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After nearly four decades, the Predator franchise is still thriving.
That wasn’t always the case. Though some movies have been more successful than others (both critically and commercially), most sequels to John McTiernan‘s 1987 veiny action-horror romp failed to reignite enthusiasm for the franchise.
Predator star Arnold Schwarzenegger has even voiced his disappointment. “So far, no Predator, no matter which one they did after the first one has come out, has been satisfactory to the audience,” he said in 2015.
That, of course, was before the release of Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, a critically acclaimed prequel that found the Predator battling a Comanche woman in the early 1700s. Trachtenberg is chasing Prey with two new Predator movies.
One, slated for release on Nov. 7, 2025, is Predator: Badlands, starring Elle Fanning. An official synopsis is forthcoming, but 20th Century Studios boss Steve Asbell called it “absolutely bonkers” and “not what everybody thinks it is” in a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Little is known about the second film, including its name, but Asbell confirmed it will drop before Badlands.
If you’re looking to acquaint yourself with the dreadlocked space-beast, we have good news. Every Predator movie, including its divisive crossovers with the Alien franchise, is now streaming on Hulu.
Here’s how to watch every Predator movie in order.
Predator (1987)
Everett Collection
Movies don’t get more manly than Predator, which is positively brimming with bulging muscles, oneupmanship, relentless s— talk, chainguns, and some of Schwarzenegger’s silliest one-liners since Commando. But McTiernan’s action-horror masterpiece has more on its mind than cheap thrills.
Set in 1987, Predator starts with Schwarzenegger’s Dutch taking out guerrillas in the Central American jungle with his beefy battalion of soldiers — played by Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, and future director of The Predator, Shane Black. From there, the rest of the film is essentially a slasher starring the titular alien.
20th Century Fox/courtesy Everett
As Entertainment Weekly‘s critics previously noted, Predator‘s genre experimentation is part of its appeal. “It’s a straight-up action movie at the start… and then it essentially becomes a horror film in which the victims aren’t sorority girls or horny teenagers but enormous, hulking super-soldiers. Then it becomes a kick-ass, sci-fi jungle version of Home Alone, with Arnold setting all those traps. And it’s all patched together with good special effects and quotable dialogue like, ‘If it bleeds, we can kill it,’ or ‘I ain’t got time to bleed.'”
EW’s critic also noted how good Schwarzenegger is in it. “There are some great long shots that are just Schwarzenegger’s eyes moving, and the way his general expression slowly morphs over the course of the movie from jockish pride to vague suspicion to gloriously freaked-out paranoia is a real pleasure. I think it’s his best acting job, period.”
Predator 2 (1990)
20th Century Fox/Courtesy: Everett
Unlike its predecessor, Predator 2 dialed up its sci-fi bonafides by setting the story in the far-flung future of 1997.
Stephen Hopkins’ film has a complex reputation. Cleverly, it transports the Predator from the Guatemalan jungle to the streets of Los Angeles, pitting the creature against gang members, the CIA, and Danny Glover‘s rule-breaking Lieutenant Mike Harrigan. But critics were unkind at the time, and the film’s $57 million gross fell below expectations.
In the years since, though, the sequel’s had something of a renaissance, with many modern critics proclaiming its genius. (Of course, time hasn’t endeared it to everyone — in 2011, EW called it a “lame cop.”)
“It’s so over the top. I just sort of went for it and made the biggest, boldest, loudest movie I could make,” Hopkins said in a 2020 interview. “I was only 29 years old — I was like a rampant child, running around Los Angeles, blowing the shit out of everything and making things as bloody as possible.”
He added of the film’s poor reception: “It had a big initial opening weekend if I remember correctly – but I think many people were disappointed that Arnold wasn’t in it. A lot of people like the film and some prefer it to the original — just because it’s in a city and more contemporary.”
Alien vs. Predator (2004)
Fox
It was just two years after the release of Predator that Dark Horse Comics dropped the first Alien vs. Predator comic book. Dozens of titles followed, and Predator 2 even slipped a Xenomorph skull into the Predator’s trophy to tease the feud. But it took 14 years for a film adaptation to manifest.
Paul W.S. Anderson stepped up to direct after his 1997 film, Event Horizon, proved he could handle space horror. Set in the then-present day of 2004, it tells the story of a billionaire who recruits a team to explore an ancient pyramid beneath Antarctica. There’s plenty of lore to unpack in Alien vs. Predator (and its sequel), but all you really need to know is that the humans are simply in the way. The title makes it clear who the real stars are.
“Anderson won’t make anyone forget Ridley Scott or James Cameron, but he does deliver creature-on-creature action that will set your inner adolescent stirring, if not quite bursting out of your chest,” EW’s critic wrote in their review.
Jurgen Vollmer/Fox
It scored over $177 million globally, but not everyone was pleased by its success. In 2015, Alien franchise star Sigourney Weaver said she was “depressed” by the Alien vs. Predator franchise. “It’s like making Alien Meets the Wolfman,” she said.
Scott, director of the original Alien, disregarded Alien vs. Predator when crafting his own Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, opting for his own mythology and timeline.
“I think Alien vs. Predator was a daft idea. And I’m not sure it did very well or not, I don’t know. But it somehow brought down the beast,” Scott told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “And I said to them, ‘Listen, you can resurrect this, but we have to go back to scratch and go to a prequel, if you like.’”
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
James Dittiger/Fox
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem is set immediately after the events of its predecessor, with an unholy creature that’s one part Xenomorph and one part Predator crash-landing in the forests of Colorado. The creature is called a “Predalien,” and if that sounds extremely dumb to you, you aren’t alone. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem was panned by critics far and wide.
EW’s staff had fun with it, though. “Don’t expect illumination on the grudge between these two,” our critic wrote. “Instead, expect a brisk, gooey bit of schlock that’s a million times better than 2004’s action-lite AVP. The money shot? A pregnant woman’s belly explodes, revealing a litter of baby aliens. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is a B movie that truly earns its B.”
Predators (2010)
Rico Torres/20th Century Fox
Aliens is one of the greatest sequels of all time. It stands to reason, then, that the best way to follow up a monstrous killing machine is by unleashing hundreds of them. Sadly, this did not work for the Predator franchise.
“Both Alien vs. Predator movies followed the Jaws 3 mistake of showing the creature all the time, when even a 12-year-old could tell you that the coolest thing about Predator is how little you see him,” EW’s critic wrote in 2011. “Same goes for Predators, the concept for which was basically: ‘You thought one Predator was cool? Here’s a million! And Adrien Brody!'”
Rico Torres/20th Century Fox
Released in 2010, Nimród Antal’s Predators finds Brody’s savvy military vet Royce dropped into a game preserve on an alien planet with a motley crew of snipers, soldiers, mobsters, and death row inmates. There, the team is hunted for sport by a slew of Super Predators. It’s unclear when this movie takes place, so, lacking that info, we’ll assume it’s set in the year it was released.
EW called it “entirely unnecessary” in our review. “As a fan of Schwarzenegger’s macho, heart-of-darkness original, it gives me no pleasure to say that Predators is an uninspired mess of mediocre action scenes strung together until the final reel.”
The Predator (2018)
Kimberley French/Twentith Century Fox
From the unnecessary “The” in its title to the script’s sweaty work folding in ancient Predator lore — Jake Busey plays the son of Gary Busey‘s CIA agent from Predator 2 — The Predator is a tried-and-true Hollywood legacy sequel in the post-2015 mold.
The cast is fun, with Boyd Holbrook, Sterling K. Brown, Jacob Tremblay, Olivia Munn, and Thomas Jane starring opposite a genetically-enhanced Predator (and its alien hounds). But, per EW’s C- review, it “can’t decide whether it wants to be an all-out ‘80s action throwback or a smirking smart aleck comedy.”
Kimberley French/Fox
It continues, “The Predator isn’t a dumb movie exactly. But it’s not a smart one either. What it is, is something uncomfortably in between: a satire of a franchise that was already in on its own macho joke. Even worse, it’s open-ended enough to tease a sequel that I suspect no one, whether they’re an action aficionado or an agnostic, will ever want to see come to fruition.”
Prey (2022)
David Bukach/20th Century Studios
After many sequels tried to capitalize on Predator‘s boundless machismo, filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) surprised everyone with Prey, a prequel that pits the tech-savvy Predator against a Comanche woman with primitive tools. It was an extremely clever reimagining of the franchise, especially since the original finds Schwarzenegger’s Dutch only overcoming the alien after ditching his firepower in favor of old-fashioned fisticuffs.
Set in 1719, well over 200 years before the original film, it finds Amber Midthunder’s Naru looking to prove herself as a warrior and hunter to her community. Her quest takes her deep into the Great Plains, where she encounters not just a “feral” version of the alien, but also the fur trappers who are endangering her tribe’s way of life.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the story didn’t start as a Predator film. “I was first thinking of how to tell a story about someone trying to prove themselves and what they could be up against,” Trachtenberg told EW. “I already had a good idea for a movie separate from the IP. When the IP came into the equation suddenly it made our movie better.”
