Latest Hulu Movie preya prequel to the 1987 sci-fi horror film predatory, pits a young Comanche woman against a brutal alien hunter. Science fiction author Zach Chapman loved the new movie.
“It’s definitely my favorite Predator movie,” Chapman says in Episode 524 of the The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I think it’s the only one in the franchise that has a theme — or at least commits to a theme in a meaningful way — and the action is super awesome.”
prey has been a hit with audiences and critics, a much-needed boost for the franchise after flops like Predator AND Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy showrunner David Barr Kirtley says that many recent Predator films have been overcrowded with one-dimensional characters. “It would be interesting to graph what the relationship is between the number of characters who have speaking lines versus the quality of these movies,” he says, “but it seems to me that there has to be a pretty strong inverse correlation there.”
prey it also largely ignores an expanded Predator universe that has grown increasingly complex over 35 years of movies, comics, and video games. Horror author Stephen Graham Jones says most viewers don’t necessarily care about the behind-the-scenes. “It’s like the franchise hasn’t learned from The X-Files that we like the monster of the week,” he says. “We don’t like myths or conspiracies. We just like running and shooting.”
Horror author Theresa DeLucci Hopefully future Predator movies will take a page from prey and explore new and different historical environments. “I think what we can learn from prey and some of the other films are about keeping it simple,” she says. “Keep it simple, keep it character-focused, and you can do that in a bunch of different ways and still have it resonate, because it’s basically ‘Predator.’ They follow you and how are we going to outrun them?’
Listen to the full interview with Zach Chapman, Stephen Graham Jones and Theresa DeLucci on Episode 524 of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
David Barr Kirtley in predator:
There’s this group of hardened killers, and then there’s this nerdy guy who says he’s a doctor, who looks out of place, and then he turns out to be a serial killer. The problem I have is that he tries to kill Alice Braga—who is this evil IDF soldier—while they’re being hunted by predators, which makes no sense at all. I think it would be nice if they killed all the predators and then he tries to kill them. And I think it would be a good thing if he succeeds, and then the ending is that he has killed everyone. And then the other group of people are skydiving, and he says, “Help! Help! You must help me! I’m this helpless nervous man!” It would be this different kind of predator, the idea that this manipulative sociopath/liar might be the most dangerous person on the planet.
Theresa DeLucci at Aliens vs Predator:
I have beautiful memories of Aliens vs Predator Video game. You can choose to play as either a Colonial Marine, a Xenomorph or a Predator. At first you could only play as a sailor or an alien because you had limited abilities. But then once you unlock the predator, you become this unstoppable machine, and it was a great, immersive story—this first-person perspective of, “Oh, I’m the xenomorph. I have ‘tail feather’ and ‘war’ and my goal is to lay eggs. The man is like, “I’m drunk. I have to fight everybody,” and then the predator is like hunting and whispering in the halls, and there was all this cool Weyland-Yutani banter. It was better than the movies for sure .
Stephen Graham Jones in Predator: Demon Eyes:
I just had to write a Predator story for an anthology and it was really fun to play in that Predator world. They gave me a really thin Bible with all the different terms for all the tools and weapons and spaceships and all that, and I didn’t use any of them, of course, because I’m not interested in that kind of stuff. My story is about the Predator on his ship between hunts. That was the interesting part for me. I’ve seen the Predator hunt so many times that I’m not interested in seeing them run towards the prey anymore, but I do care about the hunt. … It took a lot of convincing to get me to do it, because I didn’t want to just do ‘Dutch in the Jungle’. I didn’t find that fun at all. So I told them I would, but I wouldn’t give away the Predator story we’ve seen before.
Zach Chapman at prey:
I want to see more of these lower budget movies. Predator has a big budget. I would imagine it’s four or five times the budget prey. And what I see there is that you can make four films like that prey. Take these directors who have experience with smaller budget films and who know science fiction. The director of prey He did 10 Cloverfield Lane, which is wonderful. I like it significantly more than Cloverfield, and also has zero budget. So I want to see this franchise go. … We don’t need a big budget. All my friends watched prey, and they’re loving it, so I think it’s done very well for Hulu. So just do this, do more. Whatever budget you would have made Predatorgive all these little guys and let them make a bunch of movies.
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