Predator: Badlands

Fanning, in her two varied roles as Thia and Tessa, shoulders well the responsibility to nudge Badlands towards better times — even as her sawed legs carry the film jauntily over the finishing line.

Director Dan Trachtenberg's movie finally lets you see the world through the Yautja's heat-sensitive eyes.

With Badlands, it seems the director is hell-bent on undoing all of his good work and making sure the franchise goes nowhere forward. Not only is this spinoff bland, but it also demystifies one of Hollywood's most iconic characters so wastefully that it feels tragic more than anything else.

Predator: Badlands is just about kept from flatlining by Elle Fanning's effortless charm, though it shows what happens when the Predator in question must be humanised and made sympathetic – at which point it ceases to be the Predator. The sheer pointlessness of everything that happens subtracts the oxygen and even Fanning's imperishable star quality can't save it.

Trachtenberg made a similarly thoughtful Predator movie, Prey, a few years ago, and now further asserts himself as a filmmaker who can take a tired old piece of IP and breathe new life into it. It's a perspective shift that mostly works, so thoughtful is the film's construction.

Dan Trachtenberg finds fresh excitement in the popular '80s franchise, pairing Elle Fanning's 'Alien'-style synth with a runt Predator.