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.
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