Just the Ticket #113: Prey

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Showing you what you cannot see.

Ever since it subverted slasher movie convention by introducing a villain so monstrous that it could dismantle multiple incarnations of the 80s action hero trope single-handed (as well as nearly every known celebrity not-yet-former-governor, and Shane Black--a.k.a. the writer of Lethal Weapon and the director of THE Predator, a.k.a. "the pussy joke guy"), the Predator franchise has had its ups and downs. Many would say there have been nothing but downs since the original Predator graced movie screens in 1987, but still, even the lower quality entries had their bright spots.

I may do a full franchise review at some point, but for now, you can revisit my thoughts on the AVP movies and Predators at the links here:

AVP & AVP:R - Ticket Stubs #32: Rogue V. Prey (Part I)

Predators (Prometheus focus) - Just the Ticket #65: Rogue V. Prey (Part II)

I'll try to keep it to a minimum, but the usual Spoiler Warning is still in effect because I'm going to put an "Implications" section at the end. So hunt it down on Hulu if you don't want to be spoiled like a skinned and discarded bison carcass in summer, and here's the break:

Amber Midthunder (Sunshine Cleaning, The Marksman, and Netflix's low-budget attempt at a "one damned thing after another, plus stupid people" action movie, The Ice Road, the latter two of which star Liam Neeson, so if you want to learn about a good movie with Liam Neeson, guns, and ice, check out my review of The Grey) has a star-making turn in Prey as Naru, a young Comanche woman looking to prove herself in the year 1719. But as was the norm over three hundred years ago, women are only supposed to cook, clean, and reproduce. So even though she can out-track, out-shoot, and out-tomahawk most of the men in her tribe, they treat her like garbage (even blunting the delivery of the "chauvanism is bad" message so much at one point that three of them physically assault her for giving them information that will help them not die, only for karma to bluntly--or sharply, if we're being literal about the weaponry involved--kill them off moments later). 

There is some unevenness to the movie's flow later on, but my main criticism of Prey is that, as a "strong, independent woman"/"kick-ass chick" archetype, Naru only serves as someone who can do what others believe she cannot do, and needs to prove to those people that she can do what we know she can do. Even when her world is expanded by the knowledge of colonizers (there are two audio tracks for Prey: one where the Comanche speak English and the "English" speak un-subtitled French, and one dubbed in Comanche where the "French" are English, as is supposed to be historically accurate for the time), or by her encounters with the movie's villain, she has no character growth beyond "kill the most dangerous thing onscreen and bring back proof that you did."

The villain, of course, is a Predator. Some critical voices have neglected to account for the time period in their reviews, complaining that the Predator in Prey is a "Super-Predator" like were seen in Predators and The Predator, and that it is "too human" and "too dumb because movie." But I, for one, like the thought that went into the design and "plot-dumb" behavior of the creature. This Predator (or Yautja, if you want to get lore-accurate about it) is the same race as the original, but two to three hundred years less evolved or technologically advanced. Instead of the metallic faceplate with built-in HUD, it wears the skull of some alien beast it previously killed. Likewise, it's armor and clothing are textile, rather than metal. It hasn't discovered plasma or nuclear technology, and so uses a Bolt-Caster and thermal mines (in addition to the classic wrist blades) to kill its Prey. It is big and dumb, but not for the reasons the naysayers propose; lacking the centuries of hunting experience and advanced technology of its 80s-to-now descendants, this is not a Super Predator, but a relatively inexperienced ancestor of the modern Predator which relies more on brute strength (the bear scene from the trailer--the part the trailer doesn't show--is a great "get the monster over" moment) and its "kill the most obvious threat" code to hunt. This single-mindedness even makes the Retro-Predator a perfect foil for Naru, and justifies the movie's title because neither of them is consistently dominating the conflict. Just as Predators' title signified more than "Predator, but now it's plural," Prey illustrates how its heroine and villain are at once worthy rivals, but nowhere near as prepared for each other as they thought, and the resulting fights between the two are savagely amazing.

On that note, Prey is a beautiful movie. Yes, the CGI employed to make PETA and the ASPCA happy is video game obvious (unfortunately, I must again reference the bear scene here). But the scenery, even during action sequences (and the previously referenced scene of the skinned bison carcasses), is gorgeous, and this is only compounded by the film's masterful early pacing.

Though fans and those who watched the trailer know what to expect, Prey takes its cues from the original by spending its early runtime with the human characters (specifically Naru's tribe, as the European settlers are hastily thrust upon us much later on, in the second-to-third act), establishing their uncomfortably antiquated dynamics, dropping dialogue hints of varying subtlety (the "showing what you cannot see" opener I used is one of Naru's lines, referencing her desire to be accepted, and foreshadowing her encounters with the Predator), panning over establishing visuals, and sprinkling minor reveals of the ship, the camouflaged Predator, and acts of CGI-animal cruelty that can only be seen on an HD monitor with maxed-out brightness. It isn't until the 45-minute mark that the heroine and monster first share screen time. And can you guess what it is? Take it away, Chicago Superfans!

Da Bear Scene!

I joke, but the bear scene is worth mentioning for so many reasons, good and bad, whether it's to draw attention to the animal CGI, establish the Predator as an alpha beast, or mark the change of the film's pace into action-horror (and the aforementioned three-on-one physical assault--which I feel I must note was not sexual--but I've already thought and spoken enough on how unnecessarily wrong and heavy-handed it felt, so let's move on), and I guess that's why it was a featured part of the trailer--the bear scene, not the other thing that happens later. On to the weird pacing of the European settler material. The movie tries to do the same thing with them that it does with the Predator, illustrating their trophy-focused hunting with CGI skinned animal carcasses (the Pred killed a snake in one of those too-dark-but-important scenes, and the settlers killed an entire herd of bison). And anyone who is new to the franchise, or forgot their high school history (or is one of those historical revisionists who thinks Caucasians are perfect) would think back to the snake and assume the Predator was responsible for the bison herd as well. I even did for a second before my long-term store of quasi-useless facts kicked in. But following another scene from the trailer (what I am calling the "get down" scene), in which Naru and..her brother? (who I assumed had died earlier because he was an asshole to the heroine and went off on his own to shit in the woods in a slasher movie)...recreate the wheat field scene from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, she is suddenly knocked unconscious by the Europeans and wakes up in a cage. None but the Comanche translator has any character traits beyond "we are evil, greedy foreigners in need of Predator bait," and even he is only there to trade exposition dumps with Naru so she can learn how to use the film's only real Easter egg. As for the settlers as a whole, they are shoved in less for historical accuracy than because the Predator ran out of non-essential Native characters to kill, and the film's pacing slows to a crawl as we wait--twice--for it to show up and raise the body count. However, in the moment, the action proved worth the wait(s), and when Prey was over, I was a satisfied Predator fan. Even with its later pacing issues and blunt attempts at sociocultural and historical awareness, I thought it delivered a Predator prequel that felt like a Predator movie, and successfully used what made the original work. As one, more positive critical voice said, "Why was this so hard to get right?" A Predator in the jungle worked. A Predator in LA sort of worked. I thought multiple Predators with home field advantage worked. They could have done one with pirates. Or in the Crusades. Or with cavemen. Or in Egypt. Or Rome. Or with samurai or ninjas. Or make the inciting joke behind the first movie a reality and have a Yautja fight Adonis Creed. Instead, lore and merchandising became more important than taking a formula that worked and doing it again in a different setting. Though not as good as the original, Prey did the "impossible."

B+

And now, The Implications: prior to release, Prey was marketed as "a movie where the Predator wins." Now, if you heard something like that on late night TV or an entertainment news show or your social media feed (like I did), and you watched Prey (like I did), you'd be forgiven your confusion because the movie ends with Naru having defeated the Retro-Predator and returned to the remains of her tribe with a severed Yautja head in tow and the alien's blood war-painted on her face. Happy ending! Except her brother and his asshole friends are all dead, there's the possibility that her tribe might ostracize her as a god-killer instead of accepting her as a strong warrior like she wanted, the Predator's ship is still parked and cloaked somewhere nearby and probably transmitting some signal or other back to the Yautja homeworld, and then there's that Easter egg I tried not to spoil until now. The Comanche translator taught Naru how to use a flintlock pistol! Which is framed in a few shots to let fans know that it is possibly the same gun that Danny Glover's character is gifted with at the end of Predator 2. Which means (whether or not we get a Prey 2) that at some point after the movie's events, Naru is killed by another Predator, who takes the gun from her as a trophy. Yes, there could be more to the gun's providence, it may not be the same gun at all, and I'm probably making an unquantifiable number of other assumptions to leap to a dark conclusion. But this scenario is at least possible.

Let me know what you think in the comments, and Stay Tuned for an Anime Spotlight on Zombie Land Saga, as well as a Just the Ticket review of a recent Joe Hill film adaptation.

Ticketmaster,

Out.