Pretending on whether or not you count the two Alien crossovers, Predator is now sitting on either six or eight films. It is a long, lucrative road for a franchise that has been effectively based on production design since 1987. The latest iteration of the franchise comes from director Dan Trachtenberg, whose 2022 re-imagining Prey was the first attempt that genuinely stood toe-to-toe with John McTiernan’s original. This latest version, subtitled Badlands, takes the unprecedented step of making the alien Predator the protagonist, and leads to very mixed results.

Rating a franchise picture always seems to wind up involving ranking a new film among its predecessors, so to save time for impatient readers my personal best-to-worst take would be Predator, Prey, Alien vs Predator, Predator: Badlands, Predator 2, Predators, AVP Requiem, and The Predator. In effect, we’re talking about something very in the middle in terms of quality. That feels entirely appropriate: this is competent filmmaking, but ultimately it is a very average movie.

Part of the problem is just how unreal it all feels: I am probably missing a film somewhere in the mix, but there is a genuine chance this might be Hollywood’s first live-action narrative feature without any humans in it since The Dark Crystal (1982). Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a disgraced and physically imperfect member of the Yautja species – the Predators, for those of us not immersed in the various spin-offs and tie-ins of the past 30 years. He travels to the planet Genna, a world filled with deadly and aggressive aliens, to hunt down the enormous Kalisk monster and claim his honour as a hunter. He is not the first visitor to the planet: Earth’s Weyland Yutani corporation has dispatched a shipload of synthetic androids to capture the Kalisk for themselves.

Badlands struggles with engagement because for the most part it is a film about a visual effect battling other visual effects and robots. The extensive CGI gives Genna a flat, false quality that gets in the way of generating tension. When the various synthetics die they are bloodlessly ripped apart without any sense of emotion. The film feels cold, and its stakes are low.

Not that Dek is alone. Early into his adventure he comes across Thia (Elle Fanning), a badly damaged but chatty synthetic who promises to aid in his quest in return for finding her missing legs. While well-performed by Fanning – who pulls double-duty here as an identical synthetic named Tessa – it is deeply tonally misjudged and more irritating than endearing. Some things simply do not work in certain types of films, and like a musical number in an Alien film Predator does not need comic relief. Add in a cute alien creature that Thia nick-names “Bud”, and Badlands becomes overloaded with elements that work against its best interests.

There are people who will enjoy Badlands for its unexpected tone and ambitious science fiction trappings, but there will also be others – like me – disappointed by its low emotional stakes and overfamiliar storyline. If there are to be further sequels, and the commercial success of Badlands suggests there will be, a stronger screenplay and human elements would seem to be a good idea.