“Predator” and I got off on the wrong foot. I’m not talking about the new movie, but rather the 1987 original, and by extension the whole franchise. I rented the film hoping to enjoy some action-movie interaction between two future governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. Unfortunately, there was little to no interaction between the two, and Ventura’s character got picked off by the Predator earlier than I would have liked. I spent the rest of the movie sulking, and never really became a fan of the series.

Flash forward to 2025. I wasn’t really looking forward to “Predator: Badlands” in and of itself, but after the dismal October we just had at the domestic box office, I’ll take a hit wherever I can get it. Which is probably why I liked the movie as much as I did. There’s not a lot for me here, but I needed to get excited about “something,” so the film’s greatest strength may be its good timing.

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The film follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), an aspiring young Predator (or “Yautja”) on the faraway planet of Yautja Prime. Dek desperately wants to go on a successful hunt to earn the approval of his father Njohrr (Reuben De Jong), as well as… living privileges, because Yautjas that don’t complete successful hunts are put to death. Njohrr wants relative runt Dek put down anyway, but he flees to the planet Genna, home to the most high-value trophy in the known universe, the Kalisk. He vows to not return without killing the Kalisk for himself.

Dek doesn’t fare well on the hostile Genna, but an opportunity presents itself in the form of Thia (Elle Fanning), a synthetic human that had been part of a party trying to find and exploit the Kalisk for their corporate overlords (I won’t say which corporation, but it’s a big deal). The Kalisk overpowered Thia’s team, leaving her as the sole survivor, and she’s worse for wear, missing the entire lower half of her body. She and Dek make a deal: he’ll help her get her body back and help her reunite with her also-damaged “sister” Tessa (also Fanning) and she’ll help him take down the Kalisk.

Dek and Thia start off as uneasy allies, but as they overcome obstacles together, their bond turns into friendship. All this despite Thia being half of a smart-alecky robot and Dek coming from a race that forbids emotions. Which presents kind of a huge problem for me, in that neither character is from a race that I feel is worth preserving. Thia is so artificial that there’s literally another of her, and even though we ultimately see that there’s some good in Dek, sorry, the universe would probably be better off without kill-obsessed Predators.

I know I’m supposed to like “Predator: Badlands” because of the way the alien and the robot learn what it means to be human. Honestly, I was rolling my eyes at those parts. I like the movie because Thia’s jokes were hitting for me and I liked the action. The upside of all the characters being either robots or aliens is that the film can be as violent as it wants and still get a PG-13 rating as long as all the gore is in the form of either sparks or slime. “Predator: Badlands” is fine as an action movie for people who could use a half-decent action movie, but just as with Thia’s body, don’t expect it to be more than “half” decent.

Grade: B-

By the way, I later found another movie from 1987 with both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. In this one, their characters do interact. They even go head-to-head with one another in a fight, where one presumably kills the other. That movie is called “The Running Man.” And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a new version of that property coming out Friday.

“Predator: Badlands” is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong sci-fi violence. Its running time is 107 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.