“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch say this many times in prison as “Predator” has (correctly) long lapped the other films in this franchise to be the TV favorite. Sure, Adrien Brody getting weird on Predator Planet was cool, and Danny Glover in downtown L.A. taking down these monsters is not without its pleasures. But it’s hard to beat “Predator” as far as perfect genre movies.
“Prey” was ultimately never going to live up to that original film. Not a sin. I’ve always thought about how, if you do a franchise picture, you need to commit to making what you think will be the best one in the series. “Prey” is not that. But I do earnestly believe that director Dan Trachtenberg (unlike, say, the doofuses behind the “Alien Vs. Predator” offerings) really thought he had gotten there, and had topped John McTiernan’s flawless original. Not quite, but there’s no shame in getting this close to excellence.
The movie begins in 1719, with the beautiful Amber Midthunder as Naru, a Comanche would-be warrior who gets the sense that this UFO in the sky might have bad intentions. But there are other issues, particularly societal sexism that has turned Naru into a permanent understudy to her clan’s “true warriors”, boys on the possibly-eternal cusp of manhood. Once these stakes are established, we know the general arc of the story: girl empowers herself, jerk boys learn humility, girl faces off against interstellar beast.
It could work (or backfire horribly) if another director did a speed-run through these plot points. But Trachtenberg wants to emphasize just how someone could go toe-to-toe with the Predator. Part of that means showing a gnarly brawl between the creature and a grizzly bear, an all-timer as far as cinematic bear fights. But a lot of that also comes from Naru powering up and learning how to go from warrior-in-training to battle-hardened foe of the Yautja.
I will say this, in the hopes it doesn’t seem like I’m taking anything away from anyone. Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the great moviestars because his presence alone was storytelling. When he appears at the start of “Predator”, outlandishly chiseled and immediately in-charge, you know everything you need about Dutch. You know he’s respected, maybe even loved, and he’s without-a-doubt competent. His character arc isn’t about being better because he is the masculine ideal. It’s instead about defeating something that is more than man and, as such, about BECOMING more than man. The end of “Predator” is the end of a myth.
There aren’t a lot of Schwarzeneggers out there. So Trachtenberg instead works to establish Naru not as more than man, but merely more than Comanche. It’s not about the pride of defeating a Predator. It’s about working within your means, surviving. The bear attacked the Predator with brute force, because the bear understands only that. Naru has to learn how to be smarter, cagier, slicker than an inscrutable opponent. Arnold and his crew know then can kill the Predator. Naru is confident, but not nearly as sure. A different approach, but still compelling.
I should note that I won’t be writing a review of “The Predator”, which was an event for me when it made its way to basic cable during the pandemic. Of course I was excited, and it was… fine. Maybe too quippy to work fully, but a quippy Predator movie isn’t exactly sacrilege to me. It bummed me out that it seemed like a good way to launch a bunch of new, appealing stars, guys like Boyd Holbrook and Sterling K. Brown, and yet those guys are still working on the margins of the studio system and not headlining major work. Holbrook got to be the villain in “Logan” and Brown just got an Oscar nomination for “American Fiction”, but will either be recognizable on a big movie billboard in the midwest? Nope.
This gives me a chance to talk about an interesting episode on the set of “The Predator”. During filming, Olivia Munn apparently shot a scene with an extra that was a good friend of Shane Black, the writer-director. Only later did she learn that the actor in question was a convicted sex offender. She felt betrayed, and wanted the scene cut and the actor to no longer be involved in the film. Reportedly, she also expressed dismay over how the male cast members in the movie didn’t overtly support her wishes.
I have mixed feelings about this, for many reasons. Firstly, knowing what I know about the criminal justice system, I think it is a fair assumption that if someone has served a sentence for a crime, they deserve a chance to live a normal life. But I also know that most sentences are arbitrary gibberish. Someone who did twenty years might be far more mentally stable than someone who served six months. So relying on the opinion of the court won’t make you more safe. Won’t make you less safe either.
It was Munn’s assertion that the cast and crew should have been made aware about the man in question. This is a difficult area too, for two reasons. One is the question as to whether someone who committed a crime should have that follow them for the rest of their life. Does it matter if that person is trying to make amends and be a productive member of society? Does it matter that the convict repents?
But the second reason is, they technically WERE aware of the man, because he was on a Sex Offender Registry. The Registry, of course, seems quaint in the internet age, since EVERYONE’S crimes are now a few clicks away. Whether or not someone has a sex charge, their crimes will show up in every search engine as one of the earlier results. This particular guy should not have his crimes documented everywhere on principle, and yet, we have a system that does just that for the benefit of the cast and crew of that particular film. For Ms. Munn to suggest she was not made aware of this man’s crime is to also suggest the Registry, which is already cruel and punitive, doesn’t work. You can go either way on that, and you still arrive at the question of “why do we have this?”
And I commend Black for maintaining a friendship and working relationship with the man in question. People who leave prison need to integrate themselves into society, but they often need someone who will help integrate them into society. They all need help, no matter the background, no matter the crime. They need friends, they need allies, they need assistance. Those who would get holier than thou about the topic will note how Jesus often sat and broke bread with criminals, thieves, prostitutes. Hard to get holier than that guy.
At the same time, I get where Munn is coming from, in that she wishes for a safe and harassment-free work environment. Especially considering what I know of many sex criminals I knew when I was down, several of which do seem to come from central casting. It seems entirely tone-deaf of Black to cast his friend in a small role specifically as a lecherous personality who, in the excised scene, oogles Ms. Munn. I would personally not mind participating in a creative project with someone who served a prison sentence for murder. But would I want to feature in a scene with them where they were to do violence to my character? No, I think it would be wise to avoid that.
There is no perfect answer to a scenario like this. But the solution was that Fox cut the scene, the actor was no longer welcome on set and Black (supposedly confronted with additional details about the crime of which he was previously unaware) renounced his friendship with the man – that is not the right way to treat any man or woman. It would have been best to never hire the man, and “not hiring him” is not the same as punishing him. But to hire, and then fire and ostracize the man, seems like it doesn’t take into account the sacrifice he made to the government. If we don’t take into account what convicts give to the government when they serve their sentence, why are they serving it?
Next week, it’s five days of NICOLAS CAGE.
Prey is one of my favorite movies of the past few years. I'm excited to watch it soon and write about it as well!