Yautja Fest - Prey (2022) - Midnight Viewing

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
We can kill it.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Shut up?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
What the hell are you?

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Welcome back midnight viewers to Yahu. It's the one you've
been waiting for. It is Yah Mark two. We have
a bigger dressing room than the puppets. HP has joined
me as usual. He's on my He's on our Predator
journey with us, HP. How are you man?

Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm so good everything. I feel like everything has been
leading up to this moment when you mentioned to me
the idea for you yaouca fest Excuse me, I had
no idea the hills I was going to have to
climb and the distance I'd have to walk. But here
we are ready to go with Prey.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Hey, disregard this, listeners, this is just a test. I'm
leaving the network in February. All right, Pray, let's talk.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Pray.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
It is the latest in the Predator franchise. Now efficiently.
Now look up until now, the direction of the series
has really been based on whoever happens to be making
the movie at that time, whether that was an edict
from twentieth century Fox that they wanted a particular type
of movie, and then somebody came in and made it,
or somebody came in and said hey, let's do this

(01:41):
kind of movie with the Predator, and they've done it. Now.
Obviously that's the case here where somebody pitched, let's do
this kind of flick and they went for it. But
this is the first time we have a filmmaker in
charge who's going to be given multiple films. He's already
made multiple films. Is there's three now technically, and hopefully
he'll remain in charge of the entire series. I'm talking

(02:04):
of for use about Dan Tracktenberg and his movie Pray.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Why do you want to Hunt? Because you all think
that I can't. I saw a song in the sky.
I'm ready. Oh there's something else I'm trying.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
You can't.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I'm trying to protect you, protect me from what.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's time.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
It knows how to hunt, I know how to circrive.

(04:01):
Whatever did this? I can character.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
This movie was written by Patrick Eisen with a screen
that he wrote the screenplay, but stories by Patrick Iisen
and Dan Tracktenberg based on characters by Jim and John Thomas,
as all of them happened to be. This one stars
Amber mid Thunder, Dakota Beaver's, Dane de Lagro, Michelle Thrush,
Stormy Kip Julian Black, Antelope, and Bennett Taylor. And this

(04:37):
was released on July twenty first, at twenty twenty two.
That was the San Diego Comic Con premiere. Mott was
released officially and it was released in a few theaters
on August the fifth, Jessica's birthday, twenty twenty two. HB.
Was this your first time watching Prey?

Speaker 1 (04:54):
It was not.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
It's interesting we've and away he goes, here we go.
So long time listeners of you Yocha fest will know
that quite a few of these movies. I will say
to father alone, Yeah, this is the first time I
ever saw it. For this episode, this one, I the
trailers got me because so this is almost forty years

(05:17):
after the premiere of the First Predator, right, the First
Predator was nineteen eighty six, and here we are it's
twenty twenty two, so that's thirty six years. I like
most people, this was sort of coming out of the
pandemic a little bit, maybe not going to see as
many movies as I'd want to or I'd like to.
I caught wind of the trailer. It looked interesting to me.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
We were all in a haze because of the pandemic
and the entertainment that we were getting also seemed to
be in a haze. Nothing was really clicking, nothing was
really firing right. As I understand, even Mill and Ted
couldn't save us.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
That's the story for another day. I got a lot
of thoughts on that one as well. But as far
as this is concerned, and I also I'm aware that
this movie was made under the strictures of the pandemic,
so that's that in itself is an achievement when you
actually see the movie. But anyway, short story long, it
was the trailer that looped me in. It just looked
so cool. After so many years and so many seeming

(06:17):
disappointments with the direction of the franchise, nothing really interested me.
This sparked something because this was you often say, Father Malone.
And with respect to some of these movies and things,
we talk about, why has someone not thought of this sooner?
Why we've kind of gone to the future with Predator

(06:38):
in some respects, but we've never gone to the distant past.
We know that anecdotally through the Conic books and just
through various things that happen in the movies, that the
Predators have been around for a long time, but why
I know from Predator Too, right, So I guess I
would ask you rhetorically, Father Malone, why did it take

(07:00):
so long for somebody to come up with this idea?
Because it's fucking brilliant.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
To be honest, I guarantee you the idea was floated
a long time ago. I bet Jim and John Thomas
probably floated it right after Predator two and they said, no,
we're not doing that. In fact, we're not making any
Predator movies after that. But I don't think since then
no one has come in to really we're talking Predator too.

(07:26):
And then the only actual dedicated Predator movie after that
was Predator and they were just excited to have Robert
Rodriguez and a script that was ready to go basically,
so that's and after that they got Shane Black, who
not only has tie and that he was in and
wrote a bunch of the first film, but he wants

(07:47):
to try and take it. And now we're in the
midst of world building an MCU and DC flailing around
attempting to make their own and they thought, well, Shane
Black just did Iron Man three. He's going to give
us a whole new universe and give us a direction,
and he tried, but it didn't really take and nobody

(08:08):
liked it. And to be honest with you, that ultimate
notion that the Predators are conquerors, I fucking hate it.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yeah, I agree. And also, let's not forget that The Predator,
the Shane Black movie, was twenty ten, correct, So now
we've gone another twelve years without any kind of Predator
movie being released, and it sort of was feeling like
maybe the franchise had just reached its you know, had

(08:35):
taken its course, and there was no more a choose
to be squeezed from that lemon.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Good thing, I guess, because this is the ultimate example
of good things come to those who wait. If here's
my hot take on this movie. If they had made
Predator in nineteen eighty six and then we got to this,
only no other mention of a Predator in popular culture
until this came out, it would have been worth it.

(09:01):
This is a fucking great movie.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
Brilliant in so many ways, brilliant from the way it's
photograph to the acting to the story. The music is beautiful.
This looks like a big budgeted Predator movie that takes
place in the seventeen hundreds. I mean what more could
you ask for? It's just it, truly, Like I said,
I saw the trailer and it intrigued me, But I

(09:25):
honestly don't know if I was prepared for just how
good it was until I saw it, and it blew
me away. It still blows me away. I watched it
again in preparation of this episode, and I was still
taken by it.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Tell us the story already.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
So as I mentioned this, the story takes place. It's
in It's among the Commanche people in the northern Great
Plains in seventeen nineteen, and the plot really concerns a
Commanche warrior, a female warrior named Nauru, who is eager
to prove herself to the rest of the tribe. She
wants to be a hunter. She's being relied upon as

(10:01):
a tracker and as a as as someone skilled with medicine,
but that's not what she wants. She wants to become
a hunter herself. And there's this word for hunt that
all of the warriors have to go through. It's called katamia.
I believe I'm sorry from butchering the pronunciation. So so

(10:24):
she's Her older brother is Tabe, and he's basically in
line to be the new war chief, so she's in
his shadow. This is all very relatable stuff. It's a
sibling thing. She loves her brother, she loves her people,
but she wants more, she wants to be more, she
wants to accomplish more. And and on top of all that,

(10:46):
she has this absolutely cute fucking dog. And that's a
short cut to my heart right there. And I think
you two fought him alone. This dog is hard. It's great.
I mean not. Here's the thing, from what I can
gather from interviews, I guess the dog wasn't really trained.

(11:06):
I think Amber mid Thunder described the dog as a
bit of a hot mess. The dog when you watch
the movie, it's not as if the dog does any
crazy tricks or it can do all these It's just
a very cute dog that responds to a few commands
and makes its presence known. And it's just so fucking
adorable you just want to just squeeze it and give
a kiss. This awesome dog. So that alone predisposes me

(11:30):
to really pulling for this main character of Nahru.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah. So let me here's here. Let me just speak
to the brother sister thing, because not only is it
relatable plot wise, and you know what, honestly, when you
when it's described, it sounds rote, but it is not
in any way wrote what we're seeing here, because first
of all, we're seeing a Native American tribe just portrayed
and as is, without any worry about the fucking white

(11:57):
man coming in and explaining to us what's going on
or anything. But to that point, they are so casual
and so familiar with each other that they really feel
like family. I loved both of these people, of these
two character like right from the get go. That's hard
to do, and these two are so charming and it's
so smartly written, and like I said, they make it

(12:19):
feel contemporary while not making that feel anachronistic.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
It's it does really feel like a real sibling thing.
There's a lot of love between them Here's Ultimately, I'm
no historian, but to my eyes, I feel like this
picture was made with the utmost sensitivity to both the
time and the setting, but more importantly to the Commanche
people in particular. It just it felt authentic. It felt

(12:48):
matter of fact, and that there's nothing mysterious or like
the tropes of the mystical sort of Native American tribe.
These are just people that are living off the land,
doing the best they can. I'm dealing with life as
it comes to them. I just love, as you said,
how matter of fact that all is. And this it
creates this brilliant backdrop in which the Predator kind of

(13:12):
introduced inserts itself into this story in this culture. It's
really we're going to overuse the word brilliant, but I
don't have a better word to describe. It's really quite
amazing what they've done with the story here.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, not to jump ahead or anything, because I'm not
jumping ahead, because it's almost from the beginning. In fact,
when the predatorship arrives that that's when Nadho's she sponts it.
She's the only one who sponts it. And she mistakes
it for a thunderbird. She mistakes it for a vision.
And what's great about that is this movie completely side

(13:44):
steps the whole Native American mystical visionaries bullshit, the Oliver Stone,
the even Underhart, even Thunderheart. No one's having fucking visions quests.
No one's in the sweat lodge here. It's just she
sees the ship coming down. And by the way, the
reveal of the title, which is Nadu standing a top

(14:07):
a mountain peak looking up with her tomahawk in her hand,
and you don't see the ship, but you get just
the impression of it. But then the camera pans up
further into the clouds and the credits are the opening
title is waiting there. I loved it, man, It's so invigorating,
like once the last time a title came up and

(14:28):
you were like, Holy God, yeah, here we go.

Speaker 4 (14:30):
It's invigorating, and it's foreboding because you know that this
what she's taking as this sign that she's ready for
her great hunt, is actually a sign that this creature
who we've seen its brethren lay waste to civilization after
civilization through the course of all of these movies. So

(14:52):
you're kind of left wondering initially, like, how is how
are these people? How is this character going to deal
with this tech logically advanced killer in their midst And
I tell you, the Predator was not prepared for Nadu.
I can say that much.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Well, that's the thing. That's the great thing about this
fucking title is look, in that first movie, Predator is
the Predator. Here the Predator ends up being pray baby. Yeah,
you're right, he's not. He is in no way prepared
for what's waiting for him on Earth. It's so fantastic,
it's so good.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Can we talk a minute. We're going to get into
the story more, but I want to kind of kick
off by talking about the Predator itself. We often will
bring up how did you think of this predator? How
do you think he did this? To me? Is probably
my second favorite predator because this one seems so much
more organic than the rest. I think, by definition, this

(15:47):
is a feral looking predator. It's much more lithe and
lean than any of the other predators that we've seen
in the previous four or five six movies.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Whatever. This is the This is the return of Gillis
and Woodruff as the designers for the Predator. That their
last one was Requiem or was it? Really? Very wisely
has corrected me that the last one they did was Predators.
Where they had they did all these swoll predators, all

(16:20):
the skipp and leg day predators, the triangular upside down predator.
I hated those, so it was a welcome relief we
didn't see them in the Predator. But I agree the
design on this one is pretty fucking spectacular, and it
takes one of their sort of earlier innovations to its

(16:40):
ultimate step, which is turning the what were dreadlocks into
basically hair. Now it's so thin and so multiple, it
becomes its own kind of character trait, like like a
cape on him, like a lion's mane. You're right, a
Farrell a much more less ten little and more sort

(17:01):
of biological threat.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah. Even the mask, the helmet that it has is
it's not metal like we're used to. It's actually it
almost appears to be bone. I think it's meant to
be some sort of organic bony material. And that's where
it doesn't have a shoulder cannon yet, but it has
those three distinct laser lights kind of come out of

(17:24):
the out of the mask, and it actually doesn't even
shoot lasers like it actually shoots almost like arrow bolts
or crossbow bolts.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
It's a projectile weapon. These Remember this is three hundred
years ago and another Look, we're just going to keep
saying it's brilliant. But I like when somebody thinks about
the science of something three hundred years ago, maybe they
didn't have energy based weapons. Maybe they were just shooting bolts. Yes,
the bolts were effectively laser guided or heat guided or

(17:54):
far in advance of anything that we could potentially do.
But I loved that.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
It's still got the spinning discs that come off of
the gauntlet. The but it is it does feel like
a precursor to the predator creatures that we kind of
have seen in the later movie or the earlier movies,
I should say. But what's interesting is even in it
has these bolts that it shoots out, but at one
point it kills one of the warriors, one of the

(18:22):
Native American warriors, but then you see it has to
go and retrieve the bolts from the dead body. It's
not just it doesn't have an endless supply of these things.
It's almost like it has. It's like a like a
bo caster or something.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
It's just it.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
The logic of it, I think is it makes so
much sense to me, and I was thrilled by it.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah, it evens the score just a little bit between. Look,
they don't have machine guns, so he shouldn't have a laser.
He should have a laser guided bow and arrow.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Basically, it's just attitudinally and just the way it moves
it's not this giant pro wrestler. It's just it's it
kind of has the bad quality. But even in terms
of attitude, there's a part in this. It's this little
sequence excuse me, where it gets attacked by a wolf.

(19:11):
This wolf, I don't remember the context, but the wolf
sort of catches it sent and it attacks it. Normally,
correct me if I'm wrong, but a predator will not
necessarily attack you unless you are a threat to it.
But in this case, it feels like this predator is
sort of new to the idea of hunting and what
should it hunt, and essentially kills us. I mean, it's

(19:32):
not really a poor wolf, but I end up feeling
a little bad for it. But it kind of made
sense in a weird way that this predator is the
code of the predator doesn't feel like it's been fully
formed three hundred years before we see the first official
appearance of the predator. I just thought it was kind
of neat to see this thing acting just a little
bit differently than we're used to, but again making sense

(19:54):
because this is an ancestor to the predators that we've
come to know and love.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Well, hunting and predation are actual themes explored in this film.
For the first time ever in the Predator series, we're
looking at that as it actually applies to our characters.
In fact, this is the first time we have a
character who is a hunter, who is not only hunting

(20:22):
out of necessity. People need to eat, and this is
impressed upon us over and over, like when they come
back from ut. So not only does she need to hunt,
but this she needs to prove herself as a hunter
because everyone is saying she can't. So there's that. But
then just in the nature side of things, we have

(20:45):
them hunting a lion who has been hunting them. We
get this snake who is like hunting a rabbit and
like it attempts to attack the predator and because it
knows something is there even though some even though it
can't see it, but the predator can that and then
skins it and takes its little skull. There. God, what
else is there? Oh? Yeah, no, the rabbit is the

(21:07):
coyote is chasing a rabbit and the predator it is.
The predator steps in and then the coyote attacks that.
The great thing about that is the coyote snaps at
the predator, not knowing where or what it is, and
it makes contact and then for the rest of the scene,
every time that wolf's mouth opens you can see a
little bioluminescent blood in there.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah, it's great. I'm sure. Hey, let's put the.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Car into every fucking shot of this movie that I'm making.
Let me actually consider everything we're doing before we do it.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
It's all beautiful, and I'm sure most, if not all,
of those animals are CG creations, and sometimes it's a
little more obvious. But for the most part, I thought
all that stuff, the wolf, the snake, the rabbits, is
the getting killed everywhere, the lion, it all looks really good.
A lot of care went into just the effects work

(21:57):
in this, and it blends sodlessly into the world.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
It's not all we have to say about the Predator
and predation. I'm just well, ultimately, no, So you were
saying that the Predator maybe their code hasn't been formed necessarily.
I think, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think,
who knows. Maybe this is just you're right, This is
a primitive version of them. He doesn't have a metal
face plate, he doesn't have lasers, he has his heads

(22:24):
up display, sort of bored into the skull of some
creature he had killed.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
Yeah, it's cool, and there's a lot this predator, I
think more than most others, he just has a flare.
I think it's a conscious choice to make him a
little more of a badass in this because I think
it just the fight scenes are so fluid and great,
Whereas mostly predators will just kind of slash and punch
and throw its way out of anything, but this one,

(22:51):
we're seeing the predator flip things in the air and
bring them down into people's heads, and the weapons are
all kind of cool and a little different. It's just
this predator feels like more of a badass to me.
And what's interesting is there are there's moments and we've
kind of seen this a little bit in some of
the other movies, a touch of this here and there,

(23:13):
but there are moments where you can see that there's
almost a sympathy between the predator and Naduru. There's a
sequence where Naduru comes across this a whole herd of
buffalo that have been killed and just to be stripped
of their hides, and they're left there at a rot
and it really deeply troubles Nahdaru. And she says a

(23:35):
little prayer and she finds a cigar that will find
out that these French trappers are causing all this mayhem.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
So, by the way, that completely fooled me the first
time I saw it. When I saw that herd completely skinned,
I thought, predators don't do that. What's going on here
in this movie? And then she found this cigar and
I went, oh, fucking humans.

Speaker 4 (23:54):
It makes sense. But then maybe five minutes later, the
predator also comes across the same scene, and it's not
like it vocalizes anything, but you see it pick up
the cigar, and you know that the predators have this
code of, you know, killing only when it's in their
minds a fair fight. So the predator knows that this

(24:15):
is just senseless killing for the sake of killing, and
it just creates this. It's almost like Nahru and the
predator are kind of two sides of the same coin
in a way. They're both hunters trying to accomplish their mission.
She wants to prove herself to her tribe that she
can do this, and he is obviously on his hunt.

(24:36):
He's trying to hunt the biggest and baddest predators that
there are and in this case that's not ru. He
doesn't know it at that point, but as I said,
he's going to learn that to the course of the movie.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
One last thing about the predator and then we should
jump back into the plot, and that is the invisibility.
Cloaking has never looked better.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
Fantastic.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
It's great, like every fucking time he does it, and
they do cool stuff like where part of particulate matter
is hitting it and it's shorting out or water is
shorting and anyway, I loved all of that. Where were
we It does look great.

Speaker 4 (25:13):
It's almost crystalline in places, and Tractenberg knows how to
photograph it to really make it pop and make it
look good. It's awesome. But anyway, story wise, you had
mentioned there's a lion that has menaced the tribe, so
she and her brother tab go to try with the
hunting party to try to dispatch. Along the way, there's

(25:35):
one of the other warriors has been savaged by the lion,
but he's still alive and she uses her knowledge of
her bology to help save him. She has this, you know, or.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Can we just point out that before this we got
to meet the village, like when they come out when
we meet her mom, who has been teaching her herbs,
and we figure out that no matter what happens as
far as her wanting to be a hunter, she's still
expected to do these sort of female responsibilities. Supposed to
go out in the mornings and collect the herbs and
supposed to do all the female shit while the guys

(26:08):
are out there doing their thing, and then she can.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Be doing hunting.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
Yeah, that sort of points to in a larger sense,
probably the best thing that this movie does for the
audience is make you care about these characters, because we
spend a lot of time early on with Naduru, with
her extended family, with her brother, so by the time
the Predator has inserted itself in the story, we care

(26:33):
deeply about all of these people, not just the main characters,
but the extended people, the commanche. So I think that's
just such a It's elementary and it seems like it
should be self evident. But not every Predator movie takes
the time for us to get to know the characters
before they're placed in jeopardy, and I think that's vital.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Only two have been successful as far as I'm concerned,
Predator and The Predator. Like the characters in both of
those I very much cared about. And but when you
snack the three against each other, not to start comparing them,
but the first film is an action movie, and I
love those characters in their action movie. The Predator is
a goof ultimately because it's Shane Black movie, So who

(27:17):
cares at the end of the day. Plus they're all dead.
But here, what we've got is a serious movie with
serious characters and like in a fair treatment of them.
And I'm never uninterested. I'm always engaged. When they're at
the village, I'm like, Okay, we can hang out here.
I'm never like, let's get to the action. Where's the Preditor.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, there's a potential version of this movie with no Predator,
where it's just a coming of age story with this
this woman, this commanche woman trying desperately to prove herself
in the face of all these doubting people in her village.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
That'd be the biggest bear they've ever seen, right.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
This movie, Like you said, you could have not even
had The Predator, and this would be a pretty compelling
story about these people at this time. But it's just
so it's just so cool. How you then it's so logical,
how they insert what should be this incredibly fantastical element,
this alien coming down from some other planet hunting people,

(28:22):
and it not once do you ever doubt the logic
of what's happening, even though it's a fantastic story. Fantastic
meaning unbelievable, not like great. It is great, but it's.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Like fantastic Tales of the Unknown, like that fantastic.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Like you can't like. And there's something about the reactions.
There's a point at which so Nadu is the one
who is one step ahead of everybody else in terms
of what's actually happening, because they believe that. Like they
find this guy who's been savaged by this lion, and
she uses this herb that cools down his body so

(28:58):
that he won't bleed out. That'll be important later in
the movie. It's this little mcguffinity throwing.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
I love it, but she but and it looks delicious,
even though everyone who eats it like coughs and it
like acts like it's the most unappetizing thing. I still
want some.

Speaker 4 (29:13):
It's orange something I don't recall the name of the herb,
but it's this herb that she can use to help
people not bleed out. But they're all focused on helping
this guy and bringing them back to the village. But
she realizes, well, there's a reason why the lion left
this guy. Like she's already her feelers are already up,
saying something's not right here, guys, but everybody else discounts

(29:35):
what she's saying, you're crazy. It's the lion. We'll deal
with the lion. Even her own brother is like, we
just have to deal with the lion. And they all
believe that when and if the lion is killed, then
safety will return to her tribe, so they take She
saves the guy's life by the way he goes back
to the village. She goes to help Tabe dispatch this lion.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
She by now she knows it. Now she knows it's
not a lion. But because they send they dismiss her.
The hunting party dismisses her to go back with the
wounded warrior, and she sees like tracks that are unusual
to anything she had ever seen before, like kind of
a clawbe it could be a bear, but it's too big.

(30:20):
And then they see claw marks that are way too high,
and suddenly she knows there's a predator that outstrips that lion,
and it might not be anything. And let's remember she
saw the thunderbird in the sky, so she knows something's afoot.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
Yeah, but it's satisfying to see because we're with her
the whole way. We see things that the rest of
the people don't get to see, so we know that
she's right. So the whole time, we're thinking to ourselves, no,
you know, she's so when she finally does take matters
into her hands eventually, it's so satisfying as a viewer

(30:58):
because we are by then and we want her to
succeed every bit as much as she wants to succeed
for herself, because she's such a good underdog. She figures
out this way. She's got this tomahawk, and she figures
out this way to tie a rope. She braids a
rope and ties it to kind of the central axis
of the tomahawk, and she's able to throw the tomahawk

(31:21):
and retrieve it like something out of like Mortal Kombat
or something. It's this badass weapon that frankly, it probably
defies the laws of physics, but it's so fucking cool
to see it in action.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
I liked that when another warrior found it, he said,
your axe needs a leash. They thought it was a detriment,
like they thought she attached it because she was going
to lose it, like a surfboard attached to her ankle.
But the fact is she had innovated that fucking thing
and it's gonna save her life over and over again.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
It's amazing. The fight scenes, which we're going to continue
to return to. The battle scenes, the fight scenes, whatever
you want to call them, are so well shot and
they're exciting, and she's just such a badass because she's
just a great hand to hand fighter, and I just it.
Some of these scenes are just beyond belief how cool

(32:16):
they are. She really she's up there with John Wick.
I'm going to say it right there. She is a
badass of the highest order in this movie. And I
wasn't prepared for how much of a badass she was
gonna be.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
We're talking about Nadu, we're talking about Amber mid Thunder.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
Well both really, because she can't have one without the other.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
That's true, but we can also include Amber mid Thunder's
stunt double, who does some incredible fucking shit there's an
entire sequence staring in the French the plantations, not French plantation,
during the French trapper sequence, where it is one her
stunt double in like every fucking shot, but she has

(32:54):
so much hair and the camera at work is so
fucking thoughtful that you'd never know.

Speaker 4 (33:00):
You mean that the single the sort of quote unquote
single shot fight scene. Yeah, you think that's all. You
think that's all just her stunt double because I couldn't tell.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
There's some Texas switching going on, but yeah, but it's
mainly the stunt double.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Yeah, well definitely. We'll get to the trappers, but so, yeah,
so she goes to try and dispatch this lion and
she ends up falling out of it.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Before we get there, she ascertains the sort of the situation,
sees that she's basically in the place where the lion
had been making its home, climbs up a tree, and
then the lion fucking shows up like she sees it peripherally,
like running through this tall grass. It's great, and then

(33:45):
looks down. As she looks down, the fucking lion is
there in a second trying to get up at her.
Scared the shit out of me. I've seen the movie twice.
Scared me twice.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
Well, it's her plan. She has devised the plan that
they're going to go into the lion's den as it were,
and basically bait it so that it gets sort of
moved into this tree, this zone where they're gonna you know.
So it's her idea how to take out the lion. Unfortunately,
the lion has her cornered on a branch. The lion

(34:14):
is advancing on her and she's backing up. The branch breaks.
They both fall out of the tree, and then the
next thing she knows, she wakes up in her village
because her brother had to carry her back because she's
been knocked unconscious. And then her brother comes into the
village after that, the conquering hero. He's got the lion carcass,
he's decapitated the lion, and he becomes it, basically becomes

(34:37):
a war chief at that point, right, he inherits the
title of war chief. And of course now that he
was not happy about this at all, because that's what
she wants for herself.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Well, she wants to even be a hunter, and now
she's being denied that because she had to be carried
back from a hunt.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
It's embarrassing, it's demoralizing. And eventually we see that her
brother admits to her that, you know what, you're really
the one who helped take that lion out because you
devise the plan when the lion fell out of the tree.
You weakened it enough that I could take it out.
So what if? I mean, it's actually really generous of

(35:16):
her brother to admit to her. You know, you would
expect him to be this macho guy who's the war
chief and blah blah blah, but he has no problem
admitting that, you know what, you're really the one who
should take credit. It's so endearing because he's honest about it.
He's frank about the fact that, yeah, you are a
great hunter, and he defends her even when the other

(35:39):
members of the war party or what have you are
putting her down and making fun of her hatchet with
the cord on it and everything. But he he says
to them, you know, she's a great tracker and she
can really help us here. It's just so endearing. I
don't know, I love that part of it.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
Well, those two characters love each other, so that's yeah,
you know, it's pretty great.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
It's very and actually, come to find doubt that Tabe
is actually the actor is actually younger than Amber mid
Thunder did not realize.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
That didn't know that. I love both of them. I
can't wait to see them in more things. Honestly, here's
two things that I thought of during that scene the
Tabe returns with the lion beheaded lion. My first thought was, oh,
so the predator did that and he just found it,
because that's a fucking predator move to cut the head

(36:25):
off that cleanly. The second thought I had was watching
the tribe come together and then everyone's celebrating. I thought
this must be what it's like in the predator society.
It's the same idea, right.

Speaker 4 (36:39):
They're celebrating the kill.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Absolutely, so it just makes me want to see more
of these predators.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
I didn't think of it in those terms, but there
is a lot of that duality in this movie.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Actually, Well, just like you said, you know, they have
this sort of mirroring between the predator and Nahooh that
plays throughout because there are times when I am on
the Predator's side. This predator is the villain, by the way,
there are times where I go back and forth during
every Predator movie where you know, either I like the
humans and I want them to win, or I like

(37:13):
the Predator and I want him to win. Here, even
though this is the most formidable Predator I think probably ever.
I mean, maybe the giant one's a little more scary
because he's just big, But this one, I'm not on
his side at any time until he runs into the humans. Basically,
I agree with you there, like not the humans, the

(37:33):
white people. That's why I'm the French trappers. I sort
of was predisposed to maybe not liking him off the
bat when I saw him kill that wolf, being an
animal lover that to me, that kind of bothered me
a little bit, even though look it's a feral wolf,
yeah yeah, and like you said, it has that iridescent
blood all over it.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
It's maw, so it actually made look. I will also
say this for the Predator. This Predator takes his fair
share of licks. This Predator is beat to shit by
the end of this movie. He's been stabbed, he's had
his arm cut off, Predator blood everywhere, So he gets
full marks for being sort of implacable in that way, unstoppable.

(38:17):
And I agree with you that he reads as a
villain until we get to the French trapper thing, which
we can talk about. I do want to mention though,
one of the greatest predator reveals in all of the movies.
So Naduru has has decided after her brother gets war chief,

(38:37):
she goes away. She realizes that there's this isn't going
to end with this line. There's something else out there,
and she resolves. She puts aside her normal female specific duties.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Oh my god, my favorite shot in the entire movie
is her all of the sort of female members of
the tribe walking toward the river to start their day
and she's walking directly against the stream to go do this.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
Yes, so beautiful, it's amazing. It's amazing just a photography alone.
I don't know exactly where this was a shot, but
it looks like the most unspoiled wilderness, like you can imagine,
like this could very well have been the Northern Plane
in seventeen nineteen. It looks brilliant. So she's on the
hunt for the predator and at one point she comes

(39:24):
across a bear, a big bear that catches her scent.
It's a great sequence where you see the wind blow
across her and you can see, like you don't see
it literally, but you can see it wafting over to
the bear who sniffs the air. The bear basically runs
after her, tries to attack her, and in the midst
of all this, she's taken refuge and a beaver dam,

(39:46):
and this bear is doing its best to try and
dig through that killer. And there revealed is the predator.
The predator comes. They have a little battle, the bear
versus the predator. The predator of course kills the bear,
and after killing it, it picks it up and lifts
it over its head and obviously like cuts it open

(40:09):
so that the blood comes down in a rush over
this formerly camouflaged predator. And what you see revealed is
the predator outlined in blood as Nadu has probably a
number of heart attacks and runs away. I love that
reveal of the blood. It just works on a lot

(40:29):
of levels to see this thing, you know, just covered
and all of this blood and revealed and all of
its sick glory. It's an amazing shot.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
The whole sequence is fantastic.

Speaker 4 (40:41):
Yeah, it's heart pounding.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
As you've said, like, if there were no predator in
this movie, that would have been funny. If she had
just escaped the bear and then fond it again later
like that, this would just be one of the most
exciting movies I'd seen in years. But then we've got
a predator drenched in blood and has some sort of baptism.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Oh my god, it's great, it's amazing, and they have
a way. So then another thing I love about this
is at one point, so after this all happens, Tabe
has sent a small group of a search party to
come and bring Nadru back, and they find her and
they she won't listen, so there's a fight and she

(41:21):
ends up basically getting subdued, and they hear they're trying
to take her back, but they can hear the predator
and they know something's up. But they have this way
of this.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
You know what, hun you're going they knock her out.
She gets knocked out a lot, And I'd just like
to say, as much as I love this movie, could
everyone stump doing that in movies? The idea of actually
just knocking somebody out is very difficult. First of all, Yeah,
if you think you're going to punch somebody in the
head and they're just going to go, that's not how
it works. If you've ever seen a boxing match, it

(41:52):
takes a lot to get somebody to be knocked unconscious,
which is their brain has to smack up against the
side of their goal really hard. A contract coup is
what they call that medically. And the fact is every
time you're knocked unconscious, that's a little bit of brain damage.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
Yeah, it's literally an injury to your brain. So that
I yes, I could see that. I mean, it's become
such short.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
It's a fantastic transition for filmmakers. And then they get
hit in the head with the butt of a rifle
and then where am I No, yeah, you actually have
to link the scene.

Speaker 4 (42:27):
Sorry, that is I guess. Yeah I didn't. That didn't
occur to me. But you're right, and that is a
problem that used to be like a big private Eye thing. Right,
he's always getting hit in the head by some peluca
and he wakes up.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah, like Mike Hammer is a vegetable by the end
of his Private Eye brain image.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Well, what I like is that, you know, after these
this search party has caught into that there's something out there.
There's something in the way of having these three or
four Comanche warriors that all have bows drawn as they're
walking silently through the woods.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
It's beauty.

Speaker 4 (43:00):
It's such a badass image and they're so quiet and
they just seem so lethal that just have to believe, like, wow,
you know, these guys could go through anything except this
fucking predator that's gonna just tear through them like a
hot knife through butter. But it's such a graceful image
to see them with these bows drawn and the foldy

(43:21):
work is great because you can hear the bowstring tightened,
and I don't know, it just seems so like like
we've been saying, if there wasn't even a predator, this
would be really interesting to see them hunting and doing
their thing.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
But I usually say this in a crime movie, but
I just love seeing professionals speed professional exactly.

Speaker 4 (43:38):
That's the point I'm making. You said it beautifully there.
It's they know what they're doing. These are trained, you know, bowhunters,
and that's what they do best, and it doesn't matter
because the predator is just so far beyond them technologically.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Sorry, man, he's got laser guided bolts.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
Yeah, bolts, it's and that's the I mean sequin after sequence.
I keep saying, well, that sequence is great to that one.
They're all great because what happens is that the search
party is waylaid by the predator. One of them is
basically like like that that three dot laser has the
ability to kind of separate. So he shoots one in
the guy's eye, one in his hand, and one in

(44:18):
his heart, and then he goes over like I said,
and retrieves the bolts because of course he has to
retrieve them. He's not shooting energy based weapons. And again,
these are fierce warriors. They they attack this thing with
everything they've got, and it just it's almost heartbreaking to
see them just be waylaid because you want to pull

(44:40):
for them because they're so badass, all of them. They
do they Like I said, the predator gets his licks
through the whole movie and he gets stabbed and sliced
and whatever, but ultimately it's all for no because he
just he cuts a swath through all of these warriors.
So she runs away from the predator barely kind of escapes,

(45:03):
but she is snared by a metal trap that that
we've seen earlier. Her dog, Sati was also snared in
a trap, and she rescues us, but she it's a
bear trap.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
By the way I mention it. Her dog early on
gets its tail caught in one, and then she frees
the dog, and then we see that she's a herbalist
because she puts some sort of paste on the dog.
And I love that scene because this is seventeen nineteen
and she's never met a European and she certainly doesn't
know what a steel chain is, so her reaction to

(45:37):
it is great, where she's just trying to figure out
what it is and what it can be used for.
So anyway, that pays off here because she finds herself.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
It's true. Yeah, she kind of picks up the chain
and she's not really sure what to make of it.
But so she gets snared by this bear trap and
they these French trappers take her prisoner and take her
to camp and put her in a cage basically, and
she realizes that these are the people that kill those
buffalo from earlier, and one of them, this fellow Raphael,

(46:07):
can speak Commanchi. It has to be said, by the way,
before I get into this, that this movie plays a
little fast and loose with language, right we can. The
example that I always point to is Hunt for Red October,
where the Russians on the submarine speak Russian up until
this point where they zoom in on one of their
mouths and it sort of transitions into English, giving the

(46:29):
audience this idea that, well, they're still speaking Russian, but
you're hearing it as English. Now this movie, they don't,
there's no transition. Sometimes they speak commanche, sometimes mostly they
speak English, And I think it's just it's easier for
the audience to kind of figure it out. It's my
understanding that there is a all commanche dub of this

(46:53):
movie that you can watch. I don't know, I want
to see it. You did see it, okay, all subtitles
that that would be a really clever way to watch it.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
I think I turned off the subtitle really Yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:02):
Well you already kind of knew what.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Yeah, of course that I did have the advantage of
having seen the movie previously. Yeah, Honestly, Joe Danteos often
says this, He'll watch a movie on an airplane without
the sound on, because you should be able to watch
a movie without the sound if it's actually any good.
And this is definitely one you're gonna watch without the sound.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
Sure, So she's imprisoned and this fellow, Raphael tries to
reason with her. So it's clear that these trappers are
trying to trap the predator. They're aware of the predator
and they're trying to figure out a way to trap
it for some reason or another or kill it, hunts it,
and he Raphael is asking her for help, and they've

(47:43):
also turns out they've also captured her brother, Tabe, and
they end up essentially torturing him in the midst of
all of this, and.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Yeah, they cut him up. First of all, Listen, there's
this really corpulent French dude who is the sort of
main antagonist leader of this scroup, and he basically has
to be restrained from shooting and killing her over and
over again because she's not giving up any information. And
then the implication somebody comes up in whispers in his
ear and it's just really lacivious. No, keep her alive

(48:13):
because we can rape he eventually. So these guys are
bad fucking news. And then really their ultimate plan is
they take Tabe out, cut him open, like bleeding him
because they don't know what the predator is. They just
think it's some beast out there. And then they tie
those two together in an open field with on a
fucking true like a dead tree as bait.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
Yeah, and it reminded me of the end of Raiders
of the Lost Arc where one hundred in it. You know,
where they that's it. They're helpless to watch what's happening
around them, and that's what's happened to.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
Don't pick up any weapons. What don't pick up any weapons, Toby,
that's right, keep.

Speaker 4 (48:55):
Your eyes shut. So they brought them out there, like
you said, as bait for the predator. But they've the
trappers being you know, these evil, stupid people that we're
supposed to root against. They've they've grossly underestimated the intelligence
of both both the comanche and also the predator in particular,
because they're expecting it to come in and, you know,

(49:19):
attack these helpless people at this on this tree, but
instead it knows to kind of outflank them, and it
comes from behind. As they're focus straight ahead, there's the
predator coming from behind them, and it becomes this big
conflagration and really showcases the sort of bad assness of
this predator he has. It has to be said, I've

(49:40):
already talked about the tomahawk that can be like retrieved
with this cable. The Predator has this wrist shield that
kind of expands and contracts at will, so it's embedded
in this gauntlet and it can become this telescoped shield.
That was actually inspired by one of my favorite games

(50:00):
in the PS four, which is the remake of, or
the reboot of God of War, because Crados in that
movie has this thing called the Leviathan Acts that he
can throw and then it comes back to his hand
if you hit you know, R two or something like that.
So is the shield because he has a shield on
his wrist gauntlet that does the same kind of stuff

(50:22):
that the Predators does, which I thought was kind of
a nice touch. I don't know, it reminded me of something.
And then I read that and I said, oh, that's
exactly what I was thinking about. Did you ever play
God of.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
War that Urchin did? Of course, Yeah, I play a
great game, many iterations of it. Yeah, so it was
actually directly inspired by that.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Yeah, that's as far as IMDb's trivia is concerned, it
was inspired by it.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Well, I can't trust anything on IMDb trivia. That might
be just some fucking idiot who likes God of War
and went, oh, that reminds me of God of War.
Then't that inspired it? Let me add that click could
be or maybe we've seen an earlier iteration of a
predator shield and they thought, what would a predator shield
look like if you could use it also as an
offensive weapon, because that's what ends up happening here. He's

(51:06):
being shot by muskets, which is hilarious, and he's sort
of taking it because he probably could. But then he's like,
fuck this, and he pops out this little shield that
you know that well. At one point somebody shoots him
in the head and ricochet kills him, which.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
Is great because he's staring this guy in the face.
It's a standoff. The guy's got a musket pointed red
at his head, and the guy shoots and just ends
up killing himself with a musket Ricochet's back. But so
he's got this shield and at one point he has
a guy backed up against the tree and he's got
his kind of his forearm against the guy's head and
the guy, I think he has a gun that he's

(51:44):
ready to shoot, and all the predator does is kind
of flecks his wrist. The shield pops out and effectively
decapitates both the guy and the tree behind him, and
I think even like the Predator, they looped in him
going like ugh, like kind of grunting, like, oh that
was kind of interesting. What yeah again.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
My favorite moment from Alien versus Predator was when the
Predator catches the little face hugger and he like shutters afterwards,
like any little moment of character. We don't get them
all that often, so I loved that moment because the
Predator was like cool, I took his head off, and
I took this tree down, like.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
He's disarming trappers with hatchets and flipping them in the
air and throwing them into people's heads. This is the
point at which this is the only point at which
we actually are behind the predator, because we've seen how
nasty and evil these French, this trapping camp, how bad
they are. So it's really it's one of those great

(52:42):
sort of sequences where were like, yeah, you know, just
fuck him up because we want to see, especially the
corpulent one that you mentioned earlier. He's the one that
we really want to sort of see get his just desserts.
So during all of this, Naduru and Tabe are trying
to escape. But as you said, like nad who has
realized again being one step ahead of everybody, that the

(53:04):
predator won't hunt them since they are in a threat,
so don't pick up a weapon just you know, and
the predator completely ignores them through this whole crazy thing.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
Just like dancing around fucking killing everyone in the periphery everybody.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
And at one point, so the predator eventually walks into
another bear trap and the trappers like are you know,
are exultant. They throw a net over him. You figure, okay,
they really think they've got the upper hand, but no,
it lasts about three seconds and he shrugs the net off.
He shoots one of his own nets. I think we've
seen this in another one of these movies, but.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Not like this.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
This is brutal because he throws a net over a guy,
and what the net does effectively is tightened endlessly. So
eventually it tightens so much that whoever is inside of
the net becomes just atomized goo. Basically it's a really
horrific way to die.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Well yeah, I mean on this in alien versus predator,
and one of the aliens to our lead alien, our
lead Zeno morph was marked by that net remember it
like broke out of it because they acid ate through
it before it made that grid mark on it, right, Yes, yeah, yeah,
so those do that, but not this was again because
this movie is so much better than that movie. The

(54:19):
effect is fucking incredible.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
It's awesome. So finally Tabe and Naderu escape and Tabe
goes to get some horses, and Naduru has got to
go back to the camp that she was held prisoner
in because her dog is still there and she wants
to rescue the dog. I mean, who you know again,
I love this character. She's going back to this place
because her dog has been held captive. So she goes

(54:43):
back and what follows is we alluded to this earlier.
It's this hand to hand fight scene that is meant
to be a single shot. It's obviously cheated in a
couple of places, but man, it is brutal. She just
wipes out everybody in camp basically, and after freeing the dog,

(55:03):
this guy, Raphael, who was the only one who tried
to talk to her and reason with her, he comes
stumbling back to camp because he's been his foot has
been cut off. He's stumbling back and he knows that
she knows medicine, so he begs her to help him,
and in return, he's going to give her his flintlock
pistol and show her how to use it. Right now,

(55:26):
what I didn't pick up the first time through is
that he has this metal object embedded in his stump
and it's this telescoping knife blade thing that the predator used.
It didn't catch because it's sort of looped in a
circle until she takes it out and kind of expands
it at one point. But it was I don't know
why I missed that first time through, but.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
We'd seen the we'd seen the predator unfurl it earlier.
We also, by the way, since we're dealing with this
guy getting his stump taken care of by our lead,
we get one of my other face and I know
your favorite sequence is too, the predator repairing himself.

Speaker 4 (56:05):
Yeah, we have to have that, yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
Which in this it's a kind of a paste that
he puts on and another great character moment he's as
he's putting it on, you can kind of tell him like, oh,
that's smarts, like he unlike most predators will just like
howl like with like I can take this sort of pain.
This PREADU is a little touchy about it.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
Like the only thing missing is there's always one weird
aspect we've talked about in Predator two, when he's preparing himself,
he has to like grind up like a subway tile
into a paste that he then slaps on his stump.
We don't get that here. That's the only thing missing here.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
Yeah, he should have like broken off the hoof of
an antelope or something and added it to the mixture.

Speaker 4 (56:50):
Just grind it up. I don't know, but yeah, that
we Every Predator movie has to have that sequence where
it takes a moment for itself self care for the predator,
and he kind of, you know, fixes himself up before
the final battle. But meanwhile she's having this She's helping
this guy Raphael, and she ends up. He teaches her

(57:11):
how to use the flint lock, and she gives him
more of that orange herb so that he won't bleed out,
and it reduces his body temperature to the degree that
when the predator comes looking at the camp, it comes
to the camp, she sees that it doesn't notice him
on the ground, and that gives her this spark of oh,

(57:34):
he couldn't this is the same thing that happens in
almost every Predator movie. Like you know, Dutch figures out
he can't see me because he's covered in mud in
this case, and.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
Brody figures out, Hey, he can't see me because I'm
covered in mud. And then finally somebody goes, hey, there's
something else. It's cold. The temperature he can't see coal, right, smart,
I'll lower my body temperature and he won't be able
to see me.

Speaker 4 (57:59):
It's great. So she has that revelation. And what I
think is great about the scene is that you think
that he's going to make it because he just sort
of lies prone on the ground and doesn't move, and
you can see the predator's point of view that you
can kind of see the outline, but you know that
he hasn't caught on that there's a guy there, but
he's walking and he ends up stepping accidentally on this

(58:21):
guy's foot, which makes him cry out, which then attracts
his attention, and he's dead. I mean, it does no
good ultimately, but it's just sort of funny that just
by accident this guy was discovered. I don't step ah
stab yeah, dead, just gone.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
And then he did give her a flintlock that got
one shot, and I like that she's constantly levying what
the target is, Should I use this one shot that
I have for the rest of the movie. I mean,
not that there's a ton left of the movie, but
she does make the decision over and over again. Is
this worth it? Is this worth it?

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Yeah? Well, at least once she tries to shoot him
and she realizes that she didn't get the steps all right,
because she shoots and nothing happens, and she goes, oh,
that's true crap, you know, And then she's got to
figure out where she went around.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
But that's when she's actually decided she's gonna make the shot,
because at one point she sees Frenchy like out like
on some waterfall, and she's I should kill him. I
could kill him right now. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
So at this point, after the predator kills Raphael, she sorry.
The dog comes up barking, and the predator turns and
as he's about to kill this little dog that we've
become attacked.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
God, it's the worst moment of the movie. I was
so tense.

Speaker 4 (59:33):
It's awful. But then Tabe rides in on a horse
that he said he was going to get and he
starts attacking the predator, and he does a pretty damn
good job of fucking the predator up. I mean, he
basically is doing this thing where he's circling on the horse,
he's stabbing, he's doing all this stuff, and Nadu his mask.
The predator's mask gets knocked off of his head when

(59:53):
Taba attacks, and Nadhu notices that the mask fires automatically
whatever it's seeing. So when the predator makes the decision
to shoot, it's the mask and the direction that the
mask is facing that determines the direction of the bullet's
you know, father alone.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
And she's seen the targeting laser dots in action before,
so she knows if those are on, those are where
that the projectiles are going. Yeah, but earlier on she
fell into a bog and freed herself.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Yes, And that's actually a very tense sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
She's a great sequence.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
In the midst of her hunting, she does she falls
into I mean, it's not really quicksand, but the idea
is it's basically a quicksand it's his bog and she
can't get herself out. And in the last ditch effort,
she's got this axe with the rope on it and
she manages to pull herself out of it. That will
also become relevant for the conclusion of the movie. I'm
glad you mentioned that. So Tabe is still fighting off,

(01:00:50):
trying to fight off this predator while now he was
struggling with the pistol. She can't quite figure it out,
and finally Tabay tells her to run because he only
considers I'm a threat. She's not a threat yet, and
he is ultimately killed by the predator, giving her just
enough time to escape, which is a sad moment because
we've become very attached to Tabe.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
I loved him, man, and it's.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
Great, and it's just it's such a wonderful bond and
it's really all up there on the screen. So then
that evening Naduru is and sorry, they spy that that
one super evil trapper, the real over you, real corpulent
one that we keep talking about across the river. And
this is where initially she's she gets the pistol out

(01:01:35):
and she's going to aim to shoot him, but then
you can see it dawns on her. She comes up
with a different plan. She's going to use him to
try and attract the predator, And this is really one
of the more really really a brutal moment, probably maybe
the most brutal in the whole movie. Fatherm Alone. So
she speaks up on him. Well it's justified, but it's

(01:01:56):
still pretty fair play.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
And this is literal turn he that guy knocked her
out and then used her as bait for the predator.

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
So she sneaks up on him and knocks him out.
And then it's later and it's dark and he is
woken up. But what is he woken up by? Father Malone?

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Rats gnawing at his stump of a leg.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
She's cut off his leg, yeah, to hobble him basically,
and there are rats that are gnawing on the leg
in his sleep. Just put yourself in that position, like
you wake up what you think is just some sort
of nightmare, and you look down and there's rats gnawing
on what was your leg?

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
I mean, she it's I refuse to put myself in
his shoes or shoe because I would never put myself
in a position where I was keeping a Native girl
in a cage and then using bait for a monster.
Fuck that guy. I'm glad he woke up with rats
having a buffet.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting he didn't
have it coming, because he most certainly did. He's awful
and we're just waiting for him to get his come up,
and so this is only the start of that. So
Nadu is very calmly sitting by the fire and talking
to him.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Okay, she is the only part of the movie I
did not like, because.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
It's all I like this alone.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
It's all the subtext of the movie. It's everything that
we've already been watching and accepting of. Like you say
I can't do this, I'm going to do that. You
tell me I can't do this, Well I will. It's like, yeah,
we know, man, we were on this journey with you.
To me, though, is clumsy as fuck.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
I To me, I see it as we finally see
how far she's come and what she's willing to do.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
We just saw it. She kind off the guy's fucking
leg and she's waiting for the fucking predator and she's
gonna take it on hand to hand, say a word.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
That's fine to me. It didn't bother me, but I
could see where maybe it's a little bit too much.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
But everything look if everything else weren't so fucking perfect.
I wouldn't care that speech would not stand out in
any of the Predator movie.

Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
I guess I just found it sort of chilling because
of the circumstance and because of what we know is coming.
I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
So you see that in her eyes. Man, that's fair.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
But again, like I said, I didn't have a problem
with it. But what she's done is she's put a
rifle nearby, and he kind of scrabbles his way over
to pick it up. And what as she's talking to
him and basically saying to him like, you don't realize
that I'm killing you right now, Like you have no idea,
and he's swearing at her in French, and you kind
of get a sense for what he's saying. And she

(01:04:36):
eats more of that herb that makes the body go cold,
and this is all part of her plan, so she
gets cold. He's holding the rifle at that moment, the
predator finally finds them. He's been tracking them based on
this the blood from this guy's stump, and he's effectively
holding a rifle at the predator. She knows that the

(01:04:58):
predator will now cons or him a threat and not her.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
And this is how you leave somebody as bait fucker.
You put a rifle in their hand next to a fire,
to a creature that sees mainly in temperature.

Speaker 4 (01:05:13):
It's a wonderful sort of conclusion to the saga of
this French trapper that we've come to hate so much.
So he after the Predator kills the trapper, that's when
Naduru finally decides, I'm going to use this pistol. So
she gets way up close to the predator, shoots him
in the head, which knocks off his helmet, and she

(01:05:34):
she runs off with And this is there's an analog
to like what Dutch at the end of the first
Predator movie, where he's crafted all these traps and he's
figured out a way that he's going to try to
beat the predator at his own game. So predator continues
to track.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
This is the elegant ending of Predators.

Speaker 4 (01:05:51):
It is, it really is. So so she has taken
the bloody leg that she's taken from the trapper and
she trails it to this bog basically, so the predator
tracks via this leg, this cut off leg, this amputated leg,
and she then jumps onto the predator and just starts

(01:06:12):
wailing on it with the hatchet. It's this pitched fight
that commences, and she's getting more and more good hits
in on this thing. I mean, it's really a battle.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
But to the.

Speaker 4 (01:06:23):
Movie's credit, never for one moment do you think to yourself,
there's no way that this you know, this woman could
do anything to this giant predator. We've seen so much
of Nadu. It's so believable father alone, that she could
take on the predator toe to toe and beat it
in this well.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
What I like is that they never pull punches when
it comes to him hitting her back, like he will
just fucking toss her away like a rag doll, and
she has to take that, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
But it's brutal. At one point, she she's trapped. He's
got the shield and he's got her trapped.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
And he keeps saying, this is my favorite but god
damn one again seeing go it's incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
And he is bearing down. He's trying to cut off
her head with this thing, and.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
She has went bare hand between two rocks and that
has slowed the descent of this blade. But he keeps
shoving further, and he keeps cutting further through the rock.
It's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:07:17):
But then this is a move that I've never seen
anyone do in these movies. She rips off one of
the tusks off the predator's face and stabs him in
the face with it and then ducks down. That is brutal,
that's hardcore. We've never seen somebody do that. Seriously, I
can't say enough about how you know how formidable she

(01:07:40):
is during this fight, during the whole movie. Really, I've
bought into it, hook line and sinker. Finally, she maneuvers
this predator back to the bog that you'd mentioned she's
trapped in earlier, and she's she's carefully propped up the
helmet behind the predator so that it's facing the predator.
When when it's coming after her and the predator shoots

(01:08:04):
a bolt at what he thinks is her, he doesn't
realize the mask is behind him. The bolt takes like
a left turn at Albuquerque Circles all the way back home.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
They should be noted that the bolt gun you can
just use in your hand, and if the targeting system
isn't on, it's just gonna fly like a regular spear
gun would. So he doesn't realize that the targeting system
is on and it's on him.

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
Yeah, so he thinks he's just gonna shoot her and
that'll be it. But the thing takes a wide bank
left and shoots him in the head and that's it.
Finally she bested the predator. It's an amazing moment. So
she carries the severed head of the predator back to

(01:08:48):
her camp, just the way that Tabe carried the lion
carcass back. And she also has what we now know
is the famous Adelini pistol from Predator to this guy,
Raphael was Raphael Adelini. The inscription on the pistol, So
that's a really awesome tie in back to Predator too.
And she presents these things to the presiding war chief

(01:09:12):
and she tells them in no certain terms, they need
to move to more protected ground. They're not safe there anymore.
And as a result of this, what happens, she has
made the new war chief of the tribe.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
What I love is that when he came, when her
brother came back, his face was painted in blood. And
when she comes back, her face is painted in bioluminescent blood.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
Yeah, all that bioluminescent blood. It's fantastic and what a
great ending. It just everything came full circle. She's finally
got her due as the hunter that we all knew
that she was. And it's fantastic. And then the credits roll.
But that's not it. What happens with the credits, Father Malone?
What's the interesting thing they do here?

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
Are you talking about? How they have a it's not animated,
but we get drawings of the characters while the credits
are rolling, and then rather ominously, at the end, it
shows more predatorships like descending out of the sky.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
It effectively tells the story in a Native American animation,
like these sort of drawings, and that's the final image,
is more of those ships coming. Even the soundtrack at
that point has this sort of mournful like this idea
that she thought that they're safe and that she conquered
this threat, but.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Oh no, she knew that there were going to be
more on the way, so she's like, we need to
get out of here.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
That also could be true also, but man, what an ending?
What an ending?

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
I would like to mention one thing we found to mention,
which is the we don't get a predator self destruct
device in this but we do get a predator mass
destruction device that is so beautifully rendered. It's during the
French trapper sequence. Leaves this little thing, this little device,
this little mechanism, and three little balls pop up into

(01:11:06):
the air and are hovering, and then beautifully we cut
to overlooking this miss shrewn valley where Nadu turns and
watches and there's a concussion that goes off that knocks
down all of these trees. It's beautiful, it learnt what
happened now? Is that a precursor to the explosive device.

Speaker 4 (01:11:26):
I think we just chalk that up to being a
more primitive version of the I mean, it definitely killed
whatever was in that radius. And the funny part of
that scene is these like balls, discs or whatever they
are that rise up. These French trappers don't know what
to make of it. They're just kind of stick and
you would think, like, they don't know what this is.
This is the seventeen hundreds. This may as well be

(01:11:47):
magic to them, and they just sit there and watch
it and what's going on here?

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
You would too? So would I? Right it happened to
me right now, I would probably watch what's going on here.

Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
At the very last minute. I think they some one
of them realizes, oh well, let's get out of here,
but it's too late. And that shot from above where
all you see are the ripple like sort of almost
like lightning that ripples through that area because it's all missed,
strewn and fog ridden, and it really is cool. And
there's a lot of the weaponry for the predator we've
talked a little bit about. It is all really cool

(01:12:19):
in this and there's nothing that is that beggars belief
for the time period. He's got like this sort of
staff that can extend and break apart and he can
throw it like a lance or you know, do this
kind of stuff. He's got the wrist shield, he's got
you know, the mask that effectively has a targeting system
integrated into it, but it reads like bone and not metal.

(01:12:41):
It's great. I mean, he's just such. He's a scarier predator,
I think than most because he is so savage. I
think he's a little more savage than the other predators
we've seen. And maybe that part of that is the
idea that maybe the code isn't quite as formal. He
seems to be a little bit more you know, as

(01:13:03):
savage and maybe not quite as bound by code as
the others.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
He is much more pharaoh, but he does take the
time to carefully preserve his trip. We get that coyote,
we get the coyote skull getting getting polished up.

Speaker 4 (01:13:17):
Yeah, that is a very I mean that's CG obviously,
but that is a very That's kind of a gruesome
scene because it's you really see all of the matter
and flesh just dissolve away from this skull and all
it's left with is just the bone that he then
hooks right onto his belt. It's really quite it. Again,
it has to be CG, but it doesn't read as

(01:13:39):
bad CG. It all feels pretty pretty realistic to me.

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
Now, we rated the Predator movies previously in the last
episode with Daha, and what we ended up with was Predator,
The Predator two, Alien Versus Predator, Alien Versus Predator Requiem.
I'm gonna go first, Pray Predator, Predator the Predator, the
rest of the list. Basically, this is the best in

(01:14:05):
the series.

Speaker 4 (01:14:07):
It's a very hard thing for me to judge objectively.
I would say this is the best made movie. It
works on so many levels. Just the fact that as
we said, you could take the Predator rout and it
would still be a really kick ass movie. It's I
just it's hard for me to rate it higher than

(01:14:27):
the original because there would be no prey if there
wasn't a Predator, but gun to head. If this is
objectively determining which is the best quality made movie, I
would have to agree with you. I'd have to go
pray first.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
This does everything that first movie was trying to do,
and it does it better, and it gives us characters,
and it gives us community, and it gives us a
fucking on top of everything else, it gives us a
look into a world that is rarely shown in American film,
which is a fucking travesty. Just the Native American community

(01:15:04):
on display here and played by Native Americans. Gasp.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
There's a lot more going on with this. This compared
to the first Predator, this is a pretty sprawling movie. Predator.
The original is obviously just mainly limited to those five
or six you know, Special Forces guys and the Predator,
and it's kind of it's almost claustrophobic in the way
that it's just them versus this Predator. Where's this We've

(01:15:29):
got nothing but open spaces. This is such a beautiful
looking depiction of that part of the United States, and
it's just so it's really apples and oranges fa them alone.
It's hard to make a direct comparison because there's such
two different, very different movies. It's hard for me to
decide that's true. I'd say Pray Pray gets the win.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
I think, yeah, Man, Alien and Aliens are different movies,
but Alien is a better movie. I'm sorry, it's.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
Fair again, it's and it's no. I don't think it's
a disservice to Predator that this is because Pray had
the benefit.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
We improved the formula. What are you gonna do?

Speaker 4 (01:16:07):
That's the thing. Pray had the time in the history
to look and see what worked and what didn't and
what can we try to reinvigorate the formula. So in
a certain sense, they were kind of traveling and Predator
the first Predator's Wake. But I got handed to Dan
Trachtenberg and his whole team of writers and filmmakers because

(01:16:30):
they literally built a better mouse trap. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
I can't say enough good about it. It's the one
action film of recent memory that I've watched multiple times.
And still felt exhilarated during the action sequences and frightened
in certain sequences and really responds to these characters. If
you're hearing snoring, by the way, that's ripley Gene, who

(01:16:55):
has climbed into my lap and has decided to go
to sleep.

Speaker 4 (01:16:57):
Look. I finally had the pleasure of meeting Ripley g
last week, and boy, I wanted to take her home
in my carry on luggage. She is as more adorable
than I ever thought she was. She's just such a
sweet pup, and I can't I'm trying to think I
can't hear her snoring, but I did hear her snoring
then though.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
Very okay, good.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:19):
She she always has trouble watching movies with animals, and
she certainly was alarmed for a lot of the my
rewatch of this film during the dog sequences, but she
eventually calmed down and actually watched this movie. I'm not kidding. Wow,
it's impressive, and was really concerned during action sequences, So
I was just so proud of her.

Speaker 4 (01:17:40):
He tried to watch. We watched Clue when I was
there father alone, and I recall that a couple times
during Clue, I don't recall exactly. Maybe it was when the.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Was during the dog sequence at the beginning. Yeah, that's
she had to leave the room at that point. That's
what it was.

Speaker 4 (01:17:55):
I forgot about that part. Good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
But anyway that look, if you haven't seen this movie,
please well we just spoiled fucking everything. But if you
haven't seen it, watched it. If you haven't seen it,
watch it again, watch it with the commanche on it.
It's fucking fascinating. This movie was great. I love every
bit of it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Likewise, and this is coming. Anyone who's heard Yahucha Fest
throughout all these movies that I've watched, you'll know that
I came into this series with a bit of trepidation because,
aside from the first couple of movies that the rest
didn't really interest me all that much, and it was
the law of diminishing returns. This brought me back into

(01:18:32):
this series in a big way. It made me go
from Predator that's kind of ran its course to I
cannot wait to see what Tracktenburg does with bad Lands.
This is gonna be amazing, And every trailer that I've
seen of that movie gets me more and more, almost
to the point where I'm a little nervous now that
it can't possibly live up to this hype, but I

(01:18:55):
trust them, I really do.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
I do too. I am so looking forward to it.
I'm also looking forward to his next film. You should
be looking forward to it too. You're gonna hear it
in two weeks we're gonna be talking about Predator, Killer
of Killers, the first anathology. How fucking appropriate here on
midnight viewing of the Predator series. Until then, Where can
people find you when they're looking for you?

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
HP?

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
What are you working on? What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
I'm not far. I co host the Night Mister Walters
Taxi podcast alongside my erstwhile co host here Father Malone.
I host the AO. I host the Noise Junkies music
podcast as well, and I have a band camp site
which is hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
As for me, you're listening to it. You're listening all
the time. Thank you everyone for your listening, by the way,
really appreciated. The numbers have been sort of cuckoo of
late midnight viewing. We're on Father Malone's weekly roundup is
on Mondays. We're looking at current streaming, current theatrical and
every Friday here you're either hearing HP and I talking
about a fest or you're hearing let's talk about a

(01:20:02):
horror anthology television series. What are we doing here with
This is the Iota Fest. We're wrapping it up soon.
Obviously we're working our way towards bad lands. But fear not,
because another fest is right behind it. Over on the
Patreon channel, you can listen to Moranus Fest that's going
on right now. That is the Rick Moranus Fest. HP
and I are looking at the cinematic efforts of mister
Rick moranis. But starting December, HP and I are going

(01:20:24):
to be taking a cinematic trip through the stars. Jesus
Christ Almighty, We're going to be taking a look at
Star Trek. Everybody join us for those.

Speaker 1 (01:20:40):
Pleach we can kill it?

Speaker 3 (01:21:05):
What ding hell are you

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
H

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Yautja Fest - Prey (2022)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Yautja Fest - Prey (2022)