Predator: Badlands is about to outperform every other Predator franchise movie’s opening weekend, but that’s not all it’s doing.
Now that audiences have seen Predator: Badlands for themselves, their review scores are being tallied, and the film has set a different record. It’s now the highest audience-scored Predator movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 96% compared to the (also great) 85% critic score.
That is above and beyond even the other two well-received, recent Dan Trachtenberg Predator movies, ones that critics rated higher. Here’s the list by audience score:
- Predator: Badlands – 96% audience score, 85% critic score
- Predator: Killer of Killers – 89% audience score, 95% critic score
- Predator – 87% audience score, 65% critic score
- Prey – 74% audience score, 94% critic score
- Predators – 52% audience score, 65% critic score
- Predator 2 – 44% audience score, 36% critic score
- Alien Vs. Predator – 39% audience score, 21% critic score
- The Predator – 32% audience score, 34% critic score
- Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem – 30% audience score, 12% critic score
That is 7% above the much-liked animated Killer of Killers from earlier this year, and 9% above the original Predator. Yes, it’s early, but this is more than a thousand reviews in already, so it’s not the smallest of sample sizes.
I checked to see if this may actually beat all the Alien movies as well, and…it does! Alien and Aliens are at a 94% audience score each, but Alien, for instance, has 250,000+ reviews, so I think they’ll probably remain on top over time. I mean, we have to account for recency bias to some extent. But Predator movies have never gone above a 90% audience score until now. As a refresher, here is the synopsis for the Predator Badlands:
“Predator: Badlands,” which stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is set in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi), outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Fanning) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.”
It has been a fascinating year for this corner of the sci-fi universe across both the Alien and Predator franchises, Alien with its Alien: Earth show on FX, Predator with Badlands and previously Killer of Killers. And before that, Prey and Alien Romulus, respectively, in recent years. The franchises have been turned over to great hands after a number of missteps in the decades since the iconic originals.
Badlands, PG-13 or not, is a must-see for any fan, and we will see how long it manages to keep up these scores. Maybe it will end up being king in the long term, but for now at least, it has that record.
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