Prey

Amber Midthunder stars in Prey, a standalone prequel to the 1987 classic Predator, as “Naru,” a First Nations hunter who faces off with a Predator invader.

They started in the back of the room and moved stealthily through until they got all the way to the front towards me. “We created with Kevin a Native tactical sign language,” explains Myers. “Even in their off time [the cast] would go down the river and use it to talk to each other. In the middle of the conversation, the entire tribe shot up and had bows and arrows pointed at me. “I walked over after the first take and said, ‘Maybe do a little shh.’ We do a take and it was awesome. I turned to the DP [director of photography] next to me and I was like, ‘This feels familiar. In the middle of Prey, a “mud pit sequence” mirrors another scene from Predator which Trachtenberg says was an unintentional parallel. “We created a sign language,” Midthunder says. “That's what links them, on top of the obvious things we sought after to include in the movie.” Producer Jhane Myers, a Comanche and Blackfeet American film and TV producer, says the production worked with Kevin Starblanket, a First Nations individual with a background in military, law enforcement, and survival tactics. We had it on a hard drive and dissected certain points and took a lot of inspiration from it.” Naru is eager to prove her worth as a hunter for her village despite the sexist assumption that a young woman can’t assume such a role in her community. Naru is a total badass in her own right as she studies the Predator’s advanced tools and uses them to fight back against her adversary.

The genesis for the Predator franchise began with the idea that after Rocky IV, the only opponent worthy for Sylvester Stallone to do battle with is an ...

It is an aspect of the film that came as a surprise, but it was also great to see this aspect of history shown without remorse. Truly, it is a major step up from 2018’s The Predator, which removed the entire concept of two hunters duking out for some generic action movie cliches. It is a level playing field somewhat, with the audience never really sure of what Naru or Predator are truly capable of. The latest entry, 2022’s Prey, is a film that revitalises the very idea of the Predator in a whole new way. It is also a remarkable, standalone film that needs no prior knowledge of the Predator films to enjoy. The main protagonist Naru is a hunter and healer who wishes to prove herself to her tribe by hunting and bringing home a trophy.

The Predator series goes back in time and back to its roots for an old-fashioned monster hunt in the gripping Prey.

Prey is a modest sci-fi action thriller, a return as we said in many ways to the series’ simple roots, and largely successful on its own terms as a result. While the film is in English with a few Comanche words here and there, the young actors make no attempt at all to sound like humans from an earlier era; much of the dialogue is delivered as if they’re twentysomethings living in 2022 who are doing some cosplay in the woods. There’s been some grumbling among fans about the fact that 20th Century Studios (a subsidiary of Disney) has chosen to premiere this film on Hulu rather than as a theatrical release like every previous Predator movie. For one thing, Prey takes the franchise back to nature, in this case a forest and plains, which is where it belongs. Prey is the fifth installment in the Predator franchise (and seventh if you count the two Alien vs. The protagonist is a young woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder), a highly proficient tracker and hunter who is nevertheless dismissed by the male members of her tribe, including her own brother (Dakota Beavers), especially when she warns that the threat they face is much more dangerous than a lion or other wild animal.

Native American actress Amber Midthunder on tomahawk skills, Indigenous representation, her breakout role in 'Prey' and which film changed her life.

Midthunder “really enjoyed that experience” and hopes to do more in the future. She and director Dan Trachtenberg figured out a trick by tying a rope to it (so Naru can throw the axe, pull it back quickly and then toss it again) and from there “it was just honestly a lot of experimenting,” she says. “How many times can you throw it up in the air and twist it? “Prey” filmed on Stoney Nakoda land near Calgary, with a primarily Native American and First Nation cast, and placed a spotlight on Comanche lifestyle and history. A bear attack on Naru meant performing with a stuntman in “a not particularly great bear suit,” Midthunder says. “I always have intentions in that realm of things when I'm working, but they're not necessarily everybody's focus.”

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.

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.

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.

A former basketball player and longtime butcher, Dane DiLiegro has found his calling playing creatures in Hollywood.

He signed a series of one-year contracts with teams in Italy (his father’s grandparents were from Gaeta and Canosa di Puglia) and Israel (his mother is Jewish). “I was a rebounder, a defender, a screen-setter,” he said. He noted that there were only a handful of performers in Hollywood with DiLiegro’s build, flexibility and athleticism, and that they got nearly all the monster parts. The following week DiLiegro flew to L.A. to pitch his food show, look at apartments and check out a couple of special effects shops. “The idea was to create content so that I could eventually host a culinary travel TV show.” The 34-year-old DiLiegro is not the kind of actor who can be hired to play in the background of a scene: he can’t blend into a crowd shot. “You have to learn to live in discomfort,” DiLiegro said. To bear the weight of a 65-pound suit and 40 pounds of animatronic equipment, he’s got to stay thin and robust. “As a kid, I’d prowl around my house on all fours, like a beast,” he said. DiLiegro has quickly become one of Hollywood’s top “creature actors.” Sheathed in form-fitting, foam-and-latex get-ups, he appears on-screen in the guise of ghouls, space aliens and whatever a screenwriter can dream up. “I shot the entire movie essentially blind, with my head in the neck of this being,” he said. “A rite of passage for all creature actors.” “It felt like a sort of monster bar mitzvah for me,” he recalled.

The Predator franchise is an unusual beast, one fantastic action/horror blockbuster in the 80s that multiple filmmakers have tried and failed to follow up.

Every moment of Prey feels tightly crafted, it does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does it with aplomb. As she does everything she can to win a position of favor and fails at every turn, she begins to notice something deadlier than the typical wildlife in the woods. Despite her skill in medicine, she longs for the glory and pride of life as a hunter. Despite the disapproval of her elders, she trains hard, becoming a talented warrior and an almost preternaturally gifted hunter. The Predator franchise is an unusual beast, one fantastic action/horror blockbuster in the 80s that multiple filmmakers have tried and failed to follow up. It's the first big franchise feature of its kind to star an almost fully Native American cast.

A Comanche warrior fights to protect her tribe in the sci-fi film, action which debuted on Friday (Aug. 5). Find out how to watch here.

For an additional fee, subscribers can add Starz, HBO Max and other premium channels Hulu account and stream from one destination. Before you get started, there are a few things to know about Hulu, such as plans and pricing. Want to stream live television? Prey is a prequel film in the Predator franchise. The film, directed by Dan Trachtenberg, is set in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago. “It knows how to hunt.

Predator prequel Prey features the creature's first visit to Earth — and a surprising tie-in to the original films.

And as for the connection to the Predator mythology at large...well, that's revealed during Naru's encounter with the fur trappers. With the pistol now appearing in Prey, it's a clever way for Trachtenberg to pay homage to the previous Predator films while also staying true to the film's time period. If Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison return for a sequel with Midthunder, the idea of Naru having to fend off multiple Predators could definitely make for great sequel fodder. Victorious, Naru returns to her tribe with the Predator's head and is made the war chief. Despite Naru's efforts to warn them, the members of her tribe fall to the Predator's superior weaponry. This has led to critical acclaim, and is extremely fitting given that this year marks the 35th anniversary of the original Predator film.

This article contains Prey spoilers. Who knew the secret to the Predator franchise's future was to always go back in time?

In essence, the animated sequence suggests that Naru’s victory over the Predator became the stuff of legend and oral tradition: a story that was passed down from one generation to the next, including eventually on ledger paper. And given how the lone Predator in Prey can be viewed as a metaphor for European incursions into this land… At most, we’ve reached a kind of intermission before the real test comes when the Predators return to Comanche lands in force. This weekend’s Prey is the culmination of years of passion, and years of planning, from the filmmaker who wrested the Predator movies away from their recent and failed experiments of franchise-building in the future. The “post-credits scene” in Prey is technically neither after the credits or a full scene. however there is more to the story if you paid close attention to the end credits…

The Predator franchise is the ugly step-child of horror monster cannon. Fans know about it, are aware of it, but don't necessarily give it the credit it ...

The director puts his faith in a relative newcomer to shoulder the movie. At every increasing moment of this journey, Naru experiences a change in front of the camera, and it’s not just talked about in passing. Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a Comanche woman who aims to become a warrior by embarking on the “kühtaamia,” a rite of passage ritual where the hunter hunts the hunter who hunts them.

If it bleeds, we can kill it. But how does Prey connect to the bigger Predator franchise, and is there an end credits scene? Let's discuss!

So just like in other installments of the Predator franchise, the victorious hunter has to figure out how the alien tech works and how to find ways to defeat it. It’s this pistol that Naru tosses to the elders… It's really cool, but the last thing we see is a shot of the Predator ships emerging from a group of clouds... And in fact, the basic story in Prey is also pretty standard Predator-style stuff, in a good way – a fierce human warrior uses their wits and their environment to hunt down and kill a deadly alien warrior whose sole purpose for being there is to hunt and kill. As our hero, she’s the one who starts to figure out that there’s something out there in the forest that could very well be hunting her tribe. Hulu’s Prey takes The Predator way back in time, pitting one of the greatest hunters in the galaxy versus Comanche warriors in the 1700s.

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?

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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.

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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.

Dan Trachtenberg and Jhane Myers explain the streaming debut of 'Predator' film 'Prey' and adding a Native perspective to the franchise.

“I grew up on ‘Predator’ and I like action,” Myers said. A Native artist was recruited to create animations for the end credits, which unfold in the style of traditional Plains hide art. The stripped-down premise naturally lends itself to the hunter-becoming-hunted dynamic of “Predator,” while also carrying a completely new locale and mood for the series. “Prey” thoughtfully shifts the dynamic of “Predator” to the Great Plains, at a time when some Native Americans still live untouched by encroaching colonial forces. “I’ve worked in a lot of television where we’re always boxed in the format we have to work in. The filmmaker first gave his pitch for “Prey” to 20th Century Fox hot off the heels of his 2016 directorial debut, “10 Cloverfield Lane” — a critically beloved, post-apocalyptic potboiler that flipped a modest production budget into a $110 million haul at the global box office.

Find out how you can watch the Predator prequel movie Prey, where it's streaming, if it's coming to theaters, and more.

The larger Predators prey on the smaller, weaker versions as they continue to hybridize their DNA with other creatures in order to become the apex version of their species. After the group meets up with Nolan (Fishburne), he informs them that they are actually on an alien planet, the home territory for the Predators. He’s survived a few seasons there and gathered that the Predators abduct and collect warriors and beasts from other planets to sharpen their hunting skills on. Directed by Nimród Antal (Stranger Things), the third installment in the Predator franchise has a double meaning, referring to both the alien Predator and the group of people hunting it. Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story) is introduced as Special Agent Peter Keyes, a replacement for Schwarzenegger’s character, Dutch, from the previous film. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in the original Predator as he leads a team of men on a mission in the jungles of Central America. While there, the team is stalked and hunted by a creature that uses a cloaking device to avoid being seen. Set during a massive 1997 heatwave in Los Angeles, the Predator returns to wreak havoc.

Prey, the new sci-fi action blockbuster, premieres this Friday 5th August 2022. Here's how to stream Prey free online from where you are.

Subscription to Disney Plus (opens in new tab) costs from £7.99 a month. You can use it to watch on your mobile, tablet, laptop, TV, games console and more. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps you get around this obstacle. Here's how to watch Hulu from wherever you are. Better yet, viewers in the US can watch Prey free with Hulu's 30-day trial. The movie follows skilled female warrior/badass Naru, played by actress Amber Midthunder (herself a member of the Fort Peck Sioux Tribe), as she fights to protect her tribe against an high-tech alien and smash the patriarchy.

“A long time ago, it is said,” an unseen voice says, “a monster came here.” The year is 1719; neither Arnold Schwarzenegger nor Jesse “The Body” Ventura ...

He’s just another foreign power who’s come to conquer, a cosmic variation on the colonialists who’ll appear in bigger numbers and with more complex agendas, another hunter who views those already living on the land as little more than prey. Dropping a sci-fi/horror mainstay into what is essentially a revisionist Western template, one which favored the Native viewpoint over those who considered the notion of manifest destiny to be a mandate, adds a bit of novelty to the usually futureshocked franchise. And given that he has a Grade-A breakout star in addition to a famous monster of filmland at his disposal, Trachtenberg goes all in on trying to make as big, yet as creatively fertile a blockbuster-style movie as possible. (About that “big” part: Prey is most definitely a large movie, with widescreen vistas and rippling special effects and more than a couple of moments designed to turn an audience into one collectively gasping mass. It turns out that her combat skills have indeed been honed and refined more than everyone realizes, and while Midthunder doesn’t turn this young Native into a superhuman — Naru is barely able to extract herself from a quicksand pit — she does make you believe this woman is superior when and where it counts. It helps that Trachtenberg knows how to film man-vs-intergalactic-serial-killer stand-offs as well, without devolving into the usual quick-cut chaos mash-ups that now often passes for set pieces, and that he can frame a shot and pace a dread-inducing sequence for maximum impact. And the other part of it is that, handed an I.P. that’s revolved around a Darwinian survival of the fittest, Trachtenberg and cowriter Patrick Aison chose to harken back to a time in our nation’s history before there was much of an our equation at all. Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg’s addition to the Predatorverse, isn’t just an intriguing expansion of the series or a cool intellectual-property detour; it’s something close to a B-movie masterpiece, a survivalist thriller-slash-proto-Western-slash-final-girl horror flick that, like both its iconic alien and its indigenous Ripley 2.0 heroine, is extremely good at what it sets out to do. No one sees him, not at first — you don’t see the thing until it wants you to see him, and by that point, it’s too late. And it’s where, one day, a visitor comes crashing out of the sky. She’s noticed the large footprints in the mud, which suggest this intruder is bigger than a grizzly. The place is the Northern Great Plains of what will one day be called the United States of America. For the Comanche Nation, this is home: the forests where they hunt, the streams where they fish, the ground where they find roots for medicine.