How did Predator: Badlands reinvent a 38-year-old franchise in 2025?

The answer

Predator: Badlands, released in August 2025, took one of sci-fi's most enduring franchises in an unprecedented direction: telling the story from the Predator's perspective. The film follows a young Yautja (Predator) outcast from his clan who finds an unlikely ally during his journey to prove himself by hunting the ultimate adversary. Following the critical and commercial success of 2022's Prey - which set the franchise in the 18th-century Comanche Nation - Badlands continued the trend of reinventing the Predator concept rather than repeating the original formula. The film was praised for its worldbuilding and for making audiences sympathize with a creature that had been purely antagonistic for nearly four decades.