Predator Prequel ‘Prey’ Has Teaser Trailer Release
Since Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, there have been two franchises that raise eyebrows whenever they are mentioned: the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise. Ridley Scott has been quietly moving along with his Alien franchise, seemingly trying to recapture that “lightning in a bottle” from the first film with entries like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant to varying degrees of success.
That said, the Predator franchise is sorely overdue for a solid entry. The Predator, brought to us by an actor from the first movie, Shane Black, was a nice little piece of summer movie-making. Knowing that fans of the mysterious alien hunters would love to see more, Hulu has now released a teaser trailer for their entry into the Predator-verse; Prey.
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For what it’s worth, this is a great trailer. We see a couple of young Native American women running from the woods, only to be marked with the unmistakable three dots of the Predator tracking system, as the distorted figure of a predator in camouflage approaches. This is a really interesting take on the predator lore and something fans of the series may want to see expanded on. With these films having been released over the course of decades, you may find yourself asking, “how did we get here?”
In the first Predator, we saw the alien as it hunted a group of mercenaries led by the incomparable Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not much about the species or why it had arrived on Earth was revealed, and thus we were left with more questions than answers. In Predator 2, we watched him take on a crazy, riotous Los Angeles and face off against Danny Glover. In this sequel, we got a little more background and discovered that these aliens had been coming to earth for years, as evidenced by the collection of skulls and trophies kept inside the alien ship seen at the end of the movie. The mythos was further expanded in Alien vs Predator when we learned that “predators” would come down to earth for centuries to battle each other. In the last movie, The Predator, they focus far less on why they’ve come to Earth and instead focus on the types of Predators that exist and the sometimes-uneasy relationship between predators and humans.
Known as “Skulls” throughout most of the production, most of the details for Prey have been kept under lock and key. We know this movie takes place 300 years in the past and it will be about the first time a Predator landed on planet earth as he faces a warrior woman from the Comanche Nation. The movie is brought to us by Dan Trachtenberg, whose previous big-screen experience is from another semi-prequel movie 10 Cloverfield Lane which was a sequel to the found footage film Cloverfield.
10 Cloverfield Lane was atmospheric with tense moments bolstered by power acting from John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Trachtenberg is no stranger to the genre of sci-fi/horror and this looks like a minimalist production with a small cast that mirrors his previous movie, which could mean great things for those looking forward to a continuation of the franchise. The Alien vs. Predator movies, Predators and The Predator were all fantastic movies with a lot of fine action sequences, but simplifying the story to basics and honing the unique narrative of alien armaments vs old-world technology should make for an instant classic.
Hopefully, some of the scaled-down storytelling, as well as the focus on defeating a vastly superior alien will encourage other storytellers to take their franchises along the same path. We’ve already heard that the Alien T.V. series will be set on Earth, so perhaps they are sowing the seeds for a toned-down approach.
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