The "Predator" franchise receives an unexpected blast of fun — and a healthy dose of humor — in "Predator: Badlands," one of the year's most thrilling, lively action movies. Surprised? Same here. Who knew what this nearly 40-year-old series needed was a solid deployment of jokes?

Director Dan Trachtenberg, who is nothing if not driven to prove the malleability of the "Predator" series — he made 2022's sparse survival thriller "Prey" as well as this year's viciously violent animated feature "Predator: Killer of Killers" — takes a hard left here and goes the buddy comedy route with "Badlands."

And against all odds, it works, thanks to a smart reinvention of the story, a sparklingly charismatic performance from Elle Fanning and a bold belief in the director's vision. "Predator: Badlands" — the seventh movie in the "Predator" series — is a ridiculous, amusing, wildly entertaining thrill ride, and I absolutely loved it.

On the planet Yautja Prime, a Yautja — that's the technical term for Predator, the killer beast we first saw stalking Arnold Schwarzenegger and his impressively muscle-bound crew in 1987's "Predator" — named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is play-fighting with his big brother, Kwei (Mike Homick). Kwei is trying to get Dek ready for the big, bad world of Predatoring, and that involves a near-deadly battle inside a treacherous cave. Y'know, just horsin' around. Meanwhile, Dek's father, Njohrr (also Schuster-Koloamatangi, not that you can tell underneath the suit and makeup), is ready to take out his son for being too weak and not emblematic enough of the family's warrior spirit.

While defending his brother, Kwei is killed (by his own father!) and Dek is sent to a far-off planet to prove his worthiness to the clan. Before Dek can even process his grief — and yes, "Predator: Badlands" is a movie that acknowledges Yautja grief — Dek crash lands on the planet of Genna, where everything from the plant life to the native creatures are trying to kill him.

There, after a run-in with some nasty killer vines and a species of exploding herbs — the introduction of the planet and its terrain is not unlike that of "The Neverending Story" — Dek makes the acquaintance of Thia (Fanning), a chatty android who has been severed at the waistline. She's a product of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which effectively brings the "Alien" brand (back) into the "Predator" world, not that we need any more "AVP" movies, although in Trachtenberg's capable hands, anything seems possible.

Thia persuades Dek to help free her, and off these two go a-trotting across fields of razor grass, Thia strapped to Dek's back like a backpack. Dek is trying to track down a Kalisk, the biggest, baddest creature in the land, so he can slay it and prove his worth to his father, or maybe just throw it back in his face.

Thus begins the most unlikely team-up of the year, as a Predator and half an android go off on an adventure together. Along the way they pick up Bud, a cuddly creature who spits a mouthful of goo on Dek to mark his territory, which essentially means designating him as a friend. And yes, this is a "Predator" movie that acknowledges friendship, which, like everything in "Badlands," absolutely should not work but somehow does.

Screenwriters Brian Duffield (2020's underrated "Spontaneous") and Patrick Aison pepper "Badlands" with swaths of humor, never taking the enterprise overly seriously; there's a gag early on where Thia sets her language to a "universal translation" mode, a workaround to audiences hearing her in English while Dek hears her in his native language.

There's also a bit where Thia's legs, disembodied from the rest of her, become their own ass-kicking character; no "Predator" movie, and no other piece of big studio IP in memory, has felt the freedom to color so liberally outside of the lines of its own expectations as "Badlands" does.

In a dual role — she also plays her character's evil double, Tessa — Fanning is especially endearing, her humor and lightness a direct rebuke of the "Predator" series' often self-serious and macho tone. But it's not just empty, throwaway humor. Trachtenberg uses the story's playfulness to strengthen the audience's relationships to its characters, so by the time the big battles arrive, there are connections to the characters and stakes in the results.

"Badlands" still delivers the action that fans crave, but it finds new life in the "Predator" series precisely by not being so precious about itself or its lore. It's one of the year's biggest surprises: by lightening up, "Predator" once again feels vital.

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'PREDATOR: BADLANDS'

Grade: B+

MPA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of strong sci-fi violence)

Running time: 1:47

How to watch: In theaters Nov. 7

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