Prey-Predator Prequel

For me it was one of those movies that was ok. It leaves plenty of bits to play devils advocate and rip apart if you want to. If you just watch it and don't think about it, you'll be good.
 
I thought it was decent, definitely better than that gawdawful The Predator. I thought they did a decent job of making it believable for them to kill a predator with primitive weapons. I kind of wondered how she turned into an expert knife fighter when she was retrieving her dog, but I'll let that slide. The only thing I thought was EXTREMELY cringey was her brother saying "If it bleeds we can kill it." All I could think of is Peter on Family Guy excitedly pointing at the screen and saying "Ah ah! He said the thing!" It's definitely not a movie I will rewatch often like the first two though. I'd give it 3/5 stars.

I also wondered what the main chick (don't even know her name) picked up near the dead buffalo. It looked a lot like a brass shell casing, which the writers would have to be complete idiots to have included. Does anyone know what that was?
 
I enjoyed the movie but wasn't wowed by it though. I'm I glad I didn't have to pay to go see it in the theater, if I had I probably would have been disappointed.

I do have to say that I didn't like the redesign of the predator. I don't know why they didn't stick with the classic look that's been with us for so long now. I also think that they forgot about how the predator's helmet/.mask also functions as a breathing aid of some sort, or at least it did in the first movie.
 
I haven't watched it yet, but my husband has. He's a big Alien/Predator fan and he really liked it, to the point where he actually went back and watched it a second time with the indigenous language dub track.
 
Watched it last night and enjoyed it. I liked the concept and execution. I thought the lead character was good, and I liked how a) she was shown to be good at problem solving throughout, and she learned from her mistakes, but also b) she wasn't invincible and kept messing up.

I liked the misdirection about the mud also. That was a nice touch.

A nice contribution to the Predator canon. I enjoyed it far more than the AVP movies and The Predator movie from a few years back. More Predator films set throughout history please. There's heaps you could do with it.

I spent 90% of the film worrying about the dog though
 
So I reserved judgement based on the trailer. There were a lot of assumptions made based on clips with no context. After seeing the movie, here are some of my thoughts.

The first 1/2 of the movie was just… boring. It took forever for the Predator to jump into action.

This thing killed a huge bear with its bare hands. It killed dozens of Indians and French trappers. Yet a 110 lb girl was running circles around it chopping it up. And jumping 50 feet out of a tree onto its back was unbelievable.

The CGI animals looked terrible as
did the ship.

The Predator helmet graphics looked like something I made with PowerPoint. Nothing like the original.

The camouflage effects looked bad. Why all the colors?

The Predator head design just looked off. Not near as menacing as Stan Winston’s original.

The Indians talked like spoiled punks of this era. I don’t think Comanche from 300 years ago would say “I gotta go take a squat. You want me to do it here”?

What made the Predator helmet targeting lasers turn on at just the right second? How did Naru know that would happen. And the creature knowing it’s own technology, why wouldn’t it just (I don’t know)… step out of the way??? Instead it looks at it and tilts his head like a confused puppy. And the floating, steerable arrows are right out of Guardians.

Things I liked:
Naru wasn’t perfect. They didn’t let her become part of the hunting party because she was a girl. But because she did t have the skills yet. Her brother gave her several chances.

The hatchet on a rope was cool. Her clearing the village of French invaders was badass.

Naru’s brother riding the horse around the Predator was cool.

There was a good amount of action in the movie and it was just the right length.

Im glad there are several members here that liked the movie. My opinions are my own and I told my friends and family to watch the movie and judge for themselves.

Thanks for reading!
 
So far this "property" contains one decent action flick and a sequel that's watchable only for it's ridiculous gore and inclusion of Gary Busey.
Everything else is a hot mess of fan service, I'm surprised anyone refers to "canon" in the collection of movies that only share one common thread.
This is what so many people complain about frequently on the RPF, lack of new ideas being made into films.
 
I thought it was OK.

I did find myself wondering "Did Native Americans actually have dogs?"

The first 1/2 of the movie was just… boring. It took forever for the Predator to jump into action.

Well, wasn't the original film the same way? Granted, the original was a bit more interesting/engaging because we didn't know exactly what was going on, or what was going to happen. But it was a while before the Predator jumped into action.

The Predator helmet graphics looked like something I made with PowerPoint. Nothing like the original.

Why should it look like the original? This was set 268 years before the original film. Earlier technology. Our own technology has changed dramatically in less time than that.

The Predator head design just looked off. Not near as menacing as Stan Winston’s original.

Again, why should it look the same? The director briefly addressed this in an interview - "But I think this guy's perhaps from a different hemisphere of the planet and a little bit of a different breed. So even his look is a little new, it's familiar, but new." Nothing wrong with that, IMO. I thought it was an interesting look.

What made the Predator helmet targeting lasers turn on at just the right second? How did Naru know that would happen. And the creature knowing it’s own technology, why wouldn’t it just (I don’t know)… step out of the way??? Instead it looks at it and tilts his head like a confused puppy. And the floating, steerable arrows are right out of Guardians.

When the Predator draws the dart thrower weapon it activates the targeting lasers. In the earlier scene in the French trapper camp when the Predator's helmet is knocked off and the lasers ended up pointing at a tree, Naru notices that the darts went into the tree where the three red dots were. My problem was... what were the odds that the Predator would end up in the bog and stand up in exactly the right spot to be in line with where she positioned the helmet? That was a big stretch for me. And the darts weren't "steerable," per se - they would just home in on wherever the targeting laser was pointed.
 
Just watched this, and actually thoroughly enjoyed it. A nicely different take on the concept, and I thought it was very well acted, directed and edited. Not perfect by any means, and the original of course still towers above all the follow-ups, but this one was highly enjoyable and certainly much better than the rest of the more recent ones.
 
She picked up one of the cigars that the fat Frenchman was smoking.

Ah okay! I thought it looked off, color-wise, for a cartridge.


I also was thinking the dog was going to be toast. I can't stand when they kill dogs in movies. I could care less about sex/violence/drug use warnings and they need to have "depictions of animal cruelty or death" or something in movies. I turned off some movie in the middle when they were shooting dogs. I don't have a problem with killing attack dogs, just normal dogs.
 
Well, in reading an article about the film's production (and specifically in regards to the dog), I found an answer to my question (if anyone else is interested)...

The dog used in the film is "a Carolina dog, a breed theorized to have been used by indigenous people in the Americas before European colonization, and which still exists in feral populations to this day."
 
I watched 'Prey' yesterday and I loved it. I remember seeing the original 'Predator' movie in theaters and although I've seen all the other Predator movie sequels I'm really only a fan of the original film and it's the only one I own on physical media.

As a prequel-of-sorts I loved that the Predator monster was not a carbon-copy of the one from the original 1-2 movies: different looking, different weapons, etc.. It made sense to me that the Predators may have evolved over time with their technology and that this specific hunter may have been from a different 'tribe' than the one from the original movie and thus, looks different (kind of like how all dogs on Earth live on the same planet but different breeds look vastly different from each other even though they share the same DNA)

I have seen a few interviews with the director and I know they had a lot of real Comanche involved as subject experts and I felt the Native Americans were portrayed as proud and noble. I love stories where I can see and experience life from an experience that is different from my own and learn about people from their perspective.

On the language thing, this is my take. 'Schindler's List' is a near-perfect movie, however it takes place in Germany during WW2 and ideally everyone should be speaking in German and the movie should have English sub-titles. Instead everyone speaks English with a German accent. 'Schindler's List' is an American movie made for American audiences and the language spoken in the movie is a reflection of who the movie was made for- Americans. I understand from the context of the movie that all the main characters are German and I know that when the true-life events happened they were all speaking German but as the movie-watcher the characters speaking English with German accents does not take away from the powerful story being told. Yes, I would have preferred 'Prey' to have all the characters speaking Comanche with English sub-titles, but I get that it's an American movie made for modern American audiences, so it did not bother me that the dialog was spoken in (modern) English because I don't feel it took away from the story being told and it did not change the emotional impact of the story for me.

Overall, I loved 'Prey' and I know I'll watch it again.
 
Wasn't horrible, wasn't fantastic. Sort of right down the line. First and foremost I didn't think it added anything to indian culture outside of "oh, they hunt" which we already knew. It also had what has now become the cliche girl has to prove herself story arc. I hate to be that person but everyones right, she can't hunt but yet somehow turns into a killing machine when saving her dog and remains so the rest of the movie. Doesn't make much sense after she unsuccessfully hunts a deer, a rabit, a mountain lion, and a bear. She would have died halfway through the movie if there wasnt someone always there to save her ass, including the predator.

When it comes to the ol pred head he's okay. Before the helmet comes off I'd even say he looks pretty cool. I guess the little kills he makes would make sense in the context of never having been to earth but most preds that we know of wouldnt even bother. Logic does seem to go right out the window with his first human kill which is an unarmed native holding a racoon. Other than that, weapons are okayish and the part was played well enough. In the end I give the movie four and a half shrugs.
 

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