in their alien language, which was
remarkable for this ninety minute action movie.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
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,

(18:05):
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
the father can kill him too. And as you said,
just the emotions that play across this CG character's face

(18:29):
it you already you were saying, how quickly you got
used to the language and all that. It's amazing how
quickly you already feel sympathy and you feel for this
character and you're rooting for him. How could you not,
because he's everyone loves an underdog. Now, obviously the predators
over the course of the film's history are pretty brutal,

(18:51):
and it would be I'd be hard pressed to express
sympathy for any of them. You almost immediately you can't
help but be rooting for this guy. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Wolfe, the one who communicates with.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
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

(20:18):
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,
he doesn't have the ability to become invisible. He hasn't
earned that yet, which I thought was also an interesting

(20:39):
because because it was about I don't know. Shortly after
he landed on this planet, I went, why isn't he
just oh, because he hasn't earned his armor. He hasn't
earned the ability to become an actual Yaucha. There are
many times in the movie where we'll talk about el Fanning,
but she says deck of the Yaucha, and he says, no,
not yet. I haven't proven myself yet, so he's got

(21:02):
that code too. But it's almost comical. The ship takes
off automatically and arrives on this planet, and almost immediately
he is under attack, and it really doesn't stop for
the whole movie.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Right, This isn't Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
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

(22:08):
he goes through a thing with them, and then he
comes across these pods.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
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
alien world, but there's some thought behind it. The avatar
ain't got nothing on Genna, because he finds himself in

(22:33):
this field with these like cat of nine tails looking things,
like oversized cata nine tails looking, and if you get
close to them, they start to swell up and they
have like little darts and spikes. Yeah, so clearly you
can get through them if you take your time and
do it, but obviously don't go near that field. But
he finds himself in the middle of it, and then

(22:55):
a flying predator circles overhead and then drops something into
the field, which sets off a bunch.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Of them a bowler.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
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
this synth Fea is in like the vulture's nest. She's
been entangled there. She's been there for we don't know

(23:40):
at that point how long. And she starts to communicate
with Deck and everything.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, and she's like, hey, yaucha, you're fucked down there.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
To be a synth programmed with empathy.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
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
were separated from her body. And she ended up in

(24:38):
this vulture's nest with only half her So she effectively
makes a deal with Deck she will help him navigate
the dangers of this planet if he will take her
to reunite her with her legs effectively and fix her.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
So, oh my god, that's the plot of our movie.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
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

(25:20):
in this really brutal way, but just off screen, all
you see is her hand with a blade like stabbing
this thing over and over again. And then she comes
back into view like first person view, like oh hey,
I you okay, everything all right, And that's their introduction.
So he doesn't know what to make of her, and
in fact, he has no interest in helping her, but

(25:40):
then she basically convinces him that she's basically like a tool,
this tool that can help him to navigate this dangerous planet.
And at first that's what he calls her his tool
and he slings her on his back and they It's
a little bit like I don't know, Luke and Yoda
going through Daegoba with this stage on his back HP.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
It really is.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
So it's like Predator meets a Buddy movie kind of
And she, as you said, she is nothing but empathy
and he is the exact opposite of empathy. But they
have these kind of fireside conversations for lack of a
better term, and slowly but surely she starts to get

(27:04):
through to him because he's been indoctrinated with this Yaucha code,
and she basically convinces him, like she tells him this
story about wolves and how wolves hunt in packs, and
then there's the alpha wolf and his reaction is all
the alpha must be the one that kills the most,

(27:24):
and she says no, the alpha is the one who
actually protects the rest of the pack, and they work
together as a team to get through this stuff, and
slowly but surely, through the course of the movie, he
essentially learns the value of that and in fact he's
forming this ragtag for lack of a better term, it's
ragtag family that he builds around himself, and they all

(27:48):
play a part in helping him get through this. What
I wanted to mention if people aren't aware, is thea
in the other since we see come courtesy of Whylan
Utani Corporation. So this is another movie that takes place
in the shared Alien Predator universe, the one I would
love it if this was the first of because obviously

(28:10):
we talked about Alien Versus Predator the very the original
third movie in the series. This feels like a better
beginning to that shared universe. I just I love it
because it's not overly beholden to aliens. In fact, you
never even see or hear of any of the alien xenomorphs.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
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

(29:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
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,

(30:14):
an experiment on it, and figure out.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
What they want to fucking weaponize whatever they can get
their heads on exactly.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
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,

(30:54):
like we don't meet him in a nice manner. It's
quite a harrowing sequel. So look, I get the you
can accuse this lord they want to sell dolls or whatever,
but let's face it, I don't think Dan Trachtenberg wants
to sell one fucking doll unless it's like a McFarland
toy's version of a Predator.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
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

(31:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
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.

(32:22):
And what I also like about this is that it
initially Dek still doesn't care, like THEA tries, he leaves
the camp and effectively abandons this little cute monkey creature,
and THEA tries her best to break it through to
him and say, this creature risks its life for you
and you can't just abandon it. But he's still single
minded a purpose and he wants to get to the Callous.

(32:45):
And eventually they do make it to this the Callous nest.
I guess you would call it.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
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

(33:11):
fucking adorable.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
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

(33:33):
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,
I don't know. I'm not jaded enough to go, oh,
this is just a gambit to make the add something
cute see that doesn't really belong. I thought it was cute,
and I thought, again, every other Predator movie, as good

(33:56):
as some of them are, as great as some of
them are, they didn't have any of this sort of
comic relief, this sort of sweetness that we're seeing here.
And again I couldn't help thinking, this is really like
Dan Tracktingberg kind of flexing his muscles and saying, all right,
you thought you were gonna see just another old Predator

(34:17):
movie where he lays ways to another team of Special
Forces guys or what have you. Now, I'm not going
to give you that. I'm going to give you, this
kind of buddy movie trek across this hostile landscape with
this ragtag band of misfits including a predator, seems both.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
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?

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (35:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
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

(36:09):
think you can draw a direct line from Gredo to Deck.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
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

(36:36):
me speaking yaoucha. But you know it's a universal translator
effectively is what she's done. So for the rest of you.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
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

(37:03):
writing were ones that removed the glass from your television.
It allowed an interaction with the audience that was delicate
and not over hitting you over the head with it.
And that's what this felt like to me, because that's
breaking the fourth wall. That's talking to the audience and saying, hey,
you out there, you're hearing English. Because I'm sure if

(37:25):
you see this in Spain, you would get that joke
in Spanish.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
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,

(37:50):
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
and big. And my point that I'm leading up to
is that extends to the soundtrack, which I thought was wonderful.
I loved it.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
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.

(38:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Very propulsive soundtrack. It worked perfectly. I'd like to cut
I'd like to.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Cut some in here so you can listen at home,
But so far the soundtrack is completely unavailable.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
Really, that's surprising.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
I spend all fucking day looking for it.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
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

(39:30):
the word I can think of, propulsive. It moves everything along.
It's tribal at times. The throat singing with the Yaucha's fantastic.
I thought it worked really well. This isn't the kind
of movie that begs for a traditional symphonic score. I
think they needed something more alien sounding.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
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.

(40:11):
I mean, look, I'm saying they're coming up as if
they haven't been working for decades already, But like, I'm
glad there are replacements for the ones that we've had
to deal with all this time.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Ye I mean, look, John Williams is not going to
be doing scores forever. Hans Zimmer is not going to
be around forever either.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
But at one time he was the innovator. Remember the
Back One soundtrack.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Oh my god, man, we were fucking Boingo fans and
suddenly he's making soundtracks. Holy shit, we're all in.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
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

(41:36):
organic to the movie.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
I thought, HP, let's just say this barrels toward a
fantastic conclusion for the movie. Overall, I'm going to say
this is a great movie and everyone should go see it.
But I think at this point we're going to just
delve into the climax of the film. Yep, this is
spoiler more you should have generally to talk about without
talking about the ending of the film.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yeah, So anyone who doesn't want the ending spoiled just
skin up to the end. But we're getting into it.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
It marks him.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Dek takes it as an insult at first, but then
thea says he's marked you.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
The callusk fit is fucking incredible.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
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,

(44:11):
this mama callisk, decides how to kill him basically, and
this all works to start swaying. Once Deck realizes that
the baby callusk that's his mother, his focus ultimately shifts
from I'm going to kill the callusk and prove my
worth to I need to protect this mother callous because

(44:33):
Bud is part of my clan and we all look
out for each other. It's an amazing I mean, I'm
leaving out a lot of stuff that happens from that
point to from A to B.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Yeah. But in the midst of all this, what ends
up happening is.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
The French trappers arrive, right yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
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

(46:03):
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
experiment on Deck against his will. Obviously, as THEA is

(46:23):
observing all of this from her vantage point.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Is shocking his brain. It's awful, It really is awful,
and his skull blights up like a fucking translucent Christmas tree.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
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

(46:58):
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
have that thing, and you forget about it, toy. It's
a child's toy, And what effectively happens is Tessa leaves

(47:18):
the train car and one of the sort of nameless
faceless synths come in comes in, and thea convinces him
that she starts to translate for Deck, but slanting it
so that they can get the upper hand against this synth,
and she asks Deck, what is this thing? Oh, it's
a child's toy. But tell him that it's a map.

(47:42):
So she tells him that it's a map, and he
opens it and the thing explodes in his face. What
kind of child's toy is this? And so he he
she helps free him and this is whole. Now he's
finally to the corner, and he's he sees the value.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
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

(48:24):
and fauna, some of which are like explosive, and during
the course of the film he gets stripped of all
of his yaucha weapons. He it starts off and he's
got like a laser sword and a laser bow and
his the shoulder mounted canon. All of that's gone. So
by the end he has to just use all of
his wits and everything he's come along with. So he

(48:44):
goes back and collects all of those things that we've
seen that have damaged him in order to infiltrate and
fuck up all of the Wayland Utani forces. It's amazing,
it is, and.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
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.

(49:16):
And at one point thea even says like, what are
you wearing and he says, I'm wearing bison. He has
this mask that's all like a bone and everything. It
is great, and he's figured out a way to trap
these pod things that shoot spikes to put like essentially
like a blinder over the top of it. So that
it won't shoot until he wants it to. And he's
got like fangs that he's fashioned into spikes that he

(49:40):
can use to whatever.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
And he it would be a fucking bloodbath if it
wasn't a bunch of sense. So that's why it's age.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
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?

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (50:08):
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

(50:29):
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
creature they're just dispatching since left and right. But the
legs just I could not believe the spectacle, right, did

(50:53):
I say?

Speaker 2 (50:54):
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

(51:14):
I even watching right now?

Speaker 3 (51:16):
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,

(51:42):
this evil synth piloting what's essentially a giant version of
the powerloader from Aliens the Mother Alien battle at the end.
Get away from her, you bitch. But it's giant. It
can pick up like huge storage containers.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Oh that's right, because that's to me, that's more realistic
because of course Caterpillar is going to be producing that, yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Is going to outsource to other companies, let's face it.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
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

(52:36):
her child, and then in fact there's even a moment
where Deck signifies his own attachment to this clan that
he's now a part of. And then in the midst
of all of that, Tessa has been basically swallowed by
the Callusk, but she has retrieved a shoulder gun from

(52:57):
the Yaucha's ship that can basically shoot like cold like beams.
It's not just a laser. It shoots like freeze, like
a freeze ray. I don't know what you'd call it.
That's effectively what it is.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Essentially, Yeah, me too.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
But no such luck. And ultimately they it's all for
not because kill.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
It is a sad Why you had to bring that
back up?

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Man?

Speaker 3 (53:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
He's coming to claim his place with his clan.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
But he brings his It's almost like he doesn't need
them because he has his clan, because he's brought Fie up.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Out this like all the best predator movies includes a
predator fixing himself up but performing triage after he's you.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
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
his father, but not before. So what happens is they

(55:38):
when he was going to be killed, when Deck was
going to be killed by his brother, there's this like
device that the brother threw on the ground that basically
like shackles the predator Deck to the ground idea, it's
like laser restraints. So he uses the same gambit on
his father and he picks up a spear and it

(55:58):
looks like he spears the father in the face, but
he only goes so far as to take the father's
mask off. That's when we see the reveal of the
father under the mask.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
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

(56:33):
get Predator ready for the daycare center.

Speaker 4 (56:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
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

(56:58):
all been male.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Right, and the Predator series has been a sausage fest.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
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?

Speaker 2 (57:14):
We don't have a yaucha fest. We've got a sausage fest.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Good call, good punch up signaling this ship that comes
down that everybody's freaking out about, and THEA says, what's that?

Speaker 2 (57:28):
What's going on?

Speaker 3 (57:29):
Who is that?

Speaker 2 (57:30):
And do you know him? Do you know them?

Speaker 1 (57:33):
No? Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Are they friends of yours?

Speaker 1 (57:35):
No?

Speaker 3 (57:36):
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

(57:59):
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.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
But no past credit scenes. Don't waste your time.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Yeah, I wasted my time. I waited for a while before.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
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 the cliffhanger is apparently, if he continues with this storyline,

(58:37):
we're gonna continue with the adventures of Deck and Fia,
and we're gonna meet and Bud, and we're gonna meet
the first female predator, which seems like, based on the
reaction of the other yow, the females are probably way
more deadly than the males in this case. They seemed
very scared of this female predator come out.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
But he's big enough to easily fit a youch's head
in his mouth.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I want Nahue, I want Schwarzenegger. I want Demetrius and
el Fanning here. I want a monster mash here, a
monster rally.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
So are we meant to believe that Sonaw Latham's character
wasn't cryogenically frozen because she didn't actually kill a predator?

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
I will say. One of the skulls on the wall
and I looked this up looks suspiciously like the alien
from Independence Day.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Oh yeah, trailer.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
I saw it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
It was a reflash of it. I went, oh, the
Independence Day, so hopefully over we're air.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Please not unless you're going to bring back the president
there and have it be something triumphant.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
There you go, Dan Tracktenberg. If you're listening, there's your pitch.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
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,

(01:02:36):
because some of these movies do play like horror movies
at times. This there's really no horror in this. This
is basically a sci fi adventure buddy movie and I
can't recommend it enough. Even if you don't think you're
a fan of the Predator movies, you don't necessarily need
to know all of the what's canon and every little

(01:02:59):
bit of an usher from every single movie. If you
just want to see a kick ass science fiction epic
with great action, surprising amount of emotion, and just fun,
you cannot go wrong with this movie. I can't recommend
it highly enough. As well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
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

(01:03:53):
he's playing with house money at this point. I think
he's proven himself as a real He's like not to
make a direct compare somebody's like Dave Filoni when they
handed him the keys to the Star Wars TV shows,
right like I hate him. He did forge an interesting,
new creative direction for the series and that has to

(01:04:14):
be applauded to some degree.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
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

(01:04:39):
about this movie insummation. I think for all the kick
ass action directors working today, Tracktenberg is my favorite. He's
working in a visual language that is right up my
Alley and I think yours too. He seems to have
worshiped that the twin school of John wu and Steven Spielberg.

(01:05:01):
His action is always innovative while never skimping on visceral impact,
and he is the best action filmmaker for geography. You
always know where everything is every single time, no matter
how quick or languid the cutting is. For any of

(01:05:24):
his action sequences, you it's never confusing, and I can't
say that about any of the other Predator movie.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
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
saw in Imax. But if you're gonna see it, if

(01:05:53):
you have any wish, to see it in the theater
because this is a big action extravaganza that deserves to
be seen on the big screen, no matter if it's
regular theater or Imax.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
There we are. That's the end. Until next time, Where
can people find you? To looking for? You HP all right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
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,

(01:06:51):
turn in next Friday for our latest fest. It's not
just for patrons anymore. It is our Star Trek Fest,
starting with Star Trek the motion picture. That's gonna be fantastic.
Thank you, Dan Trachtenberg, Thank you Yaoucha. Everywhere we love you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
We can kill it, shut it out there?

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
What time hell are you