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Some of us are cursed with knowledge about things we wish we didn't know. Like a modern Victor Frankenstein, the man who invented Labradoodles regrets ever having unleashed his creation onto the world. And while I certainly can't live up to that level of cursed knowledge, I unfortunately suffer from remembering too many details from the worst Alien movies ever made. Seriously, I wish I could run bleach over the part of my brain that remembers all of Alien: Resurrection. 

But anyways, we're talking about Predator: Badlands here. At CinemaCon 2025, attendees were treated to a sneak peek of footage from the film. As TheWrap reports, that footage includes Elle Fanning teaming up with a Predator presumably to waste other aliens who are much worse than that specific Predator. You may have even gasped in shock while reading that last sentence, and I wouldn't blame you! The Yautja are the creatures who killed Carl Weathers's character in the first movie - an act that I think automatically makes them an enemy of humanity for the foreseeable future. Who wants to hang near them?

Well, this storyline isn't exactly new to the Predator movies. If you remember back to 2004's Alien vs. Predator, a movie that looks infinitely older than it actually is, Sanaa Lathan's Lex teams up with an agreeable Yautja called Scar to fight off the film's real baddies: the xenomorphs from Alien. This Predator truly goes above and beyond and wipes xenomorph blood across his human companion's cheek, in an unexpectedly tender moment in the film. They may be Predators, and they may also be participating in settler colonialism (see: Prey), but hey, I guess they can have a heart too. 

Regardless, it's worth mentioning that Badlands is taking place in the future - unexplored territory for the Predator franchise. I guess there just aren't enough terrible people from human history to warrant a Predator teaming up with a human to take them out. 

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