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Predator: Badlands is nearly upon us, with Dan Trachtenberg's next chapter in his Predator saga hitting theaters this week. Starring Elle Fanning as a synth and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as the franchise's first Yautja alien protagonist, Badlands is a film about an unlikely duo who must team up to survive the harsh landscape they're trapped on. 

While previous Predator movies have often been sparring with how much we've seen of Yautja culture (literally, remember these guys can go invisible), Predator: Badlands turns that dynamic around. Since Dek (Schuster-Koloamatangi), our main character, is ousted by his alien clan, the film gives him ample time to communicate in his own language. But how do you come up with an alien language for a movie like this? With an on-set linguist, of course. 

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Elle Fanning shed light on the demands that playing a Yautja brought on Schuster-Koloamatangi. "[Schuster-Koloamatangi] also learned a completely different language," Fanning began. "Yautja is a made-up language, but it’s real. We had an amazing linguist who created it, and Dimitrius had to learn it. He is fluent. So it was interesting when he would speak in Yautja, and I would respond in English. A lot of it was about the rhythm and timing of the buddy comedy-esque scenes at times. So to hit that joke and get it just right, we had to run a lot of lines together to make it work in different languages."

The language was devised by a man named Britton Watkins, who shed light on the complexities of the language with Empire Magazine. "The creatures have various words for 'you.' If you're talking to someone you don't think much of, you use 'wol,' which is not polite. But if it's familiar, you're speaking to your bro, it's 'kai.' And if you're talking up to somebody you respect, you say 'thau.' Once you lock into those paradigms, it's a pretty easy language to learn."

Based on what Fanning says about the dynamic between her and Schuster-Koloamatangi's character in the film, Badlands sounds like it'll be a departure from another time we saw a Yautja team up with a non-Yautja character - AVP: Alien vs. Predator. In that film, the human protagonist, Lex, forms an alliance with a Yautja warrior named Scar. However, Scar hardly ever "talks," and he communicates entirely in noises that sound suspiciously like lion roars. Thankfully, for this film, we'll be getting a more detailed and nuanced look at the Yautja. 

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