Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) in 20th Century Studios' PPredator: Badlands 20th Century Studios Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on Reddit Post a Comment Share on Whats App Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Print the Article Share on Tumblr "Soon the hunt will begin." Ever since John McTierman's action-sci-fi-horror spectacle, Predator, first landed on movie screens in 1987, audiences have witnessed men and women go up against the universe's deadliest species for nothing less than the slim chance of survival. And through all the blood, guts, and carnage we always knew there would be another hunt. Now, Dan Trachtenberg's Predator: Badlands promises a hunt unlike any we've seen before. We ain't got time to bleed, but we've got time to see the Predator return to the big-screen after seven years. In honor of Predator: Badlands, The Hollywood Reporter ranks the entire Predator franchise from worst to best, below. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection Requiem, directed by Greg and Colin Strause, is set in a small Colorado town that's under siege by an Alien-Predator hybrid, a Predalien, who was born at the end of the previous AvP film. In the Predalien's possession are a batch of Xenomorph eggs, which of course hatch and spread chaos. A Predator named Wolf is sent to Earth to eradicate the Predalien and the Xenomorphs, while a group of largely expendable humans portrayed by Steven Pasquale, Johnny Lewis, Kristen Hager, David Paetkau, Ariel Gade, Reiko Aylesworth and John Ortiz try to escape town before being killed, either by the aliens or the nuclear strike headed for their homes. There's a simple narrative at play, and an attempt to bring Western genre elements to the franchise. For fans of the AvP mythos, Requiem is the first film to introduce Ms. Yutani (Francoise Yip) at this point in the timeline, which is a cool moment even though it set up a sequel that never happened. But outside of those limited features, the film that was released is presented with such limited attention to lighting that it's nearly impossible to see any of the action beats or bloodshed in the movie. There's something to it, but we need a fan-edit that can brighten up the film to truly see what that something is. AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) After being teased in 1990's Predator 2 and spawning an entire line of comic books and video games, the Xenomorphs and the Yautjas finally came to blows on screen in Paul W.S. Anderson's AVP. The film serves as a sequel to the two Predator films at the time, and a prequel to the then four Alien movies. The showdown between the two species is set in motion by a group of explorers led by Lex Woods (Sanaa Lathan) who are sent by Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen) to explore a pyramid buried in the ice near Antarctica. In the pyramid, the team awakens an Alien Queen which sends a trio of Predators to Earth to destroy the pyramid and Queen before her offspring can escape and overwhelm the world, which is one of their hunting grounds. There's some goofy, inherently racist, Erich von Daniken-inspired backstory involving Predators teaching the Aztecs how to build pyramids in exchange for several humans subjecting themselves to Xenomorph embryos so that the Predators can put on hunting games. It all serves to get to what audiences came to see, which Anderson does a decent job with and works to make fit what has come before. AVP, and its aforementioned sequel, Requiem, were canon for a time, until Ridley Scott rewrote the history of the Aliens with the superior and more thought-provoking Prometheus (2012). Nevertheless, Anderson puts care into making sure the film fits within the timeline of the movies that existed upon its release. AVP mostly delivers on what it sets out to do in providing Alien versus Predator action with some great special effects and puppeteering from special effects company ADI. Really, it's the effects work that make the movie, and arguably it's a better Predator movie than Alien movie in terms of tone and playing towards Anderson's action strengths, which dialogue is not one of. Sanaa Lathan's Lex, serving in the role of Ripley-esque survivor, felt like a major win for Black audiences at the time of release, and canon or not, she remains a beloved character in the franchise. AVP is far from perfect, and it's thematically empty, but it's a pretty fun junk food movie. The Predator (2018) Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox/Photofest This should've been a contender. When it was announced that Shane Black, script doctor, and co-star on the original Predator, was following up Iron Man 3 (2013) and The Nice Guys (2016) with a new Predator movie, expectations couldn't have been higher. This was Shane Black's world. With his penchant for sharp dialogue, great buddy dynamics, clever reinventions of genre tropes, and a cast that included Boyd Holbrook, Trevan