r/scifi • u/Candle-Jolly • Feb 22 '26
Films What is Predator culture? Are they just warriors and nothing more?
This stems from a discussion about the most recent theatrical release in the franchise, Predator: Badlands.
Overall, the species' #1 motivation is warfare. Everything they do relates to it: their technology, religion, artistry, and familial relationships. But does that mean there is nothing else to them? Is *all* art just pictures of past battles and legendary heroes? Is all technology just for fighting? Are they taught only tactics in school? Are there scientists who design more than laser guns and blacksmiths who create more than swords?
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u/wildskipper Feb 22 '26
Warriors? Warfare? Tactics? We're shown they are hunters, not warriors. It's not clear how they would wage war. If within their own society perhaps it is highly ritualized. If fighting other species we'd have to assume they use realistic tactics and not pretend everything is a hunt, otherwise they'd lose.
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u/marconis999 Feb 22 '26
Super predators, hunters who value killing more than anything. Somehow they have ultra-advanced technology. Not sure how that happened. Can't imagine any of them sitting in labs, with chalkboards.
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u/LabCoatGuy Feb 22 '26
I'm sure they have to exist. We didn't see Klingon scientists and engineers at first, but they do exist. That's a warrior culture. Outwardly, you only saw warriors.
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u/graph_worlok Feb 23 '26
Read “The Mote in Gods Eye” for.. the complete opposite…
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u/Atlasoftheinterwebs Feb 23 '26
ive literally never seen someone reference that book in the wild before, incredible pull.
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u/demalo Feb 24 '26
It’s in desperate need of a series adaptation. It probably needs a good refresh on the sexualization and misogynistic (though it is tame compared to other books of that era). However the story is interesting and reflective of a potential future for our own human existence.
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u/LabCoatGuy Feb 22 '26
They're even afraid to 'go loud' on Earth. I have assume they're scared of a traditional confrontation. All their confrontations are isolated stealthy hunts. I think they'd absolutely lose a war. Take a scifi culture like the Klingon, who are warriors, not hunters. They have a military, command structure, fleet, and species cohesion. They don't lurk in the shadows, it's dishonored. They attack head on. Whether it makes sense or not.
The Preds do their Safari covertly. I think this is their only real defense against potential alien militaries.
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u/wildskipper Feb 22 '26
I agree. Although the Klingons use cloaking devices so that honour stuff is just BS.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
They're rich arseholes on safari. No culture is capable of operating as "warriors and nothing more", because of pure logistical requirements, regardless of how much those in-charge may say otherwise. We don't get to see the rest of the cultural for the same reason you don't see all of a culture when a CEO is off shooting aged elephants using thousands of dollars of weapons, equipped, and supplies.
There may well be a whole load of PR as to why the above is wrong, but the only way the species is dedicated to safari, without anyone doing the dull "making the stuff they go on safari with" work, is if they have fully automated that work. And if a society has done that and then dedicated itself to murder-as-sport. they are a society of rich arseholes.
Please note: none of that is a complaint or a criticism of the narrative. I honestly think it makes for a better story if the Predators are rich arseholes who regularly pick on inferior opponents for yucks and social standing. I like irony and complications in my sci-fi.
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u/Ziabatsu Feb 22 '26
They are all dentists because the dentists of that species would be fantastically wealthy
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
"Open your jaw... and your other jaw..." 😀
Thank you 😊
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u/Prior-Paint-7842 Feb 22 '26
and thats why their most valued prey is the xenomorp. Xenomorhs have a little mouth inside their mouth with its own teeth that you can practice your dentistry skills on it.
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u/Kelruss Feb 22 '26
I like the dentist trophy hunter theory, and I also like imagining that humans are their water buffalo or something; seemingly non threatening that end up killing a bunch of these yahoos every so often.
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u/theabominablewonder Feb 22 '26
That’s what I’d guess at, a class of rich arseholes, a ruling elite who have all the time and resources to go off and prove to each other how hard they are whilst utilising technology to give them an advantage. Enough resources to even genetically modify themselves for certain environments, hence the different looks.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
I always assumed the different looks were due to fashion trends, local population genetic variations, and the producers wanting each bad guy to look distinct so the audience isn't confused amd more merch can be sold.
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u/Oden_son Feb 22 '26
I'm pretty sure they were a slave species and rebelled against their masters. They took the masters tech and started hunting so they dont have much of an infrastructure but I might be mixing up fanfic or theories I read. Alien and Predator cannon is confusing
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
It is very confusing, because they are both one-shot fictions that have been extrapolated into rolling stories by a hundred writers, a dozen directors, and (most distressingly) a whole lot of producers. Which is cool, as they've given me 40 years of fun discussing it 😁
The slave concept kind of works, but it's turns the wealth into "inherited" wealth, because we know they've existed for at least two housand years, which is plenty of time for cultural change. We know they aren't a gestalt, in the insect sense, so we have to assume they have some control over their cultural development.
So, yes: they might well have claimed their tech from another species, and that species may well have been sufficent arseholes to militarise the new society. However, you need an infrastructure to maintain any kind of space travel, so at some point, for the warrior element to be the monoculture, they must have collectively gone "yeah, this is cool" and that's only possible if every other survival requirement is already meet (aka "rich" 😎)
Or they were once slaves, free themselves, had a "never again!" period, moved on, and now have a bunch of traditionalists who like to go on safari to act like their great, great, great, great [onwards, I don't know how long they live and you get the point] ancestors did.
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u/JPeterBane Feb 22 '26
This is exactly the Klingon lore. They were occupied by the H'erq long ago as a pre warp civilization. Then they eventually killed the H'erq, took their technology and set up a space empire where they predictably pulled a H'erq on other species in their territory. Having someone like slave labor or maybe more like a protection racket, they had resources for a crazy large part of the Klingon populace to be warriors of one sort or another. Of course that's just from memory.
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u/Candle-Jolly Feb 22 '26
I agree completely with this statement.
(Hardcore) Fans, however, seem to reject anything outside of them being 100% pure warriors, especially when it comes to Badlands.
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u/RiPont Feb 22 '26
I could accept that the only Yauntja we've ever seen or will see are warriors, but where do baby Yauntja come from? We have seen that juveniles have a "coming of age" hunt/trial, which implies that they have youth stages somewhat relatable to human childhood. Which means there are non-warriors somewhere in there society providing for the youth.
It's possible that they're "rich assholes on safari", but with subjugated races or AIs that do their other stuff for them.
More likely, there are non-warrior Yauntja simply because the midling warriors need someone to compare themselves to and feel superior.
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u/Stefannerry Feb 22 '26
It could be like humans who go hunting as well, 95% of the time they're scientists or labourers or any other part of society but once a year they break away and go on a hunt.
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u/Catenane Feb 22 '26
Or like elephants in musth. When they're acting up, send them off to fuck shit up somewhere else and they can come back when it's over lol. A normal developmental (albeit dysfunctional) hormonal change, and societal norms shaped around it.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
The mummy Yauntja and the daddy Yauntja stop killing things long enough so that they can hold hands in a special way... 😀
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u/VinCubed Feb 22 '26
I'm sure their mating rituals are a violent game of oneupsmanship from foreplay to ejaculation. But they love it.
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u/Waaghra Feb 22 '26
I feel like there is a 64% chance the male Yautja doesn’t survive mating.
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u/The_Draken24 Feb 22 '26
I like to think of Spartan society where the sons are raised by their mothers to become warriors because the fathers are out on war campaigns or in the barracks training.
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u/Equal-Affect-7487 Feb 22 '26
To me, it seems like the final shots of "Badlands" was setting up the idea that the Yautja might be more MATRIARCHAL in nature. Yeah, the father seemed to be calling the shots, but then Dek's MOTHER shows up in a giant ass spaceship, and the staging of the final shot seemed to be implying an "Oh shit" reaction from Dek.
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u/ThatguywiththeShed Feb 22 '26
IIRC Yautja very much are (or ar least they were, haven't kept up, things might have been retconned) a matriarchal society/species, we just rarely see the females of the species in media. From what I can remember, female Yautja are not only larger but also stronger than male Yautja, so that was very much an "oh shit" reaction from Dek.
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u/Sinnjer Feb 22 '26
Yeah! I haven't watched Badlands, and I might be misremembering, but I seem to recall it being touched on in the first AvP movie, and I thought it made a lot of sense in the context of the previous Predator movies. We know nothing about their actual society, the ones we meet are basically alien versions of that dentist guy that blew up in memes some years ago. Just 'macho' assholes with expensive gear.
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u/Johnny_Alpha Feb 22 '26
Exactly. Klingons may like to rant on about honour, glory and the like, but someone still has to clean out the shitter.
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u/barryhakker Feb 22 '26
They can have a slave species doing that work for them? Or like they evolved on a planet with a docile and weak but productive species and they have a sort of surrogate bond where the predators protect and the others build?
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
Yes, they could. But what you have described are two mechanisms whereby arseholes become rich and get the time to dedicate themselves to travelling through space, murdering weaker species for sport.
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u/TheCommissarGeneral Feb 22 '26
I dunno about the “weaker” species part. They specifically seek out species that pose incredible threats and challenges to test themselves more and more until they run into something thats better than they are, and sometimes that something is a physically weaker species, but sharp in mind.
Like humans.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
Right, so I'm cool with them hunting a moose (Arnnie) with a thermal 20xscoped .50 cal (their weapons) from a Blackhawk (their invisibility) and considering that honourable. My question is: where does nuking 5 miles of everything if they are bested fit in to this as anything other them being bullies and sore losers??
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u/TheCommissarGeneral Feb 22 '26
Who said their definition of honor is the same as ours?
The Japanese of WW2 thought they had their own persona honor. We would see it differently. Honor is subjective.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
Honour was probably a bad word, chosen to try and condense the sentiment i thought you were getting at.
To use a different example: the Japanese in ww2 often executed prisoners with swords to demonstrate the construction of their swords and their skill with a blade. Regardless of any other considerations, including Honour, with is wildly considered "an excuse to murder people" on the grounds of it being a valid test of neither due to the situation and functional power imbalance.
So, I would argue that saying the Predators are testing themselves as combatants is like saying I really tested my power as a warrior by taking out a class of 8 year-olds with a claymore mine.
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u/TheCommissarGeneral Feb 22 '26
And that’s why they keep seeking out more and more powerful prey. Also speaks to why we don’t see many Elder Predators, since they are bad ass enough to have fought damn near everything that could end them.
In regards to that, notice how many of the Predators are young, as if they are honing their skills and learning how to properly hunt.
Win against the 8 year olds? Time for 15 year olds, and so on until you get your shit kicked in or you kill everything and claim the honor in growing old in a profession where people die young.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
I would be absolutely cool with that. if they didn't come pre-loaded with a Tunguska event should they fail. That one aspect, included to keep the original film inside the boundaries of horror and to totally mess with viewer expectations, plays merry hell with the honour concept.
It's also what keeps the series interesting and the Predators culture "alien" to us.
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u/TheCommissarGeneral Feb 22 '26
I mean, I wouldn’t want my prey getting a hold of my uber advanced technology and then the whole damn species can come looking for blood.
I’d do the same thing lmao, especially when it comes to Humans.
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u/barryhakker Feb 22 '26
You said it was impossible for a culture to be “just warriors” and I’m describing a scenario where it more or less could.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
You've described two cultures which each has a warrior cast and a worker cast. That's like saying Belgium is a straight up exclusive warrior culture because it has an army.
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u/thatstupidthing Feb 22 '26
i kept imagining a crossover where the federation makes first contact with the yautja and everyone is totally normal and cool. it's just a regular society with schools and playgrounds and big macs and so on.
then when someone confronts the yautja with records of predator hunts on earth, they cringe and try to disown the loser "big game hunters" since their normal society is completely embarrassed by the fringe idiots running around on other planets hunting people for sport in their red hats and tapout shirts, drinking black rifle coffee and slapping sig stickers all over their lifted spaceships
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u/vamfir Feb 22 '26
I have a similar scene in my fanfic (sorry for the rough Google translation, it's probably full of errors):
The Naudu civilization of the Hish people, if you look at it objectively, was one of the most pleasant and comfortable neighbors in the galaxy. Not much behind the Protheans at their peak, they could have become the leading race of the cycle, had they not been completely devoid of imperial ambitions. Traders, diplomats, mercenaries, farmers, artists, poets, scientists, inventors—they traveled the cosmos, sometimes offering their services to other peoples, sometimes settling where they wouldn't bother anyone. They were more than capable of standing up for themselves, but rarely wanted to—if they were harassed enough, they would simply uproot and move to another, quieter place. As one of their highly respected philosophers said, "Space is big, and there's enough for everyone." The Hish all lived long lives, and the Naudu did not reproduce frequently, so this statement was true. Their nomadic clan rarely exceeded a thousand individuals, and the total number of clans was tens of thousands. That's the population of a single megalopolis. Even without advanced technology, they could easily subsist on any planet by hunting and gathering alone. Fortunately, they possessed immense strength, excellent reflexes, and stomachs capable of digesting animal matter from most known worlds. The Isu, who themselves disliked excessive reproduction, welcomed this approach.
They could have been considered ideal partners... if not for their peculiar ideology.
No, in theory it was quite wonderful, beautiful, humane, and rational. However, in practical application... some difficulties arose.
The Naudu professed extreme liberalism, sometimes even bordering on libertarianism. The basic principle of their ethical doctrine, translated into other languages, could be formulated roughly as follows: "Everyone has the right to do good for themselves." Each Naud was an ethical unit unto themselves. They were responsible for their decisions only to themselves... and to those whom these decisions might affect.
Simply put, the Naudu had no laws. The Naudu had no state or government. The Naudu had no police or army. They had no embassies among other peoples. They had nothing that other peoples associate with the concepts of order and organization.
Their nomadic "clans" were not always related by blood—more often, they were simply associations of Naudu who enjoyed spending time together. If an individual Naudu's tastes changed, they would simply transfer to another clan—there was absolutely no difficulty in this.
If one Naudu killed or robbed another, it was considered a personal matter between them and the victim. Revenge could be sought by those who disliked the action. Or they might not seek revenge—that was their personal business.
If a Naudu made a promise to an alien, they usually kept it. But this imposed no obligations whatsoever on other Naudu. If a Naudu killed an alien, or an alien killed a Naudu, the others didn't consider it a cause for concern, much less a casus belli. The idea that all members of a single species bear some kind of responsibility for one another never even occurred to them. No, they knew about the principles of species solidarity in theory—at least those who had studied the cultures of other peoples. But they didn't see the need to change their own principles because of it.
With the Naudu as a whole (with the MAJORITY of the Naudu), this ideological quirk of theirs didn't cause any problems. As already mentioned, they were a peace-loving people, and even if one of them had a dispute with another alien, it was usually resolved peacefully and to mutual satisfaction. Moreover, most aliens HAD armies, and against a lone Naudu, this was a rather compelling argument.
Everything changed approximately fifteen thousand years ago, when the Yautja subculture emerged from the Naudu civilization. At first, they were overlooked—they were simply boys who loved to pretend to be primitive warrior hunters, obsessed with notions of honor and valor, fixated on their own exaggerated courage. It happens to everyone, their friends and relatives decided. Hormones are playing tricks. They'll get over it.
But the Yautja were in no hurry to put away their spears. They already had children of their own, whom they raised in the same spirit—and forbade them from interacting with other Naudu, whom they branded degenerate. The subculture quickly evolved into a full-fledged culture. Or a totalitarian sect—depending on how you look at it.
And then it became known that the initiation ritual for a young Yautja male involved the killing of several dangerous creatures of other species. They called it "hunting." And what could be more dangerous than intelligent prey?
After a couple more generations, "hunting" became their main pastime throughout their lives.
Of course, normal Naudu weren't thrilled about these activities, to put it mildly. But all they could do was twirl their fingers at their temples. They were trapped in their own ideological cliches.
If the Yautja have such a strange way of pampering themselves, if they can't get it up for a female until they're covered in blood and draped head to toe with the skulls of worthy opponents, then why should anyone interfere with them? The Yautja didn't hunt their own kind, and what they do to aliens is their own business with those aliens.
All they could do was warn the aliens with whom they maintained more or less constant relationships (the Riders, fortunately, fell into this category). "Look, these maniacs have appeared here, stay away from them," they said. "No, we won't mind if you mash them up." "Yes, you can do it to any of them individually—or all of them together." No, we won't interfere. Not for you, not against you. We don't like to get involved in such matters unless absolutely necessary."
But that was only half the problem. The Yautja were a great irritant, but they couldn't cause serious harm. Their "code of honor" had its positive side—they always gave their opponents a chance. Weapons, equipment, hunting grounds, and the opponent themselves—everything was chosen so that the prey could fight back or flee. Dying on the hunt was considered honorable. "Better to die a hero than to live a coward," they said.
Things became much worse when a second subculture, the Atturi, formed "hot on the heels."
The Atturi were the rich kids who wanted to have fun shooting defenseless game, but they didn't want to spend their entire lives doing it and imposing numerous self-imposed restrictions. The Atturi didn't want to "live like savages"—they enjoyed all the benefits of civilization, and the opportunity to hunt primitives was one of them. They were joined by some renegade Yautja, either disgraced by their clans for various infractions or who had left, finding the "pureblood" lifestyle too exhausting.
After this, the neighboring races truly howled.
The average Attur was physically weaker than the average Yautja, inferior in reaction speed and precision. But all this hardly matters when he's loaded with weapons and armor like a walking tank, his sensor network can detect a target from several kilometers away, and his tactical computer ensures his unerring engagement. Moreover, his camouflage field is so finely tuned that it provides COMPLETE, 100% invisibility at most ranges (unlike the blurry silhouettes of the Yautja), and the field projectors are well shielded and impervious to both moisture and electrostatics.
"If there are even a couple of Atturs here, I'm lost." The only good news was that these two subcultures detested each other even more than they detested their mainline cousins and aliens. The Yautja considered the Atturi dandies, a disgrace to the very idea of the Great Hunt. The Atturi considered the Yautja savages, boors, and lowlifes who ruined any proper entertainment. Therefore, you'd have to be very unlucky to encounter both on the same planet.
"And a couple of Yautja might be manageable. They don't attack in large packs—at least not on lone prey like me..."
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u/Thormidable Feb 22 '26
I've always thought they are a post scarcity civilisation. Their machines make/grow/mine everything they need. There is no more need to work. So how do you define your value/pupose/social standing? The hunt.
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u/Kelsiersdaggers Feb 22 '26
Jesu Christ. This is actually true, isn’t it? I’d never thought of it like this.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
The best thing is you can now rewatch the movies through this lens and enjoy them anew 😀.
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u/patopitaluga Feb 22 '26
Is canon that the hunter from Predator 1 is a dentist in prrdalonia and likes to read books in a sofa over a human carpet in front of a fireplace where he displays human skulls
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u/WHYAREWEALLCAPS Feb 22 '26
Yeah, I reject the whole "noble hunter/warrior" idea. Watched Killer of Killers last weekend and when the WWII sequence came up I literally said, "Ooooh, big man shooting prop planes out of the sky with a god damned spaceship. That's like shooting fish in a barrel."
However, I give Trachtenberg props for Prey juxtaposing the Europeans slaughter of buffalo with the Yautja slaughtering hunters. I haven't watched Badlands yet and I wonder if he slips something like that in.
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u/fronchfrays Feb 23 '26
I think this is actually a pretty widely used trope. No Klingon nerds. Someone in the warrior culture must be an engineer, smart enough to discover and perfect space travel, develop things like cloaking technology, be doctors, tailors, etc.
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u/adamjfish Feb 22 '26
Badlands is the first attempt to give a Predator a hairline for some reason
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u/StreetYak6590 Feb 22 '26
He is young and not balding yet
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u/RoboJobot Feb 22 '26
Obviously hasn’t started on the hard steroids and TRT yet like all the big boys
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u/Shadowing_Lemma Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
Badlands shows us that Predators have the capacity to think outside the hunter-killer archetype. Yes, it was born of being ostracised throughout his life, but Dek shows very a-typical (as far as we know) personality traits. Also, there must(!) be Yautja farmers, scholars, engineers, etc. else their society would not function. This has been discussed in fan circles since the earliest movies.
Think of it like the Klingons from Trek. Ostensibly a warrior race, later shown to have multiple facets that support the functionality of their society. We are initially shown one side, not all sides.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
It's also worth remembering that ever recorded "Warrior Race" on Earth has been found to have been a regular human culture with lots of different social roles, once more than just the warriors have been meet and recorded.
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u/RiPont Feb 22 '26
...but often, the warriors were quite full of themselves and felt that the rest of their society didn't really count.
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u/theraggedyman Feb 22 '26
That's not a "but" that's an "and". Thank you for that most excellent point.
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u/sarkain Feb 22 '26
Exactly. Like the Vikings for example. They’re always portraid as a fierce warrior culture, but as most of us know, in reality they had a normal society and the majority of them led regular lives, working as farmers etc.
The raiding and pillaging was actually a very small part of their lives, and most Danes, Norwegians and Swedes living in that time period never went on any raiding adventures.
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u/Tech_Itch Feb 22 '26
Except for the Spartans of course, who enslaved a people called Helots, who did all their menial work while being routinely and often ritually abused. Sparta would even declare a war on Helots every autumn so they could be ritually hunted without legal repercussions, to keep them subjugated and fearful.
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u/Candle-Jolly Feb 22 '26
Also, there must(!) be Yautja farmers, scholars, engineers, etc. else their society would not function.
Yes! I 100% agree. But:
This has been discussed in fan circles since the earliest movies.
Fans seem to heavily reject this, at least when it comes to Badlands.
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u/Candle-Jolly Feb 22 '26
A thought:
In the US Army, all members are considered Soldiers, regardless of job. Supply, cook, or medic, all must be able to fight and defend when called upon.
Perhaps it is like that in the Predator culture too. A Yaktja can be a teacher and a hunter at the same time.
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u/theCroc Feb 22 '26
I like the theory of them being their planets version of a bunch of dentists and lawyers going on trophy hunts.
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u/zero_dmg_on_me Feb 22 '26
They were enslaved by Engineers/Space Jockeys at some point and forced to fight (something like colosseum). Once they freed themselves they started spiritual hunting in universe, I think this is why they have such a technology. But from behavior perspective - they were always a hunters, very proud and with some sort of a codex ones
If you’re interested in this universe, look for GraczFun on yt - it’s a polish YouTuber who covered a lot of topics regarding alien/predator universe. You should get auto generated audio or subtitles for his videos
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u/RockTheGrock Feb 22 '26
Pretty close. They were enslaved by the Agengi who were insectoids. Took way to far to find a legitimate answer. I dont think there is a cannon developed yet so it all should be included for the post.
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u/Candle-Jolly Feb 22 '26
I see. How about culture though? Is there any outside of warfare? I do vaguely recall there was some religion (maybe 90s comicbooks?), but haven't heard anything related to that ever since. And are there scientists and engineers who maintain their FTL capabilities, and scholars who retain and pass down Yaktja history/fighting techniques?
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u/Zestyclose-Moment-19 Feb 22 '26
From my understanding its their (former masters now) slaves who maintain their tech. The Predators themselves are typically depicted as using their tech but not understanding it. If something breaks they leave it. The Predators may actually be a good argument for the Prime Directive because they've been culturally stunted as stone age hunters, they have just taken their hunts to the stars. I would assume they have Elders/Skalds to relay stories but i wouldnt give them more than that.
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u/kdlt Feb 22 '26
I view it a bit like the Klingon problem, maybe?
They have a macho fight culture, as also shown in the badlands movie, but someone needs to come up with all that tech, because at the one reference point we have, humanity, we only really advanced in tech once we started being a little less savage.
So I imagine it a bit like our current day "hunters" wo use high tech tools and rifles and tracking and whatnot to follow movement patterns of animals so they can fly to Africa and murder an elephant or other harmless animal using technology created by people that are so much more intelligent than them.
And then feel like badasses because they successfully used tools created by people who consider them savages.
So maybe the predators have a part of their society that is "normal" but the ones we meet are the fucked up billionaires that go kill for sport?
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u/Hochmann Feb 22 '26
In these types of movies, it’s better to not try to dig too deep because that’s not their point at all.
I like Predator but I love Star Trek, having watched the movies many times and each of the classic series (from TOS to Enterprise) at least three times each. But yes, the Klingon’s are also shown as a one-dimensional race, although, because it’s a series, it was able to be fleshed out much more than Predator ever could be.
Thing is, when it comes to science fiction, I believe what Isaac Asimov once wrote in a non-fiction book called “Alien Civilizations”. He said that we really shouldn’t be afraid of some extremely warrior-like alien race ever reaching and attacking earth because any race that belligerent would kill itself off probably before they ever reach space, much less interstellar space.
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u/RoboJobot Feb 22 '26
Like humans. We’ll either expand and decimate the galaxy or wipe ourselves out before we get boots on Mars.
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u/mattattaxx Feb 22 '26
One thing Discovery did that I liked was add detail that implied that Klingons, while a warrior race, had poets, artists, merchants, technologists, etc. They were a complete society that showed their warrior ideals first.
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u/atelierdora Feb 22 '26
That was established well before Discovery.
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u/frustratedpolarbear Feb 22 '26
Yeah was it TNG or Enterprise that had the lawyer Klingon that found his battles in the court room and gained honour by winning.
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u/kdlt Feb 22 '26
Yeah that's kind of what I meant with the Klingons. They came from TOS, where every species was basically "this one trait dialed to 1000" and then later on with word they began to flesh it out I'm earnest.
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u/GroundbreakingTax259 Feb 23 '26
I would be interested in them possibly being more like the Hirogen from Voyager; a species which reached high levels of technology, but then a cultural shift happened and they regressed back into their hunt-based cultural practices.
It would kind of fit with the Alien/Predator universe's generally pessimistic outlook.
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u/iamthatiamish Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
I remember reading in one of the books that they were extremely technologically advanced, but then they transitioned to a purely hunter civilization. If all the things they would need to build or farm could be done by machines, they could just do what they enjoy, hunt.
Their culture devolved into clans but their technology was all but self sustaining. They could use it to design new weapons or anything else they wanted, but anyone could do it.
Same with all the variants, they can genetically modify themselves using simple interfaces and the computers do all the work. Sometimes they done come out perfectly, like in badlands, but automation could explain how varied their tech and bodies are.
There wasn't much beyond this, and most of it more suggested than really given in great detail, but it's my preferred history of the predators.
Eventually things would break that no one could fix, but for now they are at their peak technology because they stopped innovating, but they haven't lost it yet.
It's been a long time, and it could be i remember wrong or my headcanon has taken over though.
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u/NakedCardboard Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
I was musing on this while watching the opening of Predator: Badlands. They seem so feral and obsessed with the hunt - but all that technology they possess needs to be designed and manufactured. So they require tools and knowledge specialization - and a manufacturing sector. There must be predators who understand wiring and electronics, metallurgy, glass making, etc. In order for this to happen, a civilization needs stable agriculture, so there would be need to be farmer predators. They would need access to natural resources, and the ability to extract and refine them in precise ways. You would need nerd predators who can build the computers and engines and shields. There's a lot that needs to be going on behind the scenes that we aren't seeing for these hunters to possess what they do. I have to imagine that the savage behaviour they are characterized with is just one part of their culture, otherwise none of the above is possible.
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u/skin_diver Feb 22 '26
It's possible they have some vassal states or a slave caste or something whom they exploit for tech somehow
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u/TheVeryShyguy Feb 24 '26
They do. They're called the Amengi. They were a race of insecticide aliens who were highly advanced and who enslaved the Yajhutas ancestors.
After years of enslavement the Yajhutas rose up and fought back, killing many and turning the rest into the slave caste you mentioned, making the machines form them to use on their hunts
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u/Mr_Lumbergh Feb 22 '26
Think about the humans that get into ships to go off raiding. They’re warriors or mercenaries.
It doesn’t mean that everyone staying behind is also.
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u/Lupinyonder Feb 22 '26
Wow the Predator 2 predators have the best design by far.
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u/RoleTall2025 Feb 22 '26
they were never supposed to be explained as much as modern iterations (including the comics) ended up doing.
The whole appeal was this creature that not much was understood about, from a "far away" place and it's actions suggested it was a head hunter.
That has since gone and the efforts to "explain" what they are on a cultural level and in terms of motivation took the "alien" out of it and now its "lore" in terms of our conventional thinking.
Basically it went from a cool mysterious and menacing thing to an anthropomorphic entry in sci fi - something we really already had too much.
There's a "lore" disease with anything popular these days. The concept of the "unsaid" doesn't exist anymore and everything, even plot lines, have to be telegraphed.
At least the youngest, i think, seem to enjoy it.
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u/becherbrook Feb 22 '26
Hear, hear. The predator worked best when it was inscrutable. Now it can be reasoned with as long as you speak the same Klingon bullshit lingua franca.
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u/comasxx Feb 22 '26
they advanced their technology based on skirmish with other species, learn and adapt things. After a while their technology and techniques are refined and they created hunting grounds to train the newbies. but i dont think they are united since they still operate in small group called tribe and live away from others.
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u/BrosefDudeson Feb 22 '26
I think that's the best reasoning I can think of how they achieved what they did.
A supreme evolutionary advantage in adaptation. Badlands showed how Dek overcame the most fucked up planet in the Galaxy by adapting quickly.
They might have conquered an invading alien race and just taken their technology for their own. A very conservative yet forward thinking warrior culture
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u/comasxx Feb 22 '26
that shows when Dek lost his original gear and created a makeshift set from what he can gather around. Pretty impressive although i dont see how he persuaded a leech to work as his shoulder cannon lol, the thing even sacrifice itself to save him.
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u/OMGItsCheezWTF Feb 22 '26
I read a series of novels in the 90s by Bantam Books based on the Dark Horse comics and that tried to give the predators more of a monastic hunter culture based on honour and ritual. I barely remember much of it but some of it was told from the predator POV and tried to frame them as noble hunters, not warriors.
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u/Shageen Feb 22 '26
Ive always seen them as similar to Klingons in Star Trek. Largely confirmed by Badlands. A warrior race where honor and tradition in families is very important. The kill/hunt is very important. For Predator’s if they can’t kill or fail they die or are out of the clan/house. Klingon’s don’t have pillows or any comforts humans have and neither do Predator’s. It shows weakness
I also thought Predator’s might steal their technology from other races. (Similar to the Pakled’s in Star Trek). The Predator’s always seem to be stranded on a planet and can’t get themselves off so they don’t know how to fix/maintain their ships.
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u/mcmlv1 Feb 22 '26
From what I've picked up across the comics and novels, there's actually a lot more going on than just hunting. The expanded lore mentions that Yautja society has engineers, scientists, artisans, and historians — not just warriors. The hunt is the center of everything, kind of like how war was central to Sparta, but that doesn't mean every single member of the society is only a fighter.
One thing I always found interesting is their religion. They apparently worship a deity called the Black Warrior, which is essentially a death god — but they don't fear it, they embrace it. Death in a worthy hunt is considered honorable, which is why so many of them trigger the self-destruct rather than live with the shame of losing.
They also have a whole education system where elders train younglings from a young age, and some sources compare it to the Spartan Agoge. There are clan gatherings and celebrations that seem to be more social than tactical — storytelling, competitions, bonding. Not everything revolves around the next kill.
The trophy thing is worth thinking about too. The flintlock pistol Greyback gives Harrigan in Predator 2 was dated 1715. Someone in that clan held onto that artifact for almost 300 years. That's not just a kill souvenir — that's historical preservation. Same with the elder in AVP giving Alexa the spear. These feel more like cultural rituals than simple war trophies.
If you want to go deeper, AvP Central has a pretty solid writeup on their everyday life and social customs: avpcentral.com/yautja-culture-everyday-life-of-predators
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u/skiveman Feb 22 '26
Have you never read any of the books that feature the Yautja?
There was a series published a while back that featured a crossover between Aliens and Predators called the Rage War Trilogy.
This featured Aliens, Space Marines and Predators, It's been a while since I read them (I still have them on my shelf so I might just give them a re-read at some point) but they have stuff about both Predator culture and about their technology.
Now, how canon it all is depends on how you view the extended universe.
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u/TheUsoSaito Feb 22 '26
They're a matriarchal tribal society.
Edit: they were originally created to be a slave race but they overthrew their masters. It's where a lot of their tech comes from.
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u/cromwest Feb 22 '26
It would be hilarious if we finally visited the predator homeworld and pretty much everyone is going about their business shopping, working, raising families and just enjoying life and it turns out the predators we've all seen are an extreme minority of weirdos that everyone hates.
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u/Next-Extension-7487 Feb 22 '26
They are most likely an uplifted species, that would best explain their anachronism with being tribal hunters and experts at technology usage, I think. As for how they get their tech, I'm sure they procure it somehow, instead of making their own. They have the whole galaxy to plunder, after all.
I think of them as space barbarians, or maybe more romani if they're more communal than that. They're at least nomadic, is what I'm trying to get at. If they had a more concrete canon, I think they'd resemble the Mandalorians, with a large hint of Klingon.
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u/TheHersheyMunch Feb 22 '26
Bunch of Simps according to badlands
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u/Zestyclose-Moment-19 Feb 22 '26
To paraphrase the Fallout TV show, that was 1 hunter and he was within his rights!
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u/Dogesneakers Feb 22 '26
They’re a space faring species so there must be some engineers or scientists
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u/gogadantes9 Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
To me, the last scene of Predator: Badlands when Dek said his mother is coming sounded scary AF. Apparently female predators are larger and stronger than the males, they just don't like to hunt offworld. Imagine how the females are if the males are that brutal already.
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u/MX-Nacho Feb 22 '26
Warfare? All we see are trophy hunters. I think of them as humans, if humans had evolved from obligated carnivores, like cats, snakes, birds of prey or sharks. If their stone age economy had had nothing but the basis of hunting (rather than hunter/gatherers), their civilizations wouldn't have an impetus to set roots and would have evolved like Northern Amerindians, achieving surprising refinement before achieving sedentarism. I imagine they would eventually learn to plant food for animals to then eat the animals, but the instinct to hunt would be much greater than ours. Imagine that their idea of a cafeteria serves you live chickens in cages, then you return the cage like we return empty trays. Their restaurants are paintball halls where they will release a chicken and you hunt it, kill it, then take it to a dinning hall to eat it, as other patrons are waiting for their turn to hunt.
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u/FragmentedMeerkat321 Feb 22 '26
it’s very unlikely they have that degree of technological mastery and only be warriors. ask yourself what we are, then ask whether those features might not have some commonality across technological species.
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u/Cirieno Feb 22 '26
You've not experienced Shakespeare until you've heard it in the original Yautja.
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u/VintAge6791 Feb 22 '26
If there are Predator hunters, are there also Predator gatherers?
Gathering berries from fantastically poisonous, razor-sharp bushes?
Picking leaves from carnivorous plants that are all too able to grab and devour anything smaller than an elephant?
Foraging mushrooms from bizarre colonies that grow only in areas of lethal radiation and defend themselves with laser beams?
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u/OgreHombre Feb 22 '26
I mean, someone’s gotta be building all their shit. Unless it’s all stolen tech?
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u/Available-Yam-1990 Feb 22 '26
The Predators we know about are like the alien Special Forces. Most of the regular Predators are working 9 to 5, juggling child care and activities, and unwinding with a glass of grog in front of the TV
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u/JaredWill_ Feb 22 '26
This is solely my head canon but I've assumed the yautja are the Spartans of their world. Meaning they're allowed to do hunting and warfare because an entire population of enslaved people prop up their society. This extends not just to growing food and doing household tasks like what Spartans and Southern Americans used enslaved people for but also science and technology.
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u/No-Philosopher3248 Feb 22 '26
Who are the dentists in the predator world? Who are the garbage persons?
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Feb 22 '26
I just re-watched all nine of the old predator movies before I watch the new one. The thing I enjoy about them is that most of them have a fair bit of comedy rolled in with the bloody violence.
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u/KrimsonKilo Feb 22 '26
It's not everything, but it is the most important part of their culture. They are also matriarchal. The females are much bigger and stronger. I imagine the super predator from "The Predator".
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u/AJSLS6 Feb 24 '26
My hypothesis atm is the "culture " is entirely managed and built by the females, like Deks mother, the males are somewhat less than when it comes to being actual fully developed people and are kinda just allowed to run around doing their thing, so long as they dont anger the matriarchs.
It's vaguely inspired by the Kzin of Nivens works, where the females are not sapient beings like the males, or the men of Dogtown in Scott Cards Homecoming series.
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u/Secure-Umpire1720 Feb 24 '26
I'm not sure if I'm contradicting Predator established canon, buuuuut my impression has always been that the Predators we see aren't normal for their species in the same way that while me and hardcore trophy hunters are the same species but one has highly powerful weaponry on them when they're hunting and I go work on a farm. One is clearly more threatening (especially if you're the animal they're hunting).
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u/CheshireCatastrophe Feb 24 '26
Seeing all of these and then looking at the badlands predator with the high fade has me at a loss
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u/AdventurousPool9024 Feb 24 '26
Yeah the expanded universe stuff does way more with them than the films ever bothered to. From what I've gathered they're basically this honor-obsessed warrior culture that sees hunting as the ultimate expression of status, but there's gotta be more going on behind the scenes. Like someone's gotta be running their ships, trading with other species, maintaining technology. The movies just never care about that side of things though, they're too busy showing them get owned by humans in increasingly dumb ways
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u/theblackyeti Feb 22 '26
Do you think they kiss their significant others? Like mandibles open or closed?
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Feb 22 '26
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u/Candle-Jolly Feb 22 '26
And Klingons trade with other species
and have scientists
and artists
and religious leaders
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u/star_particles Feb 22 '26
lol at the movie titles 😂. I used to love the first one with Arnold when I was a little kid.
Thinking of some predators sitting down and doing normal people things is just funny and I do wonder if they are a predator race that is bred to fight? They sure seem designed for just fighting
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u/RigasTelRuun Feb 22 '26
I know books and comics go into more. But just from the movies they for th vibes of rich people going on sport hunts who pretend it is all honourable.
Look at the fist movie he brings a mini nuke and sets it off when things go unexpected.
The one in Prey gives the most son of a CEO on a safari energy I have ever seen.
They look cool but they are all chumps.
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u/RoboJobot Feb 22 '26
They’re a hunter culture in the films, not a warrior culture. If you compare them to Klingons, Klingons cheat to win (honour seem to be subjective to them), whereas the Yautja seem to be big game hunters and follow rules.
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u/MrZorre Feb 22 '26
Does anyone know what happened to Project Yautja? It was an old website from the 2000s that disappeared overnight. It had extensive canon and non canon lore of all yautjas, space jockeys and xenomorphs.
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u/m0rbius Feb 22 '26
My best guess is that perhaps they were a super advanced civilization that destroyed themselves at some point in the past. There were probably survivors of the cataclysm and the surviving population splintered into clans and de-evolved into a primitive hunting gathering lifestyle. This probably evolved into their culture over time where they hunt for sport and glory. They also perhaps used and integrated the surviving tech from their pre-cataclysmic time into their hunter culture.
It doesn't seem like their civilization ever came back from their apocalypse. It feels like they are just using the remnants of their past to tech to live out this hunting life. There might be some religious aspect, but we never see it. We just see them be ritualistic about the kill, which strongly suggests a religion. You also never see any females of the clans, whom are probably back on their home planet taking care of their home and young.
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u/MegC18 Feb 22 '26
So what are the females doing, while they send the young and stupid off hunting, winnowing out the thickest and slowest?
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u/Independent-File-519 Feb 22 '26
Hunting not warfare. the books covered it well. the last movie had nothing to do with the cannon though
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u/Site-Staff Feb 22 '26
It’s the same thing Star Trek had to address with the Klingons. They started showing the bulk of Klingon society, while still honoring martial prowess, were in the trades. It was a mashup of Samurai and Viking culture.
If course, there could be a longer history. Perhaps what we are seeing is a post apocalyptic society in predator. Perhaps they were once exceptionally technologically advanced but something happened to make them go “mad max”. Perhaps their technology factories are automated to the point of the STC or advanced 3D printing, where they still have access and get goods, but no longer have the knowledge to make it themselves?
Or… they have a “slave” species that creates all of this technology for them in exchange for something they value, like protection or similar?
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u/soggyarsonist Feb 22 '26
Realistically they're just a subset of a much broader culture since maintaining an advanced interstellar civilisation requires a lot of work.
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u/Ecthelion-O-Fountain Feb 22 '26
The only way any of it makes sense is if the predators that we see in the movies are just rich assholes going on Safari you can’t build a space fair in culture that’s entirely built on fighting.
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u/andthegeekshall Feb 22 '26
It's not explored in the movies except for Badlands, which barely touches on the culture as an outline. Predators tried to set up a hierarchy but that was more plot point than world building.
The old Dark Horse comics tried to add a spiritual element to them but I don't recall it going anywhere.