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This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Thia, portrayed by Elle Fanning, left, and Dek, portrayed by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, in a scene from "Predator: Badlands." (20th Century Studios/Disney via AP)

SAN DIEGO – “Predator: Badlands” belongs to a long-established cinema subgenre: two opposed people reluctantly stuck together with a common purpose.

The film, the seventh in the franchise (not counting the “Alien vs. Predator” offshoots), has the buddy comedy energy that comes with that dynamic. It also belongs to the narrower subgenre of people quite literally stuck together, like 1958's “The Defiant Ones,” in which Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis were fugitives united by chains.

And, in a scenario that provid

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