Disney’s Predator: Badlands plays less like a traditional Predator story and more like a stealth indoctrination film, the same way Sony’s 28 Years Later flipped its own narrative into a “find a new family” message.
The signs are hard to ignore once you look closely.
A Heavy Feminist Messaging Pattern
One of the clearest criticisms is the way Badlands handles its characters. Every male character is portrayed as awful, disposable, or outright villainous — and ALL of them die sans the main character.
Even Dek, our supposed “warrior,” is introduced as a deformed runt rejected by his clan. He only survives because the older brother saves him early on.
From that point forward, the film establishes a new dynamic: Dek finds purpose and emotional strength not from his own culture, but from an all-female foster family that “rescues” him emotionally and literally.
Who saves Dek next? The handicapped female synth. Next? Bud the Baby Yoda wannabe, another female. Next? Bud’s mom. Who raises the trophy at the end? Bud.
Fans who are enjoying the fight scenes may not notice how consistent this pattern is, but once you map it out, the messaging becomes obvious.
The Pattern in Badlands
This is the structure that has raised eyebrows:
- Dek’s biological family: all male, all hate him, all want him dead.
- Dek’s new family: all women.
- “Bud,” the cute creature they adopt? Female.
- Bud’s parent? A single mother.
- The synths? Female-coded and answering to “Mother.”
- Male synths? Cannon fodder.
- Does Dek take over the clan? Or does he rejoin his foster mom family?
- The final parental figure who returns? His mom. No father. No reconciliation.
As I said in my review: This is Disney’s classic “your family isn’t any good — find a new one” formula.
Dek remains a badass in moments, but the story structure is undeniably ideological. Strength and leadership come from women. Men, even alien men, are tyrants, bullies, cheaters, or failures. Every single one of them.
The movie bends over backwards to make Dek dependent on a new matriarchal support system.
This Is the Same Playbook as 28 Years Later
If this sounds familiar, it’s because 28 Years Later used the same beats:
- The movie starts with a traditional family structure with the dad as the clear leader.
- Plot twist: he’s suddenly painted as a cheater.
- The son abandons the father and sides with the mother.
- The mother befriends the infected, mirroring how Dek befriends what he was sent to hunt.
- The son then rejects his family outright and joins a new, cult-like group — just like Dek finding a new “chosen family” of women.
Both films take a male-centered survival story and reframe it around distrust of men, collapse of traditional family, and the replacement of the father figure with an alternate “found family” that aligns with modern DEI-era feminist storytelling.
You can’t have a traditional coming-of-age story where a boy proves himself anymore. Instead of a rite-of-passage shaped by fathers or mentors, the guidance must come from women. That’s Predator: Badlands. That’s 28 Years Later.
Fans Fell for the Action — But Missed the Message
Many viewers are walking out of Badlands excited about the fight scenes, creature designs, and callbacks — and that’s exactly how these movies slide their messaging in.
But with the male characters systematically wiped out, the narrative pushed toward an ALL-female-centric support system, and the male hero framed as weak until embraced by that system, the ideological goal is clear.
This isn’t an accident. This is the formula. They did it on purpose. The original Predator films were brutal, grim, and masculine. Not anymore.
And Badlands follows it beat-for-beat.
If Prey cracked the door open, Badlands walks through it proudly.
