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Prey 2022 tries to be annoying to concervatives
October 14, 2025π 16
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#Prey #Predator #movies #review #film #cinemastodon #DanTrachtenberg
by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
8 Minute Read
The Predator franchise started its life as a masculine super-macho, mega-violent little B-Movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In my review of the first film, I even speculated, for a second, that it might have even been racist. Something that a certain side of political spectrum finds to be a quality of a movie. That certain side of the political spectrum really didn't get when Dan Trachtenberg decided, he is making a feminist, native-American movie in the same franchise.
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The film Prey ( which is a very fun play on words, considering the story the movie is telling ) is set in America before there was USA. The entire movie there is not a singe modern type of American. You have a native-American tribe ( that speaks English only so the audience will understand them ) and you have French colonizers. That's all.
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And more than that, the film's main character is a woman. A woman who is desperately trying to prove men, that she is as capable as they are. The film is asking way too much from the conservatives. Or even, it might be possible, the movie is specifically trying to be annoying to conservatives.
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So here is main issue people saying about it. Remember how Arnold Schwarzenegger with a full squad of Rambos had a hard time killing one Yautja? In this movie the Yautja is killed by one girl. Unrealistic, isn't it? Also what... there is a super-trained girl assassin? What is this, Marry Sue? What is going on? Where is the "realism"? Where is the "logic"?
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Well I guess Trachtenberg counted that conservatives would bring up specifically these issues. And he kind of made the movie in such a way as to almost count on the fact that conservatives would not watch it. So he could later giggle to himself with his friends, every time somebody brings up any of the criticisms I just brought up. Because those criticisms are kind of invalid when it comes to the movie itself.
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I mean, yes. She does defeat the damn Yautja. And yes, she is trying to prove her people that she is as capable as the men. But it is not a simple Marry Sue story.
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Our main character Naru ( Amber Midthunder who may know from Novicaine ) is a teenage-ish girl in a native-American tribe somewhere in the forest. She is a cook and a doctor. But she wants to be a hunter. For that she needs to graduate through a hunting ritual. She needs to hunt something that is hunting her.
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By the way, her casting is fucking amazing. She is just about cute enough and just about angry enough to achieve the "short orgasmic blackout". A thing that happens to me when I see characters just like her. They make my brain very happy for some reason. Maybe I need to see a therapist. Anyway...
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The funny thing is, she is kind of pathetic. She knows how to throw an axe. And she is rather smart. But her battle inexperience makes her rather clumsy in the beginning of the film. Only by the end of the film she becomes a descent fighter, through going through shit. So it isn't a Marry Sue story per se.
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Now, does she become such a great fighter as to defeat a fucking Yautja? No. What we get is a her problem solving skills combined with the little bit of fighting skill she has. Which ultimately defeats the damn ugly motherfucker.
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For example, in the original film, Arny defeats the motherfucker by getting dirty in cold mud, making Arny invisible for the Yautja. Leveling the playing field, so to speak. Since those Predators have an invisibility tech on them. Here in Prey Naru finds out that a drug that she is using to stop people from bleeding ( that makes their blood colder ) makes those people invisible to the Yautja. We do have a mandatory mud sequence. But that is used for a different thing.
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In a way, she uses all the information she observes about the forest and the creature, to trick the creature. To play mind-games with the creature. To ultimately have a chance to defeat the motherfucker. Yes, she needs to use her body here and there to stub him and stuff. But that "fighting" was never a part of the killing plan. She didn't want to stab him to death. She wanted to stab him, to manipulate him into trying to kill her. Which she used to kill him. Kind of using his own weapon against him in a way.
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When she saw ( toward the beginning of the film ) that this motherfucker can kill a bear with his bare hands ( shit... I want to say how I came with this pun intentionally. But unfortunately no pun intended. lol ), she knew that she can't fuck with him. There is no way in hell. She even says this to her brother later in the film. She literally doesn't believe anyone can kill it. But as her brother ( Dakota Beavers, I couldn't come up with a better name, lol ), does a reference to the first film, by telling her "if it bleeds, we can kill it", she starts to think that maybe she can possibly come up with something. Maybe some trap, or sorts. Something that she can do with her mind, rather than her physical strength. And that is exactly what ends up happening in the end of the film.
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I could say that Trachtenberg made a slight directorial mistake. In the final battle, there are moments where Naru does fight the creature here and there, while trying to force him into the trap of hers. And you kind of start thinking about the fact that the creature isn't fighting as well as he used to fight when killing all of the unnamed background characters earlier. It is not illogical per se. She did take her drug, which makes her invisible for him. And therefor he is a bit clumsy when trying to kill her. But Trachtenberg seemingly forgets to show it clearly. There are no shots of the Yautja's POV during the battle, which reminds the audience that he can't see her. We kind of have to remember the fact that she took the drug earlier. And actually flex a little to understand how everything works.
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The film does show the drug in action earlier, before the fight, once. There is a POV shot, where Yautja sees a different character, but not Naru, who just took the drug. Maybe, an argument could be made that refusing the constantly remind people of the fact that he can't see her, is Trachtenberg respecting the audience.
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Or you can theorize a completely different thing. Maybe Trachtenberg refused to remind people of the drug, to catch conservatives.
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Think about it, Trachtenberg specifically makes a movie that annoys the fuck out of the conservatives. The period of time is chosen to annoy them. The main character is chosen to annoy them. The main character's main motivation is chosen to annoy them. And then all of the criticisms that he knew they will have, are addressed, but are addressed in such a way that you actually need to watch the movie and focus on it to notice them. If you simply skim it, to make an angry post about how "unrealistic" or "illogical" it is due to all of the things the movie is going for, well... then... I'm sorry, but the joke is on you.
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Happy Hacking!!!
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Prey 2022 tries to be annoying to concervatives
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f4/Prey_2022_poster.png/250px-Prey_2022_poster.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 16 π¬ 114
The Predator franchise started its life as a masculine super-macho, mega-violent little B-Movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In my review of the first film, I even speculated, for a second, that it might have even been racist. Something that a certain side of political spectrum finds to be a quality of a movie. That certain side of the political spectrum really didn't get when Dan Trachtenberg decided, he is making a feminist, native-American movie in the same franchise.
#Prey #Predator #movies #review #film #cinemastodon #DanTrachtenberg
Predator: Killer of Killers knows how to do a lot with very little
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9c/Predator%2C_Killer_of_Killers.jpeg/250px-Predator%2C_Killer_of_Killers.jpeg)
Blender Dumbass
π 58 π¬ 4
It seems like the movie Trachtenberg was going for here was way too risky and way too ambitious for a studio to green-light it normally. But if he can do that on a fraction of budget. As animation. And not a budget, something like Pixar uses for their ultra-realistic stuff and fluent motion. But on a fraction of that. He can use the trend of animating on-twos and making everything painterly, to cut all of the corners necessary to make this insane movie with the small amount of money that he is given.
#predator #killerOfKillers #PredatorKillerOfKillers #animation #film #movies #cinemastodon #review #DanTrachtenberg
Death Wish 1974 is a Superhero movie
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/Death_wish_movie_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 11 π¬ 1
Who is this character, who's family suffered from the hands of lawless criminals, and who wanders the nights in search for some of those criminals, to have his revenge? Who is this character, who is a wealthy gentleman during the day, while the "vengeance" itself during the night? Batman? No... it is Paul Kersey played by Charles Bronson in a Michael Winner 1974 film Death Wish.
#deathwish #charlesbronson #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Is Idiocracy 2006 intentionally stupid?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Idiocracy_movie_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 11 β€ 2 π¬ 2
We all know about absolute cinematic masterpieces like The Room by the legendary Tommy Wiseau. Films that were intended to be great works of cinema, but that failed so miserably at achieving their goal, that they spawn all the way around the scale and became great works of cinema, by mistake, anyway. But then there are films like The Grindhouse movies, or Black Dynamite, or Wiseau's sequel to Samurai Cop, who's goal was to be those intentionally terrible pieces of crap, from the get go. Is Idiocracy by Mike Judge from the first type of terrible movies, or from the second, intentional one? Is Idiocracy intentionally stupid?
#idiocracy #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Death Wish 2018 has a low rating due to politics
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/59/Death_wish_2017_poster.jpg/250px-Death_wish_2017_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 15 π¬ 1
17% Rotten Tomatoes score. The movie got to be shit, right? Well when it comes to the Eli Roth's 2018 Death Wish ( the remake of the 1974 film with the same name ) you are not quite correct. In my estimate the film should be no less than 60%, based on its execution. Eli Roth is a good enough director to pull something like this off. And you can see that he is trying. The actors are also good. And the music by Ludwig GΓΆransson is really fucking good. I mean this is the same guy who did the music for Tenet and Oppenheimer. He is really fucking good. Watching the movie, I saw that the movie is arguably a lot more watchable and a lot more satisfying than the 1974 original. What is different, is that the 1974 original was made in 1974. And since then the politics have changed.
#DeathWish #guns #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Dream Scenario 2023 is about Richard Stallman?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/50/Dream_scenario_poster.jpg/250px-Dream_scenario_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 17 π¬ 2
Kristoffer Borgli's 2023 film Dream Scenario starring Nicolas Cage is a movie about a man, who is being dreamed about by a lot of people. At first his family have weird dreams about him. Then people related to them. Then the whole world. At first the dreams make him famous. But then they take a turn for the worst. At first he is just doing nothing in those dreams. Then he is being a creep. And then he literally murders people in those dreams. Which makes the public, in the real life, react to him with greater and greater rivalry. Apart from, for some reason, people in France.
#DreamScenario #NicolasCage #film #review #movies #cinemastodon #RichardStallman #RMS
So Did Avatar 3 Use AI?
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/avatar_ai.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 40 β€ 3 π 1 π¬ 2
While James Cameron has denied that Avatar 3: Fire and Ash used any generative AI. On January 24, 2026 Joe Letteri ( the visual effect supervisor from Weta Digital ) sat with the Corridor Crew for their weekly show of VFX Artists React where he said that the facial animation for the hero characters for both Avatar 2 and 3 involved a neural network. A neural network? Isn't that a fancy way to say "AI"?
#avatar #jamescameron #fireandash #avatarfireandash #movies #review #film #cinemastodon #ai #art #mastoart #aiart #neualnetwork
Die Hard is a phenomenal showcase of filmmaking talent
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/ca/Die_Hard_%281988_film%29_poster.jpg/250px-Die_Hard_%281988_film%29_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 7
Somehow, for all these years I avoided the first ever Die Hard movie, even though I had watched the sequels. And even though the sequels are varying in quality, the first film is a fucking masterpiece.
#diehard #brucewillis #film #review #action #movies #cinemastodon
Superman 2025 has not enough Hawkgirl
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/32/Superman_%282025_film%29_poster.jpg/250px-Superman_%282025_film%29_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 11 π¬ 2
I love Isabela Merced. Ever since I saw her being this absolutely amazing girl in Michael Bay's Transformers 5 where there isn't enough of her either, I was a fan. I even genuinely tried to like Madame Web because of her part in it. And so it was rather disappointing to see how little screen-time she has in the new 2025 James Gunn film Superman. In case you didn't understand the title, she plays Hawkgirl.
#Superman #DCU #JamesGunn #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Hollow Man 2000 takes the horror trope of not seeing the monster to a whole new level
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e1/Poster_Hollow_Man.jpg/250px-Poster_Hollow_Man.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 12 π¬ 1
Before Kevin Bacon played a much more complex man with a psychological sexual abnormality in 2004's The Woodsman, he played a man with a psychological sexual abnormality in 2000's Hollow Man. Where the fetish is voyeurism and the crime is ghostly rape. You kind of know it is a Paul Verhoeven movie from this description.
#hollowman #paulverhoeven #film #review #kevinbacon #movies #cinemastodon
Red Heat 1988 is unintentionally funny for those who speak Russian
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/Red_Heat.jpg/250px-Red_Heat.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 12 π¬ 3
Our main character Ivan Danko ( Arnold Schwarzenegger ) is introduced with a shot showing his magnificent muscular butt-cheeks, right before a fight breaks out between naked men in the snow, all trying to scream words and sentences in Russian, sounding utterly stupid doing so. That is how Red Heat, a 1988 Walter Hill movie, begins.
#RedHeat #WalterHill #ArnoldSchwarzenegger #film #review #movies #cinemastodon #action
Magnolia 1999 is Paul Thomas Anderson asking you to respect the kids
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Magnolia_poster.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 17 β€ 3 π 1 π¬ 3
I have a fear about my current movie project that is not entirely unfounded. If everything works out as it should and I get to the point of pre-production, I might need to hire a good lawyer. The script has major roles for children, but due to the child-labor laws, the money for such roles is paid to the parents and not the children themselves. I want to come up with a way to make it so the kids are the ones that control the money. Otherwise I fear, the parents will steal it from them. Kind of like what we see in the 1999 film Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson.
#magnolia #paulthomasanderson #pta #tomcruise #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Frankenstein 2025 is... wow... just wow!
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/Frankenstein_2025_film_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 23 π¬ 1
Let's get this out of the way: Guillermo del Toro knows how to make a movie. The man is a fucking genius. And yet it seems apart from just being technically proficient, he is also a master of making corruption of the audience emotionally satisfying. Let me explain.
#Frankenstein #GuillermodelToro #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
The Naked Gun ( 2025 ) is a descent movie about enshitification, but not as funny as the originals
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/The_Naked_Gun_2025_poster.jpg/250px-The_Naked_Gun_2025_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 16 π¬ 1
Paramount snatched "The Naked Gun" / "Police Squad" rights from Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams and instead gave the material to a different Jew Akiva Schaffer to adopt. And while Schaffer is a good comedy / parody director, it seems like the movie ended up being just "merely clever".
#theNakedGun #policesquad #LiamNeeson #PamelaAnderson #film #review #comedy #movies #cinemastodon
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