Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic, and I watch films with audio description. This film has audio description from Deluxe, narrated by Jedidiah Barton, featuring William Michael Redman.

Prey was excellent. It took a franchise that hadn’t been working, and reinvented it by not being afraid to go into the past. Not only did the Yahweh end up with older technology, but they were up against fighters who had less to work with as well. It meant that skill, cunning, and determination were assets. No choppers to get to, no things to use to blow up the aliens. It was up to an indigenous tribe, and specifically one warrior looking to prove herself, to defeat the ultimate predator.Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) made enough of an impression that Disney decided they needed more of his brand of Predator. I did like what he was offering in Predator: Killer Of Killers, doing a little bit of what Prey had started. And then, he went full Badlands.

I’d like to think the problems here are driven by executives afraid of investing in a film without it meeting certain criteria. Considering Prey featured indigenous warriors speaking Navajo, and until now, not being able to understand what a Yahweh is saying. There’s a good movie here, it just got sidetracked with bad ideas.

The movie follows Dek, who is part of a Yahweh clan. He’s also a little undersized, and we see him sparring with his brother. However, his father takes no mercy, and orders Dek’s brother to kill Dek. Instead, his brother makes a different choice, sending Dek to a dangerous planet to claim his trophy and prove his worth.

Dek lands on a planet, looking for an Apex predator so scary his dad wouldn’t even face it. He faces so many weird alien species, nearly all trying to kill him. Then he finds a synthetic (Elle Fanning), and the film begins to stumble.

What should have been, and could have been, a great story about a warrior counted out, fighting aliens w’eve never encountered, in a film with negligible dialogue, we instead must pick up Elle Fanning to help make the film more accessible. She can, after all, speak English, and Disney probably assumes audiences don’t read movies, or show up for films with next to no dialogue.

But isn’t that the point of all of this? Push back against convention? Aren’t we supposed to be riding the wave of Prey, and giving audiences the unexpected? Not only is it a bit weird to apply human familial structures to the Yahweh, but they also end up pushing the same found family narrative, as Dek pairs up with not just a synthetic but a little alien that is on his side (who I’m sure is for merchandising purposes).Dek has to rationalize that since the synthetic isn’t alive, he can consider it a tool, and somehow does the same for Bud, the little alien he adopts.

Trachtenberg has proven himself adept at taking franchises that needed a reawakening and finding a way to make them feel fresh again. 10 Cloverfield Lane is terrific, and prey is amazing. This feels like someone made a lot of changes to his script, and forced it on us. It lacks the charm and pizazz of bringing something new and interesting to the table, instead trading a bold new look for a familiar synthetic from the Alien franchise. One of the best aspects of Alien Earth was seeing the other aliens, and that could have been Predator Badlands. Instead, it is a weakened sequel because Disney felt it needed to be babysat by a visible human. And for what? I love Elle Fanning, but it isn’t like they returned Arnold Schwarzenegger to the series, or got some major star like tom cruise or Brad Pitt on board. Yes, she did just get an Oscar nomination, but elle Fanning is not a massive box office draw.

And as far as the audio description, they did some stuff right and wrong. I loved the size relativity. I push for that. There’s a scene at the end where Bud has grown a bit, and we need clarification on his new size, and that was done well. However, the description frequently refers to Yahweh as “man’ which they are not. In the action sequences, the narration will refer to one of those in combat as a man, as quick shorthand, but it takes you out of it. It made me wonder if other franchises use man when describing aliens across Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar, and other franchises. I feel like this is the anomaly.

Predator Badlands is what happens when a studio isn’t sure what makes a franchise work, so instead of subverting convention, they rely on tried and true, completely missing the potential right in front of them.

Rotten: 5.5/10