Amph In Town With a Few Days to Kill: The Prey-dator Discussion Thread

Predator vs. the Carried Interest Loophole.

 

Predator vs Miyamoto Musashi.

 

Predator vs. Chuck Norris, subtitled, "NOPE".

 

I agree on other environments, historical settings, and cultures, though they have to be careful not to make it feel too similar to what we just saw.

Just to brainstorm, as a joke, since we're going back to older tech, Predator vs Conan the Barbarian. I know it's already been done, but give him a sword this time and have him pray to Crom.

They might want to get wild with settings. Predator vs Sword and Sorcery, vs Dungeons and Dragons, vs a paladin, a bard, a kung fu monk, and a sorcerer.

Predator vs other alien species on an alien world (I know Predators already did a different planet). If we can root for a raccoon and a tree in Guardians of the Galaxy, we can root for them vs a Predator. Aliens can change the competitive dynamics with different attributes.

Predator in fictional, ancient Roman gladiator games.

Ken mentioned future tech, well Predator vs Cyberpunk.

Like Ken mentioned, you can turn the tables on the Predator and have one be the POV hunted character. Take away the Predator's tech to make them weaker and rely on their wits. Have the hunters be physical equals or even physically superior.

I'd rather tech was removed from the game as much as possible. It should be a contest of wits. That's the whole point.

All the protagonists in this series earn their happy ending by virtue of being hunted. You survive, you get to go off into the sunset. You don't get hunted again. I don't want to see them after that, their story has been told and it's over.

I guess we could do Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor and have Naru keep getting caught up in the hunt, becoming a serial survivor, but no, let's not do that. It's already been done and doesn't fit the character, the setting, or the franchise. It doesn't work with Naru because Naru grew up training and wanting to be a warrior. Conflict is expected for the character and the Old West setting. Sarah Connor was a ****ing waitress who was thrust into the fate of humanity. Ripley was a civilian pilot on a merchant freighter. Those characters' stories are special specifically because they weren't meant for the circumstances they found themselves in. They had to become something they weren't and didn't really want to be. With Naru, it would just be another day of hatchet throwing.

 

Wow, these are great numbers

 

Predator vs Turok Dinosaur Hunter, Naru is Turok's ancestor, making it a Prey sequel

 

You miss the point. In real life, we went away from stone weapons to bronze, iron and then to steel. Humans adapted to the changing times, environment and even prey. Knives evolved to spears, axes, quivers and now guns. We went from the musket to AR-15 over the course of a couple of centuries. So it goes with the Yautja. If humans evolve to become better at killing, what makes you think other violent races wouldn't?

 

May or may not have watched this, uhhh, three times already...

 

I definitely have to watch the Comanche dub so there is a full 2nd viewing in my future to be had.

anyway Hollywood Reporter article on Prey's streaming debut and yes it was always destined for that because HBOMax USA release = bad

Over the Aug. 5-7 weekend, social media was buzzing over the new movie Prey, the umpteenth installment in the Predator franchise. Many wondered why 20th Century and Disney didn’t open the movie in cinemas, considering the theatrical calendar for August is notably light this year. Instead, Prey debuted directly on Hulu.

On Tuesday, Disney said the film scored the No. 1 premiere on Hulu to date, including all film and TV series debuts. Additionally, the pic was the most watched film premiere on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ under the Star banner in all other territories, based on hours watched in the first three days of its release. Disney did not share total hours viewed, as Netflix does. Since companies don’t report streaming viewership numbers into a central clearinghouse, there’s no third-party verification.

Prey was long destined for streaming, with preproduction underway prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was not among the movies that changed course once the pandemic struck.

Disney believes that sending the movie straight to Hulu — which, like other streamers, is competing to become a destination for original content — was a smart decision, and it’s impossible to say whether Prey would have benefited from a theatrical release. One veteran box office analyst says 20th Century and Disney likely made the right choice by sending it directly to Hulu, considering that the last film in the series, 2018’s The Predator, was a bust that tarnished the brand. “They might have had a tough row to hoe if going theatrical,” the source says.

The Predator franchise has a checkered box office history. The 1987 original impressed with a domestic gross of nearly $60 million on a $15 million budget, but the most recent installment in the franchise to be released theatrically, The Predator, fell flat with $51 million domestic and $160 worldwide gross after being made for a reported $88 million. The most successful film to feature the Predator was 2004 crossover movie Alien vs. Predator, which earned $177 million worldwide.

Talking to THR in March of this year, 20th Century head Steve Asbell noted that with the exception of two or three theatrical releases a year, 20th Century titles will launch on Hulu domestically and Star+ internationally. It is important to note that 20th Century movies that do receive a theatrical release have an output deal with HBO Max that was engineered before Disney acquired 20th Century Fox.

As for 20th Century’s Hulu slate, Asbell said that genre films that Disney doesn’t make in other divisions — like midbudget sci-fi films of the Predator variety — would be the domain of his studio when it came to straight-to-streaming projects. “In order to meet the volume that we are looking at — which is, by 2023, 10-plus movies just for streaming — it’s going to be a combination of originals in those genres. And coolest of all for fans, we get to find bold takes on beloved Fox properties.”

 

Creature designer posting a good thread about the new design (and biology) of the "Feral" Predator:

 

This logic is dumb. We aren't watching the Predators start from 20,000 BC. They are capable of intergalactic space travel. That alone implies huge technological advancement. The ability to generate enough energy to destroy everything within a few square miles in a split second. This obviously is not just about destructive capacity. They make a deliberate choice to walk around with melee weapons. There is something cultural happening here. If that's the case, if there's something to be "proved" about in individuals in a hunt, how is that maintained by scaling up insanely in the technical sophistication of one's weapons? In whose mind does one-on-one knife fights and combat via an unmanned drone with hellfire missiles test the same skills or mean the same thing?

Let alone the wildness of your implications. Technology is not the only way to adopt or change. Shaka's village went from being a marginalized to middling power even among the Zulus to, under his rulership, being the most powerful ethnic group in the region, and the undisputed ruler of most of the territory covered by modern day South Africa. Most of the changes he made were structural and tactical. It's not like he discovered machine guns or something. He just taught people to fight in a more insightful, effective way.*

Any way you look at it, then, this wasn't necessary. If people want to have big dumb villains with literally everything done for them, more power to them. But I don't think the logic of the story actually dictated it. There are many ways they could have done something quite different.

*Sidebar, there is some argument he actually just made things dramatically more violent. He encouraged practices that caused more death/injuries in his enemies than warfare in the region had historically been interested in generating.

 

The obvious next step is a movie set in the future, where our most despicable criminals are exiled to a remote prison colony where juvenile Yautja make their first hunts.

I call it Child Predator vs. Child Predators.

 

I mean, we can now rest assured both that Ezra Miller’s schedule will be free and that the studio executives will back it for a full cinematic release.

 

You again miss the point. The Yautja choose to use a variety of weapons for each type of prey. Whenever they lose, they adapt by using more weapons and change tactics. This one doesn't use a plasma caster for reasons. The Mexican one relied heavily on it. The game planet trio use a drone and beasts, to find and flush out their prey. The pyramid trio save the plasma casters for last resort, instead they have to hunt their way to them. The Wolf was using everything to clean up an unexpected mess.

The bombs are to cover their existence if they fail to win. Nothing was recovered in Mexico, but stuff was recovered from L.A. and Alexa gave up the spear, while the Wolf's plasma caster wound up in Yutani's hands.

It should also be noted some weapon usage might be based on an "honor points" system like in some of the games. Malee weapons also make things up close and personal, while plasma casters are ideal for not only ranged attacks, but also as a precaution against overwhelming odds. Plus, some locations rely on in close weapons. And finally, there are other species besides humans and Xenomorphs that require a variety of weapons.

 

I haven't missed the point. I just think it's a stupid point. This is the least interesting possible direction you could take this series or this alien culture. I've already said it lends itself to making the plot burn out by ridiculous escalation of powers/abilities; I'm adding now that I also just don't find it very intriguing even independent of that problem. If other people enjoy it they are certainly welcome. I, on the other hand, favor the entries in the series where the Predators don't have six trillion different weapons to make themselves invincible.

 

At some point the predator is going to need to win some of these movies. If they want the same triumphant energy for the ending I think that calls for unsympathetic human protagonists. Turns the Predator into more of a hero for successfully hunting bad guys.

 

AvP and AvP: Requiem sort of end on Predator "wins. AvP definitely. Requiem the Cleaner goes out face to face with a Xeno and the place was cleaned eventually, he just didn't do it by himself.

 

It’s so long since I saw those I forgot the endings. I remember the original AvP was a lot of fun. A much better and more entertaining movie than I expected.

Does the second AvP have a male Alien born from a predator who can impregnate people with aliens. That was a different take.

 

Predator vs The White House

 

So Predators is not the most detested of the series. I'm not sure why I thought that.

 

It has had a lot of low points.