We always knew Predator: Badlands was going to be a crossover movie. The first trailer confirmed that Elle Fanning was playing a Synthetic, a robot manufactured by the evil Weyland-Yutani corporation from the Alien franchise. This makes Dan Trachtenberg’s new science-fiction epic a spiritual sequel of sorts to the Alien vs. Predator series. But what the trailers didn’t reveal was just how heavily Badlands would lean into Alien territory — albeit without actually featuring any Xenomorphs.
