Predator: Badlands — How It Changes the Predator Franchise | Original Geek | S1E21

Predator: Badlands didn’t just land as another sequel — it cracked open a much bigger conversation about what the Predator franchise actually is, where it’s been, and where it might be going next.

In this episode of Original Geek, we use Badlands as a jumping-off point to explore the entire Predator timeline — from the 1987 original and its slasher-movie roots, through Predator 2, Predators, The Predator, Prey, and the long, messy crossover history with the Alien franchise. Along the way, we dig into how tone, humor, mythology, and even the Predator itself have evolved over the decades.

We talk about why Badlands feels different, what it reveals about Yautja culture, why the introduction of synthetics and Weyland-Yutani matters, and how this movie quietly reinforces that Predator and Alien have always shared a universe — even when the films didn’t fully commit to it.

The episode also tackles real-world fandom friction: the growing frustration with premium streaming charges, early access pricing, and whether paying extra to watch a movie you already “subscribe” for is the future of genre entertainment or a breaking point for fans.

This isn’t a spoiler-heavy breakdown or a surface-level review. It’s a franchise-wide conversation about lore, canon, creative risks, misfires, surprising wins, and why Predator has survived while so many other 80s action icons faded out.

If you’re a longtime fan, a casual viewer, or someone trying to figure out whether the Predator franchise still has teeth — this episode connects the dots.

Welcome to Original Geek—the podcast for anyone who rolled their first d20 on shag carpet, waited hours for a comic book JPEG to load on dial-up, and wore the label “geek” back when it got you mocked, not monetized.

Hosted by stand-up comic Steve Scarfo and Forever DM Jeff Shaw, we dive deep into what it meant to be a geek in the '70s and '80s—and how that underground culture became the mainstream multiverse we live in today.

🎙️ Subscribe for weekly episodes on Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, comic book chaos, geek court debates, and critical hits from your childhood basement.

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Transcript

Steve Scarfo (00:00)
so when I heard, great, Predator Badlands is on Prime Video, perfect, I pay for that. I can watch this movie.

So here we go, let's go. Oh yeah, by the way, you gotta pay $19.99. And I'm like, I already paid you.

The fact that I already pay for a subscription is ⁓ ludicrous to me.

All right, welcome to Original Geek. This is the all fandom podcast where we dig into sci-fi, fantasy, comics, and every pop culture obsession that built the multiverse we live in today. So whether you're Gen X, millennial, or just geek curious, welcome to the basement. Hi, I'm Steve Scarfo.

Jeff (00:56)
and I'm Jeff Shaw and we'll be your get to the chopper for today's explosive final extraction. What's our topic today, Steve?

Steve Scarfo (01:08)
Well today we're going directly into a random review.

Jeff (01:15)
unheard of.

Steve Scarfo (01:16)
groundbreaking.

All right, so we're kicking this off with the random review. This is where we take movies and TV shows, we roll a D20, and we let fate decide the topic. We don't know if it's gonna be hits, misses, or fights, or full blown fandom wars. There's no press, prep, no safety net, because it's time to roll for review.

Jeff (01:42)
All right. Yeah. And we're reviewing Predator Badlands. ⁓ I have to admit we that actually I should say we have to admit we were going to do a Predator episode back when Predator Badlands was still in the theater. Things went awry. We didn't get it. We didn't get to do it. And I thought we missed our chance until whatever the next Predator was going to come out. But Predator Badlands is crushing it.

in streaming. It's number one. It's ⁓ doing better than Wicked, ⁓ part two. It's Wicked for Profit, think is the title. Wicked Greedy. yeah. So Predator Badlands. It's crushing it. So we got an opportunity to resurrect our idea to do a Predator episode and a random review of Predator Badlands. We want to try to keep

Steve Scarfo (02:12)
Yeah.

It's a... Wicked greedy is what I think it's called.

Jeff (02:39)
Obviously we can't be completely spoiler free, but for those of you who might not be aware of a Predator Badlands ⁓ is very different from others in the Predator series, because we're actually not following a human in a human story. We're following Dek, a runt of the... ⁓ We're like, ⁓ Yacha, Yacha.

Steve Scarfo (03:04)
Yowcha!

Jeff (03:06)
That's the

Steve Scarfo (03:06)
Yatcha!

Jeff (03:07)
name of the the predator aliens are Yatcha and ⁓ He has to prove himself Because they all expect him his his brood his clan expect him to die They think he he's there's no way he's gonna make it because and they put him on a planet with that callous a creature that is the most fearsome in In the universe as far as the Yatcha are concerned

and he comes across a damaged, ⁓ you've got the t-shirt, the Wayland-Yutani ⁓ synthetic, like Lance Henrich, is it, no, who had the, who played the synthetic in Aliens?

Steve Scarfo (03:40)
Yeah.

In the original, it was Lance Henriksen.

Jeff (03:53)
Was it? I was thinking it was, I don't know. He was in Aliens. He was the synthetic in Aliens, right?

here, I know, I know should have looked this up ahead of time. Anyway, I just love that they're using, because they had already built, obviously earlier, that aliens and predator exist in the same universe. And so I love that they have this tie in without actually tying in an alien, it's the synthetic from that corporation, Weyland-Yutani. And ⁓ so that synthetic has been damaged. Thia, played by Dakota Fanning and ⁓

Steve Scarfo (04:03)
⁓ alright.

No, Al, Al

Fanning.

Jeff (04:32)
Elf what it's elf aning. Okay, played by a fanning of some sort. Thank you for correcting me right away. So and what yeah, this great film explores the actual lore. ⁓ So very different from the other predators and fantastic. It's well deserved to be doing as well as it is in streaming. So very happy to hear that.

Steve Scarfo (04:34)
That's Elle Fanning, that's her younger sister. One of the Fannings.

No canon correction, I caught it in time.

Jeff (05:01)
and we're gonna do a random review and we'll keep it as spoiler free as possible.

Steve Scarfo (05:04)
Yes.

Yeah, I was gonna say, so this is your chance. This is the spoiler moment. ⁓ We do chop this thing up into segments and chapters, so if you haven't seen it yet, you probably shouldn't listen to the episode, because I'm sure we're gonna talk about it a lot. But watch Predator Badlands, then come back. ⁓ So just for the record, the first alien, yes, and then come back. I do wanna say this at the top. We always say this at the end. If you're with us at all, please remember to jump online, like, subscribe.

Jeff (05:09)
You

No, this is it. Pause this. Go watch it. It's in streaming.

Steve Scarfo (05:37)
Check us out, follow us on YouTube. All the things help ⁓ let us grow this show that we have so much fun making. The first ⁓ synthetic, the character's name was Ash in 1979's Alien played by Ian Holm who would later be Bilbo Baggins.

Jeff (05:52)
Yes! Yes!

Like, that's who I was thinking of. Yes. Yes. Awesome.

Steve Scarfo (05:59)
So thank you for not having me canon correct Lance Henriksen because that was the second movie. So I do want to share this real quick. So I'm to put this up on screen. I'll leave it here while we're doing our review. Well, I'll leave it here for maybe 15, 20 seconds. You guys can take a screenshot if you're that worried about it or interested. This is how we do it. We have a list, as you can see, roles. We have a check type that we are equating to it.

Jeff (06:02)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (06:27)
the element that we want to talk about and then the question that we're going to answer in our review. So this is why it's random.

Jeff (06:32)
Yeah, and I do want to say that

we use ⁓ AI to generate this random review, which helps us be less prepared. So we get this very random. We didn't like research nine different topics. ⁓ This is as off the cuff as it can be.

Steve Scarfo (06:50)
Yeah, so just to reinforce that, Jeff and I both just watched this movie in the last few days. ⁓ And we do not, as much as this is on screen, this was generated what, 10 minutes ago? So we have no idea what these questions are, I haven't looked at them. this is what it's fun for us. We get to ⁓ see the question, we get to answer truly ⁓ extemporaneously and have some fun.

Jeff (07:01)
about 10 minutes ago.

Stembraniously, nice, yes.

Steve Scarfo (07:18)
Yeah, sorry, I paid for

Jeff (07:19)
Wow.

Steve Scarfo (07:20)
these words. I gotta use them sometime. All right, so I am gonna roll for you first. You get to go. So look, if you guys have followed any of these, I'm gonna use a different dice this time. I usually use my green one. I'm using a brown one. This one's beat up. This is my original D20 from the 80s. Look at how beat to shit that is.

Jeff (07:25)
Ooh, okay. Let's go.

Yeah.

So we used to have to take a crayon and fill in because that's almost impossible to read. Good luck there, Grandpa.

Steve Scarfo (07:44)
Yes, so.

Yeah, yeah. Why do think I got these bad boys? All right, here we go. And you're not wrong. That is an 11. So a successful perception check. The dual role reveal. Elle Fanning plays both Thia and Tessa. ⁓ A double take success. The reveal that Fanning was playing multiple Weyland-Yutani synthetics. One helpful, one antagonistic.

was a highlight allowing her to showcase her range and adding a trust no one layer to the sci-fi plot. What do you think about that?

Jeff (08:20)
Yeah, slight spoiler. OK, so we'll keep it as spoiler free as possible. This one's a bit of a spoiler because it's saying trust no one is part of this question. ⁓ Dek and Thia become kind of friends and companions and Dek, I kind of sees, you know, Thia as part of his clan and, and ⁓

Steve Scarfo (08:26)
I

Jeff (08:50)
⁓ but the, can't get to the chopper without Deks' help. So getting to that, ⁓ getting back to where she can, ⁓ her legs were severed off and so she's got to reattach her legs and then she can meet up back with her sister, robots are synthetic and, ⁓ and what, and what Elle Fanning does really well is the,

has this very joyful, like, I've experienced all these wonderful things. And then, you know, the flip side, even though a synthetic that looks identical played very differently with a very serious synthetic. We have a job to do and we're gonna do it. And it doesn't matter who gets hurt along the way. ⁓ But Thia also recognizes she has a job to do and did take advantage of Dek in getting there. Now, redemption at...

after that so she initially does betray DEC a little bit so we've got that trust no one but then eventually ⁓ she does the right thing and ⁓ live happily ever after maybe i don't know go go watch it

Steve Scarfo (10:04)
I just hear the turtles happy together in my head as you say that. So I'll say, I equate this, this is one of my pet peeves in movies. And it's when one person plays multiple characters, because it can go really, really well, which I think this one did, and it can go really, really bad. As much as I Leonardo DiCaprio, when he played the man in the iron mask, he played both characters, because in that, that

Jeff (10:07)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (10:29)
story there were twins separated at birth and the you know the original king kept his brother in a mask because he didn't want anybody to know it was the same person we know not the same person but look alike and so i could not tell him playing one character or the other there was literally a scene with both of them and i got lost as who was who because i don't he wasn't convincing like ⁓ batman michael keaton playing multiplicity if you've never seen multiplicity by the way

Go see that movie, it's a great movie. But another dual character, right? He completely separates the characters. More, and that one is three. He plays four, actually, four characters. He plays himself in three clones. But he was very convincing. And I say all that to say I think Elle Fanning did a great job because those were two completely different characters. Sorry, I agree with that one 100%.

Jeff (11:04)
or dual care. ⁓

Yeah, keeps going.

Yeah, totally. And I assume

we're led to believe that it's cheaper to create the same synthetic than it is to each synthetic has to look and sound differently.

Steve Scarfo (11:32)
So don't know if you noticed, I didn't see it and I didn't realize it till the final, ⁓ fucking more spoilers, the final battle scene. ⁓ All of the male synthetics all had the same face.

Jeff (11:45)
you know, didn't even, sorry. I'll be more observant next time.

Steve Scarfo (11:47)
Yeah, they all had the same, cause I

was watching it going, wait, think, yeah, that's the, and then they showed like eight of them. I'm like, oh yeah, that's the same guy.

Jeff (11:55)
Okay. I didn't even land. All right, you ready?

Steve Scarfo (12:00)
That's all right.

I'm ready. Let's do it.

Jeff (12:05)
Four, failed Dex That's funny, deck. Failed Dexterity check. The buddy cop humor. The banter between the Android and the alien. Was that a tonal whiplash? Was the humor leaning into straight man comedic chatterbox dynamic? Was it out of place? ⁓ And then, you know, did you find it charming, lighthearted, banter?

Steve Scarfo (12:12)
That's too funny.

Jeff (12:34)
Did you find it annoying and out of place?

Steve Scarfo (12:36)
I, okay, first pass, I liked it. And I think I liked it for the reasons they think it was out of place. I think one of the things that's the best about this movie is it's a departure. It's one of those, and we're gonna talk more about the lineage of the two franchises, because it's a combining of these two franchises in a way we've never seen, right? We've done this before.

with the aliens and we've done it with just the predators. We've had both of them in the same movie, but it's always been at that peak stress level. And this is a travelers movie. is the first part of the film is them getting to where they need to be to overcome what they need to overcome. And so that buddy cop style of improvisation, think it showed the yautja, yatcha, whatever.

⁓ In a way, we've never seen them. In fact, we hear them verbalize and actually speak For the first time you have to have subtitles and for what I understand they actually like they usually do they created a whole language Just for this character for this movie ⁓

Jeff (13:44)
Yeah, because

they're usually just like, chittering.

Steve Scarfo (13:47)
Right,

you just hear that, I can't do the voice or the sound. ⁓ But I liked it, I think it worked because it was a way to explore both of these ⁓ canons, if you will, of the synthetics and the yaucha without all of the overhead and stress of the world is ending at this very moment.

Jeff (14:15)
Yeah, and actually, I disagree with the premise that it's the first time this has happened in the franchise, because actually in 87 Predator, there was some funny lines and some comedic moments. And then especially in Shane Black's The Predator from 2018, that was very funny, I thought. I had Keegan-Michael Keyes in it.

and he's telling these horrible jokes to Thomas Jane's character and torturing him with these jokes.

Steve Scarfo (14:52)
I will say, ⁓ I never saw it and I think until we talked about this the other day, I didn't even know it existed.

Jeff (14:59)
I

know more on that one later as we do the evolution. So, but yeah, so I agree with you. think the banter worked and ⁓ was not out of place with the franchise.

Steve Scarfo (15:16)
So ⁓ again, if you guys like what we're doing, if you like the reviews, ⁓ follow us, like it, subscribe. ⁓ We've been putting these out as also segment separate segments. So you'll see this both as part of the episode and we'll drop a separate one. So, hey, tell your friends, spread the word. But now we're going to move on or are we moving back?

Jeff (15:49)
That was well done. No, that was good. That was good.

Steve Scarfo (15:49)
I have some of the cheesy, those are the cheesiest throwaways. I'm actually

trying to make them cheesier as we go. Like what? What's the weirdest, most cheesy thing I could say?

Jeff (15:57)
Ha

So I know we're talking 1987, the original Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers. Well, Shane Black, he's more known as a writer, director, not so much as an actor, but he was in that.

⁓ Jesse Ventura, yeah. Yeah, he was in that. ⁓ And it was a fantastic movie. ⁓ And I think, you know, when we watched it, we were already huge Arnold fans. At that point, he's already been Conan and Terminator. you know, this just kept building his.

Steve Scarfo (16:21)
Wow, that's right.

Jeff (16:44)
you know, cache as the action star of the eighties, I think. I think he became.

Steve Scarfo (16:49)
Yeah.

What do you think of the... So this is something I was thinking about earlier and it's touching again. So this wasn't a sci-fi movie that they brought out. This was an Arnold vehicle, right? To your point, he was in the heyday of all of his action movies. It was him and his quips. You already did it once. Get to have a Japa, right? This is one of the lines people know, whether they know it's from Alien or not. I mean, Predator or not, that's what it's from, right?

This was supposed to be his movie, but it's become, you know, he's only done the one, right? Predator became a thing on its own. Like, yes, it did great for him, but I think the franchise got more out of 87's Predator than Arnold did. You know what mean? They grew this baby, if you will, from an Arnold.

Jeff (17:24)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah, and I know, you know, we'll just not cover this in evolution because we're touching upon it now, but I did not know that he was supposed to be in Predator 2, but they couldn't afford him because he went on Terminator 2 was even bigger and they could not pay Arnold enough, but I think to the benefit of the franchise, because otherwise I think if it's a Predator 2.

It's even harder to make sequels without him. Right? I I think it did help the franchise that he only did that one. And then also what I think also helped the franchise and live on outside of Arnold is apparently the first version of the script. It was just Arnold and the Predator in the jungle. He didn't have that team that he's like, I don't like this. I want it to be a team.

Steve Scarfo (18:37)
wow.

Jeff (18:40)
I don't want it to be just me. And so I think that was a great suggestion and change. Something else that I read or, know, didn't know at the time, found out later in research for this episode is that Jean-Claude Van Damme was initially the alien in the costume.

Steve Scarfo (18:49)
See you.

wait, he was actually the actor in the costume?

Jeff (19:08)
Yes, but I don't know if you've ever seen ⁓ Tim Robbins, I think you should leave when he's like covered in like costume stuff in this one sequence and he's like, there's too much shit on me, I can't breathe. Well, that's what happened to Jean Claude. He was in this foam heavy thing. He couldn't do any of his action flips and he was like, I'm dying in here.

Steve Scarfo (19:15)
you

He

He wouldn't.

Yeah. His signature stuff.

Yeah

Jeff (19:37)
They canned him

and they and I guess he was also too short. Like, because especially when it was the full crew, like Jesse Ventura is big. Carl Weathers is big. And Jean Claude Van Damme is shorter than is the shortest one of them all. So they got an actor that was seven foot two. He was actually the same actor that played Harry and Harry and the Hendersons. And so that's how we have seven foot tall predators. And ⁓ and instead of being this

Steve Scarfo (19:49)
Arnold, of course,

wow. What a different role.

Jeff (20:07)
Predator that jumps and flips and looks like a praying mantis. They ended up with, they tapped the guy who created Alien to create the costume for the Predator. Because initially it looked like a praying mantis when Jean-Claude went in.

Steve Scarfo (20:21)
So I'll

say I think ⁓ there's a lot going on in that whole paragraph there. ⁓ First of all, I would love to see the predator do one of those Jean Claude with the sidekicks with the feet straight out. That would have been hysterical. And then, I mean, come on, that would have been ridiculous. think there's so much of this that I'm like, thank God it went the way it did. Because I think it would have cheesed the movie out.

Jeff (20:34)
Right, and he couldn't do it. That's what they wanted. That's what they wanted.

Steve Scarfo (20:48)
And listen, you know me, I love my cheesy ⁓ action, especially the karate movies. Gymkata one of my favorite movies of all times, because it's a Mystery Science Theater 3000 special, and it's horrible, but I love it. But I would have hated to see this movie kind of denigrated that way. But let's also talk about the guy who went from being the predator to Harry and Harry and Henniesons. What a great duality of roles for that guy.

Jeff (20:53)
Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Steve Scarfo (21:15)
So there is something that came up in ⁓ my list generation, I'll call it. ⁓ And this is something I never thought about. What do you think of the idea that the original Predator was actually more of a slasher movie? Because it fits more of almost like a Friday the 13th vibe than a traditional sci-fi vibe, right? There's something in the woods that's killing people off one by one. And even we as the audience don't quite know what it is. We have a sense, because I think they show the spaceship crash, right?

So we know it's an alien, but it's a hidden thing. We don't even see it for like the first half of the movie. We just see this, the shimmer and we see the lights, but we don't actually see it till the end.

Jeff (21:56)
Yeah, so it's kind of two different movies. It starts out, they fly in and they're attacking that village and it's kind of just like almost like a war type film and it's very traditional action. And then you're right. It's at that, once again, I gotta put myself in my scaredy cat teenage years. Yeah, I probably was scared of that. I could see that, yeah, that's a fair. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (22:07)
now.

Yeah

Jeff (22:25)
approach and I think that and they were yeah they were terrified in that jungle and and ⁓ it was picking them off one by one and then there's the the hanging corpses because it it skinned the humans up and hung them yeah so that's definitely more slasher scary stuff yeah interesting

Steve Scarfo (22:50)
That's good.

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it before and I'm like, really was.

Jeff (22:53)
Well, cause

alien, right? Alien sci-fi, but it's scary. So yeah, I can see that.

Steve Scarfo (22:58)
And

an alien, actually very similar, right? They're an exploration crew. They show up at this place and they find something they don't know what it is and slowly but surely it kills everybody. Well, almost everybody. But like in true slasher movie form, one person gets away or two. It's not like a, it's a process of elimination movie. Both of those, and we'll talk more about alien in a little bit, but they follow that, they follow that, that, ⁓

that same path. But I do have a problem. We talked about this before, and we're gonna have to take it to court.

Jeff (23:32)
Yes.

everyone... Well, no, I'm just going to set the stage and then you can make your argument, okay? All right. So normally we are doing the geek court about whatever topic. So you would think this geek court would be about Predator. It is not. ⁓ As we were talking about Predator Badlands being number one in streaming, we thought, hey, let's leap on this. But it did require us to pay a premium.

Steve Scarfo (23:43)
no, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start this one. This is my pet peeve. alright, alright,

No.

Jeff (24:12)
for watching Predator Badlands, which created a debate between Steve and I. And I'm like, we got to save this for court. the go ahead.

Steve Scarfo (24:24)
All right. ⁓ I pay for a lot of services. I do. If you've watched the show, if you've listened to our random reviews, I love content. I am an admitted original geek for content. I love watching. So I have every streaming service. I pay for HBO and Apple and Netflix and Paramount Plus and Peacock and Hulu and Disney and all the freaking things that I pay.

because I want their content and they all have something that I enjoy. If you don't have a show I don't, if I like, I will not pay for you. But I do and I believe this was Prime and we have Amazon Prime like half the world or three quarters of the world has an Amazon Prime account and that you get Prime Video. And so when I heard, great, Predator Badlands is on Prime Video, perfect, I pay for that. I can watch this movie.

because I didn't get to see it in the theater. We couldn't get there in time. Like Jeff said, we were gonna do this before and we missed it. Just schedules and challenges and stuff like that. So here we go, let's go. Oh yeah, by the way, you gotta pay $19.99. And I'm like, I already paid you. I paid you. Oh, sorry, yeah, sorry, $29.99. I think that was my fantasy that maybe it would be only twice. So $30 on top of...

Jeff (25:39)
I paid 29.99. Okay.

Steve Scarfo (25:50)
The fact that I already pay for a subscription ⁓ is ⁓ ludicrous to me. Now know Jeff's gonna have some other arguments, ⁓ but here's my thing. If I'm paying you, ⁓ I shouldn't have to pay you twice. That's my, ⁓ it's not about the movie. The movie was great. I'm sure it's worth the value, but I feel like it was a greedy double dip.

Jeff (26:19)
Okay, I'm not conceding defeat, but I will say, try to convince you or anyone else to pay an extra 30 bucks when all of us, we cut the cord thinking we were gonna save money and then ended up paying for all these streaming services. So like, I get what you're saying. However, the point I was trying to make about this being okay to spend that 30 bucks.

Steve Scarfo (26:40)
He

Jeff (26:49)
is that idea that we got early access to something that we can't see in the theater anymore. And we don't want to wait the traditional 90 days or more, which we want to exit the theater and then becomes part of Netflix or Paramount Plus or whatever it's going to be on. So, which we're all paying for. So within that window, we need some early access to this content. And so for 30 bucks, still less than...

If you saw the theater with your family, now I know what just what happened to both of us is we both ended up spending $30, which was a lot more than that ticket. It was just the two of us went to the theater. So we had to spend 60 bucks when we could have been in a theater with popcorn and drinks for that price. We didn't get the popcorn. We didn't get the drinks. I get that. Also,

Steve Scarfo (27:22)
Hmm

Yes.

popcorn drinks, a burger, a pizza.

Jeff (27:45)
costs a lot of money to make these films. So that little extra grab, if it gets me a sequel, then I'll take it. I will pay it for that sequel. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (27:58)
You're

paying the extra entertainment tax.

Jeff (28:00)
Yes, I am. But I'll tell you this, right now, two months from now, when that's on HBO Max, I'm going to be pissed. Because I just paid 30 bucks and just waited two months to have it on HBO Max. God damn it. So ⁓ I thought I was better prepared to make this argument for paying premium. ⁓ I'm still OK with it. But you're...

Steve Scarfo (28:11)
yeah?

You

Jeff (28:30)
You're I actually conceding this one

Steve Scarfo (28:32)
All right, so now that you've admitted that I win, I will concede the access. It's not, so I have to first, let me go back to my own argument, which is by the way, on Prime too I'm not a fan of the ads in the middle of the shows. I watch some stuff on Prime and every once in a while I'll watch a movie and there'll be an ad or like, and I watch their shows and there'll be like an ad, like, wait, I paid for the service.

Jeff (28:58)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (28:59)
Why are you showing me an ad? One of the things I liked about streaming services was no fugging ads. ⁓ Now they're money grabbing. And let's be honest, Jeff Bezos doesn't really need a lot extra money, the multi-trillion-whatever billionaire. ⁓ But now we have ads, now we have to pay for it. And I get what we're paying for isn't the film itself, because like you said, in two months it'll be somewhere. ⁓ Maybe even less than that, not for free, but included.

Jeff (29:04)
They're sneaking in, that's for sure.

Steve Scarfo (29:29)
⁓ But we paid the premium because we wanted it faster. We wanted to see it now. So some of that is on us. Part of that we wanted to make this particular episode. So it's our own problem, our own fault, but I still think it's kind of bullshit. Yes, we did. ⁓ But we talked about it a little bit. So let's go back and talk about.

Jeff (29:47)
Yep, we did this to ourselves, Steve.

Steve Scarfo (29:58)
how this went from Arnold's slasher film, if you want to call it that, and moved on.

Jeff (30:11)
Yeah, so I know we've already talked to Predator and how much we love that first film and what it was. I want to talk a bit about Predator 2. I did not realize it was a box office failure. Did you know that when we in 1990 when it came out? Did you know it was a failure? Right, so.

Steve Scarfo (30:30)
⁓ I figured with

Carl Weathers too, would have been no not Carl Weathers Danny Glover Danny Glover ⁓ Because he was pretty popular at the time with the lethal weapon movies Yeah, that surprises me

Jeff (30:34)
It was Danny Glover. Yeah. ⁓

Yeah,

I was shocked that it was a failure. Cause I love that. But I kind of get it cause we've talked about this in other episodes where you're like, I already saw that thing. this is just the same movie. Just put it in LA. I don't get Arnold. Like, so I just got, I didn't even get Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. I just got Danny Glover.

Steve Scarfo (31:06)
Did you imagine lethal weapon predator lethal lethal predator weapon? I

don't know.

Jeff (31:12)
Like I just get Danny Glover.

Steve Scarfo (31:13)
You know why

Jeff? They fuck you with the chopper Jeff, that's why. They fuck you with the chopper. Sorry.

Jeff (31:19)
but I thought it was,

I liked it. so, ⁓ but that's apparently why we did not get another Predator movie without being attached to Alien ⁓ until 2010. It took until 2010 ⁓ for us to get Predators, which is a great, great movie. and I know we got two Alien versus Predator shows, but.

Yeah, so I thought, as far as like that evolution and then I didn't buy it. I was very into comic books, everyone, but comic books back in late 80s, early 90s, ⁓ there were like five different X-Men comic books, X-Factor, five different Spider-Mans, two different Avengers, three different Bat-Mans, ⁓ Weapon X, Wolverine, like...

Steve Scarfo (31:47)
in between there.

Three Dark Nights Batman, yeah.

Hmm

Jeff (32:16)
I was shelling off enough cash for my Marvel comics and a few DC titles and I couldn't do Dark Horse. Dark Horse did Alien versus Predator, which is why I found out that when ⁓ Danny Glover's character is at the end of the movie and he's in the ship and he killed the Predator he's looking around, there's an alien skull on the wall. So there's like these different skulls on the wall. alien, I remember.

Steve Scarfo (32:22)
you

Jeff (32:46)
I remember seeing like, that's cool. So I thought it was great.

Steve Scarfo (32:48)
Yeah, so I

didn't realize that the crossover started then in 1990, that they acknowledge the existence of the other that far back. I thought the first one was 2004 as Alien vs. Predator, but that's 14 years. No. No. Oh yeah, 1990, 14 years before.

Jeff (33:06)
Yeah. Yeah, it was because there's it was 1990. Yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (33:13)
And it's funny, I noticed it in Badlands, because they kind of have a similar, you know, all the alien ships, all the Yautja ships have trophies on the walls. And I think, I don't know if I've seen it in other ones, but I did necessarily, I did definitely see it here and I noticed it that on the back wall in the original ship before the whole story really kicks off, there's like a T-Rex skull on his back wall, right? So that shows how far back in our time that they have been.

Jeff (33:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, yep.

Steve Scarfo (33:41)
you know, maybe it was supposed to be something else, it pretty much looked like a T-Rex skull to

Jeff (33:45)
Right, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. it's, so, yeah, and then, anything else on Predator 2 before we move on?

Steve Scarfo (33:53)
I have an overarching question. I'll wait till we get through the list, right? Because ⁓ you said something else too. I forgot, maybe it'll come back to me. Yeah, just some different ways of looking at how these two things merged.

Jeff (34:07)
Yeah, so I thought when we finally got Predator back and Alien vs Predator and then Alien vs Predator Requiem was, ⁓ they seem more like Alien movies than Predator movies. ⁓ I know that's probably not the way to think about it, but it did seem that way to me. What did you think? It was more...

Steve Scarfo (34:29)
you

For the first one or the second one? I love the first one. I love the first one because I think because of the hype and the fact that I liked both franchises. I liked Aliens, I liked Aliens, I liked all of them. So the idea that they were in the same universe. And then I think the first movie for the Alien vs. Predator actually starts out, it's almost like an exploration movie, almost like a...

Jeff (34:34)
Either, yeah. Okay.

Steve Scarfo (35:01)
a national treasure or one of like a Dan Brown movie because they're searching for this ancient temple buried deep in the ice and it starts like they're like, it's almost like an Indiana Jones almost like this has this feel of, hey, we're looking for these artifacts, we're looking for this lost city. And it just so happens to be the hunting ground of this battle between the Yautja and the ⁓ aliens that.

apparently has taken place many times in the past, right? This is sort of what the implication is because this is their traditional place to meet and fight and only one walks away. So it starts off as a different tone and does that switch into this, you know, it's almost like a Godzilla versus Mothra situation on a smaller scale, right? They're tinier physically, but so I loved that. I honestly don't remember a lot about Requiem. ⁓ I know I saw it, but I don't remember a lot about it.

Jeff (35:33)
Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah, so I

think, yeah, now that, and it's funny, so I'm thinking more Requiem is landing, because that's more, that is more of it like an Aliens than Predator. But you're right, the first one was pretty balanced. Yeah, we had a lot of the mythology with the Yacha and its history on Earth and why they're here and what they've been doing and with these alien eggs and being a hunting ground. Yeah, and then the, then.

Steve Scarfo (36:05)
you

Jeff (36:27)
it does the requiem picks up where that one left off where the this the one names they named scar because that scar the predator with the scar he was implanted with the embryo and it crashes back on earth in Colorado and all these alien embryos bake these facehuggers just go all over the place they're taking over things so it's very very very and then a predator that's

their nickname Wolf comes down to take care of things. But it's just a predator versus a ton of aliens. And then in the end, the US Army or military, they nuke the place like a nuclear bomb in Colorado.

Steve Scarfo (37:04)
Right.

Good old-fashioned ⁓ 80s movie

90s movie ⁓ army solution. Let's just nuke it We can't kill it. Let's just nuke the whole thing. There's people there now nuke them So Yes, so you have two questions for you one and I remembered ⁓ Do you think the crossover?

Jeff (37:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Seems problematic, but okay.

Steve Scarfo (37:40)
helped both hurt one or hurt both of the franchises because as I'm looking through the timeline um hold on let me switch over to the other one alien was first then predator almost 10 years later aliens comes out uh sorry a year before aliens comes out 86 predator 87 predator 290 alien 392 so it seems like they're kind of leapfrogging

Alien Resurrection and then in 04, so one, two, three, four, five, six movies before the crossover. And one, two, I think it's four alien movies, two predator movies, then this crossover.

Jeff (38:17)
It's because Ridley

Scott did not thought this was like Frankenstein versus werewolf meets the werewolf like a wolf man ⁓ and thought it was campy and dumb. So he was totally against this whole crossover. So it wasn't until he had kind of tapped out a little bit that they even brought that up.

Steve Scarfo (38:27)
Yeah.

So you think they wanted to do that before, but he...

Jeff (38:44)
They did. Yeah,

because of the success of the comic book. Yeah, they were trying.

Steve Scarfo (38:47)
I

I Do I like I obviously I said before I like the crossover. I like crossovers of any kind I've said that before ⁓

Jeff (38:58)
I do like they

kept going with it, like for that synthetic to be in Predator Badlands from the same company that's in Aliens. Like, I think that's great.

Steve Scarfo (39:09)
Well, in this shared mythos of both, it's like, ⁓ Spider-Man, Brand New Day. Is that the one with all three of them, Brand New Day? Like, that to me is one of the most perfect Marvels, because Spider-Man was always my favorite character growing up. So to see this merging of three actually actors, I liked all three of them.

Jeff (39:20)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm.

Yeah

Steve Scarfo (39:36)
You know, they all had their ups and downs, but I like all three of those people doing that part and to see them in that merge was like amazing. And then they had the wherewithal to do a good job. So when I see these two franchises that I like merge and have it be what I consider a successful merge, ⁓ I think it's just fantastic that they can take ⁓ and little things like ⁓ the alien skull on the back. And then there was the dinosaur skull and then

The whole crossover was based on the fact that this has been happening on Earth forever. This is not new. This is something that's been going on probably since the dinosaurs. ⁓

Jeff (40:11)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and then I loved Predators. That cast was awesome too. Adrian Brody, Laurence Fishburne's in there. I didn't know he was in it. when, you know, ⁓ for those who are unfamiliar with it, the concept is that the Predators this time have shipped in top Predators from different planets and.

⁓ It just happens that this crew of prey that they've gotten that are competitive have come from Earth. so we've got like, Adrian Brody is like this, know, tough mercenary, US mercenary. Then they've got Yakuza, they've got... ⁓

You know, Danny Trejo is a Mexican soldier or drug lord or whatever. They've got Walton Goggins as the FBI's number one. ⁓ He's in a prisoner, he's armed with a shank. Like that's all he's got, is a shank. Topher Grace, like is this like question mark? He's there, turns out he's a serial killer and that's why he's there. And... ⁓

Steve Scarfo (41:10)
I'll be drug lord, yeah.

Jeff (41:32)
And you don't see Laurence Fishburne, but he was he had been from a previous group from Earth that had been brought in and he just happened to be a survivor. And he see you meet him. And then it's it's really it's really well done. I thought that was as a great cast and and I highly recommend it.

Steve Scarfo (41:55)
Yeah, I'll be honest. I remember seeing it. I don't remember that much. So I'm glad that you had that one. ⁓ We talked a little bit about the predator, which is coming up. Yeah, we'll come up. We'll come back to that one. But a couple years ago, now this was a who I saw it on Hulu as part of the service didn't have to pay extra. ⁓ I think they actually made it specifically for Hulu and it was prey.

Jeff (42:07)
But I want to talk about that during my epic fail, so.

Steve Scarfo (42:23)
And I think that really did wonders for the ⁓ franchise too, because again, it reframes what we're looking at. It's more of a historical perspective from our perspective. It's a Comanche, and it's a female warrior who ends up going toe to toe with this Yautja. Which by the way, I don't think I knew that name. We've been using it, I've done this joke before with the Princess Bride, so I won't do the whole joke again, but.

It's one of those I didn't know the word until I watched Predator Badlands. Like I didn't know that was what they were called. Kaiju, yeah. Yeah, well, they're just starting to throw out Yautja like it's just been a thing. Like, ⁓ okay, I didn't know that. ⁓ And then obviously we've been talking Predator Badlands. ⁓

Jeff (42:55)
⁓ it's like, ⁓ kaju. Like, everyone's using that word kaju.

Exactly.

But I

wanna say another thing I like about Prey that I didn't know until we were doing all this research that could tie things together. ⁓ Danny Glover, as his trophy for beating the Partitor ⁓ from like the ambassadors or ⁓ they throw him that flimlock pistol that then is the one that's used in, ⁓ it's used in Prey.

The pistol she gets from the fur trader, the French fur trader, is that same pistol that Danny Glover gets as a trophy for defeating a predator. And then there's an animated anthology called Predator Killers that came out after Prey, which a lot of people don't know about when direct streaming. It's also very good. Same director and writer of Prey. So if you like Prey, I'd recommend seeing it. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (43:52)
I didn't know that.

Jeff (44:08)
that flintlock pistol yet makes yet another appearance. So just a funny little thing.

Steve Scarfo (44:13)
That's cool.

Yeah, I just, I know we got to jump over to hits and fail or the message first, I suppose. ⁓ But just to tie it all up, I don't think Predator Badlands happens without, ⁓ not as certainly in the same way, right? I was talking about the merging, but Predator Badlands is again, it's to me a perfect crossover merge, right? We have to your.

And again, we talked about it last week with zombies and where they use which words they never called a robot. It's always this or an Android. It's always a synthetic. ⁓ But we have the synthetics and we have the Yutja And then we have these new creatures that we meet on this world where the battles take place. But ⁓ whether you write wrong or indifferent, like the way we got here, the final not final product, the most recent product, I think is just a smash hit. I really, really enjoyed it on.

on multiple levels because it has all the action you want it to have, it shows some other stuff that we haven't seen before.

Jeff (45:20)
Every now and again, we use this not to talk to a new generation, not talk to any generation. I'm talking directly to the studios, because I know you're watching. Now look, I defended you in the price I paid of 30 bucks to watch this. But I want to just think about this. What if you charge us 10 bucks for that early access? More people would do it, and we wouldn't feel as bad about it. It wouldn't hurt as much. Like 10 bucks, like...

Steve Scarfo (45:21)
You ready?

Listen.

Jeff (45:49)
cares? That's the price of an extra value meal at McDonald's. So make it 10 bucks. You'll probably make more money because more people will do it. They're like, I don't want to wait 90 days. It's only 10 bucks? Sure. That's my message.

Steve Scarfo (45:54)
That's, it's less than that.

Yeah.

Dude, you heard my court. I'm gonna jump right on the piggyback of that one. I tend to do that a lot, because you make some good points there. Like, what the hell? You know, it's a business model that you have to choose. you know, smaller price gets bigger volume. You know, I would rather sell to 100 people at 10 bucks than 10 people at 100 bucks. Because, yep, you might make around the same amount of money.

but you're only gonna service a handful of people versus a larger group and that larger group will do what we're doing and spread the word. And you may or may not make more or less or about the same, but you'll get a ⁓ larger group of people saying, hey, look what Prime did. They gave it to me for 10 bucks. And to your point, I would have paid 10 bucks. We wouldn't have had a geek court today. So I wanna say thank you to them.

for charging me the 30 bucks and pissing me off enough to go, nope, I don't want to do this anymore.

Jeff (47:03)
Further evidence that what we're saying is true, at least for us. And let us know in comments if you agree. Warm Bodies, I wanted to rewatch it with a zombie episode. It cost me five bucks and I own the movie now. I wanted to rewatch Night of the Comet. was not an option on any streaming service. I had to pay 20 bucks. Guess what I didn't do? I didn't pay 20 bucks for Night of the Comet from 1984.

Steve Scarfo (47:17)
Yeah, perfect.

Yes.

That movie wasn't worth 20 bucks when it came out.

Jeff (47:34)
Come on now.

Steve Scarfo (47:35)
Listen, it

was a fun movie, but if I you know at the time movies were like six dollars I wasn't paying 20 bucks

Jeff (47:40)
That's true.

Steve Scarfo (47:48)
Alright, what do you got?

Jeff (47:51)
Well, mine's an epic fail, so if you have a hit, we usually start with those.

Steve Scarfo (47:55)
⁓ I mean, I don't think it's any ⁓ surprise. Predator Badlands, a huge hit for me. ⁓ I guess I really have two. The final product, as I called it before, but now I know it's not final, of Badlands was great. ⁓ I love the bringing together in a different way. We've only seen these two worlds truly come together twice and it's been in fun, huge, campy battles.

But we now get to see kind of behind the scenes a little bit of both of these worlds now one thing we didn't talk about was alien earth, which is another streaming sir a streaming show that just But it delves into the alien side, but you see the synthetics and you see the aliens and it's definitely an alien thing There's no predator involved with that. But predator badlands is there and it is a fantastic movie ⁓ I'll tell you this it's

Jeff (48:36)
because it's alien.

Steve Scarfo (48:53)
as much as I hated Paying it was it worth the money so if you want to watch it now I mean you could wait till it streams for free but you could watch it now for the 30 bucks and you would get your money's worth I think it was a great movie but the other just the idea of the combining of these two things is a hit by itself so the movie itself is great and I think these two franchises have

I think I said it last, know, rising tides lift all boats. I think this is another situation where both franchises are benefiting from the other. And ⁓ the question you can answer after that kind of fits into this thought is, does the history of these two canons and the way they merge, ⁓ how did I say it? Does it help or hurt the movies that come after it? And I know what I think, but why don't you?

You can answer that first or go right to your fail.

Jeff (49:52)
So first I want to say, double down on Badlands, it's awesome, see it, and it really gives me hope that we're going to see a true sequel to one of these great movies. understand all of them are technically sequels because there's been no reboots. That they all exist in the same universe. Predator one, two, Predators, The Predator, Prey, none of those are reboots. So they're all technically sequels, but Predators clearly was supposed to have a sequel with those same characters.

not going to happen, that it was filmed in 2010, it's not going to happen. 2018 was not a success at the box office. Clearly you're supposed to have a sequel. I don't see it happening. And then, but this one, I think we're finally going to get the same characters, we're going to see them again in another follow up. And I think that these two universes working synergistically with aliens

is in Predator. Yeah, absolutely. I think it helps the franchises. It does not hurt.

Steve Scarfo (50:57)
So hit us with your fail.

Jeff (50:59)
Okay, my epic fail is for a movie I actually really enjoyed. The Predator from 2018. And in preparation for this episode, I wanted to get as immersed in the Predator universe as possible. And I almost missed that this movie. I missed it in 2018. Did not know it came out. Did not know it came out. Missed it entirely. Missed any marketing that was done for it whatsoever. We're clearly fans of this franchise. We should have been aware.

Steve Scarfo (51:21)
Yeah, me either.

Jeff (51:29)
that this movie even came out. It came on and I'm like, well, maybe another big hit came out that was similar. It came out in September, which is exactly what I would ask of a movie to do. Don't try to compete in June and July with the big blockbusters. Just come out in like September. Perfect time. Still did not catch it at all. I felt bad. Then I said to Steve, you know, what about The Predator?

Steve Scarfo (51:30)
Yes.

Yeah.

Jeff (51:57)
And that's my epic fail. He's like, what are you talking about? The 87th Predator? No, 2018. And so he did not know. And I asked another Gen X friend. I said, what did you think of the Predator in 2018? What are you talking about? No idea. So my epic fail for this movie is A, the marketing is part of it. And I think a big part of it is the title. Because if I told you...

Steve Scarfo (52:06)
Wish.

Jeff (52:24)
that the Predator was a box office fail, you would say, what are you talking about? That was a huge hit in Creative in Franchise. No, the Predator was a box office fail. What do you, like, you mean Predator? So, and ⁓ Shane Black, who was in the original Predator, and there was a writer's strike at the time, and this is why I think he was cast as an actor in that, because he could do rewrites.

Steve Scarfo (52:37)
Predator was good. The Predator.

Jeff (52:53)
And the original title of Predator was Hunter. And it's because he's not a, these are not predators. Predators kill for survival. These are hunters with big trophies. That's what they want. They don't need this. They don't need to do this. They're doing it for the fun. And so Hunter was the more accurate title. think Shane Black makes this joke a number of times in the film. And that should have been part of the title.

Steve Scarfo (53:11)
Not for food.

Jeff (53:23)
And then it would have been a good callback to the original title of the Predator and would have been the Predator rogue hunter because both of the Predators in that film have gone rogue. There's not supposed to be an 11 foot tall Predator and that's not supposed to exist. And then the Predator that we first encounter on Earth is bringing alien tech, Predator tech to the humans and not supposed to be doing that.

So this was, this was a huge marketing mistake, titling mistake, but man, what a fun movie. If you loved the 1987 Predator, Shane Black, who did lethal weapon, he wrote that, he wrote Iron Man 3, great, he mixes humor and action so well. And he does a great job in this one. It's a fun movie, doesn't take itself too seriously.

And it's a great homage to the 87 Predator movie.

Steve Scarfo (54:26)
I definitely, it's funny too, because I had no clue, but I, once again, I gotta go back and watch it. ⁓ I will say, I found out an interesting fact, because you mentioned that one of the rogue hunters there was bringing the tech to Earth and they weren't supposed to do that. ⁓ In my search for nuggets, I found that the reason why the aliens do a nuke if they're gonna die, like that whole thing they're gonna blow up, they're gonna nuke themselves,

And it was widely thought that that was their sort of fuck you. You can't kill me, I'm gonna kill myself and I'm going to take myself out. But it wasn't, it was more of a they didn't want their technology to be reverse engineered. So the whole point behind the nuking of it was, not only did they not want it getting out, but they went so far as to I'd rather kill myself than give you the opportunity to have my tech. Which is a thing and we didn't mention about Predator Badlands, it's very low tech.

Jeff (55:07)
Mmm.

Steve Scarfo (55:25)
⁓ Which is cool. Which I liked. But ⁓ we are just about at our time and this is what happens. This is what happens. The last few of these we've done. And please, I'll say it again, like, subscribe, join us. ⁓ We love talking about this stuff and I didn't even realize how far into time we were because I was just having fun talking about it. ⁓ So ⁓ please join us.

Jeff (55:33)
We do, we're good, we're good.

Steve Scarfo (55:55)
Tell your friends. ⁓ And, ⁓ you know, if you've been keeping track, we've probably told you about 30 movies in the past three weeks that we think you should go back. Going back to Hudson Hawk and Warm Bodies and now half the Predator Alien franchise if you've never seen it. ⁓ My goodness, go watch some good content. Try not to pay the extra 30, but go watch it.

Jeff (56:23)
All right, OGs, we'll catch you next time.

01:31 Random Review: Predator Badlands
15:55 Geek Flashback
23:48 Geek Court: Streaming Costs and Value
30:17 Geek Evolution
34:07 Crossover Dynamics: Alien vs. Predator
42:38 Prey: A New Perspective on Predator
45:29 Geek Rant
47:57 Critical Hits & Epic Fails