The Predator franchise travels back into the past with new prequel film Prey. The fifth film in the science fiction franchise takes place 300 years ago in Comanche Nation. The film centers on Naru, played by Amber Midthunder (Roswell, New Mexico) a fierce and highly skilled warrior. Raised by a tribe of legendary hunters, Naru seeks to protect her camp from an unknown threat, aka everyone’s favorite mandibled alien hunter. Prey is directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane, The Boys) and stars Dakota Beavers, Stormee Kipp (Sooyii), Michelle Thrush (The Journey Home), and Julian Black Antelope (Tribal).
Prey offers a fresh look and perspective on the franchise, which launched with the 1987 John McTiernan blockbuster Predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The series has spanned five films, with the most recent entry being Shane Black’s lackluster The Predator in 2018. and two crossover films, Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). The character has also been spun off in novels, comic books, video games, and more.
Prey features a Native Comanche producer (Jhane Myers) and a cast made up almost entirely of Native and First Nations actors. The film makes history as the first studio movie that audiences can watch entirely in Comanche, as it was spoken during the time period (the film will have an English version as well). The filmmakers achieved this by filming all the scenes both in Comanche and in English. Myers said of the film, “That’s really important to me being Comanche and working with our Comanche language department, also with working with Comanche language speakers,… But just the fact that people will have a choice, the world will have a choice to listen to the whole film in Comanche is amazing.”
Myers added, “That’s never been done for my tribe, ever. There’s only a couple of movies. I think ‘Star Wars,’ which was 30 years old when they transcribed it into Navajo, and then there was Navajo again for ‘Finding Nemo,’ which was 20 years old when they did that. But this is the first time for a brand new film to come out and have that option to hear it all in the whole language. So that not only inspires the young language speakers of my nation, but that inspires a lot of other people and shows them, and like I said, shows the world what our language is about. Which is thrilling for me.”
Prey premieres on Hulu on August 5, 2022.
(via SlashFilm, featured image: Hulu)
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