Prey

Ahead of the Predator prequel's Hulu premiere, we chatted with the cast and crew of the film to learn what we can expect, from its franchise connections to ...

“It’s not like you’ve ever seen technology advance in any of the Star Wars movies, though there’s so much time covered between the movies, the games, and all those things. “In many cases, he has entirely new weapons at his disposal that feel like they’re more prototypical than some of the other stuff that we’ve seen.” “Honestly, there’s no way that you can prepare for going through everything that was involved in the making of this movie,” she added. “Unfortunately, because there’s so many different uses of language in the movie, it was very confusing for some earlier audiences.” “This is the first time that a movie has ever been done completely in our language,” Jhane Myers revealed. The result is a groundbreaking entry that emphasizes cultural authenticity and Indigenous representation while delivering a visceral, grounded adventure in the process.

Prey includes some fun links to previous Predator movies. 20th Century Studios. Predator prequel Prey -- that's fun to say out loud -- came to Hulu ...

Prey apparently overwrites the events of the 1996 comic Predator: 1718, in which one of the aliens teams up with a pirate captain to battle his mutinous crew. After the human triumphs, a bunch of other Predators decloak and seem ready to murder him. The final image pans to show a Predator ship coming out of storm clouds over Naru's camp, implying that the aliens attacked again. It mirrors the sequence in which her brother Taabe ( Dakota Beavers) did so with the lion earlier in the movie, after she failed to. Having seen her fellow Comanche Nation warriors and the deeply unpleasant French poachers slaughtered by the Predator, Naru lures the beast into a trap in the dark forest. It pits one of the alien hunters against Comanche Nation tribespeople like Naru ( Amber Midthunder), and it's absolutely excellent.

As a movie villain, the Predator has pretty basic motivations. He's an alien who comes to Earth to hunt for fun with some cool gadgets.

She’s an anti-Arnold in the best way, the kind of heroine who knows she can be underestimated and uses that to her advantage. “This movie resets a whole lot of paradigms, and one of them is the language component,” Myers told ComicBook.com in an interview. No one—including her brother (Dakota Beavers)—believes her, so she heads out with her loyal pup Sarii (a Very Good Dog) to take down the Predator on her own, and achieve what is called Ku̵htaamia, a rite of passage where a hunter is celebrated for besting a large beast. Predator spinoffs, and then rebooted twice with 2010’s Predators and 2018’s The Predator. The latter film—directed by Shane Black, who appeared in 1987’s Predator—was clearly designed to produce sequels that never actually came to fruition after controversy, bad reviews, and a mild box-office take. The Predator first started prowling in the 1987 film directed by John McTiernan and starring, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bulky Austrian action star plays Dutch, a commando who is part of a team dispatched in an unidentified but coded as Central American jungle to handle a Communist insurgency that goes awry when, surprise, there’s an alien on the loose, skinning people alive and murdering for fun. It’s an archetypal narrative—almost Disney Princess-esque—thrown onto a Predator movie with all the green goo and ridiculous kills that entails.

Prey, Dan Trachtenberg's prequel to the Predator franchise, will be bypassing theaters for a streaming debut on Hulu, so Disney can avoid having to put it ...

Given the current box office climate, Disney might well have chosen to give Prey a theatrical run, if all things were equal. But, according to Variety’s Adam B. Vary, before it was acquired by Disney, 20th Century Fox had a deal with HBO Max to stream all its theatrical releases there. Disney also owns a majority stake in Hulu, which is where it likes to put its more adult-oriented content that doesn’t fall under the Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, or Marvel brands. Predator is owned by, and Prey was made by, 20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox). Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019. And they’re turning their back on straight-to-streaming releases, even to the extent that Warner Bros. has canceled its HBO Max Batgirl film completely. While some studios sought to push films to streaming to boost their subscriber numbers during the pandemic, the box office has well and truly bounced back this year, led by the extraordinary success of Top Gun: Maverick. Studios are now betting on theatrical runs for films in well-known franchises — like the Predator series — boosting their profitability.

The 'Raphael Adolini 1715' pistol at the end of 'Prey' was once held by Danny Glover in the final moments of 'Predator 2.'

How did a Spanish pirate’s pistol end up in the hands of French hunters in America? Prey makes it clear that none of the Frenchmen had ever encountered a creature like the Predator before. If Adolini indeed gave the weapon to a Predator himself in this continuity, did that same Predator have another, later encounter with (possibly non-French) humans and lose it? The weapon’s backstory was fleshed out in the 1996 anniversary anthology issue A Decade of Dark Horse #1, in the story “Predator: 1718” by Henry Gilroy and Igor Kordey. The tale opens on Spanish pirate Captain Raphael Adolini, whose crew mutinies against him when he seeks to return stolen gold to the church for which it had been destined. It isn’t until the very end of the film that we glimpse our first and only real Easter egg: a flintlock pistol engraved with the words Raphael Adolini 1715, hinting at an entire potential timeline leading up to 1990’s Predator 2. Aboard their spaceship, just before they fly off, one of them throws the pistol to LAPD Lieutenant Mike Harrigan, played by Danny Glover, perhaps as a sign of respect. During her escape, she finds a pistol which she’s taught to use by one of the injured hunters.

Amber Midthunder (Naru). The role of Naru — a Comanche warrior who comes face-to-face with the Predator in Prey — is one that Native American actor Amber ...

See how Amber Midthunder’s Naru measures up against Dane DiLiegro’s Predator by streaming Prey (opens in new tab), which is available on Hulu now. In November 2021, Kipp won Best Actor at the American Indian Film Festival for his lead role in Sooyii — a 2021 drama co-written and directed by stuntman Krisztian Kery about a young Pikuni man who mysteriously becomes the only survivor of a deadly curse that spreads throughout his village. Among the other beastly acting credits DiLiegro has under his belt so far are his uncredited debut role as “Hero Walker” on Season 10 of The Walking Dead and the “Muscle Monster” on Netflix’s South Korean post-apocalypse drama, Sweet Home, from 2020. However, artistic performance is not lost on Beavers, who is also a successful musician and has been active in the art since he was 13. The role of Naru — a Comanche warrior who comes face-to-face with the Predator in Prey — is one that Native American actor Amber Midthunder was born to play, marking her first time leading an action movie after years of supporting roles in the genre. Midthunder made her acting debut at 4 years old alongside her father, Westworld’s David Midthunder, in 2001’s The Homecoming of Jimmy Whitecloud before landing her first speaking role in 2008’s Sunshine Cleaning and later earning more prominent starring spots in movies like the 2016 drama, Priceless, the horror movie 14 Cameras in 2018, and the thriller Only Mine from 2019.

The review embargo for Prey has finally lifted, so what are critics saying about this long-awaited Predator reboot? The social media reactions were glowing, ...

How Trachtenberg, Aison, and Midthunder interrogate that very question is a thrill, offering the most unexpected of movie treats: a once-stalled franchise that suddenly seems bursting with delights — and, yes, plenty of blood spatter." Prey made me wish the Predator franchise was turned into something like Assassin’s Creed, with each new entry touching on a different time period, exploring the mythos from a new lens." The movie’s sole focus on her lead character, Naru, means that the supporting roster comes off a little wooden, but when Prey’s tracking the young warrior’s duel with the Predator -- full of powerful imagery and creative kills -- it rarely falters." But maybe, in the case of this franchise, that marks a slight improvement over movies that wanted to be nothing but what has come before." "By the time Naru stands opposite the Predator in hand-to-face-pincer combat, coating herself in the creature’s phosphorescent green blood, it’s clear that even a “Predator” movie can now be styled as a lesson in how to be. It's also a much-needed fresh start for the series that allows Amber Midthunder to shine in a role that promises to put her on the map."

It worked particularly well for the first two films, but over the course of more sequels, spinoffs, and forays into games and comics, that high-level idea has ...

(One excellently gross scene shows the Predator in all its glory, while doused in bear blood.) But the film does an incredible job of slowly teasing out the main conflict. It terrorizes the humans in brief flashes of violence. This includes both some of the Comanche hunters and a group of French fur trappers. For the most part, Prey is a pleasantly slow buildup to the ultimate showdown between Naru and the Predator. On one side, we see Naru slowly growing into herself, trusting her instincts even when no one seems to believe her (or in her — with the exception of her supportive brother). She’s equal parts impatient, determined, and resourceful, all of which come in handy as she sorts out just what’s going on. But careful and observant Naru is the one who realizes something more is happening. She trains with weapons on her own, pushes her way into hunting excursions, and, when asked why she wants this so badly, says simply, “because you all think I can’t.” The presence of a certain alien forces her into that warrior / hunter role a little sooner than expected.

10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg co-wrote and directed Prey, a return to the iconic Predator horror series that started in 1987.

(Hint: Besides the obligatory Predator dialogue riff, there’s a connection to Predator 2 afoot, too.) Trachtenberg’s film wields the elemental appeal of watching sci-fi/horror weirdness bend the boundaries of the human-against-nature conflict. The simplicity of “women can kill as good as men” threatens to turn Naru into a Predator-fighting, bloodthirsty girlboss, but the no-nonsense scrappiness of Midthunder’s performance keeps that from happening. The other members of Naru’s tribe are there to naysay and/or become Predator fodder. He may be out there in the woods, but he isn’t exactly communing with the spirit of Terrence Malick. But when a series of mysterious signs indicates that an unfamiliar creature is stalking their territory, only Naru is willing to hunt it down. Before Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2017, the film studio had become known as a purveyor of durable genre movies like the Alien, Predator, and X-Men series — and also as an interfering cost-cutter, defined by its willingness to set pivotal action sequences in generic parking lots and Canadian forests.

Amber Midthunder makes a spectacular action hero in this compelling survival story that just happens to be a 'Predator' prequel.

Prey is barely a Predator movie, which is why it’s the absolute best Predator movie in 35 years. It matters that the film’s narrative, about an undervalued hunter holding her own against an unthinkably challenging foe, works regardless of whether you’ve ever seen a Predator movie. Sure, it’s by default the best Predator movie since the first Predator movie. All due respect to Danny Glover’s over-the-top star turn in Predator 2, I’d argue that Prey is the first Predator sequel/prequel where the main human protagonist is more compelling than the monster. Prey is a generally engaging and often engrossing action-adventure film with a strong lead performance, theater-worthy production values, agreeably R-rated violence and just enough of a connection to the prior Predator films to appease that fandom. The best thing about Daniel Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison’s Prey is that it’s barely a Predator movie.

To earn her stripes as a warrior, Comanche hunter Naru (Midthunder) must take the ritual of kühtaamia and bring down a particularly dangerous beast.

Naru may lack the no-neck brawn of Dutch’s crew, but she’s wiry and ferret-quick, efficiently dispatching quarry both four-legged and two with bow, blade and tomahawk-on-a-rope (genius) in a symphony of choreographed mayhem that wouldn’t look out of place in John Wick: Chapter 4. Instead of Arnie at his Arniest, we have Amber Midthunder’s Naru, a defiantly competent Comanche fighter who flatly rejects her people’s notion of a woman’s role — a cause touchingly supported by her war chief brother, Taabe (Dakota Beavers). Prey, by contrast, takes the same basic set-up (warriors in the wilderness, hunted by an alien) but strips out the absurdity and neatly realigns the original with more modern sensibilities.

'Prey' proves to be an apropos title, as Dan Trachtenberg's film is cowed by John McTiernan's original 'Predator.'

This sensibility, common of American action movies of the ‘80s, feels authentically volatile in our skittish modern culture, as contemporary, woefully self-conscious genre offerings can’t hope to capture such anarchy. Of course, she’s right: A relative of the monster that will plague Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mercenary centuries in the future lurks nearby, armed and ready to party. Evil white people pop up to die as grist for the mill and that’s about it, as the tension between the Comanche and the European invaders is, at best, rudimentarily mined. The film is set 300 years in the past, in the Highland Plains of the Comanche nation, with a protagonist, Naru (Amber Midthunder), who has a problem redolent of many a Disney princess. Now, the potential annihilation of Naru’s tribe is an opportunity for her to come of age. So ripe, in fact, that it’s rather astonishing to consider that John McTiernan’s 1987 original is the only Predator that’s worth a damn.

The cast and filmmakers of Prey discuss bringing primal surprise back to the Predator franchise—and making a movie that truly honors its Comanche setting.

Then you saw it decloaked with the biomask on, and you thought, ‘Oh that’s what the Predator is!’ And then it still had yet another look, and that’s something we haven’t gotten from any of the movies since then.” That to me was the most mind-blowing and special part of this experience.” It also added to the film’s visceral return to nature in the Predator mythos. Trachtenberg cites Terrence Malick as a reference for the look of the film. It was also a thrill to make. To achieve that effect onscreen was a learning process for many involved, including the stars. “For me, this is amazing because we always wonder what life was like on the Great Plains back in the 1700s,” Myers beams after entering the Den of Geek studio at San Diego Comic-Con. “So it’s pretty amazing to bring people to see just that. Watch it once in Comanche and once in English.” It is set 300 years ago, before much of the North American continent had been colonized by European settlers, and tells the story of Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman who is a gifted hunter and tracker that wants to break gender norms in her community and prove she is likewise a great warrior. However, unlike recent, stumbling attempts to relaunch the Predator franchise, Prey also succeeds by mirroring a real culture and real world that has long been undervalued onscreen. They were, after all, about to make the first good Predator movie in nearly 40 years—and perhaps more importantly a movie that took Indigenous and First People’s experiences seriously. “I thought about how Native Americans, and specifically Comanche, are so often relegated to playing sidekicks or the villains,” Trachtenberg says, “never the hero.

Prey's Rotten Tomatoes score has been revealed, and it's a major win for Hulu's upcoming Predator reboot. You can find out how it compares to the rest of ...

In our review, we concluded by saying, "Prey delivers pure Predator pandemonium, and is the Predator franchise at its best. Prey is debuting on Hulu this Friday, and the hope is streaming numbers will be high enough to warrant a sequel. With a female lead and a unique 1700s setting in The Comanche Nation, the Predator finally feels relevant again.

The wide open spaces of Alberta look fantastic, there's plenty of monster mayhem and action, and the striking score by Sarah Schachner deserves to be blasted ...

As it yanks the bear from its pursuit, lifting it up for the kill, the invisible Predator is painted into view by an outpouring of blood. This gives the creature a kindred spirit of sorts in Naru ( Amber Midthunder), a young warrior who wishes to hunt like the males in her tribe, including her brother, Taabe ( Dakota Beavers). Naru is teased by the guys, who state that hunting is men’s work, but we learn she can hold her own in a fight. The Predator’s modus operandi is the same, however: it is a hunter and it’s looking for trophies of prey. “Prey” bills itself as an origin story of the first Predator alien to appear on Earth. This one is fitted with slightly retro versions of the weapons wielded by the late actor Kevin Peter Hall in the first film. Considering the recent cancellations of films scheduled for upcoming release, I suppose I should be thankful that “Prey” can be seen anywhere, including on services to which I do not subscribe. So, why is Disney dumping an entry in the popular “ Predator” series on Hulu in the middle of the summer?

The world wasn't calling out for yet another Predator movie but 10 Cloverfield Lane's Dan Trachtenberg finds mileage in a light-footed prequel led by Native ...

Said smashing is done with gusto from 25-year-old Midthunder who rises to the challenge of taking on the Predator even if her character’s ascent from unsure warrior-in-training to top-of-the-food-chain action hero is missing a few beats or, dare I say, a training montage. While it really shouldn’t be, it feels genuinely new to see a genre film of this scale centred on an almost entirely Native cast (the only white characters are odious French invaders, natch). It’s worth applauding not because of the mere fact of what it is and what it means but because screenwriter Patrick Aison (a TV pro with credits including Jack Ryan and Wayward Pines), finds a way to make it all seem perfectly seamless, the setting an inventive way to impose a new set of restrictions on a story we’ve seen a few too many times before. But when Naru notices a new kind of predator, one who can’t simply be hunted as a bear or lion would, she finds a way to prove herself and save her people.

By focusing on the stories of the human characters—in a uniquely anachronistic setting—director Dan Trachtenberg rekindles interest in the uneven film ...

This is the shot in the arm that the franchise needed—a confident addition to its timeline, populated with moments that will leave long-time fans grinning and will encourage newcomers to explore the rest of the franchise. Alongside their respect for the Comanche, to whom the film is dedicated (and producer Jhane Meyers is a Comanche and Blackfeet American Indian, ensuring respect and authenticity in its depictions of their culture), there is a giddiness in the filmmaking that suggests that the film was a passion project for all involved. Stunt coordinators Steven McMichael and Jeremy Marinas conjure magic magic with mostly primitive weapons like bows and arrows, hatchets, and swords, giving the fights the kind of brisk pacing and visceral impact that action junkies expect in a post-John Wick film landscape. After Naru’s first confrontation with the Predator, the film continuously escalates and it becomes a gauntlet run of near escapes and propulsive action, depicted in decidedly cool but never larger-than-life terms. Aison establishes what hunting means to the Comanche, defines the roles expected of men and women in their tribe, and spotlights Naru’s competitive relationship with her older brother, Taabe, who’s played with empathy and star-making confidence by newcomer Dakota Beavers. Trachtenberg and cinematographer Jeff Cutter, reteaming from their work on 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), take great lengths to create a sense of naturalism and beauty, both in the landscape and performances, that leads naturally into the eventual showdown with an alien audiences know is waiting in the brush. With Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey, the long-running Predator franchise finally has an entry that can stand as an equal to the original film, precisely because it narrows its focus on the story elements that matter dramatically, instead of unnecessarily expanding the franchise’s mythology.

The “Predator” franchise gets a prequel and the Comanche Nation gets a space invader in this unremarkable adventure.

Yet despite a female-empowerment theme and an adversary fairly bristling with fancy weaponry, “Prey” never builds a head of steam. Taking note of the bloody remains, Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman, and her brother (Dakota Beavers) determine to track the perpetrator. Dropped out of a spaceship in the Northern Great Plains in 1719, the beast proceeds to research the local wildlife.

Amber Midthunder plays a young warrior battling an alien in 'Prey.' (CNN) For those who remember the original "Predator," the ...

Until that climactic showdown, the best thing going for it is Midthunder, whose recent roles include "The Ice Road" When it comes to battling Predators, brains tend to trump brawn. Naru soon gets the test of several lifetimes, recognizing that the alien (played by Dane DiLiegro, a 6'9" former basketball player) isn't an animal but something different, while also learning its strengths, weaknesses and the peculiar game that it plays in terms of who and what it chooses to kill.