Predator: Badlands
I have never watched a Predator movie in my life. To be honest, I never really had any interest in watching action alien-type movies, but my partner is a fan of this franchise, and apparently, this one was positively reviewed, so we decided to take the plunge earlier today after suffering through our final week of assignments (and classes).
The movie focuses on Dek, a 'weak' member of this alien clan (or at least weak in the eyes of the clan's leader, who is also coincidentally Dek's father). The starting sequence unfolds a tragedy that leads Dek to leave his planet in search of another alien species, which is apparently one of the most powerful ones out there. In the hopes of proving himself to his father, he decides that he needs to kill this Godzilla-on-four-legs-alien-creature-thing and bring it's body home.
However, his plans are disturbed when he realizes that the planet that Godzilla-on-four-legs-alien-creature-thing inhabits is riddled with poisonous obstacles and dangerous creatures. And the only person available to save him from these was Thia, a human-like synthetic robot who is part of a corporation hunting for creatures like these to create bio-human weapons (or so my partner tells me hahaha).
Personally, I thought that Thia and Dek's relationship really won me over. Looking at the movie's plot after a few hours now of watching it on the big screens, it definitely follows a somewhat generic-ish storyline (think enemies to friends to enemies to super good friends after some big action sacrifice scene) but the interactions the two had: playful banters, looks of annoyance (from Dek, and at least in the initial scenes only), and gentle conversations around what it is like to be excluded for being different, was really beautiful to me.
My other favorite character (there's not much, but this is still a strong one) was Bud! She became a pretty important character during the end, and my partner and I agreed that we didn't see the plot twist for her coming at all. We might've just been sleep-deprived, though!
Major spoiler here: Bud is the child of the Godzilla-on-four-legs-alien-creature-thing who eventually befriends and aids Thia and Dek's journey, and then becoming somewhat of their adopted child. She was sooooo cute despite looking like an amalgamation of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon and the film adaption version of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.
This was a pretty fun movie to watch overall! I wouldn't say it made me fall in love with the genre or anything, but I wouldn't be opposed to watch the sequel (assuming there will be one from that last scene) or go back and watch some of the older films.
Funnily enough, it was either this or Wicked 2, but my partner and I decided to save the musical after we take our time and watch the first film again. Fingers crossed that will be available on streaming soon!