Prey

The new Prey movie is a prequel that explores a Predator's first visit to Earth, where it comes face-to-face with a brave and skillful Comanche warrior (played ...

Prey the movie is a streaming exclusive everywhere! Prey is streaming exclusively on Hulu in the US, skipping movie theaters altogether. The new Prey movie is a prequel that explores a Predator's first visit to Earth, where it comes face-to-face with a brave and skillful Comanche warrior (played by Amber Midthunder).

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Hulu's clever prequel to 'Predator' is so much more than IP exploitation—it's bloodthirsty, self-assured, and crowd-pleasing.

What’s at stake in Naru’s adventure isn’t just survival, it’s an identity, and the subtle hints that the Predator here is also a bit of a rookie—and maybe Naru’s mirror image—work nicely without overwhelming the slender story line. Ultimately, it’s that very leanness—a stripped-down, muscular propulsiveness—that differentiates and elevates Trachtenberg’s proudly middleweight films above avatars of midsummer bloat like The Gray Man. Prey isn’t striving for greatness, or even really for posterity; instead, it’s happy to be tight and self-contained. Every person on-screen who isn’t Naru is pretty much grist for the mill, and the way the Predator’s presence gets weaponized against a group of cartoonishly nasty French interlopers is more righteous than suspenseful or frightening (just as it was in Predator 2, whose real bad guys worked for the DEA). At this point, it’s hard to make a figure as familiar as the Predator genuinely scary for audiences who’ve grown up with the iconography. In a nice touch, Prey complicates the theme of predation by juxtaposing the alien’s advanced weaponry with the steel traps and shell casings littering the woods—the detritus of European settlers. An image of fields littered with slaughtered, skinned buffalo is genuinely nightmarish, and keeps the period-piece setting from feeling like a gimmick. In lieu of characters with superpowers, Trachtenberg likes heroes who punch up; he’s said that he wanted Prey to convey the same basic, elemental appeal of Predator, which he defined, quite aptly, as “the ingenuity of a human being who won’t give up.” Or, as Jesse “the Body” Ventura put it so succinctly: “Ain’t got time to bleed.” The satisfaction of McTiernan’s film lay in making a front-runner into an underdog, and then giving him the duke anyway. The film makes a fun running gag out of the idea that there’s a food chain extending both ways through the animal, human, and extra-terrestrial worlds. There’s some other interesting backstory here as well: At first, Prey was conceived as a bit of stealth brand extension that would disguise its own status as intellectual property, the industry equivalent of the Predator’s own cloaking device. “We made it to be a big theatrical experience and on the downside, it’s not being released that way,” Trachtenberg told Screenrant, sounding like a filmmaker trying to put on a happy face. Its cast is dominated by Native American and First Nations actors, and while the version I watched featured English and Comanche dialogue, it’s also being released in a full Comanche-language dub—the first U.S. film to ever hold that distinction. As industry power brokers debate whether even summer movies belong on the big screen—and even $90 million superhero movies are canceled as tax breaks—Prey is in a highly visible yet precarious position.

Prey doesn't feature a post-credits scene, but there is a little something in the credits that sets the stage for a possible sequel.

We don't get a post-credits scene in Prey, but as we see Nara and her tribe celebrating the Predator's demise, there's one additional scene. "It leaves room for lots of different kinds of sequels to be made. "That said, we do something very unique in that, whereas other movies may have a post-credits scene, we have some storytelling inside our end credits themselves."

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.

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.

Created by brothers Jim Thomas and John Thomas, and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the film goes back to 1719 detailing an early days encounter with this iconic ...

Dane DiLiegro stars as the Predator, joined by Dakota Beavers, Stormee Kipp, Geronimo Vela and Harlan Blayne Kytawyhat. Created by brothers Jim Thomas and John Thomas, and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the film goes back to 1719 detailing an early days encounter with this iconic alien hunter. The infamous Predator gets a fresh update and an amazing new action hero (Amber Midthunder) in the prequel film out today.

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.

A film saga that began with Arnold Schwarzenegger machine-gunning a jungle in search of an invisible enemy has a new instalment – and shines an insightful.

but we have people within the Comanche nation that have that knowledge, so we were really able to hone in and really get everything really accurate for that time.” This ranged from the colour palate of the wardrobes being dependent on plant pigments that would have been found in the area in the 1700s, to the hairstyles and makeup, and fight tactics and weaponry. Brando is one of only three actors to decline the award in its 94-year history – and the only one in protest to events depicted onscreen. “Even the hide-art [drawn on animal skins] that you see at the very end of the film… and laying that message with the Creator.” and on television, and movie reruns.” Littlefeather also namechecked ‘ recent happenings’ at Wounded Knee, where Federal agents were in a standoff with activists who had occupied the town in protest over high level corruption and government mistreatment of Indigenous people’s civil rights. That was Sacheen Littlefeather, a White Mountain Apache actor and the President of National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. The lead belligerents in the film pivot between the predatory alien, and a repulsive camp of French fur traders – who value the life they find on the plains even less than does the alien creature in their midst. By the time cinema started interpreting history to the masses in the late 19th century, it was immediately guilty of prejudice. Amongst others, director James Young Deer (also known as James Young Johnson) who identified as Winnebago, made some 150 silent westerns between 1910 and 1913 for major French studio Pathe Frères. Young Deer’s protagonists were often heroic Natives who held the moral high ground in the movies, enjoyed interracial marriages, and lived authentic lives free of oppression. that does affect you,” says Midthunder, adding that few of the faces she saw on TV growing up were representative of her culture. An opportunity – and threat – arrives in the shape of a mysterious killer who leaves unfamiliar traces on the ground. It’s the story of an alien humanoid brutally hunting an enemy-by-default that fights back on its own terms, all amidst the beguiling mists of 18th century rural America. But beneath this subversive, hunter-becomes-hunted storyline – which began with 1987’s Predator – the film’s depiction of North American Indigenous people, and their representation both onscreen and behind the camera, sets Prey apart.

For a striking film like Prey, a highly anticipated entry in the Predator series, to be relegated to streaming is a grave disservice to cinema.

The closer and closer the film was to its release, the more strange of a decision this became. While it certainly seems like Prey will thankfully get some sort of physical release later this year, it is hard to shake the feeling of how quickly this could change if a streaming service decided to prohibit that. While you should absolutely still take in the viciously vibrant experience of Prey, its lackluster release serves as the most present and profound example of why solely streaming is not the best path forward. While this is by no means the first time that something like this has happened in the streaming age, there still is the unshakeable feeling that this was a missed opportunity. Lean and mean with a sharp eye for striking visuals, it is a genuinely outstanding work that demands to be seen on the biggest canvas possible. It features a riveting performance from Amber Midthunder as Naru, a resourceful hunter who is seeking to somehow track down the infamous Predator and kill it.