¶ Intro / Opening
We can kill it.
Shut up?
What the hell are you?
Welcome back midnight viewers to Yahu. It's the one you've been waiting for. It is Yah Mark two. We have a bigger dressing room than the puppets. HP has joined me as usual. He's on my He's on our Predator journey with us, HP. How are you man?
I'm so good everything. I feel like everything has been leading up to this moment when you mentioned to me the idea for you yaouca fest Excuse me, I had no idea the hills I was going to have to climb and the distance I'd have to walk. But here we are ready to go with Prey.
Hey, disregard this, listeners, this is just a test. I'm leaving the network in February. All right, Pray, let's talk.
Pray.
It is the latest in the Predator franchise. Now efficiently. Now look up until now, the direction of the series has really been based on whoever happens to be making the movie at that time, whether that was an edict from twentieth century Fox that they wanted a particular type of movie, and then somebody came in and made it, or somebody came in and said hey, let's do this kind of movie with the Predator, and they've done it. Now. Obviously that's the case here where somebody pitched, let's do
this kind of flick and they went for it. But this is the first time we have a filmmaker in charge who's going to be given multiple films. He's already made multiple films. Is there's three now technically, and hopefully he'll remain in charge of the entire series. I'm talking of for use about Dan Tracktenberg and his movie Pray.
Why do you want to Hunt? Because you all think that I can't. I saw a song in the sky. I'm ready. Oh there's something else I'm trying.
You can't.
I'm trying to protect you, protect me from what.
It's time.
It knows how to hunt, I know how to circrive. Whatever did this? I can character.
¶ Prey
This movie was written by Patrick Eisen with a screen that he wrote the screenplay, but stories by Patrick Iisen and Dan Tracktenberg based on characters by Jim and John Thomas, as all of them happened to be. This one stars Amber mid Thunder, Dakota Beaver's, Dane de Lagro, Michelle Thrush, Stormy Kip Julian Black, Antelope, and Bennett Taylor. And this was released on July twenty first, at twenty twenty two.
That was the San Diego Comic Con premiere. Mott was released officially and it was released in a few theaters on August the fifth, Jessica's birthday, twenty twenty two. HB. Was this your first time watching Prey?
It was not.
It's interesting we've and away he goes, here we go. So long time listeners of you Yocha fest will know that quite a few of these movies. I will say to father alone, Yeah, this is the first time I ever saw it. For this episode, this one, I the trailers got me because so this is almost forty years after the premiere of the First Predator, right, the First Predator was nineteen eighty six, and here we are it's
twenty twenty two, so that's thirty six years. I like most people, this was sort of coming out of the pandemic a little bit, maybe not going to see as many movies as I'd want to or I'd like to. I caught wind of the trailer. It looked interesting to me.
We were all in a haze because of the pandemic and the entertainment that we were getting also seemed to be in a haze. Nothing was really clicking, nothing was really firing right. As I understand, even Mill and Ted couldn't save us.
That's the story for another day. I got a lot of thoughts on that one as well. But as far as this is concerned, and I also I'm aware that this movie was made under the strictures of the pandemic, so that's that in itself is an achievement when you actually see the movie. But anyway, short story long, it was the trailer that looped me in. It just looked so cool. After so many years and so many seeming disappointments with the direction of the franchise, nothing really interested me.
This sparked something because this was you often say, Father Malone. And with respect to some of these movies and things, we talk about, why has someone not thought of this sooner? Why we've kind of gone to the future with Predator in some respects, but we've never gone to the distant past.
We know that anecdotally through the Conic books and just through various things that happen in the movies, that the Predators have been around for a long time, but why I know from Predator Too, right, So I guess I would ask you rhetorically, Father Malone, why did it take so long for somebody to come up with this idea? Because it's fucking brilliant.
To be honest, I guarantee you the idea was floated a long time ago. I bet Jim and John Thomas probably floated it right after Predator two and they said, no, we're not doing that. In fact, we're not making any Predator movies after that. But I don't think since then no one has come in to really we're talking Predator too.
And then the only actual dedicated Predator movie after that was Predator and they were just excited to have Robert Rodriguez and a script that was ready to go basically, so that's and after that they got Shane Black, who not only has tie and that he was in and wrote a bunch of the first film, but he wants to try and take it. And now we're in the midst of world building an MCU and DC flailing around attempting to make their own and they thought, well, Shane
Black just did Iron Man three. He's going to give us a whole new universe and give us a direction, and he tried, but it didn't really take and nobody liked it. And to be honest with you, that ultimate notion that the Predators are conquerors, I fucking hate it.
Yeah, I agree. And also, let's not forget that The Predator, the Shane Black movie, was twenty ten, correct, So now we've gone another twelve years without any kind of Predator movie being released, and it sort of was feeling like maybe the franchise had just reached its you know, had taken its course, and there was no more a choose to be squeezed from that lemon.
Good thing, I guess, because this is the ultimate example of good things come to those who wait. If here's my hot take on this movie. If they had made Predator in nineteen eighty six and then we got to this, only no other mention of a Predator in popular culture until this came out, it would have been worth it. This is a fucking great movie.
Brilliant in so many ways, brilliant from the way it's photograph to the acting to the story. The music is beautiful. This looks like a big budgeted Predator movie that takes place in the seventeen hundreds. I mean what more could you ask for? It's just it, truly, Like I said, I saw the trailer and it intrigued me, But I honestly don't know if I was prepared for just how good it was until I saw it, and it blew
me away. It still blows me away. I watched it again in preparation of this episode, and I was still taken by it.
Tell us the story already.
So as I mentioned this, the story takes place. It's in It's among the Commanche people in the northern Great Plains in seventeen nineteen, and the plot really concerns a Commanche warrior, a female warrior named Nauru, who is eager to prove herself to the rest of the tribe. She wants to be a hunter. She's being relied upon as a tracker and as a as as someone skilled with medicine, but that's not what she wants. She wants to become a hunter herself. And there's this word for hunt that
all of the warriors have to go through. It's called katamia. I believe I'm sorry from butchering the pronunciation. So so she's Her older brother is Tabe, and he's basically in line to be the new war chief, so she's in his shadow. This is all very relatable stuff. It's a sibling thing. She loves her brother, she loves her people, but she wants more, she wants to be more, she wants to accomplish more. And and on top of all that, she has this absolutely cute fucking dog. And that's a
short cut to my heart right there. And I think you two fought him alone. This dog is hard. It's great. I mean not. Here's the thing, from what I can gather from interviews, I guess the dog wasn't really trained. I think Amber mid Thunder described the dog as a bit of a hot mess. The dog when you watch the movie, it's not as if the dog does any crazy tricks or it can do all these It's just a very cute dog that responds to a few commands
and makes its presence known. And it's just so fucking adorable you just want to just squeeze it and give a kiss. This awesome dog. So that alone predisposes me to really pulling for this main character of Nahru.
Yeah. So let me here's here. Let me just speak to the brother sister thing, because not only is it relatable plot wise, and you know what, honestly, when you when it's described, it sounds rote, but it is not in any way wrote what we're seeing here, because first of all, we're seeing a Native American tribe just portrayed and as is, without any worry about the fucking white man coming in and explaining to us what's going on
or anything. But to that point, they are so casual and so familiar with each other that they really feel like family. I loved both of these people, of these two character like right from the get go. That's hard to do, and these two are so charming and it's so smartly written, and like I said, they make it feel contemporary while not making that feel anachronistic.
It's it does really feel like a real sibling thing. There's a lot of love between them Here's Ultimately, I'm no historian, but to my eyes, I feel like this picture was made with the utmost sensitivity to both the time and the setting, but more importantly to the Commanche people in particular. It just it felt authentic. It felt matter of fact, and that there's nothing mysterious or like the tropes of the mystical sort of Native American tribe. These are just people that are living off the land,
doing the best they can. I'm dealing with life as it comes to them. I just love, as you said, how matter of fact that all is. And this it creates this brilliant backdrop in which the Predator kind of introduced inserts itself into this story in this culture. It's really we're going to overuse the word brilliant, but I don't have a better word to describe. It's really quite amazing what they've done with the story here.
Yeah, not to jump ahead or anything, because I'm not jumping ahead, because it's almost from the beginning. In fact, when the predatorship arrives that that's when Nadho's she sponts it. She's the only one who sponts it. And she mistakes it for a thunderbird. She mistakes it for a vision. And what's great about that is this movie completely side steps the whole Native American mystical visionaries bullshit, the Oliver Stone,
the even Underhart, even Thunderheart. No one's having fucking visions quests. No one's in the sweat lodge here. It's just she sees the ship coming down. And by the way, the reveal of the title, which is Nadu standing a top a mountain peak looking up with her tomahawk in her hand, and you don't see the ship, but you get just the impression of it. But then the camera pans up further into the clouds and the credits are the opening
title is waiting there. I loved it, man, It's so invigorating, like once the last time a title came up and you were like, Holy God, yeah, here we go.
It's invigorating, and it's foreboding because you know that this what she's taking as this sign that she's ready for her great hunt, is actually a sign that this creature who we've seen its brethren lay waste to civilization after civilization through the course of all of these movies. So you're kind of left wondering initially, like, how is how
are these people? How is this character going to deal with this tech logically advanced killer in their midst And I tell you, the Predator was not prepared for Nadu. I can say that much.
Well, that's the thing. That's the great thing about this fucking title is look, in that first movie, Predator is the Predator. Here the Predator ends up being pray baby. Yeah, you're right, he's not. He is in no way prepared for what's waiting for him on Earth. It's so fantastic, it's so good.
Can we talk a minute. We're going to get into
¶ The Predator's Design and Abilities
the story more, but I want to kind of kick off by talking about the Predator itself. We often will bring up how did you think of this predator? How do you think he did this? To me? Is probably my second favorite predator because this one seems so much more organic than the rest. I think, by definition, this is a feral looking predator. It's much more lithe and lean than any of the other predators that we've seen in the previous four or five six movies.
Whatever. This is the This is the return of Gillis and Woodruff as the designers for the Predator. That their last one was Requiem or was it? Really? Very wisely has corrected me that the last one they did was Predators. Where they had they did all these swoll predators, all the skipp and leg day predators, the triangular upside down predator. I hated those, so it was a welcome relief we
didn't see them in the Predator. But I agree the design on this one is pretty fucking spectacular, and it takes one of their sort of earlier innovations to its ultimate step, which is turning the what were dreadlocks into basically hair. Now it's so thin and so multiple, it becomes its own kind of character trait, like like a cape on him, like a lion's mane. You're right, a Farrell a much more less ten little and more sort of biological threat.
Yeah. Even the mask, the helmet that it has is it's not metal like we're used to. It's actually it almost appears to be bone. I think it's meant to be some sort of organic bony material. And that's where it doesn't have a shoulder cannon yet, but it has those three distinct laser lights kind of come out of the out of the mask, and it actually doesn't even shoot lasers like it actually shoots almost like arrow bolts or crossbow bolts.
It's a projectile weapon. These Remember this is three hundred years ago and another Look, we're just going to keep saying it's brilliant. But I like when somebody thinks about the science of something three hundred years ago, maybe they didn't have energy based weapons. Maybe they were just shooting bolts. Yes, the bolts were effectively laser guided or heat guided or far in advance of anything that we could potentially do. But I loved that.
It's still got the spinning discs that come off of the gauntlet. The but it is it does feel like a precursor to the predator creatures that we kind of have seen in the later movie or the earlier movies, I should say. But what's interesting is even in it has these bolts that it shoots out, but at one point it kills one of the warriors, one of the Native American warriors, but then you see it has to
go and retrieve the bolts from the dead body. It's not just it doesn't have an endless supply of these things. It's almost like it has. It's like a like a bo caster or something.
It's just it.
The logic of it, I think is it makes so much sense to me, and I was thrilled by it.
Yeah, it evens the score just a little bit between. Look, they don't have machine guns, so he shouldn't have a laser. He should have a laser guided bow and arrow.
Basically, it's just attitudinally and just the way it moves it's not this giant pro wrestler. It's just it's it kind of has the bad quality. But even in terms of attitude, there's a part in this. It's this little sequence excuse me, where it gets attacked by a wolf. This wolf, I don't remember the context, but the wolf sort of catches it sent and it attacks it. Normally, correct me if I'm wrong, but a predator will not necessarily attack you unless you are a threat to it.
But in this case, it feels like this predator is sort of new to the idea of hunting and what should it hunt, and essentially kills us. I mean, it's not really a poor wolf, but I end up feeling a little bad for it. But it kind of made sense in a weird way that this predator is the code of the predator doesn't feel like it's been fully formed three hundred years before we see the first official
appearance of the predator. I just thought it was kind of neat to see this thing acting just a little bit differently than we're used to, but again making sense because this is an ancestor to the predators that we've come to know and love.
Well, hunting and predation are actual themes explored in this film. For the first time ever in the Predator series, we're looking at that as it actually applies to our characters. In fact, this is the first time we have a character who is a hunter, who is not only hunting out of necessity. People need to eat, and this is impressed upon us over and over, like when they come back from ut. So not only does she need to hunt, but this she needs to prove herself as a hunter
because everyone is saying she can't. So there's that. But then just in the nature side of things, we have them hunting a lion who has been hunting them. We get this snake who is like hunting a rabbit and like it attempts to attack the predator and because it knows something is there even though some even though it can't see it, but the predator can that and then skins it and takes its little skull. There. God, what
else is there? Oh? Yeah, no, the rabbit is the coyote is chasing a rabbit and the predator it is. The predator steps in and then the coyote attacks that. The great thing about that is the coyote snaps at the predator, not knowing where or what it is, and it makes contact and then for the rest of the scene, every time that wolf's mouth opens you can see a little bioluminescent blood in there.
Yeah, it's great. I'm sure. Hey, let's put the.
Car into every fucking shot of this movie that I'm making. Let me actually consider everything we're doing before we do it.
It's all beautiful, and I'm sure most, if not all, of those animals are CG creations, and sometimes it's a little more obvious. But for the most part, I thought all that stuff, the wolf, the snake, the rabbits, is the getting killed everywhere, the lion, it all looks really good. A lot of care went into just the effects work in this, and it blends sodlessly into the world.
It's not all we have to say about the Predator and predation. I'm just well, ultimately, no, So you were saying that the Predator maybe their code hasn't been formed necessarily. I think, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think, who knows. Maybe this is just you're right, This is a primitive version of them. He doesn't have a metal face plate, he doesn't have lasers, he has his heads up display, sort of bored into the skull of some creature he had killed.
Yeah, it's cool, and there's a lot this predator, I think more than most others, he just has a flare. I think it's a conscious choice to make him a little more of a badass in this because I think it just the fight scenes are so fluid and great, Whereas mostly predators will just kind of slash and punch and throw its way out of anything, but this one, we're seeing the predator flip things in the air and bring them down into people's heads, and the weapons are
all kind of cool and a little different. It's just this predator feels like more of a badass to me. And what's interesting is there are there's moments and we've kind of seen this a little bit in some of the other movies, a touch of this here and there, but there are moments where you can see that there's
almost a sympathy between the predator and Naduru. There's a sequence where Naduru comes across this a whole herd of buffalo that have been killed and just to be stripped of their hides, and they're left there at a rot and it really deeply troubles Nahdaru. And she says a little prayer and she finds a cigar that will find out that these French trappers are causing all this mayhem.
So, by the way, that completely fooled me the first time I saw it. When I saw that herd completely skinned, I thought, predators don't do that. What's going on here in this movie? And then she found this cigar and I went, oh, fucking humans.
It makes sense. But then maybe five minutes later, the predator also comes across the same scene, and it's not like it vocalizes anything, but you see it pick up the cigar, and you know that the predators have this code of, you know, killing only when it's in their minds a fair fight. So the predator knows that this is just senseless killing for the sake of killing, and it just creates this. It's almost like Nahru and the predator are kind of two sides of the same coin
in a way. They're both hunters trying to accomplish their mission. She wants to prove herself to her tribe that she can do this, and he is obviously on his hunt. He's trying to hunt the biggest and baddest predators that there are and in this case that's not ru. He doesn't know it at that point, but as I said, he's going to learn that to the course of the movie.
One last thing about the predator and then we should jump back into the plot, and that is the invisibility. Cloaking has never looked better.
Fantastic.
It's great, like every fucking time he does it, and they do cool stuff like where part of particulate matter is hitting it and it's shorting out or water is shorting and anyway, I loved all of that. Where were we It does look great.
It's almost crystalline in places, and Tractenberg knows how to photograph it to really make it pop and make it look good. It's awesome. But anyway, story wise, you had
¶ Naru's Determination and the Lion Hunt
mentioned there's a lion that has menaced the tribe, so she and her brother tab go to try with the hunting party to try to dispatch. Along the way, there's one of the other warriors has been savaged by the lion, but he's still alive and she uses her knowledge of her bology to help save him. She has this, you know, or.
Can we just point out that before this we got to meet the village, like when they come out when we meet her mom, who has been teaching her herbs, and we figure out that no matter what happens as far as her wanting to be a hunter, she's still expected to do these sort of female responsibilities. Supposed to go out in the mornings and collect the herbs and supposed to do all the female shit while the guys are out there doing their thing, and then she can.
Be doing hunting.
Yeah.
Yeah, that sort of points to in a larger sense, probably the best thing that this movie does for the audience is make you care about these characters, because we spend a lot of time early on with Naduru, with her extended family, with her brother, so by the time the Predator has inserted itself in the story, we care deeply about all of these people, not just the main characters, but the extended people, the commanche. So I think that's just such a It's elementary and it seems like it
should be self evident. But not every Predator movie takes the time for us to get to know the characters before they're placed in jeopardy, and I think that's vital.
Only two have been successful as far as I'm concerned, Predator and The Predator. Like the characters in both of those I very much cared about. And but when you snack the three against each other, not to start comparing them, but the first film is an action movie, and I love those characters in their action movie. The Predator is a goof ultimately because it's Shane Black movie, So who cares at the end of the day. Plus they're all dead.
But here, what we've got is a serious movie with serious characters and like in a fair treatment of them. And I'm never uninterested. I'm always engaged. When they're at the village, I'm like, Okay, we can hang out here. I'm never like, let's get to the action. Where's the Preditor.
Yeah, there's a potential version of this movie with no Predator, where it's just a coming of age story with this this woman, this commanche woman trying desperately to prove herself in the face of all these doubting people in her village.
That'd be the biggest bear they've ever seen, right.
This movie, Like you said, you could have not even had The Predator, and this would be a pretty compelling story about these people at this time. But it's just so it's just so cool. How you then it's so logical, how they insert what should be this incredibly fantastical element, this alien coming down from some other planet hunting people, and it not once do you ever doubt the logic of what's happening, even though it's a fantastic story. Fantastic
meaning unbelievable, not like great. It is great, but it's.
Like fantastic Tales of the Unknown, like that fantastic.
Like you can't like. And there's something about the reactions. There's a point at which so Nadu is the one who is one step ahead of everybody else in terms of what's actually happening, because they believe that. Like they find this guy who's been savaged by this lion, and she uses this herb that cools down his body so that he won't bleed out. That'll be important later in the movie. It's this little mcguffinity throwing.
I love it, but she but and it looks delicious, even though everyone who eats it like coughs and it like acts like it's the most unappetizing thing. I still want some.
It's orange something I don't recall the name of the herb, but it's this herb that she can use to help people not bleed out. But they're all focused on helping this guy and bringing them back to the village. But she realizes, well, there's a reason why the lion left this guy. Like she's already her feelers are already up, saying something's not right here, guys, but everybody else discounts what she's saying, you're crazy. It's the lion. We'll deal with the lion. Even her own brother is like, we
just have to deal with the lion. And they all believe that when and if the lion is killed, then safety will return to her tribe, so they take She saves the guy's life by the way he goes back to the village. She goes to help Tabe dispatch this lion.
She by now she knows it. Now she knows it's not a lion. But because they send they dismiss her. The hunting party dismisses her to go back with the wounded warrior, and she sees like tracks that are unusual to anything she had ever seen before, like kind of a clawbe it could be a bear, but it's too big. And then they see claw marks that are way too high, and suddenly she knows there's a predator that outstrips that lion,
and it might not be anything. And let's remember she saw the thunderbird in the sky, so she knows something's afoot.
Yeah, but it's satisfying to see because we're with her the whole way. We see things that the rest of the people don't get to see, so we know that she's right. So the whole time, we're thinking to ourselves, no, you know, she's so when she finally does take matters into her hands eventually, it's so satisfying as a viewer because we are by then and we want her to succeed every bit as much as she wants to succeed for herself, because she's such a good underdog. She figures
out this way. She's got this tomahawk, and she figures out this way to tie a rope. She braids a rope and ties it to kind of the central axis of the tomahawk, and she's able to throw the tomahawk and retrieve it like something out of like Mortal Kombat or something. It's this badass weapon that frankly, it probably defies the laws of physics, but it's so fucking cool to see it in action.
I liked that when another warrior found it, he said, your axe needs a leash. They thought it was a detriment, like they thought she attached it because she was going to lose it, like a surfboard attached to her ankle. But the fact is she had innovated that fucking thing and it's gonna save her life over and over again.
It's amazing. The fight scenes, which we're going to continue to return to. The battle scenes, the fight scenes, whatever you want to call them, are so well shot and they're exciting, and she's just such a badass because she's just a great hand to hand fighter, and I just it. Some of these scenes are just beyond belief how cool they are. She really she's up there with John Wick. I'm going to say it right there. She is a
badass of the highest order in this movie. And I wasn't prepared for how much of a badass she was gonna be.
We're talking about Nadu, we're talking about Amber mid Thunder.
Well both really, because she can't have one without the other.
That's true, but we can also include Amber mid Thunder's stunt double, who does some incredible fucking shit there's an entire sequence staring in the French the plantations, not French plantation, during the French trapper sequence, where it is one her stunt double in like every fucking shot, but she has so much hair and the camera at work is so fucking thoughtful that you'd never know.
You mean that the single the sort of quote unquote single shot fight scene. Yeah, you think that's all. You think that's all just her stunt double because I couldn't tell.
There's some Texas switching going on, but yeah, but it's mainly the stunt double.
Yeah, well definitely. We'll get to the trappers, but so, yeah, so she goes to try and dispatch this lion and she ends up falling out of it.
Before we get there, she ascertains the sort of the situation, sees that she's basically in the place where the lion had been making its home, climbs up a tree, and then the lion fucking shows up like she sees it peripherally, like running through this tall grass. It's great, and then looks down. As she looks down, the fucking lion is there in a second trying to get up at her. Scared the shit out of me. I've seen the movie twice. Scared me twice.
Well, it's her plan. She has devised the plan that they're going to go into the lion's den as it were, and basically bait it so that it gets sort of moved into this tree, this zone where they're gonna you know. So it's her idea how to take out the lion. Unfortunately, the lion has her cornered on a branch. The lion is advancing on her and she's backing up. The branch breaks.
They both fall out of the tree, and then the next thing she knows, she wakes up in her village because her brother had to carry her back because she's been knocked unconscious. And then her brother comes into the village after that, the conquering hero. He's got the lion carcass, he's decapitated the lion, and he becomes it, basically becomes a war chief at that point, right, he inherits the
title of war chief. And of course now that he was not happy about this at all, because that's what she wants for herself.
Well, she wants to even be a hunter, and now she's being denied that because she had to be carried back from a hunt.
It's embarrassing, it's demoralizing. And eventually we see that her brother admits to her that, you know what, you're really the one who helped take that lion out because you devise the plan when the lion fell out of the tree. You weakened it enough that I could take it out. So what if? I mean, it's actually really generous of
her brother to admit to her. You know, you would expect him to be this macho guy who's the war chief and blah blah blah, but he has no problem admitting that, you know what, you're really the one who should take credit. It's so endearing because he's honest about it. He's frank about the fact that, yeah, you are a great hunter, and he defends her even when the other members of the war party or what have you are putting her down and making fun of her hatchet with
the cord on it and everything. But he he says to them, you know, she's a great tracker and she can really help us here. It's just so endearing. I don't know, I love that part of it.
Well, those two characters love each other, so that's yeah, you know, it's pretty great.
It's very and actually, come to find doubt that Tabe is actually the actor is actually younger than Amber mid Thunder did not realize.
That didn't know that. I love both of them. I can't wait to see them in more things. Honestly, here's two things that I thought of during that scene the Tabe returns with the lion beheaded lion. My first thought was, oh, so the predator did that and he just found it, because that's a fucking predator move to cut the head off that cleanly. The second thought I had was watching the tribe come together and then everyone's celebrating. I thought this must be what it's like in the predator society.
It's the same idea, right.
They're celebrating the kill.
Absolutely, so it just makes me want to see more of these predators.
I didn't think of it in those terms, but there is a lot of that duality in this movie.
Actually, Well, just like you said, you know, they have this sort of mirroring between the predator and Nahooh that plays throughout because there are times when I am on the Predator's side. This predator is the villain, by the way, there are times where I go back and forth during every Predator movie where you know, either I like the humans and I want them to win, or I like the Predator and I want him to win. Here, even though this is the most formidable Predator I think probably ever.
I mean, maybe the giant one's a little more scary because he's just big, But this one, I'm not on his side at any time until he runs into the humans. Basically, I agree with you there, like not the humans, the
white people. That's why I'm the French trappers. I sort of was predisposed to maybe not liking him off the bat when I saw him kill that wolf, being an animal lover that to me, that kind of bothered me a little bit, even though look it's a feral wolf, yeah yeah, and like you said, it has that iridescent blood all over it.
It's maw, so it actually made look. I will also say this for the Predator. This Predator takes his fair share of licks. This Predator is beat to shit by the end of this movie. He's been stabbed, he's had his arm cut off, Predator blood everywhere, So he gets full marks for being sort of implacable in that way, unstoppable. And I agree with you that he reads as a villain until we get to the French trapper thing, which
we can talk about. I do want to mention though, one of the greatest predator reveals in all of the movies. So Naduru has has decided after her brother gets war chief, she goes away. She realizes that there's this isn't going to end with this line. There's something else out there, and she resolves. She puts aside her normal female specific duties.
Oh my god, my favorite shot in the entire movie is her all of the sort of female members of the tribe walking toward the river to start their day and she's walking directly against the stream to go do this.
Yes, so beautiful, it's amazing. It's amazing just a photography alone. I don't know exactly where this was a shot, but it looks like the most unspoiled wilderness, like you can imagine, like this could very well have been the Northern Plane in seventeen nineteen. It looks brilliant. So she's on the
¶ The Bear Encounter and Predator Reveal
hunt for the predator and at one point she comes across a bear, a big bear that catches her scent. It's a great sequence where you see the wind blow across her and you can see, like you don't see it literally, but you can see it wafting over to the bear who sniffs the air. The bear basically runs after her, tries to attack her, and in the midst of all this, she's taken refuge and a beaver dam, and this bear is doing its best to try and dig through that killer. And there revealed is the predator.
The predator comes. They have a little battle, the bear versus the predator. The predator of course kills the bear, and after killing it, it picks it up and lifts it over its head and obviously like cuts it open so that the blood comes down in a rush over this formerly camouflaged predator. And what you see revealed is the predator outlined in blood as Nadu has probably a number of heart attacks and runs away. I love that
reveal of the blood. It just works on a lot of levels to see this thing, you know, just covered and all of this blood and revealed and all of its sick glory. It's an amazing shot.
The whole sequence is fantastic.
Yeah, it's heart pounding.
As you've said, like, if there were no predator in this movie, that would have been funny. If she had just escaped the bear and then fond it again later like that, this would just be one of the most exciting movies I'd seen in years. But then we've got a predator drenched in blood and has some sort of baptism.
Oh my god, it's great, it's amazing, and they have a way. So then another thing I love about this is at one point, so after this all happens, Tabe has sent a small group of a search party to come and bring Nadru back, and they find her and they she won't listen, so there's a fight and she ends up basically getting subdued, and they hear they're trying to take her back, but they can hear the predator and they know something's up. But they have this way of this.
You know what, hun you're going they knock her out. She gets knocked out a lot, And I'd just like to say, as much as I love this movie, could everyone stump doing that in movies? The idea of actually just knocking somebody out is very difficult. First of all, Yeah, if you think you're going to punch somebody in the head and they're just going to go, that's not how
it works. If you've ever seen a boxing match, it takes a lot to get somebody to be knocked unconscious, which is their brain has to smack up against the side of their goal really hard. A contract coup is what they call that medically. And the fact is every time you're knocked unconscious, that's a little bit of brain damage.
Yeah, it's literally an injury to your brain. So that I yes, I could see that. I mean, it's become such short.
It's a fantastic transition for filmmakers. And then they get hit in the head with the butt of a rifle and then where am I No, yeah, you actually have to link the scene.
Sorry, that is I guess. Yeah I didn't. That didn't occur to me. But you're right, and that is a problem that used to be like a big private Eye thing. Right, he's always getting hit in the head by some peluca and he wakes up.
Yeah, like Mike Hammer is a vegetable by the end of his Private Eye brain image.
Well, what I like is that, you know, after these this search party has caught into that there's something out there. There's something in the way of having these three or four Comanche warriors that all have bows drawn as they're walking silently through the woods.
It's beauty.
It's such a badass image and they're so quiet and they just seem so lethal that just have to believe, like, wow, you know, these guys could go through anything except this fucking predator that's gonna just tear through them like a
hot knife through butter. But it's such a graceful image to see them with these bows drawn and the foldy work is great because you can hear the bowstring tightened, and I don't know, it just seems so like like we've been saying, if there wasn't even a predator, this would be really interesting to see them hunting and doing their thing.
But I usually say this in a crime movie, but I just love seeing professionals speed professional exactly.
That's the point I'm making. You said it beautifully there. It's they know what they're doing. These are trained, you know, bowhunters, and that's what they do best, and it doesn't matter because the predator is just so far beyond them technologically.
Sorry, man, he's got laser guided bolts.
Yeah, bolts, it's and that's the I mean sequin after sequence. I keep saying, well, that sequence is great to that one. They're all great because what happens is that the search party is waylaid by the predator. One of them is basically like like that that three dot laser has the ability to kind of separate. So he shoots one in the guy's eye, one in his hand, and one in his heart, and then he goes over like I said, and retrieves the bolts because of course he has to
retrieve them. He's not shooting energy based weapons. And again, these are fierce warriors. They they attack this thing with everything they've got, and it just it's almost heartbreaking to see them just be waylaid because you want to pull
for them because they're so badass, all of them. They do they Like I said, the predator gets his licks through the whole movie and he gets stabbed and sliced and whatever, but ultimately it's all for no because he just he cuts a swath through all of these warriors. So she runs away from the predator barely kind of escapes, but she is snared by a metal trap that that we've seen earlier. Her dog, Sati was also snared in a trap, and she rescues us, but she it's a bear trap.
By the way I mention it. Her dog early on gets its tail caught in one, and then she frees the dog, and then we see that she's a herbalist because she puts some sort of paste on the dog. And I love that scene because this is seventeen nineteen and she's never met a European and she certainly doesn't know what a steel chain is, so her reaction to it is great, where she's just trying to figure out what it is and what it can be used for. So anyway, that pays off here because she finds herself.
It's true. Yeah, she kind of picks up the chain and she's not really sure what to make of it. But so she gets snared by this bear trap and they these French trappers take her prisoner and take her to camp and put her in a cage basically, and she realizes that these are the people that kill those buffalo from earlier, and one of them, this fellow Raphael, can speak Commanchi. It has to be said, by the way,
¶ Language and Cultural Nuances
before I get into this, that this movie plays a little fast and loose with language, right we can. The example that I always point to is Hunt for Red October, where the Russians on the submarine speak Russian up until this point where they zoom in on one of their mouths and it sort of transitions into English, giving the audience this idea that, well, they're still speaking Russian, but you're hearing it as English. Now this movie, they don't,
there's no transition. Sometimes they speak commanche, sometimes mostly they speak English, And I think it's just it's easier for the audience to kind of figure it out. It's my understanding that there is a all commanche dub of this movie that you can watch. I don't know, I want to see it. You did see it, okay, all subtitles that that would be a really clever way to watch it.
I think I turned off the subtitle really Yeah.
Well you already kind of knew what.
Yeah, of course that I did have the advantage of having seen the movie previously. Yeah, Honestly, Joe Danteos often says this, He'll watch a movie on an airplane without the sound on, because you should be able to watch a movie without the sound if it's actually any good. And this is definitely one you're gonna watch without the sound.
Sure, So she's imprisoned and this fellow, Raphael tries to reason with her. So it's clear that these trappers are trying to trap the predator. They're aware of the predator and they're trying to figure out a way to trap it for some reason or another or kill it, hunts it, and he Raphael is asking her for help, and they've also turns out they've also captured her brother, Tabe, and they end up essentially torturing him in the midst of all of this, and.
Yeah, they cut him up. First of all, Listen, there's this really corpulent French dude who is the sort of main antagonist leader of this scroup, and he basically has to be restrained from shooting and killing her over and over again because she's not giving up any information. And then the implication somebody comes up in whispers in his ear and it's just really lacivious. No, keep her alive because we can rape he eventually. So these guys are
bad fucking news. And then really their ultimate plan is they take Tabe out, cut him open, like bleeding him because they don't know what the predator is. They just think it's some beast out there. And then they tie those two together in an open field with on a fucking true like a dead tree as bait.
Yeah, and it reminded me of the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc where one hundred in it. You know, where they that's it. They're helpless to watch what's happening around them, and that's what's happened to.
Don't pick up any weapons. What don't pick up any weapons, Toby, that's right, keep.
Your eyes shut. So they brought them out there, like you said, as bait for the predator. But they've the trappers being you know, these evil, stupid people that we're supposed to root against. They've they've grossly underestimated the intelligence of both both the comanche and also the predator in particular, because they're expecting it to come in and, you know, attack these helpless people at this on this tree, but instead it knows to kind of outflank them, and it
comes from behind. As they're focus straight ahead, there's the predator coming from behind them, and it becomes this big conflagration and really showcases the sort of bad assness of this predator he has. It has to be said, I've already talked about the tomahawk that can be like retrieved with this cable. The Predator has this wrist shield that kind of expands and contracts at will, so it's embedded in this gauntlet and it can become this telescoped shield.
That was actually inspired by one of my favorite games in the PS four, which is the remake of, or the reboot of God of War, because Crados in that movie has this thing called the Leviathan Acts that he can throw and then it comes back to his hand if you hit you know, R two or something like that. So is the shield because he has a shield on his wrist gauntlet that does the same kind of stuff that the Predators does, which I thought was kind of
a nice touch. I don't know, it reminded me of something. And then I read that and I said, oh, that's exactly what I was thinking about. Did you ever play God of.
War that Urchin did? Of course, Yeah, I play a great game, many iterations of it. Yeah, so it was actually directly inspired by that.
Yeah, that's as far as IMDb's trivia is concerned, it was inspired by it.
Well, I can't trust anything on IMDb trivia. That might be just some fucking idiot who likes God of War and went, oh, that reminds me of God of War. Then't that inspired it? Let me add that click could be or maybe we've seen an earlier iteration of a predator shield and they thought, what would a predator shield look like if you could use it also as an offensive weapon, because that's what ends up happening here. He's being shot by muskets, which is hilarious, and he's sort
of taking it because he probably could. But then he's like, fuck this, and he pops out this little shield that you know that well. At one point somebody shoots him in the head and ricochet kills him, which.
Is great because he's staring this guy in the face. It's a standoff. The guy's got a musket pointed red at his head, and the guy shoots and just ends up killing himself with a musket Ricochet's back. But so he's got this shield and at one point he has a guy backed up against the tree and he's got his kind of his forearm against the guy's head and the guy, I think he has a gun that he's ready to shoot, and all the predator does is kind
of flecks his wrist. The shield pops out and effectively decapitates both the guy and the tree behind him, and I think even like the Predator, they looped in him going like ugh, like kind of grunting, like, oh that was kind of interesting. What yeah again.
My favorite moment from Alien versus Predator was when the Predator catches the little face hugger and he like shutters afterwards, like any little moment of character. We don't get them all that often, so I loved that moment because the Predator was like cool, I took his head off, and I took this tree down, like.
He's disarming trappers with hatchets and flipping them in the air and throwing them into people's heads. This is the point at which this is the only point at which we actually are behind the predator, because we've seen how nasty and evil these French, this trapping camp, how bad they are. So it's really it's one of those great sort of sequences where were like, yeah, you know, just fuck him up because we want to see, especially the
corpulent one that you mentioned earlier. He's the one that we really want to sort of see get his just desserts. So during all of this, Naduru and Tabe are trying to escape. But as you said, like nad who has realized again being one step ahead of everybody, that the predator won't hunt them since they are in a threat, so don't pick up a weapon just you know, and the predator completely ignores them through this whole crazy thing.
Just like dancing around fucking killing everyone in the periphery everybody.
And at one point, so the predator eventually walks into another bear trap and the trappers like are you know, are exultant. They throw a net over him. You figure, okay, they really think they've got the upper hand, but no, it lasts about three seconds and he shrugs the net off. He shoots one of his own nets. I think we've seen this in another one of these movies, but.
Not like this.
This is brutal because he throws a net over a guy, and what the net does effectively is tightened endlessly. So eventually it tightens so much that whoever is inside of the net becomes just atomized goo. Basically it's a really horrific way to die.
Well yeah, I mean on this in alien versus predator, and one of the aliens to our lead alien, our lead Zeno morph was marked by that net remember it like broke out of it because they acid ate through it before it made that grid mark on it, right, Yes, yeah, yeah, so those do that, but not this was again because this movie is so much better than that movie. The effect is fucking incredible.
It's awesome. So finally Tabe and Naderu escape and Tabe goes to get some horses, and Naduru has got to go back to the camp that she was held prisoner in because her dog is still there and she wants to rescue the dog. I mean, who you know again, I love this character. She's going back to this place because her dog has been held captive. So she goes back and what follows is we alluded to this earlier. It's this hand to hand fight scene that is meant
to be a single shot. It's obviously cheated in a couple of places, but man, it is brutal. She just wipes out everybody in camp basically, and after freeing the dog, this guy, Raphael, who was the only one who tried to talk to her and reason with her, he comes stumbling back to camp because he's been his foot has been cut off. He's stumbling back and he knows that she knows medicine, so he begs her to help him, and in return, he's going to give her his flintlock
pistol and show her how to use it. Right now, what I didn't pick up the first time through is that he has this metal object embedded in his stump and it's this telescoping knife blade thing that the predator used. It didn't catch because it's sort of looped in a circle until she takes it out and kind of expands it at one point. But it was I don't know why I missed that first time through, but.
We'd seen the we'd seen the predator unfurl it earlier. We also, by the way, since we're dealing with this guy getting his stump taken care of by our lead, we get one of my other face and I know your favorite sequence is too, the predator repairing himself.
Yeah, we have to have that, yeah.
Which in this it's a kind of a paste that he puts on and another great character moment he's as he's putting it on, you can kind of tell him like, oh, that's smarts, like he unlike most predators will just like howl like with like I can take this sort of pain. This PREADU is a little touchy about it.
Like the only thing missing is there's always one weird aspect we've talked about in Predator two, when he's preparing himself, he has to like grind up like a subway tile into a paste that he then slaps on his stump. We don't get that here. That's the only thing missing here.
Yeah, he should have like broken off the hoof of an antelope or something and added it to the mixture.
Just grind it up. I don't know, but yeah, that we Every Predator movie has to have that sequence where it takes a moment for itself self care for the predator, and he kind of, you know, fixes himself up before the final battle. But meanwhile she's having this She's helping
this guy Raphael, and she ends up. He teaches her how to use the flint lock, and she gives him more of that orange herb so that he won't bleed out, and it reduces his body temperature to the degree that when the predator comes looking at the camp, it comes to the camp, she sees that it doesn't notice him on the ground, and that gives her this spark of oh, he couldn't this is the same thing that happens in
almost every Predator movie. Like you know, Dutch figures out he can't see me because he's covered in mud in this case, and.
Brody figures out, Hey, he can't see me because I'm covered in mud. And then finally somebody goes, hey, there's something else. It's cold. The temperature he can't see coal, right, smart, I'll lower my body temperature and he won't be able to see me.
It's great. So she has that revelation. And what I think is great about the scene is that you think that he's going to make it because he just sort of lies prone on the ground and doesn't move, and you can see the predator's point of view that you can kind of see the outline, but you know that he hasn't caught on that there's a guy there, but he's walking and he ends up stepping accidentally on this guy's foot, which makes him cry out, which then attracts
his attention, and he's dead. I mean, it does no good ultimately, but it's just sort of funny that just by accident this guy was discovered. I don't step ah stab yeah, dead, just gone.
And then he did give her a flintlock that got one shot, and I like that she's constantly levying what the target is, Should I use this one shot that I have for the rest of the movie. I mean, not that there's a ton left of the movie, but she does make the decision over and over again. Is this worth it? Is this worth it?
Yeah? Well, at least once she tries to shoot him and she realizes that she didn't get the steps all right, because she shoots and nothing happens, and she goes, oh, that's true crap, you know, And then she's got to figure out where she went around.
But that's when she's actually decided she's gonna make the shot, because at one point she sees Frenchy like out like on some waterfall, and she's I should kill him. I could kill him right now. Yeah.
So at this point, after the predator kills Raphael, she sorry. The dog comes up barking, and the predator turns and as he's about to kill this little dog that we've become attacked.
God, it's the worst moment of the movie. I was so tense.
It's awful. But then Tabe rides in on a horse that he said he was going to get and he starts attacking the predator, and he does a pretty damn good job of fucking the predator up. I mean, he
¶ The Final Showdown
basically is doing this thing where he's circling on the horse, he's stabbing, he's doing all this stuff, and Nadu his mask. The predator's mask gets knocked off of his head when Taba attacks, and Nadhu notices that the mask fires automatically whatever it's seeing. So when the predator makes the decision to shoot, it's the mask and the direction that the mask is facing that determines the direction of the bullet's you know, father alone.
And she's seen the targeting laser dots in action before, so she knows if those are on, those are where that the projectiles are going. Yeah, but earlier on she fell into a bog and freed herself.
Yes, And that's actually a very tense sequence.
She's a great sequence.
In the midst of her hunting, she does she falls into I mean, it's not really quicksand, but the idea is it's basically a quicksand it's his bog and she can't get herself out. And in the last ditch effort, she's got this axe with the rope on it and she manages to pull herself out of it. That will also become relevant for the conclusion of the movie. I'm glad you mentioned that. So Tabe is still fighting off, trying to fight off this predator while now he was
struggling with the pistol. She can't quite figure it out, and finally Tabay tells her to run because he only considers I'm a threat. She's not a threat yet, and he is ultimately killed by the predator, giving her just enough time to escape, which is a sad moment because we've become very attached to Tabe.
I loved him, man, and it's.
Great, and it's just it's such a wonderful bond and it's really all up there on the screen. So then that evening Naduru is and sorry, they spy that that one super evil trapper, the real over you, real corpulent one that we keep talking about across the river. And this is where initially she's she gets the pistol out and she's going to aim to shoot him, but then you can see it dawns on her. She comes up
with a different plan. She's going to use him to try and attract the predator, And this is really one of the more really really a brutal moment, probably maybe the most brutal in the whole movie. Fatherm Alone. So she speaks up on him. Well it's justified, but it's still pretty fair play.
And this is literal turn he that guy knocked her out and then used her as bait for the predator.
So she sneaks up on him and knocks him out. And then it's later and it's dark and he is woken up. But what is he woken up by? Father Malone?
Rats gnawing at his stump of a leg.
She's cut off his leg, yeah, to hobble him basically, and there are rats that are gnawing on the leg in his sleep. Just put yourself in that position, like you wake up what you think is just some sort of nightmare, and you look down and there's rats gnawing on what was your leg?
I mean, she it's I refuse to put myself in his shoes or shoe because I would never put myself in a position where I was keeping a Native girl in a cage and then using bait for a monster. Fuck that guy. I'm glad he woke up with rats having a buffet.
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting he didn't have it coming, because he most certainly did. He's awful and we're just waiting for him to get his come up, and so this is only the start of that. So Nadu is very calmly sitting by the fire and talking to him.
Okay, she is the only part of the movie I did not like, because.
It's all I like this alone.
It's all the subtext of the movie. It's everything that we've already been watching and accepting of. Like you say I can't do this, I'm going to do that. You tell me I can't do this, Well I will. It's like, yeah, we know, man, we were on this journey with you. To me, though, is clumsy as fuck.
I To me, I see it as we finally see how far she's come and what she's willing to do.
We just saw it. She kind off the guy's fucking leg and she's waiting for the fucking predator and she's gonna take it on hand to hand, say a word.
That's fine to me. It didn't bother me, but I could see where maybe it's a little bit too much.
But everything look if everything else weren't so fucking perfect. I wouldn't care that speech would not stand out in any of the Predator movie.
I guess I just found it sort of chilling because of the circumstance and because of what we know is coming. I guess.
So you see that in her eyes. Man, that's fair.
But again, like I said, I didn't have a problem with it. But what she's done is she's put a rifle nearby, and he kind of scrabbles his way over to pick it up. And what as she's talking to him and basically saying to him like, you don't realize that I'm killing you right now, Like you have no idea, and he's swearing at her in French, and you kind of get a sense for what he's saying. And she eats more of that herb that makes the body go cold, and this is all part of her plan, so she
gets cold. He's holding the rifle at that moment, the predator finally finds them. He's been tracking them based on this the blood from this guy's stump, and he's effectively holding a rifle at the predator. She knows that the predator will now cons or him a threat and not her.
And this is how you leave somebody as bait fucker. You put a rifle in their hand next to a fire, to a creature that sees mainly in temperature.
It's a wonderful sort of conclusion to the saga of this French trapper that we've come to hate so much. So he after the Predator kills the trapper, that's when
Naduru finally decides, I'm going to use this pistol. So she gets way up close to the predator, shoots him in the head, which knocks off his helmet, and she she runs off with And this is there's an analog to like what Dutch at the end of the first Predator movie, where he's crafted all these traps and he's figured out a way that he's going to try to beat the predator at his own game. So predator continues to track.
This is the elegant ending of Predators.
It is, it really is. So so she has taken the bloody leg that she's taken from the trapper and she trails it to this bog basically, so the predator tracks via this leg, this cut off leg, this amputated leg, and she then jumps onto the predator and just starts wailing on it with the hatchet. It's this pitched fight that commences, and she's getting more and more good hits in on this thing. I mean, it's really a battle.
But to the.
Movie's credit, never for one moment do you think to yourself, there's no way that this you know, this woman could do anything to this giant predator. We've seen so much of Nadu. It's so believable father alone, that she could take on the predator toe to toe and beat it in this well.
What I like is that they never pull punches when it comes to him hitting her back, like he will just fucking toss her away like a rag doll, and she has to take that, you know.
But it's brutal. At one point, she she's trapped. He's got the shield and he's got her trapped.
And he keeps saying, this is my favorite but god damn one again seeing go it's incredible.
And he is bearing down. He's trying to cut off her head with this thing, and.
She has went bare hand between two rocks and that has slowed the descent of this blade. But he keeps shoving further, and he keeps cutting further through the rock. It's awesome.
But then this is a move that I've never seen anyone do in these movies. She rips off one of the tusks off the predator's face and stabs him in the face with it and then ducks down. That is brutal, that's hardcore. We've never seen somebody do that. Seriously, I can't say enough about how you know how formidable she is during this fight, during the whole movie. Really, I've
bought into it, hook line and sinker. Finally, she maneuvers this predator back to the bog that you'd mentioned she's trapped in earlier, and she's she's carefully propped up the helmet behind the predator so that it's facing the predator. When when it's coming after her and the predator shoots a bolt at what he thinks is her, he doesn't realize the mask is behind him. The bolt takes like a left turn at Albuquerque Circles all the way back home.
They should be noted that the bolt gun you can just use in your hand, and if the targeting system isn't on, it's just gonna fly like a regular spear gun would. So he doesn't realize that the targeting system is on and it's on him.
Yeah, so he thinks he's just gonna shoot her and that'll be it. But the thing takes a wide bank left and shoots him in the head and that's it. Finally she bested the predator. It's an amazing moment. So she carries the severed head of the predator back to her camp, just the way that Tabe carried the lion carcass back. And she also has what we now know is the famous Adelini pistol from Predator to this guy,
Raphael was Raphael Adelini. The inscription on the pistol, So that's a really awesome tie in back to Predator too. And she presents these things to the presiding war chief and she tells them in no certain terms, they need to move to more protected ground. They're not safe there anymore. And as a result of this, what happens, she has made the new war chief of the tribe.
What I love is that when he came, when her brother came back, his face was painted in blood. And when she comes back, her face is painted in bioluminescent blood.
Yeah, all that bioluminescent blood. It's fantastic and what a great ending. It just everything came full circle. She's finally got her due as the hunter that we all knew that she was. And it's fantastic. And then the credits roll. But that's not it. What happens with the credits, Father Malone? What's the interesting thing they do here?
Are you talking about? How they have a it's not animated, but we get drawings of the characters while the credits are rolling, and then rather ominously, at the end, it shows more predatorships like descending out of the sky.
It effectively tells the story in a Native American animation, like these sort of drawings, and that's the final image, is more of those ships coming. Even the soundtrack at that point has this sort of mournful like this idea that she thought that they're safe and that she conquered this threat, but.
Oh no, she knew that there were going to be more on the way, so she's like, we need to get out of here.
That also could be true also, but man, what an ending? What an ending?
I would like to mention one thing we found to mention, which is the we don't get a predator self destruct device in this but we do get a predator mass destruction device that is so beautifully rendered. It's during the
French trapper sequence. Leaves this little thing, this little device, this little mechanism, and three little balls pop up into the air and are hovering, and then beautifully we cut to overlooking this miss shrewn valley where Nadu turns and watches and there's a concussion that goes off that knocks down all of these trees. It's beautiful, it learnt what happened now? Is that a precursor to the explosive device.
I think we just chalk that up to being a more primitive version of the I mean, it definitely killed whatever was in that radius. And the funny part of that scene is these like balls, discs or whatever they are that rise up. These French trappers don't know what to make of it. They're just kind of stick and you would think, like, they don't know what this is. This is the seventeen hundreds. This may as well be magic to them, and they just sit there and watch it and what's going on here?
You would too? So would I? Right it happened to me right now, I would probably watch what's going on here.
At the very last minute. I think they some one of them realizes, oh well, let's get out of here, but it's too late. And that shot from above where all you see are the ripple like sort of almost like lightning that ripples through that area because it's all missed, strewn and fog ridden, and it really is cool. And there's a lot of the weaponry for the predator we've talked a little bit about. It is all really cool in this and there's nothing that is that beggars belief
for the time period. He's got like this sort of staff that can extend and break apart and he can throw it like a lance or you know, do this kind of stuff. He's got the wrist shield, he's got you know, the mask that effectively has a targeting system integrated into it, but it reads like bone and not metal. It's great. I mean, he's just such. He's a scarier predator, I think than most because he is so savage. I think he's a little more savage than the other predators
we've seen. And maybe that part of that is the idea that maybe the code isn't quite as formal. He seems to be a little bit more you know, as savage and maybe not quite as bound by code as the others.
He is much more pharaoh, but he does take the time to carefully preserve his trip. We get that coyote, we get the coyote skull getting getting polished up.
Yeah, that is a very I mean that's CG obviously, but that is a very That's kind of a gruesome scene because it's you really see all of the matter and flesh just dissolve away from this skull and all it's left with is just the bone that he then hooks right onto his belt. It's really quite it. Again, it has to be CG, but it doesn't read as bad CG. It all feels pretty pretty realistic to me.
¶ Final Thoughts and Series Ranking
Now, we rated the Predator movies previously in the last episode with Daha, and what we ended up with was Predator, The Predator two, Alien Versus Predator, Alien Versus Predator Requiem. I'm gonna go first, Pray Predator, Predator the Predator, the rest of the list. Basically, this is the best in the series.
It's a very hard thing for me to judge objectively. I would say this is the best made movie. It works on so many levels. Just the fact that as we said, you could take the Predator rout and it would still be a really kick ass movie. It's I just it's hard for me to rate it higher than the original because there would be no prey if there wasn't a Predator, but gun to head. If this is objectively determining which is the best quality made movie, I
would have to agree with you. I'd have to go pray first.
This does everything that first movie was trying to do, and it does it better, and it gives us characters, and it gives us community, and it gives us a fucking on top of everything else, it gives us a look into a world that is rarely shown in American film, which is a fucking travesty. Just the Native American community on display here and played by Native Americans. Gasp.
There's a lot more going on with this. This compared to the first Predator, this is a pretty sprawling movie. Predator. The original is obviously just mainly limited to those five or six you know, Special Forces guys and the Predator, and it's kind of it's almost claustrophobic in the way that it's just them versus this Predator. Where's this We've
got nothing but open spaces. This is such a beautiful looking depiction of that part of the United States, and it's just so it's really apples and oranges fa them alone. It's hard to make a direct comparison because there's such two different, very different movies. It's hard for me to decide that's true. I'd say Pray Pray gets the win.
I think, yeah, Man, Alien and Aliens are different movies, but Alien is a better movie. I'm sorry, it's.
Fair again, it's and it's no. I don't think it's a disservice to Predator that this is because Pray had the benefit.
We improved the formula. What are you gonna do?
That's the thing. Pray had the time in the history to look and see what worked and what didn't and what can we try to reinvigorate the formula. So in a certain sense, they were kind of traveling and Predator the first Predator's Wake. But I got handed to Dan Trachtenberg and his whole team of writers and filmmakers because they literally built a better mouse trap. It's incredible.
I can't say enough good about it. It's the one action film of recent memory that I've watched multiple times. And still felt exhilarated during the action sequences and frightened in certain sequences and really responds to these characters. If you're hearing snoring, by the way, that's ripley Gene, who has climbed into my lap and has decided to go to sleep.
Look. I finally had the pleasure of meeting Ripley g last week, and boy, I wanted to take her home in my carry on luggage. She is as more adorable than I ever thought she was. She's just such a sweet pup, and I can't I'm trying to think I can't hear her snoring, but I did hear her snoring then though.
Very okay, good.
Yeah.
She she always has trouble watching movies with animals, and she certainly was alarmed for a lot of the my rewatch of this film during the dog sequences, but she eventually calmed down and actually watched this movie. I'm not kidding. Wow, it's impressive, and was really concerned during action sequences, So I was just so proud of her.
He tried to watch. We watched Clue when I was there father alone, and I recall that a couple times during Clue, I don't recall exactly. Maybe it was when the.
Was during the dog sequence at the beginning. Yeah, that's she had to leave the room at that point. That's what it was.
I forgot about that part. Good stuff.
But anyway that look, if you haven't seen this movie, please well we just spoiled fucking everything. But if you haven't seen it, watched it. If you haven't seen it, watch it again, watch it with the commanche on it. It's fucking fascinating. This movie was great. I love every bit of it.
Likewise, and this is coming. Anyone who's heard Yahucha Fest throughout all these movies that I've watched, you'll know that I came into this series with a bit of trepidation because, aside from the first couple of movies that the rest didn't really interest me all that much, and it was the law of diminishing returns. This brought me back into this series in a big way. It made me go from Predator that's kind of ran its course to I cannot wait to see what Tracktenburg does with bad Lands.
This is gonna be amazing, And every trailer that I've seen of that movie gets me more and more, almost to the point where I'm a little nervous now that it can't possibly live up to this hype, but I trust them, I really do.
I do too. I am so looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to his next film. You should be looking forward to it too. You're gonna hear it in two weeks we're gonna be talking about Predator, Killer of Killers, the first anathology. How fucking appropriate here on midnight viewing of the Predator series. Until then, Where can people find you when they're looking for you?
HP?
What are you working on? What's going on?
Oh?
I'm not far. I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside my erstwhile co host here Father Malone. I host the AO. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast as well, and I have a band camp site which is hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
As for me, you're listening to it. You're listening all the time. Thank you everyone for your listening, by the way, really appreciated. The numbers have been sort of cuckoo of late midnight viewing. We're on Father Malone's weekly roundup is on Mondays. We're looking at current streaming, current theatrical and every Friday here you're either hearing HP and I talking about a fest or you're hearing let's talk about a horror anthology television series. What are we doing here with
This is the Iota Fest. We're wrapping it up soon. Obviously we're working our way towards bad lands. But fear not, because another fest is right behind it. Over on the Patreon channel, you can listen to Moranus Fest that's going on right now. That is the Rick Moranus Fest. HP and I are looking at the cinematic efforts of mister Rick moranis. But starting December, HP and I are going to be taking a cinematic trip through the stars. Jesus Christ Almighty, We're going to be taking a look at
Star Trek. Everybody join us for those.
Pleach we can kill it?
What ding hell are you
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