Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands will be a franchise first in centering on a Predator protagonist, and will also be influenced by other legendary action movie heroes in a key way. In an interview with Empire, Trachtenberg likened the alien hunter protagonist of Predator: Badlands, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), to Conan the Barbarian or Mad Max, stating “He’s a thing of few words, pretty blunt”, with Trachtenberg adding “He cuts straight to the point. Literally and figuratively”. Trachtenberg’s description of Dek as a comparatively silent protagonist does indeed put him in good company with Conan, Mad Max, and his fellow Predators.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger’s portrayal of Conan the Barbarian in the eponymous 1982 movie launched him to stardom with Conan having very little in the way dialogue in the movie (and what lines Conan does speak are some of Arnold’s most quoted). Additionally, after the loss of his family in 1979’s Mad Max, Mel Gibson’s Max Rockatansky becomes a hardened loner who speaks very little in The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, a practice that Tom Hardy later carried over in his portrayal of Max in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.
While Predators (also known as “Yautja”) have tended to have little dialogue in the Predator franchise, that has mostly been due to their dialogue exchanges being primarily with humans. While Predators can approximate human speech and language, their dialogue has often consisted of repeating various lines spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch, Danny Glover’s Mike Harrigan, and other characters back to them. Trachtenberg’s description of Dek could indicate that Predator: Badlands may have an abundance of the Yautja language being spoken between Predators.
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With that said, Dek himself coming from the Conan the Barbarian and Mad Max schools of minimal dialogue likely plays into his character arc in Predator: Badlands. As described by Trachtenberg in the Empire interview, Dek is the “runt of the litter” within his Predator tribe, while Badlands will reportedly focus upon Dek being exiled from the Predator culture. With his only ally being the Weyland-Yutani android Thia (Elle Fanning), Dek’s focus on survival and proving his worth as a hunter and warrior to his fellow Yautja probably accounts significantly for why he will speak so little in Badlands.
This is not the first time a Dan Trachtenberg-directed Predator movie has had minimal dialogue. Trachtenberg famously went out of his way to have as little actual dialogue as possible in his first foray into the Predator franchise, 2022’s Prey. With the movie centering on Comanche warrior Naru (Amber Midthunder) battling a Feral Predator in 1719 (with the movie having both English and Comanche dialogue tracks on its Hulu release and on home media), Prey provided a real showcase for Trachtenberg’s skill for visual storytelling and keeping dialogue compartmentalized.
With Predator: Badlands, Trachtenberg seems to be shifting that storytelling approach somewhat with Dek as the movie’s hero while keeping his dialogue as minimized as possible. This is also just the latest of the many ways in which Trachtenberg has breathed new life into the Predator franchise as director of its last three installments. Hopefully, as a Predator who speaks little and keeps his eye on the goal in front of him, Dek could become another of the many break-out characters in Trachtenberg’s Predator movies.
Predator: Badlands will be released in theaters on November 7th.
