Movies
‘Predator: Badlands’ Will Introduce Fully Developed Yautja Language
Since 1987’s Predator, we’ve only seen and heard glimpses of the complex Yautja language as brief teases of their higher intelligence. That’s changing with Predator: Badlands; the newest entry will introduce the fully developed Yautja language.
Predator: Badlands introduces an unlikely Yaujta warrior in Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), an underdog who forges an unorthodox alliance with Weyland-Yutani synth Thia (Elle Fanning) in his quest to hunt the most dangerous game. It’s a scenario that demands communication, despite a clear language barrier.
That proved to be one of the more challenging aspects of telling Dek’s story.
Producer Ben Rosenblatt explained to Bloody Disgusting during our visit to the Predator: Badlands set, “We went through a lot of different versions of what that might be, and what we’ve done here is hire someone to actually create the language of Yautja. That guy’s name is Britton Watkins, and he came to us through a guy named Paul Frommer, who created Na’vi for Avatar.”
“It’s been really interesting on this one in particular, because pretty much most of what has been invented in the movies for sure has just been based on necessity, “Rosenblatt continued. “That’s both for the written language and for anything vocalized. Britton took as much as possible, took everything that had come before, and said, ‘Okay, let me try to synthesize this into a working language.’ It is not a task I would have been able to do, but I am so happy he exists and that he did it. We have Dek speaking in Yautja, subtitled, and we have Thia, Tessa, and the other synths speaking in English. The device that we’re using and you’ll see in the film is a universal translator, and basically it means that you hear your own language, whoever’s speaking it. So when she’s speaking to him, he’s hearing Yautja. When he’s speaking to her, she’s able to understand it in English.”
Props master Matt Cornelius revealed that Watkins’ work extended to the Yautja weaponry and translating its signature glyphs.
For example, “We gave him [info] for the cryo grenade, and then he would give them the design, and then he would say, ‘All right, what does it do?’ Then he would come up with the runes, so he would actually tell us what to put on it. He would do all the translation. There’s a family crest that we see on a lot of these. But then all these other runes, look, I couldn’t tell you exactly what they mean, but they’re things like, ’60 meters range.’ ‘Activate before throwing.‘ ‘Stand well back.‘ ‘Don’t get in the way of this.'”
Prepare to get fully immersed in Yautja culture when Predator: Badlands releases in theaters on November 7, 2025, in IMAX, Dolby Cinema, RealD 3D, Cinemark XD, 4DX, ScreenX, and premium screens everywhere.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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