“I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’ve argued before that all of our best stories are always ultimately rooted in the Gospel. The connections aren’t always obvious, but if you look and think a bit, you’ll find them. They’re all over the place. I recently watched the latest offering from the Predator Universe, Predator: Badlands, and was pretty impressed with just how many Gospel touch points there were. Let’s talk about what made this a much better film than I expected it to be. And just to be fair, I’ll go ahead and issue a spoiler alert.

I had not planned on watching this movie. I’ve seen some of the early Predator movies, but while they were fun, they weren’t ever really my cup of tea. The same goes for the Alien franchise that is part of the same cinematic universe. When I first saw the early teasers and posters for this one, my mind naturally went to the Badlands in South Dakota. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how a Predator movie set in that kind of environment was going to work and just tuned it out.

Then I watched a spoof review from a YouTube series called Honest Trailers from Screen Junkies, and changed my mind. The whole point of the series is to make fun of movies. They go through and point out all the various ridiculous elements of the plot and characters. It’s usually pretty funny. Every now and then, though, they’re relatively kind to a movie because it’s actually pretty good. Predator: Badlands got the kid-gloves treatment, so I thought I would give it a try. I was not disappointed.

The Yautja are a race of hunters. That’s what they do. Theirs is a brutal, violent tribe. Those who are strong – whose strength is demonstrated by their hunting prowess – are celebrated and become leaders of their race. Those who are weak are culled for the sake of preserving the strength of the rest. It is an aggressively Darwinian society. Dek, the main character and Predator who is the focus of the film, is weak.

The movie opens with his father’s arrival to make sure that his brother, Kwei, finished the job of killing him so that he wasn’t a drag on the tribe any longer. The bond between the brothers is loving and strong, however, and after pushing Dek to safety, Kwei fights their father to save his life, sacrificing his own in the process. Dek’s last vision before being rocketed into space is of his father murdering his brother.

All of that is just the context for the real plot which is Dek’s arrival on the planet Genna to hunt the mighty Kalisk, a creature rated as impossible to kill, whose successful hunt on Dek’s part will bring him the glory he needs to earn his place in the tribe. Unfortunately for Dek, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is also there on Genna. This is the company that is constantly trying to harness alien technology in the various Alien franchise films and which always winds up unleashing horror on others for their efforts. They are hunting the Kalisk to study it for its incredible regenerative properties that make it so very hard to kill. As a case in point, at one point, Dek cuts the head off the creation only to have it immediately reattach to its body as good as new.

Early after his crash-landing arrival, Dek meets and rescues Thia, an android who was part of a Weyland-Yutani team attacked by the Kalisk. In the attack her torso was separated from her legs (which are apparently and hilariously capable of operating independently under the right, plot-advancing conditions). She was also taken by a vulture back to its nest where she is trapped when Dek finds her. The pair also meet and befriend another mystery creation Thia names Bud.

Together the team works first to actually become a team over Dek’s fierce resistance and thanks to Thia’s constantly bubbly optimism, and then to complete Dek’s quest. This evolves as the plot unfolds as we learn the secret of the Kalisk. It’s a female creature and Bud is her little boy. The team manages to rescue the Kalisk momma from the evil Corporation, but Thia’s evil twin sister, Tessa, manages to kill it anyway just before they finally kill her. In the end, Dek goes home with his new team in tow to exact revenge on his father for the murder of his brother.

I’ll grant you, the plot sounds silly, but that’s because it is. This is probably the least serious Predator movie they’ve made. The stakes are the lowest. There’s a great deal more humor than other films in the franchise have offered. It’s just about this one Predator learning to get along with others and that there can be strength in love and compassion. But I’ll be honest: the film has a lot of heart. You really do come to like all three of the characters and long before the end. It’s not a movie that’s going to rock anybody’s world, but it is fun to watch when you just want to relax with a mindlessly enjoyable movie. Other than the violence which is excessive (it is a Predator movie) but never particularly graphic since it’s all aliens and robots and Predator blood is glowing and green, this is one you can probably watch with your kids if the monsters aren’t going to scare them.

But if you want to engage your brain even a little bit, the Gospel connections throughout the movie really are good. The first and most obvious is the vital nature of love. The Yautja tribe does not value love or compassion or gentleness or basically any virtue that can be seen as a weakness. Theirs is a world in which the survival of the fittest is the law and there’s no room for love in that kind of a world. Thia gradually manages to convince Dek that the greatest strength is found not in merely hunting other creatures, but in protecting the ones you love just like Kwei did for him. It is when he learns and truly internalizes this truth that he manages to step into his full potential as a warrior.

The love of Christ is the greatest strength there is in this world. The world doesn’t agree and often treats love as a weakness. But the truth is that hurting others in pursuit of our own ends is easy. Using others to get what we want takes almost no effort at all. That comes exceedingly naturally. On the other hand, actively saying no to what we want in order to help someone else experience their highest good is hard. That takes a strength that doesn’t come from us. It comes instead from the source of all real strength.

Another major Gospel connection point is the importance of community. Dek, motivated by the core beliefs of his people, wanted to be a solo hunter. He didn’t want any help from anyone else. On his own, though, he would have failed badly and quickly. Just about everything on Genna was deadly or actively sought to kill him. Thia was an analyst before getting attacked in the field and knew everything there was to know about the planet and its creatures. Without her knowledge, Dek wouldn’t have survived. And Bud brought an even greater strength to the group as well as the means of protecting them from the Kalisk which they otherwise would not have been able to stop or survive. By their powers combined, they were an unstoppable force.

On our own, we can’t do much. We need community. As followers of Jesus, we need the church. Following Christ, proclaiming and advancing His kingdom was never intended to be a solo sport. You may be a really gifted individual, but you can’t do everything that needs to be done in order to accomplish all that God has for you to do. Only when you are part of the body of Christ will you be able to experience the wonder of His victory. And in the body of Christ, you have a family that will persist and thrive even where and when your earthly one fails. And when you take a community that is united around the glory of God and the love of Christ, you really do have the most unstoppable force the world has ever seen.

I doubt very much that any of us will have to go to a hostile alien planet to hunt an unkillable beast to prove our worth to our tribe back home so they won’t kill us to cull our weakness. But we do live in a world that is broken. There are dangers lurking around every corner. Some of them are physical, but many more of them are relational and psychological. If we want to do more than merely survive, we are going to need more than just ourselves. We are going to need a community, a family. The Gospel gives us that in a way nothing else does.

Some of my members just experienced a tragedy the likes of which could break a couple, a family, into pieces. But it won’t. And while they are plenty strong on their own, the real reason it won’t is because they have a whole church community who is going to support them through it, lending strength where theirs won’t be enough. This monster will not overcome them because they have a tribe. Do you have a tribe? If it’s not a Gospel tribe, you really should consider fixing that. Find yourself a good church and make your home there. Life is better with Gospel community.