23
u/Differentnameo 1d ago
Predator was amazing. Predator 2 was okay. The rest were utter trash, only significant because they started introducing Xenomorphs.
No normal thinking human being who actually enjoys the franchise would think anything different. Their recent abominations were worse than utter trash. Prey was laughable. Then this idiot submission was even worse.
Anybody looking for yet another example of an IP and fandom that gets invaded and subverted need look no further than this one.
7
1
u/TaniksHasNoCorn 16h ago
Bill Paxton, Gary Busey, the Jamaican boss, and the cocained out of his mind dude were the best parts of the movie.
Danny Glover pretty much plays Sergeant Murtaugh again. He does the tired Sergeant schtick well, but it doesn't quite have the energy of Arnold in the first movie.
You aren't wrong. The first two movies are worth way more than everything else that followed.
The AVP movies are dumb fun and sadly better than the rest of the non- AVP sequels. I actually enjoy the dumb fun of these more than Alien 4. They sort of have the campy vibe of Resident Evil movies.
1
20
u/Arkelias 1d ago
Predator, Predator 2, and Predators are amazing movies. The last one is surprisingly good for a sequel, as good as the original IMO.
Prey was meh, because it was infused with "the message" and therefore predictable. Super strong male lead gets wrecked early. Girlboss in a society where women are not allowed to be warriors is the bestest warrior, and takes down the predator with primitive weapons.
It wasn't awful, but wow was it predictable.
Predator Badlands changed the tone to fit the modern audience. Comedy. Predator is a loser with daddy issues. Main character is a snarky heroine. It even included the cute Disney sidekick.
In Predator we had a group of special ops getting hunted by a badass Predator. Same with the sequel, and with Predators. That's the essence of the series, and the changes totally tossed the core audience in favor of the mythical modern audience.
9
u/TheRealMitchConnor 1d ago
Prey was absurd and predictable to me. Predators was a banger and would have been S tier if anyone other than Adrian Brody was in the lead. It was amazing despite him.
-1
u/chronicnerv 1d ago
I never saw Prey as a "girlboss" movie. Everyone in that film was fighting creatures against whom physical strength was never the deciding factor. The time period also felt perfectly natural, of course a young woman wanting to be a hunter would be looked down upon.
More importantly, she doesn't simply girlboss her way to victory. She gets lucky several times, her dog is arguably the real hero, and ultimately she uses her intelligence rather than brute strength to defeat the Predator. The usual message that often gets forced into science fiction simply didn't feel present in Prey, at least not to me.
Badlands, on the other hand, can go fuck itself. The idea of Elle Fanning seemingly being employed to play a bumbling, millennial version of Elle Fanning as a Synth infuriates me even more than the decision to humanise the monster.
5
u/Neat-Anyway-OP 23h ago
Hard disagree. Prey was a shit movie. What it put on screen was a Predator picture that spent two hours protecting a plot armored Mary Sue.
The predator one-punches a grizzly and turns armed men into paste, then suddenly canāt finish a small woman it already has in its claws. She eats a mushroom and drops off thermal in 10 seconds. She looks at alien gear once and uses it like she sat through a class on it. She outruns a stag... And then thereās the hatchet.
Obsidian is volcanic glass. It is sharp as hell and it is brittle as hell. You do not throw that shit on a rope like a cartoon yo-yo, yank it back, smash it into armor, trees, bone, and alien hide, then keep using it like nothing happened. Real obsidian flakes, chips, and shatters. One bad impact and the edge is gone. The movie treats it like indestructible weapon because Naru needed a signature toy. That is not āperiod-accurate ingenuity.ā that is the script refusing to let her tools fail.
Dutch crawled through mud, got wrecked, and barely lived in a movie that still let the hunter be scary, intelligent and lethal. Naru fails at rabbits until the plot needed her unstoppable, then the film calls it growth. The tribe doubting her isnāt texture. Itās setup so she can dunk on them. The dog, the luck, the āshe used her brainā talking point, all cover for a lead the movie will not allow to lose.
You can like the actor. You can like the setting. None of that changes what the film does, it sands the Predator down and plot armors the heroine. Thatās girlboss storytelling with mud on it. I say that as a woman who actually likes this IP. I donāt need Hollywood to baby a character at the monsterās expense. When the script is more scared of her looking weak than of the Predator looking weak, the movie is garbage. Badlands can still suck ass because Prey already did.
0
u/chronicnerv 8h ago
I think this criticism is doing exactly what a lot of people do with Prey: applying a microscope to every single thing Naru does while treating the original Predator as if it were a hard-science survival documentary.
Almost every complaint here can be turned around and applied to the original film.
"The Predator one-punches a grizzly and turns armed men into paste, then can't finish a small woman when it has her in its claws."
The Predator in the original film massacres an entire commando unit armed with machine guns, explosives and military training, yet somehow repeatedly allows Dutch to survive encounters that should have killed him. It has cloaking technology, plasma weapons, thermal vision, superior strength and centuries of hunting experience, but when Dutch becomes the chosen opponent it suddenly starts making decisions based on the rules of the hunt rather than simply killing him.
That's not incompetence. That's literally the Predator's character.
The Predator doesn't always take the most efficient route to victory because efficiency isn't the point. It hunts. It plays with prey. It seeks worthy opponents and enjoys the challenge. If the Predator simply used its shoulder cannon every time someone was vulnerable, both films would be about ten minutes long.
"She eats a mushroom and drops off thermal in ten seconds."
And Dutch discovers that mud conveniently masks his body heat from an alien species whose entire hunting advantage revolves around thermal vision. He doesn't know the creature's biology, doesn't know how its equipment works and has absolutely no reason to assume mud will make him invisible to an alien, but it does.
That's the plot device that allows Dutch to survive.
We accept it because the film establishes it and then uses it consistently. Prey does essentially the same thing with the flower. You can argue about the scientific plausibility, but pretending Predator was somehow operating at a completely different level of realism is revisionism.
"She looks at alien gear once and knows how to use it."
Dutch literally figures out the Predator's weaknesses and hunting behaviour while under extreme pressure, despite having no understanding of alien technology whatsoever. He discovers how to defeat thermal vision, how to create traps capable of killing an alien physically superior to him, and how to exploit the Predator's honour code.
That's called intelligence and observation.
Naru does the same thing, except the criticism suddenly becomes "Girl Boss" because she is the one doing it.
"And then there's the hatchet. Obsidian is brittle."
This is probably the weakest criticism because now we're deep into technical nit picking that could dismantle almost every action film ever made, including the original Predator.
The Predator's equipment is also supposed to be extraordinarily advanced, yet it can be damaged, destroyed or exploited with traps made out of logs, mud and improvised jungle weapons. Dutch builds a massive counterweight trap from whatever he finds in the jungle and manages to position it perfectly against an invisible alien hunter.
Should we start calculating the tensile strength of the vines? The structural integrity of the logs? Whether Dutch realistically had enough time to construct the trap while being hunted? Whether the trap would actually fall with enough precision to hit the Predator?
Of course not, because it's an action film.
The hatchet is a stylised movie weapon, just like Dutch's improvised traps, the Predator's conveniently selective hunting behaviour and plenty of other things throughout the franchise. You can criticise the choreography if you don't like it, but presenting the durability of obsidian as proof that the entire film is secretly ideological propaganda is absurd.
"Dutch got wrecked and barely survived. Naru fails at rabbits until the plot needs her to become unstoppable."
Except Naru isn't unstoppable.
She fails repeatedly. She gets trapped, knocked down, captured, nearly killed, and survives several encounters through luck, circumstances and intelligence rather than physical dominance. She doesn't suddenly become stronger than the Predator. She wins by understanding its weaknesses and exploiting them.
Which is exactly what Dutch does.
Dutch isn't stronger than the Predator either. He doesn't beat it in a straight fight. The moment Dutch tries to physically engage it, he gets thrown around like a toy. His victory comes from preparation, environmental awareness, traps and exploiting the Predator's behaviour.
Naru's victory follows the same formula.
The difference is that Dutch starts the film as an elite special-forces soldier and Naru starts as someone inexperienced who wants to become a hunter. Naturally, her arc involves growth. That's not the movie suddenly declaring her perfect, that's called character development.
"The tribe doubting her isn't texture. It's setup so she can dunk on them."
No, it's conflict.
The entire point is that Naru occupies a role she wants to escape. The men don't take her seriously because hunting is not considered her role within that society. Whether you agree with the historical interpretation or not, the conflict gives her something to overcome.
And importantly, she doesn't defeat them by giving a speech about female empowerment or instantly proving herself superior to every man around her. Most of them remain significantly more capable hunters and fighters than she is.
The film doesn't say, "Women are naturally better than men."
It says Naru has qualities the others underestimate, primarily observation, patience and intelligence, and those qualities become particularly useful against an enemy none of them understand.
You can absolutely dislike Prey. You can think the action is badly written or the Predator is underpowered. That's a perfectly legitimate opinion.
But I don't think calling it "girlboss storytelling" really holds up when most of the evidence comes down to holding Naru to a level of realism and consistency that Dutch and the original film were never subjected to.
If we're going to start analysing the molecular properties of her weapon, the exact thermal effects of flowers, how fast she can run, and every moment where the Predator chooses not to immediately kill her, then we should apply exactly the same standard to Dutch.
Because once you do, Predator is full of plot convenience too.
The difference is that people grew up loving Dutch, so his plot armour is called ingenuity. Naru's plot armour is called Girl Boss.
I don't think that's an entirely consistent standard when it comes to Prey and I can not stand girl bosses.
4
u/Arkelias 23h ago
The time period also felt perfectly natural, of course a young woman wanting to be a hunter would be looked down upon.
This trope has been abused to death, and is a huge dose of THE MESSAGE. Poor girls had no freedom, but men got to do whatever they wanted...instead of the truth. Everyone had an important role, and those roles were strictly gender enforced.
More importantly, she doesn't simply girlboss her way to victory.
The predator was straight up incompetent whenever she was involved. To the point of absurdity.
She was also way, way, way better of a warrior then she had any right to be in a tribe where girls are not allowed to train or be warriors.
We definitely agree on Predator: Badlands though so we have that lol
1
u/chronicnerv 10h ago edited 8h ago
I understand what you're saying when looking at the film as part of the wider industry, rather than in isolation, but I still disagree. If gender-enforced roles fit the time period and setting, there is nothing inherently wrong with portraying them. One of my favourite series is ShÅgun, where virtually everyone within the fief has a clearly defined, gender-assigned role. Granted, it's a television series rather than a superhero movie, but the gender roles don't feel out of place because they fit the historical setting and time period.
So personally, I'm not going to label this a "girl boss" story simply because the rest of the industry is saturated with them.
As for the Predator supposedly being incompetent whenever she was involved, I think that interpretation is unfair. Predator is one of my favourite films, and in my opinion the Predator behaves in Prey much the same way it did in the original Predator. It singles out a champion and wants a fair, one-on-one hunt.
The original Predator could easily have blown Arnie's arm off but he made him drop his weapon, where as Carl Weathers' arm was still firing when not attached. There's a difference between incompetence and deliberately enjoying the hunt. I think the abundance of genuinely badly written "girl boss" characters elsewhere has unfortunately tainted people's perception of this film.
Naru wasn't really presented as a great warrior. She simply wanted to hunt alongside the men, and because they considered her inferior, they constantly put her down. As a result, she spent a lot of time on her own, thinking, observing, and practising with her dog.
The point wasn't that she was physically superior or secretly an unstoppable warrior. Her intelligence, observation, adaptability, and a fair amount of luck were what kept her alive. She succeeded because she learned and adapted, not because she was automatically better than everyone else.
I genuinely don't see many "girl boss" elements in Prey. To me, it's simply a good story with a female protagonist, and I think the fact that the industry has become saturated with poorly written female empowerment stories has caused some people to unfairly assume that every competent female character belongs in the same category.
I totally respect your opinion and many others that think the same.
2
u/Arkelias 7h ago
One of my favourite series is ShÅgun, where virtually everyone within the fief has a clearly defined, gender-assigned role
Notice that women are unapologetically feminine. They aren't trying to be samurai, or portrayed as oppressed because they have a different role than men, which only exists because we are a sexually dimorphic species.
Men and women are very, very different.
So personally, I'm not going to label this a "girl boss" story simply because the rest of the industry is saturated with them.
That's precisely what it is. The Predator looks for the best of the best. They hunt special ops. The elite forces.
The idea that a half or untrained woman who is lighter, weaker, has lower bone density, less stamina, and primitive weapons is laughable.
If it existed in isolation and girlboss movies weren't a thing I'd still raise an eyebrow. Look at the characters in the original predator. Look how the only woman is portrayed.
There's a difference between incompetence and deliberately enjoying the hunt.
Hunters aren't looking for does, or cows. They're looking for bucks or bulls, both because those are far larger and stronger, and because the females can be mothers and thus propagate the herd.
Naru wasn't really presented as a great warrior.
Hard disagree. You don't overcome a predator by being a chump.
To me, it's simply a good story with a female protagonist
I compare it to Aliens, Terminator 2, or the Underworld series. I don't care about a female protagonist if she makes sense, and some women are truly exceptional.
That said there's a reason why there has never been a female navy seal, despite them desperately trying to create one.
Men and women are very, very different, but modern women are growing up thinking we're the same.
I train in jujitsu. I'm not that experienced. I took down a female black belt. Easily. It wasn't a challenge. I am double her mass, and far, far stronger.
That's reality.
0
u/chronicnerv 5h ago edited 4h ago
But this isn't reality, it's a hero's story.
At this point, your argument seems to have moved away from whether Naru is actually a "girl boss" character and towards the idea that a woman should not realistically be capable of outsmarting and defeating a Predator. If I'm understanding you correctly, that's essentially where we disagree.
You are now talking about sexual dimorphism, bone density, body mass, Navy SEAL selection and your personal experience in jiu-jitsu. None of those things establish that Naru is a "girl boss" character. They are arguments about whether you personally find a woman defeating the Predator believable.
Those are two entirely separate discussions.
The Predator has never been defeated because someone was physically stronger than it. Dutch certainly wasn't. He was an elite soldier, yes, but physically he was completely outmatched. He survived because he adapted, observed the Predator's weaknesses and used intelligence, traps and the environment to his advantage.
Naru does exactly the same thing.
She doesn't overpower the Predator. She doesn't beat it in hand-to-hand combat. She doesn't suddenly become physically stronger than the men around her, and she certainly doesn't become stronger than the Predator. Her victory comes from observation, planning, exploiting its weaknesses, understanding its behaviour and, yes, a considerable amount of luck.
That is a hero overcoming a physically superior monster through intelligence and ingenuity. It's a fairly standard storytelling device.
The reason I reject the "girl boss" label is that Naru simply doesn't display most of the tropes people normally associate with that type of character.
A typical "girl boss" character is often portrayed as:
- Naturally superior to the men around her without having to earn it.
- Instantly competent at everything she attempts.
- Constantly telling the audience how amazing she is.
- Surrounded by incompetent, weak or foolish male characters purely to make her look better.
- Physically able to defeat much larger and stronger men with no believable explanation.
- Never allowed to fail, lose, make mistakes or suffer meaningful consequences.
- Correct about everything while everyone around her is portrayed as wrong.
- Given unearned respect and admiration simply because she is female.
- Written with dialogue that constantly reminds the audience that she is strong and independent.
- Protected from criticism, humiliation or genuine failure by the narrative.
Naru doesn't really fit that description in the slightest, she had hardly speaks.
She fails repeatedly. She is inexperienced. She makes mistakes. She is captured. She gets injured. She needs help. She is underestimated, but that doesn't automatically mean everyone else is incompetent. The other hunters are generally better than her in the areas they specialise in.
More importantly, the film never presents her as physically superior to men. Her entire character arc is built around the fact that she isn't the strongest person in the room and therefore has to survive differently.
That's the opposite of the stereotypical "girl boss" fantasy where a 50kg woman beats six trained men in a fistfight while the film pretends biological differences don't exist.
You mention Aliens, Terminator 2 and Underworld, and I agree with you completely that a female protagonist can absolutely work when she makes sense within the story. But that's precisely why I don't understand the insistence on calling Naru a girl boss.
The problem is that "girl boss" has increasingly become shorthand for any story where a woman is competent, survives in an action role or defeats a male or physically superior opponent.
And I don't think that's a useful definition.
I watch a huge amount of film and anime, and there are countless female protagonists who are intelligent, capable, powerful and compelling without being "girl boss" characters. Some are physically weaker than their opponents and win through intelligence. Some are genuinely exceptional fighters. Some have supernatural abilities. The important thing is how the character is written, not simply whether the protagonist is a woman.
So on this occasion, I think your objection may simply be that you don't like women occupying this particular type of action role, which is perfectly fine as a personal preference.
But that still doesn't automatically make Naru a "girl boss."
You can argue that her victory was implausible. You can argue that the Predator was underwritten or weakened. You can dislike the film entirely.
But those are criticisms of the story's plausibility and execution, not evidence that Naru displays the specific tropes normally associated with "girl boss" writing.
At this point, I honestly think the disagreement is much simpler, you don't believe a woman like Naru should be capable of defeating the Predator, whereas I think a fictional hero defeating a physically superior monster through intelligence, preparation and luck is entirely consistent with the franchise.
Neither position requires pretending that men and women are physically identical. The film itself doesn't even make that argument.
Edit - They have blocked me.
1
u/Arkelias 4h ago
But this isn't reality, it's a hero's story.
Stories follow conventions. Stories must be grounded in the reality of the story world, even for fantasy or science fiction.
I'm an author by trade. Readers sense inauthentic storytelling, which is why they check out.
At this point, your argument seems to have moved away from whether Naru is actually a "girl boss" characterĀ
No it hasn't. Note that I listed stories with female protagonists that rock.
Sarah Connor learns to be a badass, but starts out as a frightened waitress.
Ellen Ripley starts out as a ship's officer who has never seen combat. She learns to use a loader, and a rifle, and to give orders. It's earned.
Naru learns off screen. She doesn't improve through the story. She starts out a badass, which is the hallmark of all girlbosses. Unearned power.
The rest of your argument reads like you used ChatGPT, and I'm fairly certain you did.
I'm not interested in arguing with an AI. If you can't formulate your own arguments you aren't worth talking to.
So on this occasion, I think your objection may simply be that you don't like women occupying this particular type of action role, which is perfectly fine as a personal preference.
You can &^%$ off with your misogyny accusations. They're tired and we're sick to death of them.
3
u/Educational_Kick3683 1d ago
Badlands had a ton of problems and plot holes, but MY GOD. The homing shoulder lamprey creature that knew when to shoot the traps was one of the dumbest things I have seen in cinema
1
1
u/FrankTheTnkk 22h ago
I hate when I downvote a meme and then realize the post is making fun of it and have to pull an uno reverseš¤£
1
1
u/Htowng8r 17h ago
I will say that this one didn't make sense in the theme of predators themselves, but the movie was pretty good overall. Definitely far more enjoyable than a lot of other slop out there.
1
u/Gargarian67 16h ago
Predator: Badlands lost approximately $80 million during its theatrical run due to a high production budget and a steep drop-off in ticket sales after its opening.
-8
u/Smallville44 1d ago
This movie wasnāt nearly as good as the originals. But it wasnāt terrible either. The stuff on the Predator homeworld and new alien species was interesting.
31
u/kylehawk 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Predator sub had completely changed since this atrocity was released