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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
The Killing of a Sacred Deer 2017 is Yorgos Lanthimos's attempt to show Lars Von Trier how to properly corrupt the audience
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8f/The_Killing_of_a_Sacred_Deer.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 15 β€ 1 π¬ 6
I was afraid of 2017 absurdist horror film by Yorgos Lanthimos The Killing of a Sacred Deer, because I know it involves a murder of a child. Ever since Lars Von Trier utterly traumatized me with his depiction of this very thing in The House That Jack Built I avoid movies like this. But seeing Bugonia the other day, where I attempted to psycho-sexually analyse Lanthimos, I realized that I avoided a movie that potentially has a lot of what I need for such an analysis. So I braved myself and saw the damn film. Now I think the film was about corrupting the audience enough that they would feel good about a child being murdered. I'm not joking. That is how the movie is structured.
#thekillingofthesacreddeer #YorgosLanthimos #horror #film #movies #review #cinemastodon
The Audition 2015 is an interesting short-film, when it comes to film history
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4f/The_Audition_%282015_film%29.jpg/250px-The_Audition_%282015_film%29.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 15
You may think that 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon is the first time Leonardo DiCaprio have worked with Robert De Niro. In fact the first time was 30 years earlier in 1993 with This Boy's Life. Yet a lot of people will suggest Killers of the Flower Moon is still at least the first time both DiCaprio and De Niro worked with Martin Scorsese. That is also not true. That would be 2015's short-film, directed by Scorsese called The Audition.
#theaudition #martinscorsese #leonardodicaprio #robertdeniro #bradpitt #film #review #movies #shortfilm #vfx #cinemastodon
Bad Boys 1995 is a Tarantino picture gone Bayhem!
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/Bad_Boys.jpg/250px-Bad_Boys.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 17 β€ 1 π¬ 3
The first thing you notice when watching Michael Bay's directorial debut Bad Boys is that the movie is not trying to be a Michael Bay film. There was no Michael Bay films prior to it. Bay was doing music videos and commercials before this film. And while those do have some of the style Bay will eventually bring over to his cinema pictures, here it seems he is actually trying something else entirely. The best analogy for the movie would be Tony Scott's 1993 film True Romance written by Quentin Tarantino.
#badboys #michaelbay #willsmith #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Knock Knock 2015 is more of a Lars Von Trier movie
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d1/Knock_Knock_poster.jpg/250px-Knock_Knock_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 13 π¬ 1
Before there was 2025 Balerina there were two other movies ( I know of ) which were collaborations of Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas. One is the 2016 film Exposed which I am still yet to see. And then, before that, marking their first collaboration, there was a 2015 film by Eli Roth called Knock Knock, which I was curious to see for multiple reasons.
#knockknock #eliroth #anadearmas #keanureeves #film #review #movies #cinemastodon #larsvontrier
Children of Men (2006) predicts the present
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/LTQZI6WA62O2EPCB.jpg)
Troler
π 14 β€ 2 π 1 π¬ 5
When I came to watch Alfonso CuarΓ³n's dystopian film Children of Men, the UK depicted seemed quite up par to what I've heard. That UK had outlawed immigration. Looking at the present day land, if not for influx of migrants, the Kingdom would become a Kill-dome with how fast the population is aging. No need for a world-wide infertility disease.
#childrenofmen #CliveOwen #EmmanuelLubezki #AlfonsoCuaron #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
The Rock 1996 is Michael Bay's James Bond movie
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/82/The_Rock_%28movie%29.jpg/250px-The_Rock_%28movie%29.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 16 β€ 1 π¬ 4
The Rock by Michael Bay is about an FBI chemist agent ( Nicolas Cage ) who calls for help from an old retired British Intelligence Agent played by Sean Connery himself. No wander there are theories that this agent character could be James Bond, making this film a kind of unofficial Bayhem!ed sequel to Connery Bond films. It's not like he didn't play James Bond outside of the main franchise. He did play James Bond in Never Say Never Again which is a real James Bond film, which is not a part of the main franchise. So maybe, possibly, he did that again here too. We will never know.
#TheRock #MichaelBay #NicolasCage #JamesBond #SeanConnery #QuentinTarantino #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Final Destination 2 is a parody of itself
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Final_destination_two.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 15
The second installment in the Final Destination saga is different from the first film. While the first film was breathing mystery and suspense, this time around, the film feels almost like a slapstick comedy, if not for the gruesome deaths.
#finaldestination #DavidREllis #film #movies #review #cinemastodon
Pearl Harbor 2001 made me cry for 3 hours straight
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3c/Pearl_harbor_movie_poster.jpg/250px-Pearl_harbor_movie_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 16 π¬ 2
In my review of Bad Boys II I talked about how Michael Bay needed to discharge from Pearl Harbor and do a properly Bayhem! movie. This speculation of mine is largely based on some stories from the set of this movie, where it looked like Bay tried to actually make a properly directed film in the very beginning and then suddenly snapped and started setting up Bayhem! shots out of nowhere in the middle of production. And when people pointed that out to him he told them to "Shut the fuck up" and that he "knows what he is doing".
#PearlHarbor #MichaelBay #movies #film #review #cinemastodon
Ultraviolet 2006 is my guilty pleasure movie
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3a/Ultraviolet_poster.jpg/250px-Ultraviolet_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 14 β€ 1 π¬ 3
With 9% Rotten Tomatoes score 2006 Kurt Wimmer film Ultraviolet starring Milla Jovovich cannot possibly be any good, can it? Well I re-watched it for this review and while I somewhat see where the critics are coming from, I also have enjoyed the hell out of it.
#Ultraviolet #MillaJovovich #KurtWimmer #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Blow Out 1981 is De Palma's take on The Conversation
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/ce/Blow_outENG.jpg/250px-Blow_outENG.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 17 π¬ 2
47th Academy Awards from 1975 ( giving awards to movies from 1974 ) was an interesting spectacle. Francis Ford Coppola's film The Conversation ( which was nominated for Best Picture ) lost to The Godfather Part II also by Francis Ford Coppola. In 1981 Brian De Palma, one of the people who hanged out with Francis at the time, decided to remake a 1966 Italian film Blowup, but doing it like Coppola's The Conversation. Where sound plays a critical role in the plot of the picture.
#BlowOut #NancyAllen #BrianDePalma #JohnTravolta #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Broken Wings ( 2002 ) is satisfyingly depressing
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7e/BrokenWINGS.jpg/250px-BrokenWINGS.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 13
There is a feeling I'm chasing sometimes that only a few things can give me. A feeling of satisfying depression. Films like Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away give me that feeling to some extent in some of the sequences. But Nir Bergman's 2002 film Broken Wings gives it all throughout.
#BrokenWings #film #movies #review #cinemastodon
Was the 2014 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" directed by Michael Bay?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_film_July_2014_poster.jpg/250px-Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_film_July_2014_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 15 β€ 1 π¬ 4
While Steven Spielberg was producing a Michael Bay film Transformers 4, Michael Bay was producing a Jonathan Liebesman 2014 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And like with a Spielberg-produced film The Poltergeist by Tobe Hooper about which people started claiming that Spielberg himself directed the movie in question. With the 2014 TMNT people started claiming Michael Bay was the actual director on this film. It is absolutely and utterly poetic that both Tobe Hooper and Jonathan Liebesman also made movies in the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
#tmnt #michaelbay #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
Transformers 3 has only 1 flaw
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bf/Transformers_dark_of_the_moon_ver5.jpg/250px-Transformers_dark_of_the_moon_ver5.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 15 π¬ 1
Megan Fox. Megan Fox is the only flaw of Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The script by Ehren Kruger ( who wrote Top Gun: Maverick and F1 ) was written with Mikaela Banes ( Megan Fox ) as the girlfriend of Shia LaBeouf's character Sam. But because of some drama behind the scenes ( which involved Steven Spielberg for some reason ), she ultimately dropped out of the project, in very late stages of pre-production. Forcing the team to quickly patch her character out in a very forced and obvious way, replacing her with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who worked with Bay on Victoria Secret commercials. That ultimately made the film very confusing, emotionally.
#transformers #transformersdarkofthemoon #michaelbay #film #review #cinemastodon #movies
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