When the Predator: Badlands trailer landed, one detail set the internet alight – a brief shot of Elle Fanning’s incoming android character Thia. Specifically, a quick flicker in her eyeball, revealing that she’s actually a synthetic. And not any synthetic – a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, the evil robo-bastard corporation from the Alien movies. It teased a potential Alien Vs. Predator rematch, for the first time since 2007’s Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem.
As exciting as the possibility of a full-on Xenomorph-Yautja rematch might be, it seems fans might be getting a little ahead of themselves. As Trachtenberg tells Empire, this is a slow-burn crossover. “There’s no Xenomorph in this movie,” he confirms of Badlands. “But to me, that makes it more exciting. We’re not involving [the Alien franchise] just to smush the action figures together. There are great, organic story reasons for Weyland-Yutani to be in this film.”
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Whatever her connection to the wider Alien mythology, Thia (or, at least, her top half, since she’s been sliced in two on the alien planet of Genna) is a synth unlike any other. “Thia has been on Genna a while, seeing things she wouldn’t normally see,” teases Fanning. “She’s absorbing all this new information, and she’s broken too, so she’s become very different from the other synths.” Sounds like she could do with some care from Mother.