The nature of the beast in current year. You push hard on one side, you will polarize another to push back. Thus we will not have any context and nuance in the great CULTure wars.
Yeah. I mean, no one has a problem with female protagonists. It just so happens one side created a strawman that female heroes don't exist and has been lecturing the world on this fact for ~10 years now.
I want more Ripley, The Bride, Lara Croft (90s version), Trinity, Leia Organa, Furiosa etc and less Rey, Captain Marvel, Batwoman, Reva, Admiral Holdo, Teela (Netflix), etc. When you have a pattern of creating trash characters and pushing a message people are naturally going to jump to conclusions.
It sounds Prey doesn't fall into this category, but I don't blame people for writing it off initially.
Really sad to see what consumers have become. Youtube was never mesn to be some platform for idiots to spread their nonsense.
This whole trend of calling stuff "woke" is repugnant to me on general, I know some will disagree but its virtually completely arbitrary and has no meaning beyond personal opinions about things that wouldn't have been a big deal 20 or 30 years ago in a movie.
Just reeks of insecurity in general to decry any female protagonist before a movie even releases. And the youtubers and pundits who push their own agendas while claiming to have their viewers best interest and out straight up falsehoods in their videos are just as bad as the agenda driven news outlets. Completely misleading, selfish and knowingly manipulative instead of giving their honest opinions.
Whatever. Movies still awesome regardless. Hopefully people will have a more open mind after seeing this, and will stop going to these guys for their fix after realizing they've been lied to.
Goddamn, what an awesome movie. Trachtenberg really knocked it out of the park with this one. I've been trying to tell y'all, he's a director to watch. Honestly, I would say Prey is nearly as good as the original Predator IF it wasn't for the fact that it reveals the Predator way too early IMO. That might sound like a silly complaint but think about the original Predator for a moment. One thing I always loved about the original is that you don't know what the threat is until you see its hand pop up in Predator Vision, which is 1/3 of the way through the movie. You see the spaceship in the intro, but by that point you're so engrossed in this jungle commando thing going on that you've probably already forgotten about the 20-second intro. It's fun to introduce the movie to new viewers because they're often surprised about what direction the movie goes in.
In Prey, you are constantly reminded of it's existence. Hey, Predator landed! Hey, just a reminder but Predator is still here and killed snek! etc. Don't get me wrong, the snake scene is very cool visually but I guess I just prefer subtlety in that regard. I think it would have worked better if they came across the snake carcass without the viewer knowing what did it, kinda like the later scene with the buffalo (which was a nice but momentary misdirection). Oh and speaking of misdirections, I loved the camera zooming into mud early in the movie, which made us think "oh they're going to do the 'mud conceals your body heat' thing again". Not in this one!
So yeah, in summation: I loved it.
8/10
Also, shout out to Uber Eats for giving me 3 months of free Hulu and Disney+.
To be 100% honest it's what gives clicks and pays the bills.
It's the same thing that people always screaming "ist" do. Basically to them everything is an "ist". And if everything is an "ist" then nothing is. People on the other side of the aisle are doing the same thing. Everything is "woke" and if everything is "woke" then nothing is. Terminator 2 and Aliens would be a "woke" mess if they released today. It's part of the reason I stopped watching some youtube channels. They are as annoying as the left.
Really sad to see what consumers have become. Youtube was never mesn to be some platform for idiots to spread their nonsense.
This whole trend of calling stuff "woke" is repugnant to me on general, I know some will disagree but its virtually completely arbitrary and has no meaning beyond personal opinions about things that wouldn't have been a big deal 20 or 30 years ago in a movie.
Just reeks of insecurity in general to decry any female protagonist before a movie even releases. And the youtubers and pundits who push their own agendas while claiming to have their viewers best interest and out straight up falsehoods in their videos are just as bad as the agenda driven news outlets. Completely misleading, selfish and knowingly manipulative instead of giving their honest opinions.
Whatever. Movies still awesome regardless. Hopefully people will have a more open mind after seeing this, and will stop going to these guys for their fix after realizing they've been lied to.
After being wounded by an elite fighting force. With bullets. Not to mention Arnolds exploding arrow which disabled it's cloak. Then a giant log being dropped on it. I don't think you've watched it.
I can't wait for this 90 pound slay queen to single handily defeat the predator.
Yep Prey pretty much sucks, it's not a huge abomination like the 2018 movie, but it's still bad. It had some enjoyable brutal fatalities, but that's pretty much the only good thing. The finale was by far the worst part of the movie...
like when the Indian girl took the 'invisibility herb' that didn't affect her combat abilities... or the part with the ricocheting projectile was also very lame
The setting had potential, but it should've been made much more believable (even for an action flick standards). It feels like the Predator picked the easy difficulty for most fights that didn't apply to a petite Indian girl. The CGI was also godawful in some scenes, especially when it came to animating animals.
PS. Oh and I was also disappointed with the lack of classic Predator roar. Would've made the action scenes more atmospheric.
Ill watch this again sometime probably. A little surprised how universally lauded it seems to be. Didn't hate it, liked a few bits, but was really underwhelmed.
My standings I guess would be
Predator
Predator 2
Predators
Prey
...
All the other crap.
Just finished watching Prey. I re-watched Predator and Predator 2 to refresh my memory regarding the production values and story beats. My verdict...
Prey was excellent!
Prey is the prequel this franchise didn't know it needed. Trachtenberg hit it out of the park.
The cinematography was incredible. Every scene was beautifully composed and lit with one exception, a vista shot where the lighting was a bit overdone, making the scene appear artificial, for a couple of seconds. Overall, the day and night scenes were incredible.
The writing was solid. Not too much exposition, not too much dialogue. There was one welcome callback (forward? lol) to Predator that was delivered in the right way and at the right time.
The treatment and interplay between the
three different cultures, Native American Indian (Comanche), French trappers and the Predator
was very convincing and respecfully done. As an English speaking Canadian born in the 70's, this was perhaps the first sci-fi movie I've seen where a story weaves historically accurate non-fiction with fantastical science-fiction effectively.
I don't mean this in the contemporary "woke" sense. I came away from Prey feeling like if i didn't know anything about the groups represented (through old fashioned "edumacating" in highschool and having watched Predator), I now have a reasonable idea of what the reality was and how it could play out if an intergalactic hunter-warrior decided to pay us a visit. This is where Prey takes the human side of the story beyond that of the first Predator movie.
Predator was a story about a specialist military team facing off against a Predator. Dutch et al were a handful of the best of the best versus the unknown alien combatant. Dutch survived by the skin of his teeth.
Prey is a broader humanity versus alien story from Naru's viewpoint. We get the setup for her motivation which, within the framework of a hunter-gatherer culture, is plausible. She has innate abilities, but she knows she is capable of more. In the movie's condensed timeframe, she develops her tactical and lethal skills. Dutch and Naru might start from different levels in their respective movies, but by the end, both characters gain the knowhow to survive and overcome the threat.
The actors were well chosen. My absolute nit-pick would be Naru (Midthunder) reminded me about a criticism leveled at Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games. Naru's tribe is composed of children, elders and notably lean/gaunt males. Within the filming schedule of Prey, I'm not suggesting Midthunder was fat, but if everyone in this tribe are living off the land, and Naru is supposedly more active than the other female members of this tribe, I would think she would be leaning towards a slim/athletic build. A couple of the running scenes gave me doubt. This is just a nit-pick.
The CGI for the most part was well executed. The smaller animals fared better than the one big one, but even that beast looked convincing.
They could have omitted the one animal jump scare. This is Prey, part of the Predator franchise, not a James Wan film.
I would have preferred a little less visual exposition of the Predator at the beginning. Prey did it in three stages compared to Predator where there was just the atmosphere insertion with no further cues about what landed on Earth until the first jungle encounter.
The executions... Oh my, the executions... Prey takes us back to Predator and turns the dial up...waaay up!
I'm talking "Flawless victory...FATALITY".
In terms of (subjective) ranking within the franchise:
Just saw the movie. I see why people are positive about this.
Really well made movie. The effort and the care were all there. Yes, there was a slight dip in quality when it came to the final fight(which a lot of directors and studios struggle a bit on) and a couple of goofy characters that I think that should have been given a little more time and development to be handled slightly differently. However the initial theme, how the protagonist and antagonist both were constantly learning and very observational before striking, and how it all circled back to the end fight and the protagonist's motivation was handled really well. Because of that, I'll also put it as number 2 on my Predator movie list.
This movie is on the right track of what I think this series desperately needs: to be more of an anthology series and less like AvP, AvP 2, and The Predator(2018). Let's keep jumping around to different timelines and different planets with different stories and completely different predator experiences, and we should also get more movies where it's ok for the predator to win.
It's a real shame this doesn't have a theater release.
Yeah i really want to check this out, I would have absolutely wanted for this version to be my first experience with the film, it wasn't immediately obvious that it was an option when i loaded it up on D+? Guess ill have to check again.
Ghostbusters 2016
Captain Marvel
And that one scene in Endgame that made everyone cringe where the women all line up to pose for the camera.
None of this movie had anything near what the above movies had.
The protagonist failed multiple times and had to be saved multiple times until the very end fight. You saw her observing and learning the whole film just as much as the Predator was doing the same.
If the spoiler is considered woke then I must be behind on the times with how much the goalposts have moved.
I tought it would be shit but i just watched it and i really liked it ! Good thing they went back to something simpler, the last one was a big fucking mess , i loved the scenes where the pred just massacres everyone, really violent, also it doesn't waste time, 1h39 minutes, would watch again
The scene with characters talking at the top of a ridge with riders on horses in the background, just out of focus. Then [snik-snik] body parts. Then the horses bolted. Priceless!
Ghostbusters 2016
Captain Marvel
And that one scene in Endgame that made everyone cringe where the women all line up to pose for the camera.
None of this movie had anything near what the above movies had.
The protagonist failed multiple times and had to be saved multiple times until the very end fight. You saw her observing and learning the whole film just as much as the Predator was doing the same.
If the spoiler is considered woke then I must be behind on the times with how much the goalposts have moved.
Horseshit was it woke. They dumbed the Predator down, but she was a decent character, and they didn’t make her combat with Preddy completely unbelievable. No more or less than Ripley taking on the Alien, or Sarah taking on the Terminator.
Sounds like your issue is with a female protagonist in a modern movie.
Horseshit was it woke. They dumbed the Predator down, but she was a decent character, and they didn’t make her combat with Preddy completely unbelievable. No more or less than Ripley taking on the Alien, or Sarah taking on the Terminator.
Sounds like your issue is with a female protagonist in a modern movie.
I've had a theory for the longest time that if a character like Ripley from Aliens were actually created today, she would not be looked with the same reverence that she was back then. We are getting very close to my theory being true.
Horseshit was it woke. They dumbed the Predator down, but she was a decent character, and they didn’t make her combat with Preddy completely unbelievable. No more or less than Ripley taking on the Alien, or Sarah taking on the Terminator.
Sounds like your issue is with a female protagonist in a modern movie.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Ripley basically just run from the Alien the entire time and yells at everyone who is stupid enough to stick around and fight? Then at the end, when she has access to the mech, she decides it's worth taking the thing out?
Same with Sarah Connor, who is waaaaay more bad ass than this high school chick. She outsmarts a creepy Dr and takes him out plausibly and then she just runs from the Terminator the entire film.
This movie just pits this high school girl in front of a 500lb alien from outer space and he just watches as her 120lb non athlete body hits it over and over. Like...you moron filmmakers, we just watched the Predator take out a striking viper with absurd quickness and precision but this scrawny girl is too fast for you to react to?
I enjoyed it, it's a good Predator movie. I like the vibe and angle but I wish they did more with it, that they went more "all in" with the native americans and the period piece. It's a better idea than I expected and I wanted more of it
Make sure you watch this from a device in which you're sure supports full 4K, HDR, BT2020, and Dolby Digital for the Hulu app, and have at least a good sound bar that supports DTS V or some other spatial audio. Pro tip: the PlayStation 5 does not, the Xbox Series X and Apple 4K TV do.
The shooting of the film is gorgeous at times. Colors really pop. The effects for the predator are so well done. The sounds at times are so reminiscent of the first Predator.
Despite any criticisms of her prior work, apparently most would say they were valid, Midthunder can act. She is great in this.
Full thoughts later. The best Predator movie since the first. In fact I could see younger audiences enjoying this one more just because of how amazing it looks and sounds. (edit: the downside is the CG for some wildlife was obviously skimped on - but it's not terrible, just clearly not the best available)
Agreed fully. Within first 10 minutes I realized this movie is a showcase for OLEDs HDR (I am on a C9, should be even better with new ones). The dark scenes with the fire torches were soooo atmospheric. The outdoors scenes were amazing too. And I was watching with a great soundbar in a dark room and the sound blew the roof off, figuratively.
And the movie itself is pretty great. I was cautious about woke shit and all but no. It has little to do with the fact that she is a girl, but simply that she is a badass person. This is the way I like it. No 'cause i am a wahmen!' moments. And the native American cultural stuff really added to the atmosphere I felt.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Ripley basically just run from the Alien the entire time and yells at everyone who is stupid enough to stick around and fight? Then at the end, when she has access to the mech, she decides it's worth taking the thing out?
Same with Sarah Connor, who is waaaaay more bad ass than this high school chick. She outsmarts a creepy Dr and takes him out plausibly and then she just runs from the Terminator the entire film.
This movie just pits this high school girl in front of a 500lb alien from outer space and he just watches as her 120lb non athlete body hits it over and over. Like...you moron filmmakers, we just watched the Predator take out a striking viper with absurd quickness and precision but this scrawny girl is too fast for you to react to?
Is every movie that stars a female protagonist woke now?
Because if you’re going to bleat about this scifi action film being woke, you’d better do it about every sci-fi action movie that stars a woman who fights the monster, otherwise you’re a hypocrite. And every horror movie while you’re at it.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Ripley basically just run from the Alien the entire time and yells at everyone who is stupid enough to stick around and fight? Then at the end, when she has access to the mech, she decides it's worth taking the thing out?
Same with Sarah Connor, who is waaaaay more bad ass than this high school chick. She outsmarts a creepy Dr and takes him out plausibly and then she just runs from the Terminator the entire film.
This movie just pits this high school girl in front of a 500lb alien from outer space and he just watches as her 120lb non athlete body hits it over and over. Like...you moron filmmakers, we just watched the Predator take out a striking viper with absurd quickness and precision but this scrawny girl is too fast for you to react to?
You cant compare to other movie like aliens or terminator
Predator movie is about art of survival, always has been, using tactics, hit and run, distraction, ambush, setting traps, teamwork, using environment etc bring whatever cause you need to survive is important to win
A 120 lbs fighter can still beat 500 lbs beast if he knows how to kill cuts its artery/ cut the throat/ hit vital organs etc
It is not woke. I think it was never mentioned, that she is a bad hunter because she is a woman. Just lack of experience or talent. You could have even replaced her with a guy and it wouldn‘t have changed anything.
Is every movie that stars a female protagonist woke now?
Because if you’re going to bleat about this scifi action film being woke, you’d better do it about every sci-fi action movie that stars a woman who fights the monster, otherwise you’re a hypocrite. And every horror movie while you’re at it.
That’s literally what you’re saying though, because this film is just like all those classic female led sci fi and horror films in terms of how it handles her character arc and the way she fights the monster. No different.
You’re desperate to see agendas where they don’t exist. And this is coming from someone who happily calls out actual woke shit when it rears its ugly head.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Ripley basically just run from the Alien the entire time and yells at everyone who is stupid enough to stick around and fight? Then at the end, when she has access to the mech, she decides it's worth taking the thing out?
Same with Sarah Connor, who is waaaaay more bad ass than this high school chick. She outsmarts a creepy Dr and takes him out plausibly and then she just runs from the Terminator the entire film.
This movie just pits this high school girl in front of a 500lb alien from outer space and he just watches as her 120lb non athlete body hits it over and over. Like...you moron filmmakers, we just watched the Predator take out a striking viper with absurd quickness and precision but this scrawny girl is too fast for you to react to?
We all agree here that the ending fight wasn't handled as well as it could have been, however even in that same end fight
she had help from the dog during the times it was about to kill her. She even ran away at one point during the fight after it quickly overpowered her so that she could bait it to jump into the spike trap and land into the quicksand pit. Rewatch the fight. Also consider every scene where he observed her she was either being manhandled or in a captured state, so he might not have considered her hunt-worthy when the battle first occured between them(of course they should have done a better job to point this out in the movie but I do think there were subtle hints to this).
Also weight and size has nothing to do with someone going for a quick stab with a sharp object. This isn't a UFC match. You're acting like she just ran in, suplexed it, and called it a day.
I just watched it (on a proper screen with all the bells and whistles of course) and I liked it but aside from some creative new (old) Pred shenanigans, in both design and weaponry, it didn't do much for me I'm afraid. Yeah the action was good for the most part (and it definitely helped that it has an R-rating) but I the first half was just dreadfully dull. And writers these days seem unable to write normal dialogue as 90% of the time characters in this speak "trailer talk" where every line seems almost specifically written so editors can cut promotion material from it. The only genuine and 'natural' dialogue seemed to be from the Frenchies lol. I also thought the first few scenes where they just outright show the Predator were kind of jarring. The CGI seemed rough in those bits and felt like they were put in at the last minute to counter the stupid "you don't even see the thing for half the movie!" criticism you hear so often these days. I dunno, just seemed unnecessary to me and I would've liked it if they kept an air of mystery around it and spent more time with the main characters doing main character things.
Anyway, it's not a bad film and definitely a step in the right direction compared to shit like The Predator which was just awful in every way imaginable.
I gave it a 70/100 on Criticker and I'm being generous with that score.
They are at pains to show that this is a weaker, dumber Predator.
They have it pretty badly injured by others like her brother before the end fight. She doesn't best it in physical combat, and has to use her wits with the targeting helmet to kill it.
If they'd had her coming up against OG Predator and win, then yeah... woke as shit. But that's not what happens. Did you actually watch the movie properly?
The CGI was also godawful in some scenes, especially when it came to animating animals.
, i loved the scenes where the pred just massacres everyone, really violent, also it doesn't waste time, 1h39 minutes, would watch again 
