123: Is ‘Prey’ a Good ‘Predator’ Movie? Plus: Salman Rushdie and the West’s Shame

Welcome

back to across the movie, I’ll presented by Bullwerk, plus I’m your host, Sunny Bunch, Culture Editor of The Bullwerk, I’m joined as always by Elizabeth Rosenberg of The Washington Post, Peter Siegerman, reason magazine. I’ll listen, Peter. How are you today?

I’m well. How are

you? I am happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First up, before we get to that, a somber controversies and controversies following Friday’s horrifying attack on Selman Rusty by a twenty four year old New Jersey resident named Hadi Matar who his mother said was a different person following his trip to Lebanon with his father, and whom vice reports has been in contact with Iran’s revolutionary guard the motive for his attack officially remains unclear, but unofficially it’s pretty fucking clear that the author of the St. Tannick Versus who has lived under sentence for blasphemy imposed by the Iranian Ayatollah following that book’s publication in nineteen eighty eight, finally met someone attempting to cash in on the multimillion dollar bounty place on his head. Rashdi, who has lived under armed protection on and off for the last thirty plus years, looks as though he will survive. That’s great. May lose an eye.

Nerves one of his arms were severed and damaged. Our thoughts and prayers are with him. And I apologize in advance for the length of this rant, the attack is a stark reminder that when confronted with one of the most basic tests, a westerner can be confronted with, that is the freedom to be safe from physical harm while doing intellectual work. Too many of us blank. I couldn’t help but seize at the memory of the response to the Charlie Haendel attack in France following the slaughter Of that magazine’s journalist by Islamic terrorists, the free speech org, pet America decided to reward the magazine for its courage at its annual dinner.

Which prompted protests by Penn members like Joyce Carolos and Juno Diaz, furious at the free speech organization would honor. People murdered for practicing free speech because the free speech was, well, you know, not quite entirely politically correct about France’s Muslim population or it’s Catholic population or it’s liberal politicians or it’s conservative politicians really much of anyone. But, you know, God forbid that they punch down in any way because that is a worse sin than murder. Oh, to be sure, to be sure, none of those cowards actually support murder. Like Jimmy Carter responding to the rush to fatwa in nineteen eighty nine, they were all very clear to denounce actual threats of violence.

But also like Jimmy Carter responding to the Rusty Fatwa in nineteen eighty nine, the Penn protesters wanted to make it very clear that Charlie had to disorder had it coming for insult insulting the venerable institution of Islam and its adherence. If you insult to a religion, well, you can’t really be that surprised. When the insult strike back. Now can you, as Graham Wood noted in the Atlantic over the weekend, quote, over the past two decades, our culture has become card arrived. We have conceded moral authority to howling mobs, and the louder the hows, the more we have agreed, that the hows were worth heating.

The novelist, Hanif, Karishi, has said that Nobody would have the balls, that’s quote, to write the satanic verses. Today, more precisely, nobody would publish it because sensitivity readers would notice that the the theological delicacy of the book’s title and plot. The Ayatollah’s have trained them well and social media disasters of recent years have reinforced the lesson. Don’t publish books that get you criticized either by semi literate fanatics on the other side of the world or by semi literate fanatics on this one, end quote. Since people love to be obtuse, there are some on Twitter dismissing graham’s piece with snyze.

Oh, yes. Murdering someone and authoring bad tweets are the same. I am very smart. Style replies. But the point here is that they are the same and that the intent is the same to stifle works of art that defend the sensibilities of protected group.

And it is childish to pretend that there is no difference between writing critically of a work or its author on Twitter or applying pressure to publishers to ensure that certain works never see the light of day at all, but we do live in an age of shirtlessness.

Do we not Peter? I I guess, yes, we we live at a world an age of churchillishness. I think what this underlines for me is just how important it is to kind to hold the line on free speech and to to not stop talking about it. And I will I’ll actually take a little bit of a of a I’ll disagree with you a little bit that I Like, it’s not the same thing to gripe about stuff on Twitter versus to take a knife to somebody. Like,

it’s really not. Obviously, that’s that nobody’s nobody’s saying that they are exactly the same. I

don’t even necessarily think that they’re entirely on the same continuum. At the same time, I do think that the idea that we that we should prioritize someone’s right not to be offended over someone’s right to express themselves, the the rights of, you know, the what was that line in the Carter piece? Oh, you know, people are just too obsessed with the rights of the writer. You know, right? Like, that that it’s that, like, dude, we we really need to balance those against the offended.

No. Actually, we just don’t. We just don’t. And I saw this unfold, not obviously at the event, but I heard about this and I was moved in a way that I did not expect and is honestly just a little bit difficult to is a little bit difficult for me to to even explain. In part because my wife was on the same stage earlier that week, but in part because this attack is a reminder that, like, that expressing yourself and that art and that language and that words is something that has historically been met with violent response.

In many cases, that the world that we that the United States exists in, where, you know, where one has an enshrined constitutional right to say what you want even at the if someone else is bothered by it, even if it makes them mad, even if makes them feel yucky. That, like, that that is a that that is a historically unusual world, and it is one that that people who care about free speech need to continue to fight for and need to not let their guard down on really in any way because while I don’t, like I said, I don’t think it’s the same thing to, you know, complain on Twitter. And I I I don’t think that we should even necessarily put those things on a continuum I do think that we need to understand that at some point, the idea that the offense of a of a group or an individual should take priority ultimately leads us to thought was on writers. And people getting stabbed or killed. And it’s not we should also remember it’s also not just some some rusty.

Right? It’s that there there were a lot of people associated with the publication of that book who have been harmed or even killed over the past thirty three years or so. This is not a one time incident, and it’s not just the work of one person who we can dismiss as being, you know, whatever he’s I’m sure he’s had you know, he’s had some sort of issues because people like this often do. But this is not just a one time thing and it’s not just a single incident with a single writer? Yeah.

I I think I think the the Japanese translator the state tanning versus was murdered a few years back. Translators,

publishers, at least one of the publishers in the foreign country was shot.

Almost forty people were burned to death. In an arson attack related to the book.

Yeah. I just wanna read the the line from the Carter Ape that Peter referenced here real quick. I’ll just read it. Ayatollah Khomeini’s offer of paradise to Rusty’s assassin has caused riders of public officials in Western nations to become almost negatively preoccupied with the author’s rights and quote, and I read that and I say, yes, that is literally the only thing that matters in this debate. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry. It does not matter if people are offended by the or maybe it does matter in some sort of broader contextual discussion about the literary merits of the satanic verses. But when the question at hand, Alyssa, is well, somebody threatened to murder a writer for his writing. That is actually literally the only thing that matters. Right?

Yeah. But I I wanted to circle back around to something that you said because one of the things that I find, you know, just and this is small in the sort of grand scope of things. But, you know, you mentioned the artistic merits of the satanic verses. And have either of you read it? I have not.

I have not. It’s wonderful. And I actually picked up my copy of it last night. And it’s I think it’s you know, I just wanted to talk about the book a little bit because for fans of this podcast, it is the the satanic verses is very much a book about movies and movie making. The two main characters are both actors.

One, a sort of metni idol who is famous for story and so called Theologicals, like Hollywood movies, about gods, and the other of whom is a voice actor who’s moved to England and sort of erased all vestiges of his Indianness from his voice. And so it’s, you know, it is a it is a novel about sort of fantasy and acting and taking on different identities. I mean, and it’s incredibly It’s so rich and moving. I mean, I the number of pages that I have dogured in this book is insane. Looking through it and encountering these sentences again, is it the white?

There’s this one passage early in the book that I hope you’ll indulge me if I read Sunny. One of the characters give real far a sheet has this sort of shock to the system and retires from acting. And the satanic versus his magical realism. Right? So things happen that are sort of you know, somewhere in the space between fantasy and reality.

And after Farxida retires from acting, Brushy writes, his portraits on the cover of movie magazines acquired power of death and knowledge about the eyes of Holleness. Ellis’ images simply faded off the printed page to the shiny coverage of celebrity and society and illustrated weekly went blank at the book stalls. And their publishers fired their printers and blame the quality of the ink. Even on the silver screen itself, high above his worshipers in the dark, that supposedly amorto physiogenamine began to putrefi blister and bleach. Projectors grant jammed unaccountably every time he passed through the gate.

His films ground to a halt and the stampede of the malfunctioning projectors burned his celluloid memory away, a stargon supernova with the consuming fire spreading outwards as was fitting from his lips. It was the death of God. And every page of the book is full of images like that. And and inside, it’s not just sort of into the nature of starto, which of course that passage is about so beautifully. But, you know, about what it means to be a migraine, what it means to having contentious relationship with your father.

It is just it is a book that is overflowing with perfect senses and images and it’s just wonderful. I can’t, you know, I think now more than ever, you know, for political reasons, it’s a great time to buy and read the satanic verses because

you

know, Stalin Rusty deserves all of the money and recognition that he can get, but it’s always a great time to read the satanic verses because, you know, irrespective of the offense that particularly the second section of the novel causes. It is just it’s a beautiful book. It is unbelievably great, and I cannot recommend it enough.

I will I will have to attempt to I tried to read it in college and I didn’t love it because I’m not a magical realism guy. It doesn’t literally, it does not work for me, you know, in the same way it does in movies sometimes. But even in movies, I’m not always a magical realism guy. That said, I did I I I did read his memoir, Justin Vanton, which came out a few years, but I don’t know, almost, like, ten years ago, fifteen years ago now, long time ago. And I was flipping through that this weekend because I was very depressed.

And as you say, listen, just on on basically every page, there’s there’s a wonderful image or a wonderful idea. The the one that jumped out to me was this one. So he’s he’s writing about basically, again, this is a it’s a very lightly fictionalized story of his own life. It uses essentially suit and them to to tell it. But here’s here’s one line from that.

In Britain, a gaggle of self appointed leaders and spokesman continued to clamber to fame by sticking knives in his back and then skipping up the ladder of blades. And I just it’s such a delightfully pure visual image that explains so much of what we still see on the Internet today, the sort of competitive throwing under the bus of somebody who has it coming. And I really I cannot recommend Joseph Anton enough to people who either were too young or do not remember just how craving so much of the west really was when it when it came to him just like the the people in in Great Britain who were like, well, why are we spending so much defending this this ungrateful son of a bitch who has insulted the beautiful religion of of Islam. You know, why are we why are we backing this man who was engaged in a colonial assault on the I mean, it just like every bit of nonsense. And

the pettiness, I mean, you know, Rolf Dahl, who must have think of as, like, the author of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you know, malign him in print, John, like Horae, with whom he had, like, I think almost decade and a half long feud. I went after him and saying like, oh, well, we don’t have the right to malign the world’s rich religions. In part, because he was clearly teased off that rushy had Wallen exile written a, like, pretty harsh review of one of his books. And so the extent to which, you know, principals got caught up in petty nonsense is also sort of worth noting and is amazing. It’s yeah.

It’s it’s staggering and it’s awful. And, you know, as a bit of punted accountability, I wanna say that you know, I it made me think a little bit about some of the columns that I’ve written, not about sort of broad rights a free speech. I mean, I, you know, the Washington Post reprinted the Charlie Hepto cartoons. I, you know, wrote about the necessity of that kind of boundary pushing speech at the time. But I, like a lot of other people on the left, I think, have, you know, been sort of sanguine when conservatives, in particular, lose big publishing deals.

And, you know, obviously, there’s a difference between someone deciding they don’t wanna be in business with Josh Holly and governments has sensorship, much less someone deciding they don’t want to be in business with Josh Holly and a fatwa. But I have spent the past couple of days thinking you know, maybe I have been somewhat glib about, say, you know, the the doctor’s assistant deciding to, you know, not publish new editions of one of his books that has some racist images. And I

I

don’t know that I’ve totally sorted out my views on these sort of private companies and, you know, the private contracts between individuals and the broader speech ecosystem. But it’s forced me to think about whether I’ve been to flip, and I think this is a useful moment for a self reflection for all of us who write on, you know, those sort of tricky boundaries of what gets published in my home?

I’ll just say that I think publishing companies have every rights to not publish Josh Holly if they feel like not publishing him unless they’re contractually bound to do so. But the most depressing thing is the attack itself. But this but like the depressing footnote to this that really jumped out at me was the fact do you guys know what the panel was that he was supposed to be speaking at? The panel was about the United States as a refuge for persecuted writers. And that’s what he was there to talk about.

And it’s really pretty dark to think about Oh, he he went there to have it to to chat about how the United States is the country that has gotten this right of all the places in the world of all the places in the world of all that in all the times that in the world. And and that’s where he got attacked. And it is It’s very dark. I’m glad that he’s that he appears to be alive and joking, but this is not the world that I wanna live in. After

the attack, the CEO of Pan America, with an organization that I joined actually after the Charlie Hubbell attack. And after that letter, because I was Well, as Grant as Grant Wood noted in his his opay, he also joined after that as a way to cancel out the voice of Joyce Carolodes. In the within the organization, and that is almost literally the same exact reason I had joined. But the the CEO sent out a letter that said that just that well, literally, that morning, he had been in contact with Penn America trying to help riders from Ukraine get placements. To, you know, who were fleeing persecution of warfare or who just wanted to write to get their experiences out there.

This is the sort of thing that Russia did. He understands the softness that that surrounds freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and I’ve spent all weekend. And I I was in a I was in a very dark place. I don’t know. It was it was bad.

I don’t I don’t I don’t like doing this sort of segment on the show because it’s a downer. But yeah. So is it a controversy or an controversy that Selwyn Rashmiq was almost killed on stage by a fatwa adherent probably as as best as I could tell. Peter. We’re we’re we’re decades

A list of kids into this controversy. I mean, the whole thing is This is very

This is a controversy that the Iranian government is, in this regard, just the worst, especially if we’re putting out a victim blaming statement. Just terrible people. Absolutely awful. Go by the satanic verses and also midnight’s children, which is the best way to Superhero story, elaborate.

Yeah. It’s a it’s controversial. Murder, controversial. Take it take it take it from me on that one. Alright.

Make sure to tune in for our bonus episode this week on Friday on the mini boom in Native Americans starring movies and TV shows we’ve been enjoying over the past few years. Speaking of which, on to the main event, Prey, that’s p r e y, not p r a y. The latest entry in the predator series is a prequel of sorts at least in the sense that it is set Arnologically, before the events of Arnold Schwartz maker and John McPieran’s classic high concept action movie. Prey follows the efforts of Neru, who is played by Amber Midthunder in this movie to first convince her fellow Comanche that there’s something not of this world that is stalking the tribe and then to kill that something. But first, she has to overcome a far more pernicious foe.

That’s right, sexism. Yes. None of the mean boys in her tribe believe that this little girl can be a hunter. So if you guys prove them all wrong, of course, they’re actually kind of right, at least in the sense that we see her try to hunt deer early on and fail. She fails at fighting off the mountain lion.

And this is my first beef with the movie. The the the predator series when it works is about the predator fighting absolute alpha killers. Right? So, like, Arnold and his team of Holy Commandos in the first or, you know, the predator facing off against Columbia Colombian and Jamaican gangs and badass cops in the sequel or in predators, you have a special forces up, a Israeli sniper, yakuza, etcetera, etcetera, they’re all transported to a game planet, and it’s It’s cool. Even the alien versus predator movies use this idea.

Right? Like, it’s it’s the world’s most badass hunter versus the world’s perfect killer. Right? Interesting. The reason the predator, the the missbegotten Shane Black movie doesn’t work is because it’s about none of this.

Right? We don’t we’re not gonna talk about that. There’s a dumb criticism of prey that goes something like, how could this little girl be the predator, l o l, woke, bullshit, blah, blah, blah, blah. Alright. That’s dumb.

That’s dumb. But there isn’t a more effective criticism that’s kind of in the same vein that says, well, the rest of the tribe is actually kind of right to be scuffed goal lever, which turns prey and instead of being a movie about competition between alpha hunters into an underdog narrative about believing in yourself. Sort of movie. And again, that’s just not really what the predator pictures are. My second beef is more prosaic than that.

Right? The CGI in the early going looks like complete trash. The mountain lion fight looks like garbage. And a scene that should be really cool featuring a predator fighting a bear looks kind of terrible like a cheap video game cutscene. It’s a problem, particularly when the rest of the movie actually looks really good.

Right? Director Dan Trakenberg understands how to frame a shot and pace an action sequence. There’s this great shot of hunters going through high grass and you’re kind of looking at it overhead, then down on the ground, then overhead again. It’s all really well done. For all my complaints about the cheapness, of how some of it looks, the thing really glides on rails.

All of which is to say that the first two hours or so of this movie feels entirely off to me But luckily, the last forty minutes are genuinely rousing. They feature among other things, the slaughter of a group of annoying French trappers. But the French trappers. One thing Prey understands that the underrated Predator two understood is that it’s fun to watch the predators hunt out group stereotypes with all their cool hunting toys. Right?

In Predator two, the out group was the Columbian and Jamaican gangs. Right? The the crack epidemic was raging. They were the news as great villains. Look at these terrible gangs turning the turning the inner cities into war war zones.

Right? And now the out group is Western colonizers, and the French resolutely and literally in the movie, filthy, enough to fill up that role very well. It’s important to let the audience have their cake, horrible violence, and eat it too. Feel smug and superior because the violence is being done to people they don’t like. Mid Thunder in this movie calls to mind Aubrey Plaza, Circle Parks and Wrex right down to, like, the eye rolls and nose wrinkles.

And I I like half expected her to stare at the camera and kind of sardonically run down the predator in in the twenty first century intonation that she had. Throughout the whole movie, which is to say that it’s I was, like, totally pulled out of the supposed eighteenth century setting. I just, like I was, like, I feel like I’m talking to, like, a modern high school girl. I don’t know. To my mind, the real breakout star of this movie is Dakota Beavers who plays her brother.

He is almost like stereotypically quiet and competent. And yet for those very reasons, fits the movie perfectly. Mixed bag. That’s what I’m saying. You’re mixed bag.

Kinda liked it. At least the last forty minutes, did not really like the first hour. I don’t know. Alyssa, am I being too hard on it? Or am I being appropriately hard on?

I mean,

I think you’re being sunny on it. So I I am the member of this podcast who has never seen a predator movie before this. For which I apologize, I am aware that I have to go back and watch the original. I will do that at some point when my baby is actually sleeping. But is it weird to say that I found this movie sweet?

No. It’s sweet and kinda awesome. It’s pretty sweet. Sweet. Right.

It’s it’s like that kind of sweet, but it’s all said. No. It’s sweet. It’s

multiple kinds of sweet.

No. I found it basically sweet. I think I like Mid Thunder more than you did in this movie in part because I really like the sequences where she’s just alone by herself. Or with her dog. Right?

You know, it’s fun watching her sort of move around space. It’s fun watching her, her actor, sorry. I actually think one of the best scenes in the movie is the one where she’s stuck in the mud and has to try to get herself out. In part, because it goes on longer than the requisite three beats. Right?

It’s like it really you really begin to think I mean, obviously, she’s gonna make it out of it because there’s more of the movie to go. But it like, you feel that sense of sort of frustration and desperation, and I think she handles that really nicely. I agree with you that

the

action plays for brother is terrific. I’d love to see them both in both similar and completely different contexts. But yeah, I mean, I think this is this is totally minor and that’s kind of nice. I appreciate a movie that actually appears to have thought about its action sequences and about how all of the asymmetries between the various parties could play out both the advantage of the ostensibly stronger party and could how this rebalance of power could be changed by the cleverness of the weaker party. But, yeah, the CGI does not look particularly good.

This has my classic beef about, like, why are we doing all of these sequences at night in ways that make them harder to see? But as it’s a clever, sweet, little action movie. It’s decidedly minor. I enjoyed watching it, but it did not blow me away.

Peter speaking of the CGI, I mean, the there was a video going around this week showing the the actor in, like, the actual makeup, the actual practical effects And I I remain kind of confused as to why they didn’t just roll with that in the movie.

Well, I can’t answer I can’t answer that question. Entirely. But Trachtenberg clearly went in, wanting practical effects wherever he could get them. Now it’s very difficult to get a bear to just do whatever you want, especially when that bear is it’s I’ve seen a whole movie called the bear. Fair enough, but the bear didn’t fight a guy in a predator suit.

So the bearer doesn’t look great. I agree, but I’m totally willing to overlook this because I really liked this movie. I don’t think it’s it’s not gonna make my, you know, best movies of the decade list or anything like that. But there’s this movie has a lot of lessons for Hollywood in it in that it is a really great sequel to a legacy IP that everybody knows now at this point. And And it, like, it takes the ideas of the original and it develops them in new and interesting ways that are that are occasionally referential to the original So that mud pit sequence, Alyssa, is like an extended kind of clever wink at a at a famous scene from the from the first predator.

However, it’s not just like a member berry. It’s not just like, hey, you remember when our tour sare covered himself in mud? So if the predator couldn’t find him, it’s a like, it actually takes that idea and it’s like, what if we use this as a as as a dual plot point. So at first, it shows her cleverness and her, like, her stick to itiveness when put in a bind. And then, of course, the mud pit becomes a trap at the very end of the movie that come when it comes back to, you know, she she figures out a way to use it to her advantage.

This movie just does stuff like that all throughout, where it where it it occasionally nods and winks to the original, but not in ways that are just designed to make you say, oh, yeah. You know, I I remember the original and I liked it. And that’s That is a huge problem with these legacy IP sequels that, you know, to to properties that have existed for two or three or four decades at this point is that they are just there to remind you that you liked the original rather than to do something new and interesting on their own. And this movie does such a good job of taking the idea of, hey, predators are these, like, cool super hunter alien species that go places to kill hard to kill prey. Right?

And what happens then? Like, this is this is an obvious extension of that idea once you’ve played out sort of the original narrative and more movies, more movie sequels, like, as long as we’re living in a world in which IP gets sort of developed and redeveloped and redeployed, for decades at a time. I would like to see more movies take this approach. I mean, you can imagine you can imagine this like Something like this for Star Wars, you can imagine something like this, even for something like Indiana Jones, for any of these properties that have just sort of been hanging on too long. And are mostly about reminding people that they liked one or two original films, you know, the aliens films, which did as you mentioned, Sonny crossover with the Predator movies in in a low point for both franchises.

And the other I mean, the other thing that I liked about this is it’s really nicely shocked. And this is why I’m willing to forgive all that bad c g. Is that is that the it’s not just that the the action scenes are framed pretty well and kind of thoughtful. It’s that this movie doesn’t feel frantic at any point. Every now and then, the the camerawork gets kind of jostily in the middle of a big fight because they’re trying to sort of put you in the middle of the action.

But this is a movie that is willing to just give us a landscape shot and sort of linger on it. It is a movie that is willing to show us the space and the people in it and how they interact. And to do so in a way that doesn’t feel rushed or hurried. And I just appreciate that so much because so many movies are just kinda crappily, hastily blunder edited and shot in ways that don’t feel they just sort of feel like, oh, we just need to get somewhere. Like, we don’t have an idea for what we’re trying to say with any of these shots.

But we just need to, like, rush you through a bunch of things. We and we we shot coverage. Right? We shot this eighteen different ways So we’ll just somebody in the editing room is going to is gonna take all eighteen shots and kinda give you an idea of what’s happening. And this movie feels feels thoughtful in the way that it’s shot and in the way that it’s edited.

In a way that I think is actually relatively rare, especially for this sort of class of action movie. It’s also I I have not seen budget numbers for this movie. I don’t know if anybody has a sense of what this cost, but it’s I wanna say it was, like, forty, thirty to forty

billion something like that.

Please, Hollywood, make more movies at this budget level with this level of creativity. Because this is, like, this is the kind of genre film. Yeah. I like my I like a hundred and fifty million dollar Christopher Nolan movie. But this is the kind of genre film that I want to see a lot more of.

Smaller movies, not tiny budgets, but smaller budgets that take a risk on a on a property and actually have an idea and act take it take that idea and execute it with some thought and some care. And this movie just sort of like checks all the boxes for me on mid to low budget genre filmmaking in a way that is relatively rare now, and and I just wanna see more from Dan Traktenberg. He also directed the one good Cloverfield sequel. Ten Cloverfield play, which is underrated and really, really good also has a a like a really effective use of a female protagonist that who is who is like demonstrably weaker than the people she is fighting. And yet is smarter than them and figures out how to use her advantages to, like, to overcome them in a way.

This is like it’s he’s he is He’s doing a lot of the stuff that I think other filmmakers are trying to do and failing. He does it much better. And I I am very curious to see what Drackenburg gets to do after this because this is a couple of really good, modestly budgeted, very smart very clever genre films.

Especially a week after we discussed bullet train. It’s just really nice to watch a movie that is genuinely curious about every single part of its premise and interested in making use of all of them. Right? I mean, so whether it’s you know, the sort of parallels between, like, the predator itself and the, like, the rituals that young commande hunters go through or the fact that, like, oh, yeah, there would be, you know, French Canadian fur trappers in, you know, in the area at this time, and that might be a source of tension and anxiety. It’s interested.

You know, the movie is interested in weapons asymmetry. It’s just it is curious and it demonstrates it rips the benefits of that curiosity at pretty much every step of the way. Yeah.

I I mean, and this is a good I mean, this is a the the the movie uses a lot of elements from prior Predator films very well. I mean, it is it is this is a kind of a hallmark of these movies, like ideas like weapons asymmetry and, you know, and how how a human would be able to combat against do combat against a a predator, which again, like, again, there’s a very dumb variety of criticism of this movie that’s like l o l little girl versus predator, you know, how how we just believe this. But it’s not like It’s not like in the first one, like Arnold Schwarzman punched Predator and like ripped his heart out. Like, that he had to he had to do clever things to create a series of traps and and and, you know, and blinds to to get the the predator to do what he wanted. Peter, I’m I’m curious as you’ve watched all of these movies.

Right? You’ve seen all of the predator

— Yes. I have. — I do not.

Okay. So there there’s an interesting evolution in this series in the first one, the first one is very interesting because it is essentially a predator movie or I’m sorry, it’s essentially a generic Arnold Schwarzinger action movie. That turns on a dime into a horror movie. Turn to it turns into a Slasher flick where the the predator is basically hunting and killing the the team one by one, picking them off one by one. And, you know, alright.

But then in the rest of the movies. The predator is almost a sort of anti hero type. Right? Like in Predator two, he’s killing the Columbians and the Jamaicans, and we’re all glad about that because they’re sick terrible people. Or in alien versus predator, the predators are like there to hunt the aliens and they team up with the humans to stop the aliens from taping Antarctica and destroying the world.

And even in even in the terrible shame black one, like, the predator comes to Earth to stop global warming.

Oh, I forgot about that.

So give people give people give people a tool to fight against the super predator, which just turns out to be some dumb armor anyway. And I thought he was also

much bigger because the the normal ones are like seven or eight feet tall and then there’s the fourteen foot But then the the super predator is, like, fourteen feet. Remember there’s a whole thing about how he’s a contract, the the main character is a contractor, so he can Tom. Estimate how to all the star predators. The whole movie’s

dumb. The whole movie is dumb. We’re not talking about that dumb movie. But the point is, like, the the the series has evolved a bit in the conception of the predator, which I think is ultimately and ultimately detract from what the predator is. Like, it really lets the audience off the hook.

Instead of, like, making us worried about predator, we have to be, like, yeah, the predator is awesome until the person we really like gets Kilbeth.

I agree with that, but that’s pretty common in monster movies. And Godzilla has become a sort of was, you know, initially was a stand in for the nuclear apocalypse and was just pure bad. Right? Nobody was like on Godzilla’s side. And eventually, Godzilla became like the the the hero that that we need, right, who fights for the, you know, the the people.

I mean, like, this has happened even in sort of the recent American reboot of the franchise. This is something that happens and it’s especially something that happens in a franchise that gets named after the monster. Because people come to love the the character that is, like, that defines the movie. And in fact, part of the reason that the initial predator works so well is because as much as the predator is obviously just the bad guy. Skimming people and like doing horrible stuff and just like apps, you know, taking down one by one the the the crew that is out to to kill the predator.

The predator is also The movie invites you to think, man, you know what? I have to get hand it to the predator. Right? Like, it is pretty freaking cool. At his fight nate, like, the only person who was cool enough to actually take him down is Arnold Schwartz and Anchor.

Right? Eats, despite having several, like, future libertarian party politicians in their party. Right? And maybe just only one. If the governor Jesse Ventura’s in that movie, but at least one of them, I think, ended up being a libertarian party guy, but maybe I’m wrong.

About that. The whole thing is that the movie invites you to take a sort of sick and twisted pleasure in the predator’s killings. In the same way that this this is part of the horror genre. Right? Like, you ultimately, like, it is both horrific.

But if it’s too horrific, You don’t wanna watch it. So in some sense, it has to be a little bit cool. This has happened not quite as much, but to some extent with the alien movies as well. Right? There is something seductively horrific about the aliens.

And you have to, in some ways, enjoy the fact that the aliens are gonna die at the end, but kill a bunch of people before they get there and you If you’re not on board with that, if you don’t if viewers don’t want to see the aliens succeed right up until the point where it where it is defeated at the very end, then it’s the the franchise doesn’t work. And the same is true with the predator, and they’ve leaned more and more into that as the franchise has has progressed.

Alyssa, you gotta go watch the at the very least, the original predator. All the predator movies are on Hulu right now, by the way.

We we should do a special episode that where I talk about my experiences with the end of all the predator movies.

Just just watching all of them one after the other. We

we can do a bonus episode where I experienced predator.

Alyssa, after ten hours of predator movies,

my brain is mush Don’t Why’d you do this to me? I would absolutely like that episode. I do think that for people who haven’t seen the Predator movies, the the first one is the real classic and is a a true like, it is John McTernan. It at the peak of John McTernan. Like, It’s because he did that die hard at hunt for at October right in a row, plus a last action hero shortly after that.

This is just a it’s just a great run from one of the best action directors. The predator two and predators that’s the third one, right, that are pretty good, but not nearly as effective as the first predator. I actually think Prey is the second best predator film. It’s it’s third best after Predator too, probably. Maybe it’s tied for it’s tied for a third with predators.

I

feel like they’re right in the same. Right. Alright. So what do we think? Thumbs up thumbs down on Friday, Peter.

Thumbs up. It’s good, Alyssa. Thumbs

up.

I give it a thumbs down. Too too much bad at the beginning. Did not it looks the work on that CGI folks. If you’re at a studio, if I if I see a predator fight a bear, I don’t want to thank, this looks weightless. Oh, Right?

That is it for this week’s show. Make sure to speak by at m a dot lebriar dot com for our bonus episode on Friday. Make sure to tell your friend a strong record from a friend is basically the only way to grow podcast audiences if we don’t grow we’ll die. You did not love two days episode. Please complain to me on with their ads on Ivan chock mention that back to the show in your podcast feed.

See you guys next

week.