For the longest time there was just Predator and Predator 2. Then came Alien vs. Predator and its sequel, which almost made fans wish things had just been kept at those two installments. Then, like with The Terminator‘s post-James Cameron sequels, there were multiple attempts to keep the franchise alive, well, and going strong. Thanks to Dan Trachtenberg, Predator knows how to be a genuine franchise now, one that is perpetually building, not just intent upon replicating the success found out the gate. The newly released (and excellent) Predator: Badlands makes nine installments of the Yautja franchise, so the question is, just where does it rank among the rest?
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We’re going to go through all nine of them, from the mainline Yautja movies to the duo of misguided clashes against the Xenomorph. Let’s find out how Trachtenberg’s newest stacks up against its competitors.
9) Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Pretty much always falling dead last on any ranking of either the Alien or Predator franchise, the clunkily titled Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem looks and plays like a direct to video movie that was shrugged into theaters because it has two A-list titans in the title. That said, “looks” is perhaps an overstatement word there, because you can’t see anything in this movie.
The best thing that can be said about Requiem is that it tried to make good on the Predalien promise that closed out Alien vs. Predator. However, again, you can’t even see the thing. It’s hard to put all of the blame on the shoulders of The Brothers Strause, who were making their feature length directorial debut, as Requiem‘s budget was $30 million less than AVP‘s, but even a $40 million movie should look a lot better than this. For example, see Predators, which also carried a $40 million budget and had more expensive stars to pay.
8) The Predator
It would be great to see what Shane Black’s original vision for The Predator would have been, because it almost feels unfair to incorporate the Frankenstein’s Monster that is the final product into the ranking. However, there’s enough in the final product that was clearly part of Black’s original vision that the question is begged whether an untampered with version would have done much better than this number eight spot.
Much of the dialogue is trying too hard to be vulgar, the Predator dog thing is pretty silly, and the autism plotline is offensive. Then there’s the stuff that feels like it was a product of the rampant behind-the-scenes tampering and resulting reshoots. For instance, the Ultimate Predator vs. Fugitive Predator narrative isn’t given enough focus to make a shred of sense, and the result is that neither of the film’s antagonists (non-human, anyway) feel like they carry any weight. In fact, much of the film is incoherent, and not always in ways that feel like the results of the reshoots, e.g. the death of Sterling K. Brown’s Will Traegar, a major character who is gone in an instant. Even in a dark theater it was next to impossible to tell his death even happened it’s so dimly lit and abrupt.
7) Alien vs. Predator
Alien vs. Predator promised the best action sequence of either franchise and, to a degree, it does deliver that. When the Yautja and Xenomorph do come face-to-face about midway through the movie, there were definitely some raised hairs on the necks of theatergoers back in ’04.
However, the decision to go PG-13 was misguided. Understandable, but misguided. Predator: Badlands gets away with it because it makes full sense for no humans to be involved, much less killed off. Here, there are humans, and every time one of them dies we get that cliche “Oh, blood just sprayed across some snow quickly” kind of shot. The whole product feels like a watered-down version of what it really wants to be. It’s better than Requiem, but that’s only because it’s coherent (and the underground pyramid setting is inventive, though that too could have had its tension level benefitted by an R rating).
6) Predators
While some of the casting is suspect, Predators was mostly a solid entry of the franchise and an admirable attempt to give the IP (which outside the AVPs had been dormant for 20 years) some new life. However, it plays as rote more often than not.
Sure, there is more than one Yautja to contend with this time, not to mention nasty little Predator dogs, but this is the ultimate example of how the franchise had a hard time moving on from the template set by the original film. That said, as far as the franchise’s opening sequences go, this one’s “soldiers falling from the sky” beginning takes the cake.
5) Predator 2
While Predator 2 was seen as a massive step down from the original film’s level of quality for a while, time has actually been quite kind to it. At the very least it did a wonderful job of expanding the franchise’s lore, e.g. in the Yautja’s weaponry and their culture (for instance, how they give a gift to Lt. Harrigan after he bests one of their own).
The sequel excels for a few reasons. On top of its world-building it was great to have the late Kevin Peter Hall back as the Yautja. Furthermore, while replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead was an unenviable task, Danny Glover was up for it. Toss in knowingly humorous supporting performances by Bill Paxton and Gary Busey and Predator 2 is a lot of fun.
4) Predator: Badlands
It may be the weakest of Trachtenberg’s three Predator movies thus far, but Predator: Badlands is another winner. It once seemed like a tall order, perhaps even an impossible one, to turn the Yautja into a protagonist (much less a sympathetic one), but Trachtenberg has pulled it off.
Dek is a CGI character (his face, anyway) that nonetheless makes the audience believe he’s a real being with genuine desires, fears, ambitions, and loyalties. He gets a full character arc in this movie, and the audience comes to believe every word of it. Then there’s Elle Fanning, who excels in the dual roles of Thia and Tessa. She can play charming and adventurous as well as calculating and driven equally well, and along with Dek her Thia is the heart of Badlands. Then there’s the film’s action, which never stops even for a moment yet never feels overwhelming because each sequence fluidly leads into the next and, more importantly, serves to build the world and characters as much as it serves to excite the audience. Trachtenberg is now three for three, and if the final scene of Badlands is any indication, he has an exciting concept for round four.
3) Predator: Killer of Killers
From its opening moments to its extremely exciting final scene, Predator: Killer of Killers was another major win for Dan Trachtenberg and his newfound spearheading of the Yautja franchise. Even for those who don’t traditionally go for animated films, this one’s visual allure and clear love for the IP is more than enough to keep them hooked.
The film’s structure is its greatest strength. It operates as an anthology film but, because there’s a running theme, those three separate stories naturally coalesce into the fourth. And, while the action in all four stories is fantastically brutal, it’s the fully fleshed characterization that makes Killer of Killers a more than worthy follow-up to Prey.
2) Prey
The key to giving the Predator franchise its second-best movie was to deliver something entirely unexpected. With Prey, Trachtenberg took things back to the 1700s, focused on character development more than every entry before combined, and still managed to not short the fans on Yautja action.
In fact, Prey has the best Yautja action of any installment outside the original film, with some brutal uses of the creature’s futuristic arsenal. And, while one might think that having such ill-equipped humans with flintlocks may make for an unexciting film, where the Yautja is impervious, Trachtenberg gets away with it by having the Yautja’s tech not as advanced as it was in the 1987 film and, more importantly, by having Amber Midthunder’s Naru a perfect combination of intelligent and ingenious. Speaking of Midthunder, her acting is the best to ever grace the IP, and her performance deservedly made her a star.
1) Predator
John McTiernan’s Predator was, for the longest time, utterly uncontended with for the top spot. Its claim on the crown is a little shakier these days, not because of any poor aging on its part (well, one line from Jesse Ventura’s Blaine is cringe-inducing), but rather because Trachtenberg is such a vital voice for the whole IP’s future. Speaking of Ventura, it’s also one of the best horror movies starring a wrestler, so it’s got that going for it, too.
There are a few things that nab the original Predator the number one spot. Firstly, shooting in the jungle really helps the audience feel the ambiance. It’s an open location but all the trees and shrubbery make it feel claustrophobic. Second, the casting couldn’t be better. Third, the script is loaded with classic one-liners. Fourth, the general concept of pitting the toughest types of characters against a single threat and having them lose so badly makes the film feel like it has the highest stakes of the bunch. Lastly, the pacing is outstanding. The film never stays in one place too long. There’s the introduction, the attack on the guerrilla camp, the first two rescue team members getting picked off, the remainder trying to figure out what this thing is, the rest of them getting picked off, and the one-on-one fight that concludes the film. It’s one of the most rewatchable movies of the ’80s, perhaps even of all time. Not to mention, all due credit to screenwriters Jim and John Thomas and special effects master Stan Winston for creating such a unique and formidable creature.
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