Predator: Badlands Goes Human-Free to Avoid the Mistake in James Cameron’s Best Sequel

The Predator saga is going where no human can follow. Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands unleashes the franchise’s first Yautja lead, complete with a fully realized Yautja language—and not a single human on screen.

Dan Trachtenberg is not easing into his Predator era. After Prey shook the dust off the franchise, he is back with Predator: Badlands and going all-in on a wild idea: a Predator movie with no humans. At all. Not in the background. Not as comic relief. None. Also, the lead is a Yautja and they speak an actual Yautja language. This is the kind of swing that either face-plants or turns into the thing everyone points to years later and says, yep, that was the game-changer.

No humans, by design

Trachtenberg told Screen Rant he wanted to avoid the easy fallback where a non-human hero gets paired with a human co-lead so the audience has a comfy POV. He flat-out shut that door because he knew the attention would just shift to the human, and we have decades of examples of how that dynamic plays out.

'I refused to allow any humans in the movie, because I knew that is where the audience's attention would go. And it would just end up being something like T2 - which is wonderful - but it would be another "human with a Predator sidekick" story.'

He is not wrong. The Terminator 2 template is powerful and, when done well, great (Logan, The Mandalorian). When it is not, you get Black Adam, which felt like a copy of a copy.

Why not just make Prey 2?

A direct follow-up to Prey would have been the safe move, but Trachtenberg and producer Ben Rosenblatt were against repeating the formula. Rosenblatt says the whole appeal of Prey was that it did something the series had never done before. For the next one, they wanted that same jolt of 'did not see that coming.' The answer they landed on: set it far in the future, flip the POV to a Yautja, and commit to the bit.

Yes, it is PG-13. Here is why that makes sense.

Badlands is also the first Predator movie not rated R. That sounds alarming until you remember the human-free rule. No humans means no red blood, which is a big factor in how the MPAA grades intensity. Trachtenberg is not dialing down the brutality - the pre-release footage leans into hunting and kill-or-be-killed action on a nightmare planet where everything wants you dead - but without spraying human gore, they can keep the rating at PG-13 and still go hard.

The interesting wrinkle

Marketing materials show Elle Fanning as a character named Thia. Given the 'no humans' thing, that likely means she is voicing or portraying a non-human character. It is a small but fascinating detail, and I am curious how they use a recognizable star in a story that refuses a human POV.

What is new in Badlands

• First Predator movie led by a Yautja character
• A fully built Yautja language used in the film
• No human characters, by choice, to avoid the human-plus-alien buddy setup
• Set in the distant future instead of the historical angle of Prey
• First PG-13 entry in the franchise, enabled by the lack of human blood, not a lack of action
• Elle Fanning appears as Thia, which suggests a non-human role given the above

The gamble here is pretty clear: if you cut out humans, can you still make the audience care? Trachtenberg is betting the novelty - and the discipline to actually stick to the concept - is what keeps Predator fresh instead of repetitive.

Predator: Badlands hits theaters on November 7, 2025.