This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

Today we turn at last to the Predator franchise, but not to discuss its central Yopjah alien hunters.

Now, we might come back to the titular predators at some point in the future,

but for today, I just want to talk about the latest installment in the series 2025's Predator Badlands.

Here's something I never thought I'd say, hey, the cute alien and odd couple humor in this latest

predator movie, it really worked.

But hey, here we are. I have a lot of nostalgia for Predators 1 and 2. I enjoyed most of the

sequels, at least on some level, and I thought 2022's Prey was just a great take on the original concept.

Its director, Dan Tractenberg, apparently considered a slasher-style follow-up to prey in which we

cheer the predators on against Nazis, which would have been something, but I'm ultimately glad they

gave us this fresh action-adventure approach that we got with Badlands. Again, just something

different that is also a lot of fun. The movie follows a young cast-aside predator runt named Deck as he seeks the ultimate prey on an alien planet at the same time as an all-android Wayland-Jutani research mission is also active on that planet seeking the same target.

Yes, the film is something of a soft alien versus predator film,

but without literal AVP action. Instead, pitting the alien franchise's corporate villains and multiple

synths against our yacht jaw protagonist and a damaged synth named Thea. Again, it's a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with this one.

I'm still not sure if I want to see another film in which predators actually take on xenomorphs,

at least not anytime soon, but hey, Predators versus Synths was still pretty great.

But let's come back to that crazy alien planet.

It's presented here as a hyper-dangerous ecosystem in which just about every form of fauna and flora is trying to kill you.

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