As I observed in my review of Predator 2, the Predator films feel very B-movie-like. And the first film, John McTiernan's 1987 Predator is not an exception.
When looking at the poster of 2002 film Rollerball you ask yourself 2 questions: 1) Why somebody thought it would be a good idea? 2 ) Why this somebody is John McTiernan, the filmmaker that brought us classics like Predator and Die Hard?
Predator: Badlands is Dan Trachtenberg's third Predator movie after Prey 2022 and Killer of the Killers 2025. And strangely enough non of these movies have any kind of connection to one other. They are not sequels. They are stand alone films, different in style and tone. Telling different stories and having different structure. The only thing that binds them together, so to speak, is the fact that they are all technically a part of the Predator franchise.
Somehow, for all these years I avoided the first ever Die Hard movie, even though I had watched the sequels. And even though the sequels are varying in quality, the first film is a fucking masterpiece.