Predator Badlands

Ronald Young Jr. reviews Predator Badlands by himself… 

RYJ struggles to pronounce Predator Badlands

RYJ - 4 of 5 stars

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Available in theaters

Starring Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, and Mike Homik
Written by Patrick Aison and Brian Duffield
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Long after Dutch Schaeffer barely escaped a technologically advanced humanoid
hunter in the Central American jungle, we traveled to a
planet far far away for an origin story of sorts.
Here on Yaucha Prime, we're introduced to deck Aunt, desperate
to earn his clan's approval through any means necessary. Those
means require him to successfully hunt and kill the deadly

(00:24):
callous on the even deadlier planet of Jenna. It's Predator
bad Lands. I'm Ronald Young Junior, and I'm leaving the theater.

(01:26):
All right. This is Ronald and I am leaving the
theater after seeing Predator Badlands. Predator Badlands written by Patrick
Ason and Brian Duffield, directed by Dan Tracktenberg, starring El Fanning,

(01:51):
Demitrius Schuster, Colona Matanji, and Mike Homick. And for complete
cast listing, you can go to the link in our
show notes. It is just me today, Predator Badlands. I'm sorry,
that's gonna make me laugh every time. Yes, there's a

(02:14):
joke deep inside me that I cannot explain to y'all.
But there's a way I want to say Badlands. I
want to say Badlands because it makes me laugh. It's
also a sad and painful memory, but it also makes
me laugh. So and it's hard not to say Predator.
So Predator Badlands. Okay, enough silliness, let's be serious now,

(02:42):
Predator Badlands. Oh god, see, it's like, how do I
stop saying it? How do I stop it? Okay? All right,
are you still with me? I'm gonna review the movie,
I promise. Okay. Predator Badlands, Oh no, I can't stop
saying it. Predator bad Lands. Okay. So this is this,
this is going deeper into the origin of the Predators.

(03:05):
I'm not even going to try to pronounce what the
name is. I want to say it's youcha. But they
go into actually what these creatures are called. So these
creatures are aliens. They are from a different planet. And
if you know anything about the Predator series or the
Alien series, you know at this point they're kind of intertwined.
It's not even kind of they're intertwined. They're in the
same they are set in the same universe. So in

(03:28):
this one, we go to the Predator home planet and
we find that there's one Predator named oh man, I
was watching them say his name over and over again.
I can't remember his name. You should look it up.
It is somewhere in Wikipedia. You could find it very easily.
He is the runt of his clan, and in order

(03:50):
for him to get the respect of his clan, he
has to do a hunt. Once he completes the hunt,
he gets his cloaking device. So, for those of you
that watch any of the Predator movies, this is diving
into the low that exists on top of all of that.
So the fact that the predators can cloak themselves, they
have heat seeking vision. All of the things that the

(04:10):
predators are able to do are tools that they earn
for their respective hunts. I am not going to explain
the Predator lore to you. I will say this, if
you do not watch the Predator movies, I would encourage
you to watch them before you watch this one. I
do not think that this is a good entry point

(04:31):
into the Predator franchise. I think it is a great movie,
and I think for most people who want to watch it,
even if you never watched any other Predator movies, you
would probably understand the plot of this easily. But there
is so much lore from other movies, not to the
point that this is easter Egg salad. But there is
enough in there that they're just not going to explain.

(04:55):
There's just stuff that they're not explaining. They expect you
to know some things and they're not going to tell
you any details. So you know enough to watch the movie.
But if you care about the larger story, you're gonna
watch at least a couple of other movies. I would
at least watch the First Predator and the First Alien
and maybe Alien Versus Predator. Laughing, I'm laughing because everyone's

(05:20):
gonna jump down my throat for saying that. There was
also a movie that recently came out in the last
couple of years called Prey. It is a prequel set
in the Predator series. For those of you that ignore
the Predator movies, these are fun movies. They're action adventure films.
You don't have to watch like Predator two or Predator three.
But if you watch Predator and then the Predator, which

(05:43):
is the remake of it, and then there's a couple
of Prey is another good one, and this one I
think this is another strong entry into the Predator franchise.
So we're following the runt of this clan who is
trying to earn his stripes per se, and he's working
with his brother and his father is very very mean

(06:05):
to him, and eventually he has to find his own
path on this very hostile planet in which he has
to seek out this creature called the Callisk. I remember
that he has to seek out this creature called the
Callisk and then bring back its head as a trophy

(06:28):
so that he can get his cloaking device. So this
is a movie that is about grief. And while he's there,
he runs into an Android. And so the thing is,
androids are uniquely from the Alien series. This is the
first time that I've seen a movie that was not
Alien versus Predator or we will not see any aliens

(06:51):
in this movie, except for the fact that predators are
also aliens. But when I say aliens, I mean the
scary things with the two mouths that jump out in
the acid blood all that, and I can't remember that
xeno morphs xenomorphs. We don't see any zeno morphs in
this film, but typically when you see androids, you also
see zeno morphs. So this is the first film in
which I'm seeing androids and only the predators as opposed

(07:16):
to seeing the Xeno Morphs as well. There are some
callbacks to the Alien franchise as well, which are all
very good. There's one in particular that happens towards the
end of the film that is just very, very, very
very good. So I'll say all that to say this
is a very fun movie, very very enjoyable. If you
like the franchise like me, if you watch them when

(07:38):
they come out and you say, oh, that was pretty
good or that wasn't so good. If you watch these movies,
you will like this. You will like this. This is
a strong entry into the franchise. If you watch the
preview ands like, I don't know about that seems a
little dumb, it's not. It's very heartwarming and charming, and
there's funny parts, and there's an action adventure movie. It's

(08:01):
a quest movie. It's a classic heroes journey. It's enjoyable
in that way. I think the things that I don't
like about this film are all about are all technicalities.
I think that it's too dark sometimes, you know what
I mean. I know you're like, what, Ronald, Yeah, it's
too dark sometimes, and it's too dark, and sometimes the

(08:26):
writing is a little on the nose. But I would
expect that from a film like this, But other than that,
I really enjoyed it from the beginning to end. It's
a movie about grief, and I find that more movies
that explore grief in some ways are especially now, they

(08:46):
touch a special place in my heart, especially when they
do it in a very straightforward way like this. The action,
the action sequences are good. There are setups that have
very satisfying payoffs. There's parts of the film where he
gets to this hostile planet and you realize everything on

(09:06):
the planet could possibly kill him, and he leans into
that in a lot of ways. And of course, because
you see those setups, you expect to see the payoff
later and you're very much rewarded for it. And I
think if you enjoyed the pray, Pray is again a
cat and mouse movie where we have the Predator and

(09:27):
it's thrown into the past. It like you know, it
comes to the planet in the past, and it fights
against it's hunting Native Americans. It's hunting the indigenous folks
of America, and Amber Midtunder is fighting against one of them.
I don't know her actual name in the film, but
I'm saying that to say this I mean, Dan Tracktenberg

(09:50):
did that one. He did Pray and so now he's
doing this, and if he has control of the franchise
moving forward, I think he has a good life on
what this franchise is and what it can be in
the future. That's important to note because I'm thinking about
the fact that they redid The Running Man and I

(10:11):
recently started watching some of the newest entries or rewatched
some of the newest entries in the Terminator franchise, and
I posted this on threads. But I firmly believe that
our vision of the future cannot be based from what
we thought the future was going to be in the eighties,

(10:33):
And I think what this franchise is doing well is
constantly updating the future. Because we also had Alien Prometheus
no Alien Romulus that came out, and I think, again,
that's based on a vision of the future from the eighties.
But there's a way that they're presenting it that makes sense,
even if it's just about some of the socioeconomic dynamics.

(10:57):
It makes sense. Even though maybe some of the technology
isn't quite what it should be, the dynamics of people
is exactly where I think it would be in the future,
and I think if we're going to look at future
visions from the eighties, we just got to make sure
that they got it right. And I'm saying that to say,
like all of the movies that we liked in the
eighties and nineties that are now being remade or revisited,

(11:22):
such as the Predator franchise, now is it appropriate time
to just say what does it mean to engage with
this franchise right now? And I think this does a
good job of Again, Hero's Journey movie about grief. Take
us on an action adventure, find somebodies along the way,
and maybe the trophy that we were taking back was
the friends we made along the way the whole time. Anyway,

(11:43):
you know, like that's kind of where we are right now,
and so I think this movie does that very well.
With all of that being said, I think it's a
four star movie. I would definitely watch it again. I
definitely want to see more entries into the frame. It
feels like a good starting point for this branch of

(12:04):
the series. I'm interested to see what happens with humans
in the future in this version of the future. Elle
Fanning is in it, and she does a great job.
I haven't seen her in anything in a while. I
think she's been in things. I think I just have
not seen what she's been in lately, and she does
a great job in it. Dimitrius Schuster Colo Coloa Matanji

(12:31):
is I can't tell what he's doing in the film,
but physically he's fine. El Fanning is getting the bulk
of the actual acting, and she's doing a great job
seeing as how she's the only person speaking English in
the film, meaning that and that's not to say that
you have to speak English in order to do a

(12:52):
good job, but because I'm imagining the acting challenge of
her basically acting by herself in a lot of ways,
almost close to GreenScreen. I know there's some green screen
stuff in here, and her acting partner is speaking Yaucha
never speaks English the whole film. So yeah, I think

(13:14):
it was a feat of acting on her part. But
it was believable and she was charming, and the film
itself is charming. If you like action adventure movies, I
don't think this is the type of movie like I
don't know if this is the date night movie Fellas,
unless you are with a partner that likes this franchise already.

(13:36):
I dated a woman and I took her through the
entire Alien and Predator franchise, and I know she would
like this. If you like Star Wars, if you can
suspend disbelief for all that, you can watch this as well.
It does a good job of building out more of
the low I liked it, and so I think this
is a good start to the holiday movie season. We're

(13:56):
deep in November, we're going into Christmas. This is where
you get some surprise blockbusters and get people back into
the theaters before we headed to a strong award season.
So we're seeing and with that leaving the theater is
a production of Oh It's Big Round Studios. I mixed
this episode and I'm working very hard. You might have

(14:17):
noticed that the Bogonia episode that came out last week
came out on Wednesday when it should have come out
on Monday. Well that was because I was traveling the
week before and I got very tired on Sunday and
I had to take a recovery day on Monday. I
didn't get to edit this, finished editing it until Tuesday.
So that's the type of slide that happens when you're
a one Man Band. But I'm working very, very hard.

(14:40):
I'm promoting my live show Heartbreaker. I'm also still working
on season three of Wait for It. I'm a little
behind on that, a lot behind on that, if we're
being honest, and i just got a lot on the
plate right now. But I'm still working hard. I'm still
putting out episodes. We still put out a Bogonia ad
free episode. We still have the ad for Going, We

(15:01):
still did on the Couch. We got The Running Man
coming out soon. We got the rest of this month
planned for movies. We are moving ahead. We're moving ahead
the best we possibly can. This is a labor of love,
but it is labor. If that means something to you.
You want to see this show continue, you want to
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(15:22):
patreon dot com slash leaving a Theater, or go to
the link in our show notes. Show art from Heather Wilder,
theme music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. For more information
about Predator bad Lands, check out our show notes. You
can follow me on Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok, threads or
letterboxed at owitz Big Grond That's at h I T

(15:43):
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leaving the theater will be back soon, Thanks for listening.

(16:07):
Directed by ten Directed by Dan track Trackenberg, Trattenberg, tratt
Michelle Trackenberg, track and Tractenberg directed by Dan Trachtenberg