Prey is a different beast than most recent franchise blockbusters

A few days prior to the movie’s release, very few people would have expected that Predator 2 would be released. Prey, This movie was bound to be a hit with the Film Twitter audience. While the review were generally positive, it was still a modest update on a franchise. It was streaming directly to Hulu, while Hollywood traffic, driven by a rebounding box office was the opposite.

Barry Jenkins, the revered filmmaker, was watching the movie on Saturday, and he live-tweeted his thoughts, giving praise to Dan Trachtenberg and his director. “I mean she beat him DOWN — girl is TUFF,” he enthused after one fight scene featuring the heroine, Comanche hunter Naru (Amber Midthunder). “This is a lean, mean, impressive bit of filmmaking. The craft is on POINT,” tweeted Jenkins, who knows what he’s talking about. The fight choreography was “impeccable.” The film’s themes might be “a visceral genre excavation of manifest destiny.” Jenkins signed off: if you “like visceral, awesome ass films you REALLY should watch PREY, certified hype.”

He wasn’t alone. All over social media, film fans were expressing surprise at just how good the film was, and frustration that they hadn’t been able to see it on the big screen. PreyThis seems to be a film that struck a chord. It was quite surprising considering that the film series, which is consistently entertaining, struggled to capture the public imagination following the incredible. Predator1988 was the year that it happened. The majority Predator sequels have been content to wallow in their trashy niche, while the biggest swing, 2018’s PredatorThis was also the most important mistake. This time, what went well?

Photo: David Bukach/20th Century Studios

Perhaps those low expectations were key — not just on the audience’s part, but on the studio’s, too. One reason may have been the ambivalence of Disney’s new franchise owner about Predator’s true popularity. Prey’s streaming debut. The film’s streaming debut must have helped ease some of the stress, given Hollywood bosses who are notoriously obsessed with getting every possible potential out every franchise. Trachtenberg made a film which is in sharp and refreshing contrast with the vast majority of franchise movies.

Unlike, say, Jurassic World Dominion, PreyIt doesn’t have to shoulder the weight of a large budget, an international shoot or cast comprising all lead characters from multiple sub-series. The lore it has accumulated over the years, just like layers of silt, does not need to be its home. You don’t have to allow crossover appearances for universe-building executives.

All these considerations and pressures make it difficult for many franchise movies to succeed. Fantastic Beasts in The Secrets of DumbledoreYou can find more information here Ghostbusters: AfterlifeThe result has been blurred storytelling, chaotic production and sober self-mythologizing. When watching these overblown productions it is sometimes difficult to recall that many of them started as simple, easy-to-follow romps.

Photograph by 20th Century Studios

By contrast, PreyThis is Trachtenberg’s inspiration, a 100-minute, taut genre film. It takes a simple idea and executes it with sparseness, yet with a relentless purpose. Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison are the true geniuses of screenwriter Patrick Aison. Prey A prequel but set at such an extreme distance from the original Predator — 268 years before — that it effectively gives them a blank slate. The fact that Predator legend isn’t overdone in the first instance means that the film is completely free from any preconceived notions.

PreyThis film breathes with space that many other modern science-fiction and action films lack. Its cleanly shot, sharply edited action scenes are matched by the clearly described beats of Naru’s quest to prove herself a hunter, and interpolated with contemplative traveling shots taking in a beautiful wilderness. No B-plot is present. There’s no exposition, because there’s really no plot to expose; something is out there, killing, and it must be stopped. There’s even a little room to expand the thematic scope of the Predator universe a little, as the alien hunter’s sport is contrasted with the still-vital food chains of the American wilderness, and with the technologically powered, brutal exploitation of another kind of alien invader: the white man.

This kind of resourceful brand extension is not new territory for Trachtenberg, who somehow transformed a claustrophobic psychological thriller script into a sequel to a smash-hit monster movie, without betraying its bottled B-movie charm, in 2016’s Cloverfield Lane. That film was a fun, inventive movie. Trachtenberg found a way for the old title to be incorporated into the new. This film was produced by Prey, he’s achieved a mirror-image feat: ridding the new film of all the baggage of a modern film franchise, up to and including its title. All that’s left is its raw, ruthless spirit.