Every Predator Movie Ranked - Empire Online

Invisible(-ish). Invincible(-ish). Intent on ripping out your spine. For decades, the Predator (aka the Yautja) has been dishing out damage on our screens – a tooled-up amphibian hunter who’s in it for the thrill of the chase, ready to add to its collection of intergalactic trophies. Right back from its introduction in 1987, the Predator has been an all-timer movie monster, just as well-adapted to serving up scares as causing carnage. Through the years, it’s fought human soldiers, alien Xenomorphs, gang members and more – and now, after a run of stellar recent entries, the series is in the rudest health it ever has been.

Team Empire gathered to rank the best Predator movies – including the Alien Vs Predator crossovers – boasting big hits, some major misses, and all kinds of gory kills in between. Even if you ain’t got time to bleed, make sure you have time to read:

9) Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

Director: The Brothers StrauseStarring: Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis

Picking up from the cliffhanger of the first AvP (see below), Requiem crashes the hybrid ‘Predalien’ on Earth and sets it to work butchering small-town American schoolkids and their parents. Deservedly viewed as the nadir of both franchises, it’s an almost entirely dismal experience that’s often so dark you can barely see what’s happening. The idea of taking Giger’s Xenomorph and simply putting it through the motions of an Earth-bound, present day slasher movie shows a wretched lack of imagination. And yet… if you squint (and you have to), Requiem is at the very least attempting something surprising – long before Badlands, this film delivered a Predator protagonist. Still, Badlands’ existence now makes Requiem even less worth watching.

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8) Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Director: Paul W. S. AndersonStarring: Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Colin Salmon

It should have been a dream cinematic deathmatch. An Easter Egg in Predator 2 (a Xenomorph skull seen in the Predator’s trophy collection) led to an Alien Versus Predator comic book run – eventually spawning a big-screen clash. Despite moments of trashy, pulpy fun, the result is a film not really befitting either of Hollywood’s scariest creatures – a murky, silly noisefest with paper-thin plasma-fodder characters, dumb dialogue (“This is like finding Moses’ DVD collection!”), and endless exposition to establish exactly why these species have intergalactic beef. There are cool ideas (Aliens star Lance Henriksen returns, not as android Bishop but as Charles ‘Bishop’ Weyland) and director Paul WS Anderson brings some of Event Horizon’s gothic flair, but it misses where it really counts: the Alien vs Predator showdown just isn’t very good.

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7) The Predator (2018)

Director: Shane BlackStarring: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Jacob Tremblay, Trevante Rhodes

In theory, Shane Black directing a Predator movie was a perfect marriage. Somewhere, though, it all went wrong. While there are flashes of Black’s signature wit, the ‘Predator in the suburbs’ premise feels fresh, and the upgraded mega-Predator is cool, The Predator ends up mostly a mess. With choppy and incoherent storytelling (you barely register when major players are bumped off), an unbalanced tone, unlikeable characters, and a questionable approach to autism and PTSD, the radar on this one went seriously awry. Over-reliant on nods to the past and bearing all the hallmarks of studio interference, an apparent effort to relaunch the franchise instead resulted in it stalling once more.

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6) Predator 2 (1990)

Director: Stephen HopkinsStarring: Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Ruben Blades, Bill Paxton

Predator’s first sequel swaps the jungle for the city – the ‘concrete jungle’, if you like – but manages to stay a step above pedestrian. If the narrative trajectory is unavoidably similar to a rather good Dark Horse comics series, there’s mileage in setting a sequel somewhere markedly different. Once again attracted by heat (this time a sweltering LA beset by gang violence and some wonky Jamaican voodoo) this Predator takes on a cast that’s an interesting roll-call of Lethal Weapon, Aliens, Die Hard and Arnie-movie alumni – Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Steve Kahan, Bill Paxton, Robert Davi, Maria Conchita Alonso – all solidly directed by ‘90s franchise go-to Stephen Hopkins. There’s some great action, even if the Predator itself occasionally approaches Frank Drebin levels of haplessness.

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5) Predators (2010)

Director: Nimród AntalStarring: Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Walton Goggins, Laurence Fishburne

The largely underrated Predators – co-written and produced by Robert Rodriguez – neatly inverts the original’s premise. It too is set in a sweltering jungle where humans are picked off by the invisible hunter. Except, this time they’ve all been plucked from Earth and dropped (quite literally, the film beginning in mid-air) onto the Predator home-world. It gets a bit carried away with the world-building, but Predators brings plenty of new ideas: different Yautja tribes, in-fighting among the species, and a vast booby-trapped forest. While its characters aren’t the most memorable (Adrien Brody, cast against type as the central hero, doesn’t really work), there’s a dual meaning to the title, since many of them are revealed as terrible people. A solid expansion of the series, but one that didn’t set the box office alight.

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4) Predator: Killer Of Killers (2025)

Director: Dan TrachtenbergStarring: Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Rick Gonzalez, Michael Biehn

Make no mistake: just because Dan Trachtenberg’s second Predator film is animated, it is far from watered down or family-friendly. In fact, it might be the most brutal of the bunch, spraying blood (both green and red) across the screen with an anthology of time-hopping stories. Across four acts, we see Yautja hunting Vikings in Scandinavia in the year 841, Ninjas in Japan in 1609, and an American fighter pilot in 1942, before bringing all three chapters together thrillingly. Each segment is action-packed, but filled with character beats too – Killer Of Killers is wildly impressive for compressing so much into a 90-minute runtime, running rampant with Predator mythology and displaying real creativity with the lore thanks to the boundless opportunities of animation. In short: it’s cool as hell.

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3) Predator: Badlands (2025)

Director: Dan TrachtenbergStarring: Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Elle Fanning, Elle Fanning

How’s this for something new? Predator films have always been about hunters and the hunted; just, this time, the Yautja itself could easily be prey. Following Prey and Killer Of Killers, Trachtenberg flips the script yet again – casting maligned Predator runt Dek as his lead, sending him to the ‘death planet’ of Genna, and seeing if he can fell the ‘un-killable Kallisk’ to prove his worth, all aided by the top half of a Weyland-Yutani synth (an ebullient Elle Fanning). This is Predator as epic ‘80s fantasy, delivering a planet’s worth of vicious creatures and a buddy-comedy dynamic, all while knitting together the Alien and Predator universes with a light touch. Despite its PG-13 rating, Trachtenberg still unleashes in the action department – since there isn’t a single human character (all are either extra-terrestrial or synthetic), he gets away with all kinds of murder. A total blast, and a Predator film truly like no other.

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2) Prey (2022)

Director: Dan TrachtenbergStarring: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro

It took several decades, but finally someone figured out how to make a Predator movie that comes close to the original. The real masterstroke was not looking forward but back, to the 1800s and the Native American Comanche nation, offering a gloriously stripped-back set-up: more so than any film in the franchise, this is a film about predators and prey, hunter and hunted. Amber Midthunder’s ferocious Naru is a Comanche woman who wants to be a hunter, and isn’t taken seriously by the men in her community. Nor is she taken seriously by the Predator, who literally can’t see her since it doesn’t perceive her as a threat. But a threat she most certainly is (especially with her tomahawk-on-a-rope), and seeing her level up to take it on is thrilling stuff. With strong thematic underpinnings about colonialism, an earthy elemental feel, and tense, stylish filmmaking, this one’s bang on target.

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1) Predator (1987)

Director: John McTiernanStarring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo

Recent years have finally given it some competition – but the original Predator is still the best. It’s the most ridiculously macho movie ever made, with rippling biceps galore, but also dismantles that brute-force masculinity – quite literally, since the “ugly motherfucker” of the title turns almost the entire human cast to mincemeat. Director John McTiernan builds the atmosphere beautifully – you can feel the sweltering heat of the jungle – taking his sweet time before revealing the dreadlocked alien hunter in all its glory. It’s a formidable foe – so much so that even peak-powers Arnie is barely a match for it, his Special Forces soldier Dutch forced to outsmart the beast rather than overpower it. Throw in a legendary supporting cast, some of the most quotable dialogue of all time (“Get to da choppah!”), and you have a sci-fi action masterpiece.

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