There seems to be a hard and fast rule that any movie based on a popular franchise is going to come under criticism for not meeting some requirements that fans have in their heads. When it was announced that a Predator prequel movie was coming from Disney, with a female lead, social media immediate lit up with comments from Predator fans decrying the demise of the franchise. Of course, the last few Predator movies haven’t quite set the world alight and when Prey arrived its reviews bested even the original Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. However, that didn’t stop trolls from continuing to negatively react to Amber Midthunder’s Naru, something that director Dan Trachtenberg says is born from them misremembering John McTiernan’s 1987 movie.
Prey takes place many years before Arnie took on the bug-ugly alien in the jungle, and while many Predator movies have attempted to bring something new to the franchise, the film has managed to do that by bringing something old back to the franchise. There are no flashy settings or elaborate storylines, but instead Prey concentrates on a simple premise of Predator against prey at its rawest and most brutal.
Director Trachtenberg recently spoke on Radio 1’s Screen Time Podcast, and dismissed the complaints that Midthunder’s character being able to handle herself against a mighty Predator are unbelievable, saying that their issue is not remembering the core conflict of the original movie. He said:
"There was a very strange reaction, too, in… it’s almost a Mandela Effect thing of the way people misremember the original movie. […] But I never really wanted to correct that thinking, because it helps the movie. This movie is more exciting the more you feel like, ‘How is she gonna pull this off?’ […] I’m happy for people to think that way, even if you think a little bit harder about Predator, the end of that movie is where she begins, you know? Like he ends up in a place where, all the Comanches sort of have that knowledge-base that Arnold has to resort to, so… But I was happy for people to forget that. I think people remember Predator as, ‘Guys with big guns fight the thing,’ you know?"
Prey’s Amber Midthunder Is “So Grateful” For The Movie’s Success
Taking on the lead role of a movie connected to major franchise can be daunting, but Amber Midthunder has taken on the role of Naru as though she has been preparing for it her whole life. When the first reviews of Prey started rolling in with massively positive ratings, it was something that Midthunder couldn’t be happier about. She previously said in an interview:
"There are no words for how that has felt. Really, the thing that I was thinking about the most, in making the movie, and then releasing the movie, was how Native people would feel about it. Indian country’s response to the movie was really what I felt the most anxious about. That was the biggest thing that was weighing on me, what the response for that would be. I feel like that’s who the movie was for and that’s what the movie was about, so to have it come out in that way, and to have Comanche people respond well, and to have Native people, in general, respond well, was a huge sigh of relief. And then, to have some of the interactions I’ve had with people, which have been really meaningful and really beautiful, and really, really moving, there’s nothing that could top that. There’s no amount of chart breaking or anything that could top what that means to me."
Prey is available now on Hulu and Disney+.