The recent Hulu movie preya prequel to the 1987 sci-fi horror film predator, pits a young Comanche against a brutal alien hunter. Science fiction author Zach Chapman I loved the new movie.
“It’s definitely my favorite Predator movie,” Chapman says in episode 524 of 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 engages with a theme in a meaningful way, and the action is super awesome.”
prey has been a hit with audiences and critics alike, a much-needed boost to the franchise after flops like the predator i Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Host David Barr Kirtley says that many recent Predator films have been full of one-dimensional characters. “It would be interesting to graph what the relationship is between the number of characters who have speaking lines and the quality of these films,” he says, “but it seems to me that there must be a pretty strong inverse correlation.”
prey it also largely ignores an expanded Predator universe that has grown increasingly convoluted over 35 years of movies, comics, and video games. Horror author Stephen Graham Jones says most viewers don’t necessarily care about the backstory. “It’s like the franchise hasn’t learned The X files that we like the monster of the week”, he says. “We don’t like myths or conspiracies. We like to run and shoot.”
Horror author Theresa DeLucci hope future Predator movies take a page from it prey and explore new and varied historical settings. “I think we could learn from it prey and some of the other movies is to keep it simple,” he says. “Keep it simple, keep it character-centered, and you can do it in so many different ways and still have it resonate, because at the heart of it is “The Predator”. They are chasing you, and how are we going to outsmart them?’”.
Listen to the full interview with Zach Chapman, Stephen Graham Jones and Theresa DeLucci on episode 524 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (on top). And check out some of the highlights from the discussion below.
David Barr Kirtley Predators:
It’s this group of hardened killers, and then there’s this nerdy guy who says he’s a doctor, who seems 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 IDF soldier, while they are being hunted by predators, which makes no sense at all. I think it would have been cool if they killed all the predators and then he tries to kill them. And I think it would have been great if he had been successful, and then the ending is that he’s killed everyone. And then the next group of people are parachuting up and he’s like, “Help! Help! You gotta help me! I’m this helpless nerd!” It would be this different kind of predator, the idea that this manipulative sociopath/liar may be the most dangerous person on this planet.
Theresa DeLucci is active Aliens vs Predator:
I have fond memories of it Aliens vs Predator video game. You could choose to play as a colonial marine, xenomorph or 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 wonderful, immersive story—this first-person perspective of, “Oh, I’m the xenomorph. I’ve got ‘tail-stab’ and ‘brawl,’ and my goal is to make eggs.” The human is like, “I’m screwed. I have to fight everyone,” and then the predator is like hunting and whispering through the halls, and it had all these great Weyland-Yutani jokes. It sure was better than the movies.
Stephen Graham Jones Predator: The Devil’s Eyes:
I just wrote a Predator story for an anthology, and it was really fun to play in that Predator world. They gave me a very fine bible of all the different terms for all the tools and weapons and spaceships and all that, and I didn’t use any of it, of course, because I’m not interested in that sort of thing. My story is about the Predator in his ship between hunts. That was the interesting part for me. I have seen the Predator hunt so many times that I am no longer interested in watching them hunt prey, but I am interested after the hunt. … It took me a lot to convince him to do it, because I didn’t want to just do ‘Dutch in the Jungle’. I didn’t find that funny at all. So I told them I would, but I’m not going to tell the Predator story we’ve seen before.
Zach Chapman continues prey:
I want to see more of these low budget movies. the predator it has a huge budget. I would imagine it’s four or five times the budget prey. And what I see there is that you could make four movies like prey. Get these directors who have experience with lower budget films and who know science fiction. The director of prey did 10 Cloverfield Lane, which is great. I like it much more than Cloverfield, and also has zero budget. So that’s where I want to see this franchise go. … We don’t need a huge budget. All my friends watched prey, and they love it, so I think it’s done really well for Hulu. So do that, do that more. No matter how much budget you would have made the predatorgive this to all these guys and make them make a bunch of movies.
More big stories on cable
Back to top Jump to: Start of article.