Speaker 1: We can kill it.
Speaker 2: Shut up?
Speaker 1: What the hell are you?
Speaker 3: Welcome back midnight viewers to Yahu. It's the one you've
Speaker 3: been waiting for. It is Yah Mark two. We have
Speaker 3: a bigger dressing room than the puppets. HP has joined
Speaker 3: me as usual. He's on my He's on our Predator
Speaker 3: journey with us, HP. How are you man?
Speaker 4: I'm so good everything. I feel like everything has been
Speaker 4: leading up to this moment when you mentioned to me
Speaker 4: the idea for you yaouca fest Excuse me, I had
Speaker 4: no idea the hills I was going to have to
Speaker 4: climb and the distance I'd have to walk. But here
Speaker 4: we are ready to go with Prey.
Speaker 3: Hey, disregard this, listeners, this is just a test. I'm
Speaker 3: leaving the network in February. All right, Pray, let's talk.
Speaker 4: Pray.
Speaker 3: It is the latest in the Predator franchise. Now efficiently.
Speaker 3: Now look up until now, the direction of the series
Speaker 3: has really been based on whoever happens to be making
Speaker 3: the movie at that time, whether that was an edict
Speaker 3: from twentieth century Fox that they wanted a particular type
Speaker 3: of movie, and then somebody came in and made it,
Speaker 3: or somebody came in and said hey, let's do this
Speaker 3: kind of movie with the Predator, and they've done it. Now.
Speaker 3: Obviously that's the case here where somebody pitched, let's do
Speaker 3: this kind of flick and they went for it. But
Speaker 3: this is the first time we have a filmmaker in
Speaker 3: charge who's going to be given multiple films. He's already
Speaker 3: made multiple films. Is there's three now technically, and hopefully
Speaker 3: he'll remain in charge of the entire series. I'm talking
Speaker 3: of for use about Dan Tracktenberg and his movie Pray.
Speaker 2: Why do you want to Hunt? Because you all think
Speaker 2: that I can't. I saw a song in the sky.
Speaker 2: I'm ready. Oh there's something else I'm trying.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to protect you, protect me from what.
Speaker 3: It's time.
Speaker 2: It knows how to hunt, I know how to circrive.
Speaker 2: Whatever did this? I can character.
Speaker 3: This movie was written by Patrick Eisen with a screen
Speaker 3: that he wrote the screenplay, but stories by Patrick Iisen
Speaker 3: and Dan Tracktenberg based on characters by Jim and John Thomas,
Speaker 3: as all of them happened to be. This one stars
Speaker 3: Amber mid Thunder, Dakota Beaver's, Dane de Lagro, Michelle Thrush,
Speaker 3: Stormy Kip Julian Black, Antelope, and Bennett Taylor. And this
Speaker 3: was released on July twenty first, at twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: That was the San Diego Comic Con premiere. Mott was
Speaker 3: released officially and it was released in a few theaters
Speaker 3: on August the fifth, Jessica's birthday, twenty twenty two. HB.
Speaker 3: Was this your first time watching Prey?
Speaker 1: It was not.
Speaker 4: It's interesting we've and away he goes, here we go.
Speaker 4: So long time listeners of you Yocha fest will know
Speaker 4: that quite a few of these movies. I will say
Speaker 4: to father alone, Yeah, this is the first time I
Speaker 4: ever saw it. For this episode, this one, I the
Speaker 4: trailers got me because so this is almost forty years
Speaker 4: after the premiere of the First Predator, right, the First
Speaker 4: Predator was nineteen eighty six, and here we are it's
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two, so that's thirty six years. I like
Speaker 4: most people, this was sort of coming out of the
Speaker 4: pandemic a little bit, maybe not going to see as
Speaker 4: many movies as I'd want to or I'd like to.
Speaker 4: I caught wind of the trailer. It looked interesting to me.
Speaker 3: We were all in a haze because of the pandemic
Speaker 3: and the entertainment that we were getting also seemed to
Speaker 3: be in a haze. Nothing was really clicking, nothing was
Speaker 3: really firing right. As I understand, even Mill and Ted
Speaker 3: couldn't save us.
Speaker 4: That's the story for another day. I got a lot
Speaker 4: of thoughts on that one as well. But as far
Speaker 4: as this is concerned, and I also I'm aware that
Speaker 4: this movie was made under the strictures of the pandemic,
Speaker 4: so that's that in itself is an achievement when you
Speaker 4: actually see the movie. But anyway, short story long, it
Speaker 4: was the trailer that looped me in. It just looked
Speaker 4: so cool. After so many years and so many seeming
Speaker 4: disappointments with the direction of the franchise, nothing really interested me.
Speaker 4: This sparked something because this was you often say, Father Malone.
Speaker 4: And with respect to some of these movies and things,
Speaker 4: we talk about, why has someone not thought of this sooner?
Speaker 4: Why we've kind of gone to the future with Predator
Speaker 4: in some respects, but we've never gone to the distant past.
Speaker 4: We know that anecdotally through the Conic books and just
Speaker 4: through various things that happen in the movies, that the
Speaker 4: Predators have been around for a long time, but why
Speaker 4: I know from Predator Too, right, So I guess I
Speaker 4: would ask you rhetorically, Father Malone, why did it take
Speaker 4: so long for somebody to come up with this idea?
Speaker 4: Because it's fucking brilliant.
Speaker 3: To be honest, I guarantee you the idea was floated
Speaker 3: a long time ago. I bet Jim and John Thomas
Speaker 3: probably floated it right after Predator two and they said, no,
Speaker 3: we're not doing that. In fact, we're not making any
Speaker 3: Predator movies after that. But I don't think since then
Speaker 3: no one has come in to really we're talking Predator too.
Speaker 3: And then the only actual dedicated Predator movie after that
Speaker 3: was Predator and they were just excited to have Robert
Speaker 3: Rodriguez and a script that was ready to go basically,
Speaker 3: so that's and after that they got Shane Black, who
Speaker 3: not only has tie and that he was in and
Speaker 3: wrote a bunch of the first film, but he wants
Speaker 3: to try and take it. And now we're in the
Speaker 3: midst of world building an MCU and DC flailing around
Speaker 3: attempting to make their own and they thought, well, Shane
Speaker 3: Black just did Iron Man three. He's going to give
Speaker 3: us a whole new universe and give us a direction,
Speaker 3: and he tried, but it didn't really take and nobody
Speaker 3: liked it. And to be honest with you, that ultimate
Speaker 3: notion that the Predators are conquerors, I fucking hate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree. And also, let's not forget that The Predator,
Speaker 4: the Shane Black movie, was twenty ten, correct, So now
Speaker 4: we've gone another twelve years without any kind of Predator
Speaker 4: movie being released, and it sort of was feeling like
Speaker 4: maybe the franchise had just reached its you know, had
Speaker 4: taken its course, and there was no more a choose
Speaker 4: to be squeezed from that lemon.
Speaker 3: Good thing, I guess, because this is the ultimate example
Speaker 3: of good things come to those who wait. If here's
Speaker 3: my hot take on this movie. If they had made
Speaker 3: Predator in nineteen eighty six and then we got to this,
Speaker 3: only no other mention of a Predator in popular culture
Speaker 3: until this came out, it would have been worth it.
Speaker 3: This is a fucking great movie.
Speaker 4: Brilliant in so many ways, brilliant from the way it's
Speaker 4: photograph to the acting to the story. The music is beautiful.
Speaker 4: This looks like a big budgeted Predator movie that takes
Speaker 4: place in the seventeen hundreds. I mean what more could
Speaker 4: you ask for? It's just it, truly, Like I said,
Speaker 4: I saw the trailer and it intrigued me, But I
Speaker 4: honestly don't know if I was prepared for just how
Speaker 4: good it was until I saw it, and it blew
Speaker 4: me away. It still blows me away. I watched it
Speaker 4: again in preparation of this episode, and I was still
Speaker 4: taken by it.
Speaker 3: Tell us the story already.
Speaker 4: So as I mentioned this, the story takes place. It's
Speaker 4: in It's among the Commanche people in the northern Great
Speaker 4: Plains in seventeen nineteen, and the plot really concerns a
Speaker 4: Commanche warrior, a female warrior named Nauru, who is eager
Speaker 4: to prove herself to the rest of the tribe. She
Speaker 4: wants to be a hunter. She's being relied upon as
Speaker 4: a tracker and as a as as someone skilled with medicine,
Speaker 4: but that's not what she wants. She wants to become
Speaker 4: a hunter herself. And there's this word for hunt that
Speaker 4: all of the warriors have to go through. It's called katamia.
Speaker 4: I believe I'm sorry from butchering the pronunciation. So so
Speaker 4: she's Her older brother is Tabe, and he's basically in
Speaker 4: line to be the new war chief, so she's in
Speaker 4: his shadow. This is all very relatable stuff. It's a
Speaker 4: sibling thing. She loves her brother, she loves her people,
Speaker 4: but she wants more, she wants to be more, she
Speaker 4: wants to accomplish more. And and on top of all that,
Speaker 4: she has this absolutely cute fucking dog. And that's a
Speaker 4: short cut to my heart right there. And I think
Speaker 4: you two fought him alone. This dog is hard. It's great.
Speaker 4: I mean not. Here's the thing, from what I can
Speaker 4: gather from interviews, I guess the dog wasn't really trained.
Speaker 4: I think Amber mid Thunder described the dog as a
Speaker 4: bit of a hot mess. The dog when you watch
Speaker 4: the movie, it's not as if the dog does any
Speaker 4: crazy tricks or it can do all these It's just
Speaker 4: a very cute dog that responds to a few commands
Speaker 4: and makes its presence known. And it's just so fucking
Speaker 4: adorable you just want to just squeeze it and give
Speaker 4: a kiss. This awesome dog. So that alone predisposes me
Speaker 4: to really pulling for this main character of Nahru.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So let me here's here. Let me just speak
Speaker 3: to the brother sister thing, because not only is it
Speaker 3: relatable plot wise, and you know what, honestly, when you
Speaker 3: when it's described, it sounds rote, but it is not
Speaker 3: in any way wrote what we're seeing here, because first
Speaker 3: of all, we're seeing a Native American tribe just portrayed
Speaker 3: and as is, without any worry about the fucking white
Speaker 3: man coming in and explaining to us what's going on
Speaker 3: or anything. But to that point, they are so casual
Speaker 3: and so familiar with each other that they really feel
Speaker 3: like family. I loved both of these people, of these
Speaker 3: two character like right from the get go. That's hard
Speaker 3: to do, and these two are so charming and it's
Speaker 3: so smartly written, and like I said, they make it
Speaker 3: feel contemporary while not making that feel anachronistic.
Speaker 4: It's it does really feel like a real sibling thing.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of love between them Here's Ultimately, I'm
Speaker 4: no historian, but to my eyes, I feel like this
Speaker 4: picture was made with the utmost sensitivity to both the
Speaker 4: time and the setting, but more importantly to the Commanche
Speaker 4: people in particular. It just it felt authentic. It felt
Speaker 4: matter of fact, and that there's nothing mysterious or like
Speaker 4: the tropes of the mystical sort of Native American tribe.
Speaker 4: These are just people that are living off the land,
Speaker 4: doing the best they can. I'm dealing with life as
Speaker 4: it comes to them. I just love, as you said,
Speaker 4: how matter of fact that all is. And this it
Speaker 4: creates this brilliant backdrop in which the Predator kind of
Speaker 4: introduced inserts itself into this story in this culture. It's
Speaker 4: really we're going to overuse the word brilliant, but I
Speaker 4: don't have a better word to describe. It's really quite
Speaker 4: amazing what they've done with the story here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not to jump ahead or anything, because I'm not
Speaker 3: jumping ahead, because it's almost from the beginning. In fact,
Speaker 3: when the predatorship arrives that that's when Nadho's she sponts it.
Speaker 3: She's the only one who sponts it. And she mistakes
Speaker 3: it for a thunderbird. She mistakes it for a vision.
Speaker 3: And what's great about that is this movie completely side
Speaker 3: steps the whole Native American mystical visionaries bullshit, the Oliver Stone,
Speaker 3: the even Underhart, even Thunderheart. No one's having fucking visions quests.
Speaker 3: No one's in the sweat lodge here. It's just she
Speaker 3: sees the ship coming down. And by the way, the
Speaker 3: reveal of the title, which is Nadu standing a top
Speaker 3: a mountain peak looking up with her tomahawk in her hand,
Speaker 3: and you don't see the ship, but you get just
Speaker 3: the impression of it. But then the camera pans up
Speaker 3: further into the clouds and the credits are the opening
Speaker 3: title is waiting there. I loved it, man, It's so invigorating,
Speaker 3: like once the last time a title came up and
Speaker 3: you were like, Holy God, yeah, here we go.
Speaker 4: It's invigorating, and it's foreboding because you know that this
Speaker 4: what she's taking as this sign that she's ready for
Speaker 4: her great hunt, is actually a sign that this creature
Speaker 4: who we've seen its brethren lay waste to civilization after
Speaker 4: civilization through the course of all of these movies. So
Speaker 4: you're kind of left wondering initially, like, how is how
Speaker 4: are these people? How is this character going to deal
Speaker 4: with this tech logically advanced killer in their midst And
Speaker 4: I tell you, the Predator was not prepared for Nadu.
Speaker 4: I can say that much.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. That's the great thing about this
Speaker 3: fucking title is look, in that first movie, Predator is
Speaker 3: the Predator. Here the Predator ends up being pray baby. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, he's not. He is in no way prepared
Speaker 3: for what's waiting for him on Earth. It's so fantastic,
Speaker 3: it's so good.
Speaker 4: Can we talk a minute. We're going to get into
Speaker 4: the story more, but I want to kind of kick
Speaker 4: off by talking about the Predator itself. We often will
Speaker 4: bring up how did you think of this predator? How
Speaker 4: do you think he did this? To me? Is probably
Speaker 4: my second favorite predator because this one seems so much
Speaker 4: more organic than the rest. I think, by definition, this
Speaker 4: is a feral looking predator. It's much more lithe and
Speaker 4: lean than any of the other predators that we've seen
Speaker 4: in the previous four or five six movies.
Speaker 3: Whatever. This is the This is the return of Gillis
Speaker 3: and Woodruff as the designers for the Predator. That their
Speaker 3: last one was Requiem or was it? Really? Very wisely
Speaker 3: has corrected me that the last one they did was Predators.
Speaker 3: Where they had they did all these swoll predators, all
Speaker 3: the skipp and leg day predators, the triangular upside down predator.
Speaker 3: I hated those, so it was a welcome relief we
Speaker 3: didn't see them in the Predator. But I agree the
Speaker 3: design on this one is pretty fucking spectacular, and it
Speaker 3: takes one of their sort of earlier innovations to its
Speaker 3: ultimate step, which is turning the what were dreadlocks into
Speaker 3: basically hair. Now it's so thin and so multiple, it
Speaker 3: becomes its own kind of character trait, like like a
Speaker 3: cape on him, like a lion's mane. You're right, a
Speaker 3: Farrell a much more less ten little and more sort
Speaker 3: of biological threat.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Even the mask, the helmet that it has is
Speaker 4: it's not metal like we're used to. It's actually it
Speaker 4: almost appears to be bone. I think it's meant to
Speaker 4: be some sort of organic bony material. And that's where
Speaker 4: it doesn't have a shoulder cannon yet, but it has
Speaker 4: those three distinct laser lights kind of come out of
Speaker 4: the out of the mask, and it actually doesn't even
Speaker 4: shoot lasers like it actually shoots almost like arrow bolts
Speaker 4: or crossbow bolts.
Speaker 3: It's a projectile weapon. These Remember this is three hundred
Speaker 3: years ago and another Look, we're just going to keep
Speaker 3: saying it's brilliant. But I like when somebody thinks about
Speaker 3: the science of something three hundred years ago, maybe they
Speaker 3: didn't have energy based weapons. Maybe they were just shooting bolts. Yes,
Speaker 3: the bolts were effectively laser guided or heat guided or
Speaker 3: far in advance of anything that we could potentially do.
Speaker 3: But I loved that.
Speaker 4: It's still got the spinning discs that come off of
Speaker 4: the gauntlet. The but it is it does feel like
Speaker 4: a precursor to the predator creatures that we kind of
Speaker 4: have seen in the later movie or the earlier movies,
Speaker 4: I should say. But what's interesting is even in it
Speaker 4: has these bolts that it shoots out, but at one
Speaker 4: point it kills one of the warriors, one of the
Speaker 4: Native American warriors, but then you see it has to
Speaker 4: go and retrieve the bolts from the dead body. It's
Speaker 4: not just it doesn't have an endless supply of these things.
Speaker 4: It's almost like it has. It's like a like a
Speaker 4: bo caster or something.
Speaker 3: It's just it.
Speaker 4: The logic of it, I think is it makes so
Speaker 4: much sense to me, and I was thrilled by it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it evens the score just a little bit between. Look,
Speaker 3: they don't have machine guns, so he shouldn't have a laser.
Speaker 3: He should have a laser guided bow and arrow.
Speaker 4: Basically, it's just attitudinally and just the way it moves
Speaker 4: it's not this giant pro wrestler. It's just it's it
Speaker 4: kind of has the bad quality. But even in terms
Speaker 4: of attitude, there's a part in this. It's this little
Speaker 4: sequence excuse me, where it gets attacked by a wolf.
Speaker 4: This wolf, I don't remember the context, but the wolf
Speaker 4: sort of catches it sent and it attacks it. Normally,
Speaker 4: correct me if I'm wrong, but a predator will not
Speaker 4: necessarily attack you unless you are a threat to it.
Speaker 4: But in this case, it feels like this predator is
Speaker 4: sort of new to the idea of hunting and what
Speaker 4: should it hunt, and essentially kills us. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: not really a poor wolf, but I end up feeling
Speaker 4: a little bad for it. But it kind of made
Speaker 4: sense in a weird way that this predator is the
Speaker 4: code of the predator doesn't feel like it's been fully
Speaker 4: formed three hundred years before we see the first official
Speaker 4: appearance of the predator. I just thought it was kind
Speaker 4: of neat to see this thing acting just a little
Speaker 4: bit differently than we're used to, but again making sense
Speaker 4: because this is an ancestor to the predators that we've
Speaker 4: come to know and love.
Speaker 3: Well, hunting and predation are actual themes explored in this film.
Speaker 3: For the first time ever in the Predator series, we're
Speaker 3: looking at that as it actually applies to our characters.
Speaker 3: In fact, this is the first time we have a
Speaker 3: character who is a hunter, who is not only hunting
Speaker 3: out of necessity. People need to eat, and this is
Speaker 3: impressed upon us over and over, like when they come
Speaker 3: back from ut. So not only does she need to hunt,
Speaker 3: but this she needs to prove herself as a hunter
Speaker 3: because everyone is saying she can't. So there's that. But
Speaker 3: then just in the nature side of things, we have
Speaker 3: them hunting a lion who has been hunting them. We
Speaker 3: get this snake who is like hunting a rabbit and
Speaker 3: like it attempts to attack the predator and because it
Speaker 3: knows something is there even though some even though it
Speaker 3: can't see it, but the predator can that and then
Speaker 3: skins it and takes its little skull. There. God, what
Speaker 3: else is there? Oh? Yeah, no, the rabbit is the
Speaker 3: coyote is chasing a rabbit and the predator it is.
Speaker 3: The predator steps in and then the coyote attacks that.
Speaker 3: The great thing about that is the coyote snaps at
Speaker 3: the predator, not knowing where or what it is, and
Speaker 3: it makes contact and then for the rest of the scene,
Speaker 3: every time that wolf's mouth opens you can see a
Speaker 3: little bioluminescent blood in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great. I'm sure. Hey, let's put the.
Speaker 3: Car into every fucking shot of this movie that I'm making.
Speaker 3: Let me actually consider everything we're doing before we do it.
Speaker 4: It's all beautiful, and I'm sure most, if not all,
Speaker 4: of those animals are CG creations, and sometimes it's a
Speaker 4: little more obvious. But for the most part, I thought
Speaker 4: all that stuff, the wolf, the snake, the rabbits, is
Speaker 4: the getting killed everywhere, the lion, it all looks really good.
Speaker 4: A lot of care went into just the effects work
Speaker 4: in this, and it blends sodlessly into the world.
Speaker 3: It's not all we have to say about the Predator
Speaker 3: and predation. I'm just well, ultimately, no, So you were
Speaker 3: saying that the Predator maybe their code hasn't been formed necessarily.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think,
Speaker 3: who knows. Maybe this is just you're right, This is
Speaker 3: a primitive version of them. He doesn't have a metal
Speaker 3: face plate, he doesn't have lasers, he has his heads
Speaker 3: up display, sort of bored into the skull of some
Speaker 3: creature he had killed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's cool, and there's a lot this predator, I
Speaker 4: think more than most others, he just has a flare.
Speaker 4: I think it's a conscious choice to make him a
Speaker 4: little more of a badass in this because I think
Speaker 4: it just the fight scenes are so fluid and great,
Speaker 4: Whereas mostly predators will just kind of slash and punch
Speaker 4: and throw its way out of anything, but this one,
Speaker 4: we're seeing the predator flip things in the air and
Speaker 4: bring them down into people's heads, and the weapons are
Speaker 4: all kind of cool and a little different. It's just
Speaker 4: this predator feels like more of a badass to me.
Speaker 4: And what's interesting is there are there's moments and we've
Speaker 4: kind of seen this a little bit in some of
Speaker 4: the other movies, a touch of this here and there,
Speaker 4: but there are moments where you can see that there's
Speaker 4: almost a sympathy between the predator and Naduru. There's a
Speaker 4: sequence where Naduru comes across this a whole herd of
Speaker 4: buffalo that have been killed and just to be stripped
Speaker 4: of their hides, and they're left there at a rot
Speaker 4: and it really deeply troubles Nahdaru. And she says a
Speaker 4: little prayer and she finds a cigar that will find
Speaker 4: out that these French trappers are causing all this mayhem.
Speaker 3: So, by the way, that completely fooled me the first
Speaker 3: time I saw it. When I saw that herd completely skinned,
Speaker 3: I thought, predators don't do that. What's going on here
Speaker 3: in this movie? And then she found this cigar and
Speaker 3: I went, oh, fucking humans.
Speaker 4: It makes sense. But then maybe five minutes later, the
Speaker 4: predator also comes across the same scene, and it's not
Speaker 4: like it vocalizes anything, but you see it pick up
Speaker 4: the cigar, and you know that the predators have this
Speaker 4: code of, you know, killing only when it's in their
Speaker 4: minds a fair fight. So the predator knows that this
Speaker 4: is just senseless killing for the sake of killing, and
Speaker 4: it just creates this. It's almost like Nahru and the
Speaker 4: predator are kind of two sides of the same coin
Speaker 4: in a way. They're both hunters trying to accomplish their mission.
Speaker 4: She wants to prove herself to her tribe that she
Speaker 4: can do this, and he is obviously on his hunt.
Speaker 4: He's trying to hunt the biggest and baddest predators that
Speaker 4: there are and in this case that's not ru. He
Speaker 4: doesn't know it at that point, but as I said,
Speaker 4: he's going to learn that to the course of the movie.
Speaker 3: One last thing about the predator and then we should
Speaker 3: jump back into the plot, and that is the invisibility.
Speaker 3: Cloaking has never looked better.
Speaker 4: Fantastic.
Speaker 3: It's great, like every fucking time he does it, and
Speaker 3: they do cool stuff like where part of particulate matter
Speaker 3: is hitting it and it's shorting out or water is
Speaker 3: shorting and anyway, I loved all of that. Where were
Speaker 3: we It does look great.
Speaker 4: It's almost crystalline in places, and Tractenberg knows how to
Speaker 4: photograph it to really make it pop and make it
Speaker 4: look good. It's awesome. But anyway, story wise, you had
Speaker 4: mentioned there's a lion that has menaced the tribe, so
Speaker 4: she and her brother tab go to try with the
Speaker 4: hunting party to try to dispatch. Along the way, there's
Speaker 4: one of the other warriors has been savaged by the lion,
Speaker 4: but he's still alive and she uses her knowledge of
Speaker 4: her bology to help save him. She has this, you know, or.
Speaker 3: Can we just point out that before this we got
Speaker 3: to meet the village, like when they come out when
Speaker 3: we meet her mom, who has been teaching her herbs,
Speaker 3: and we figure out that no matter what happens as
Speaker 3: far as her wanting to be a hunter, she's still
Speaker 3: expected to do these sort of female responsibilities. Supposed to
Speaker 3: go out in the mornings and collect the herbs and
Speaker 3: supposed to do all the female shit while the guys
Speaker 3: are out there doing their thing, and then she can.
Speaker 4: Be doing hunting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that sort of points to in a larger sense,
Speaker 4: probably the best thing that this movie does for the
Speaker 4: audience is make you care about these characters, because we
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time early on with Naduru, with
Speaker 4: her extended family, with her brother, so by the time
Speaker 4: the Predator has inserted itself in the story, we care
Speaker 4: deeply about all of these people, not just the main characters,
Speaker 4: but the extended people, the commanche. So I think that's
Speaker 4: just such a It's elementary and it seems like it
Speaker 4: should be self evident. But not every Predator movie takes
Speaker 4: the time for us to get to know the characters
Speaker 4: before they're placed in jeopardy, and I think that's vital.
Speaker 3: Only two have been successful as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 3: Predator and The Predator. Like the characters in both of
Speaker 3: those I very much cared about. And but when you
Speaker 3: snack the three against each other, not to start comparing them,
Speaker 3: but the first film is an action movie, and I
Speaker 3: love those characters in their action movie. The Predator is
Speaker 3: a goof ultimately because it's Shane Black movie, So who
Speaker 3: cares at the end of the day. Plus they're all dead.
Speaker 3: But here, what we've got is a serious movie with
Speaker 3: serious characters and like in a fair treatment of them.
Speaker 3: And I'm never uninterested. I'm always engaged. When they're at
Speaker 3: the village, I'm like, Okay, we can hang out here.
Speaker 3: I'm never like, let's get to the action. Where's the Preditor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a potential version of this movie with no Predator,
Speaker 4: where it's just a coming of age story with this
Speaker 4: this woman, this commanche woman trying desperately to prove herself
Speaker 4: in the face of all these doubting people in her village.
Speaker 3: That'd be the biggest bear they've ever seen, right.
Speaker 4: This movie, Like you said, you could have not even
Speaker 4: had The Predator, and this would be a pretty compelling
Speaker 4: story about these people at this time. But it's just
Speaker 4: so it's just so cool. How you then it's so logical,
Speaker 4: how they insert what should be this incredibly fantastical element,
Speaker 4: this alien coming down from some other planet hunting people,
Speaker 4: and it not once do you ever doubt the logic
Speaker 4: of what's happening, even though it's a fantastic story. Fantastic
Speaker 4: meaning unbelievable, not like great. It is great, but it's.
Speaker 3: Like fantastic Tales of the Unknown, like that fantastic.
Speaker 4: Like you can't like. And there's something about the reactions.
Speaker 4: There's a point at which so Nadu is the one
Speaker 4: who is one step ahead of everybody else in terms
Speaker 4: of what's actually happening, because they believe that. Like they
Speaker 4: find this guy who's been savaged by this lion, and
Speaker 4: she uses this herb that cools down his body so
Speaker 4: that he won't bleed out. That'll be important later in
Speaker 4: the movie. It's this little mcguffinity throwing.
Speaker 3: I love it, but she but and it looks delicious,
Speaker 3: even though everyone who eats it like coughs and it
Speaker 3: like acts like it's the most unappetizing thing. I still
Speaker 3: want some.
Speaker 4: It's orange something I don't recall the name of the herb,
Speaker 4: but it's this herb that she can use to help
Speaker 4: people not bleed out. But they're all focused on helping
Speaker 4: this guy and bringing them back to the village. But
Speaker 4: she realizes, well, there's a reason why the lion left
Speaker 4: this guy. Like she's already her feelers are already up,
Speaker 4: saying something's not right here, guys, but everybody else discounts
Speaker 4: what she's saying, you're crazy. It's the lion. We'll deal
Speaker 4: with the lion. Even her own brother is like, we
Speaker 4: just have to deal with the lion. And they all
Speaker 4: believe that when and if the lion is killed, then
Speaker 4: safety will return to her tribe, so they take She
Speaker 4: saves the guy's life by the way he goes back
Speaker 4: to the village. She goes to help Tabe dispatch this lion.
Speaker 3: She by now she knows it. Now she knows it's
Speaker 3: not a lion. But because they send they dismiss her.
Speaker 3: The hunting party dismisses her to go back with the
Speaker 3: wounded warrior, and she sees like tracks that are unusual
Speaker 3: to anything she had ever seen before, like kind of
Speaker 3: a clawbe it could be a bear, but it's too big.
Speaker 3: And then they see claw marks that are way too high,
Speaker 3: and suddenly she knows there's a predator that outstrips that lion,
Speaker 3: and it might not be anything. And let's remember she
Speaker 3: saw the thunderbird in the sky, so she knows something's afoot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's satisfying to see because we're with her
Speaker 4: the whole way. We see things that the rest of
Speaker 4: the people don't get to see, so we know that
Speaker 4: she's right. So the whole time, we're thinking to ourselves, no,
Speaker 4: you know, she's so when she finally does take matters
Speaker 4: into her hands eventually, it's so satisfying as a viewer
Speaker 4: because we are by then and we want her to
Speaker 4: succeed every bit as much as she wants to succeed
Speaker 4: for herself, because she's such a good underdog. She figures
Speaker 4: out this way. She's got this tomahawk, and she figures
Speaker 4: out this way to tie a rope. She braids a
Speaker 4: rope and ties it to kind of the central axis
Speaker 4: of the tomahawk, and she's able to throw the tomahawk
Speaker 4: and retrieve it like something out of like Mortal Kombat
Speaker 4: or something. It's this badass weapon that frankly, it probably
Speaker 4: defies the laws of physics, but it's so fucking cool
Speaker 4: to see it in action.
Speaker 3: I liked that when another warrior found it, he said,
Speaker 3: your axe needs a leash. They thought it was a detriment,
Speaker 3: like they thought she attached it because she was going
Speaker 3: to lose it, like a surfboard attached to her ankle.
Speaker 3: But the fact is she had innovated that fucking thing
Speaker 3: and it's gonna save her life over and over again.
Speaker 4: It's amazing. The fight scenes, which we're going to continue
Speaker 4: to return to. The battle scenes, the fight scenes, whatever
Speaker 4: you want to call them, are so well shot and
Speaker 4: they're exciting, and she's just such a badass because she's
Speaker 4: just a great hand to hand fighter, and I just it.
Speaker 4: Some of these scenes are just beyond belief how cool
Speaker 4: they are. She really she's up there with John Wick.
Speaker 4: I'm going to say it right there. She is a
Speaker 4: badass of the highest order in this movie. And I
Speaker 4: wasn't prepared for how much of a badass she was
Speaker 4: gonna be.
Speaker 3: We're talking about Nadu, we're talking about Amber mid Thunder.
Speaker 4: Well both really, because she can't have one without the other.
Speaker 3: That's true, but we can also include Amber mid Thunder's
Speaker 3: stunt double, who does some incredible fucking shit there's an
Speaker 3: entire sequence staring in the French the plantations, not French plantation,
Speaker 3: during the French trapper sequence, where it is one her
Speaker 3: stunt double in like every fucking shot, but she has
Speaker 3: so much hair and the camera at work is so
Speaker 3: fucking thoughtful that you'd never know.
Speaker 4: You mean that the single the sort of quote unquote
Speaker 4: single shot fight scene. Yeah, you think that's all. You
Speaker 4: think that's all just her stunt double because I couldn't tell.
Speaker 3: There's some Texas switching going on, but yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: mainly the stunt double.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well definitely. We'll get to the trappers, but so, yeah,
Speaker 4: so she goes to try and dispatch this lion and
Speaker 4: she ends up falling out of it.
Speaker 3: Before we get there, she ascertains the sort of the situation,
Speaker 3: sees that she's basically in the place where the lion
Speaker 3: had been making its home, climbs up a tree, and
Speaker 3: then the lion fucking shows up like she sees it peripherally,
Speaker 3: like running through this tall grass. It's great, and then
Speaker 3: looks down. As she looks down, the fucking lion is
Speaker 3: there in a second trying to get up at her.
Speaker 3: Scared the shit out of me. I've seen the movie twice.
Speaker 3: Scared me twice.
Speaker 4: Well, it's her plan. She has devised the plan that
Speaker 4: they're going to go into the lion's den as it were,
Speaker 4: and basically bait it so that it gets sort of
Speaker 4: moved into this tree, this zone where they're gonna you know.
Speaker 4: So it's her idea how to take out the lion. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: the lion has her cornered on a branch. The lion
Speaker 4: is advancing on her and she's backing up. The branch breaks.
Speaker 4: They both fall out of the tree, and then the
Speaker 4: next thing she knows, she wakes up in her village
Speaker 4: because her brother had to carry her back because she's
Speaker 4: been knocked unconscious. And then her brother comes into the
Speaker 4: village after that, the conquering hero. He's got the lion carcass,
Speaker 4: he's decapitated the lion, and he becomes it, basically becomes
Speaker 4: a war chief at that point, right, he inherits the
Speaker 4: title of war chief. And of course now that he
Speaker 4: was not happy about this at all, because that's what
Speaker 4: she wants for herself.
Speaker 3: Well, she wants to even be a hunter, and now
Speaker 3: she's being denied that because she had to be carried
Speaker 3: back from a hunt.
Speaker 4: It's embarrassing, it's demoralizing. And eventually we see that her
Speaker 4: brother admits to her that, you know what, you're really
Speaker 4: the one who helped take that lion out because you
Speaker 4: devise the plan when the lion fell out of the tree.
Speaker 4: You weakened it enough that I could take it out.
Speaker 4: So what if? I mean, it's actually really generous of
Speaker 4: her brother to admit to her. You know, you would
Speaker 4: expect him to be this macho guy who's the war
Speaker 4: chief and blah blah blah, but he has no problem
Speaker 4: admitting that, you know what, you're really the one who
Speaker 4: should take credit. It's so endearing because he's honest about it.
Speaker 4: He's frank about the fact that, yeah, you are a
Speaker 4: great hunter, and he defends her even when the other
Speaker 4: members of the war party or what have you are
Speaker 4: putting her down and making fun of her hatchet with
Speaker 4: the cord on it and everything. But he he says
Speaker 4: to them, you know, she's a great tracker and she
Speaker 4: can really help us here. It's just so endearing. I
Speaker 4: don't know, I love that part of it.
Speaker 3: Well, those two characters love each other, so that's yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty great.
Speaker 4: It's very and actually, come to find doubt that Tabe
Speaker 4: is actually the actor is actually younger than Amber mid
Speaker 4: Thunder did not realize.
Speaker 3: That didn't know that. I love both of them. I
Speaker 3: can't wait to see them in more things. Honestly, here's
Speaker 3: two things that I thought of during that scene the
Speaker 3: Tabe returns with the lion beheaded lion. My first thought was, oh,
Speaker 3: so the predator did that and he just found it,
Speaker 3: because that's a fucking predator move to cut the head
Speaker 3: off that cleanly. The second thought I had was watching
Speaker 3: the tribe come together and then everyone's celebrating. I thought
Speaker 3: this must be what it's like in the predator society.
Speaker 3: It's the same idea, right.
Speaker 4: They're celebrating the kill.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so it just makes me want to see more
Speaker 3: of these predators.
Speaker 4: I didn't think of it in those terms, but there
Speaker 4: is a lot of that duality in this movie.
Speaker 3: Actually, Well, just like you said, you know, they have
Speaker 3: this sort of mirroring between the predator and Nahooh that
Speaker 3: plays throughout because there are times when I am on
Speaker 3: the Predator's side. This predator is the villain, by the way,
Speaker 3: there are times where I go back and forth during
Speaker 3: every Predator movie where you know, either I like the
Speaker 3: humans and I want them to win, or I like
Speaker 3: the Predator and I want him to win. Here, even
Speaker 3: though this is the most formidable Predator I think probably ever.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe the giant one's a little more scary
Speaker 3: because he's just big, But this one, I'm not on
Speaker 3: his side at any time until he runs into the humans. Basically,
Speaker 3: I agree with you there, like not the humans, the
Speaker 3: white people. That's why I'm the French trappers. I sort
Speaker 3: of was predisposed to maybe not liking him off the
Speaker 3: bat when I saw him kill that wolf, being an
Speaker 3: animal lover that to me, that kind of bothered me
Speaker 3: a little bit, even though look it's a feral wolf,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah, and like you said, it has that iridescent
Speaker 3: blood all over it.
Speaker 4: It's maw, so it actually made look. I will also
Speaker 4: say this for the Predator. This Predator takes his fair
Speaker 4: share of licks. This Predator is beat to shit by
Speaker 4: the end of this movie. He's been stabbed, he's had
Speaker 4: his arm cut off, Predator blood everywhere, So he gets
Speaker 4: full marks for being sort of implacable in that way, unstoppable.
Speaker 4: And I agree with you that he reads as a
Speaker 4: villain until we get to the French trapper thing, which
Speaker 4: we can talk about. I do want to mention though,
Speaker 4: one of the greatest predator reveals in all of the movies.
Speaker 4: So Naduru has has decided after her brother gets war chief,
Speaker 4: she goes away. She realizes that there's this isn't going
Speaker 4: to end with this line. There's something else out there,
Speaker 4: and she resolves. She puts aside her normal female specific duties.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, my favorite shot in the entire movie
Speaker 3: is her all of the sort of female members of
Speaker 3: the tribe walking toward the river to start their day
Speaker 3: and she's walking directly against the stream to go do this.
Speaker 4: Yes, so beautiful, it's amazing. It's amazing just a photography alone.
Speaker 4: I don't know exactly where this was a shot, but
Speaker 4: it looks like the most unspoiled wilderness, like you can imagine,
Speaker 4: like this could very well have been the Northern Plane
Speaker 4: in seventeen nineteen. It looks brilliant. So she's on the
Speaker 4: hunt for the predator and at one point she comes
Speaker 4: across a bear, a big bear that catches her scent.
Speaker 4: It's a great sequence where you see the wind blow
Speaker 4: across her and you can see, like you don't see
Speaker 4: it literally, but you can see it wafting over to
Speaker 4: the bear who sniffs the air. The bear basically runs
Speaker 4: after her, tries to attack her, and in the midst
Speaker 4: of all this, she's taken refuge and a beaver dam,
Speaker 4: and this bear is doing its best to try and
Speaker 4: dig through that killer. And there revealed is the predator.
Speaker 4: The predator comes. They have a little battle, the bear
Speaker 4: versus the predator. The predator of course kills the bear,
Speaker 4: and after killing it, it picks it up and lifts
Speaker 4: it over its head and obviously like cuts it open
Speaker 4: so that the blood comes down in a rush over
Speaker 4: this formerly camouflaged predator. And what you see revealed is
Speaker 4: the predator outlined in blood as Nadu has probably a
Speaker 4: number of heart attacks and runs away. I love that
Speaker 4: reveal of the blood. It just works on a lot
Speaker 4: of levels to see this thing, you know, just covered
Speaker 4: and all of this blood and revealed and all of
Speaker 4: its sick glory. It's an amazing shot.
Speaker 3: The whole sequence is fantastic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's heart pounding.
Speaker 3: As you've said, like, if there were no predator in
Speaker 3: this movie, that would have been funny. If she had
Speaker 3: just escaped the bear and then fond it again later
Speaker 3: like that, this would just be one of the most
Speaker 3: exciting movies I'd seen in years. But then we've got
Speaker 3: a predator drenched in blood and has some sort of baptism.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's great, it's amazing, and they have
Speaker 4: a way. So then another thing I love about this
Speaker 4: is at one point, so after this all happens, Tabe
Speaker 4: has sent a small group of a search party to
Speaker 4: come and bring Nadru back, and they find her and
Speaker 4: they she won't listen, so there's a fight and she
Speaker 4: ends up basically getting subdued, and they hear they're trying
Speaker 4: to take her back, but they can hear the predator
Speaker 4: and they know something's up. But they have this way
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 3: You know what, hun you're going they knock her out.
Speaker 3: She gets knocked out a lot, And I'd just like
Speaker 3: to say, as much as I love this movie, could
Speaker 3: everyone stump doing that in movies? The idea of actually
Speaker 3: just knocking somebody out is very difficult. First of all, Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you think you're going to punch somebody in the
Speaker 3: head and they're just going to go, that's not how
Speaker 3: it works. If you've ever seen a boxing match, it
Speaker 3: takes a lot to get somebody to be knocked unconscious,
Speaker 3: which is their brain has to smack up against the
Speaker 3: side of their goal really hard. A contract coup is
Speaker 3: what they call that medically. And the fact is every
Speaker 3: time you're knocked unconscious, that's a little bit of brain damage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's literally an injury to your brain. So that
Speaker 4: I yes, I could see that. I mean, it's become
Speaker 4: such short.
Speaker 3: It's a fantastic transition for filmmakers. And then they get
Speaker 3: hit in the head with the butt of a rifle
Speaker 3: and then where am I No, yeah, you actually have
Speaker 3: to link the scene.
Speaker 4: Sorry, that is I guess. Yeah I didn't. That didn't
Speaker 4: occur to me. But you're right, and that is a
Speaker 4: problem that used to be like a big private Eye thing. Right,
Speaker 4: he's always getting hit in the head by some peluca
Speaker 4: and he wakes up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Mike Hammer is a vegetable by the end
Speaker 3: of his Private Eye brain image.
Speaker 4: Well, what I like is that, you know, after these
Speaker 4: this search party has caught into that there's something out there.
Speaker 4: There's something in the way of having these three or
Speaker 4: four Comanche warriors that all have bows drawn as they're
Speaker 4: walking silently through the woods.
Speaker 3: It's beauty.
Speaker 4: It's such a badass image and they're so quiet and
Speaker 4: they just seem so lethal that just have to believe, like, wow,
Speaker 4: you know, these guys could go through anything except this
Speaker 4: fucking predator that's gonna just tear through them like a
Speaker 4: hot knife through butter. But it's such a graceful image
Speaker 4: to see them with these bows drawn and the foldy
Speaker 4: work is great because you can hear the bowstring tightened,
Speaker 4: and I don't know, it just seems so like like
Speaker 4: we've been saying, if there wasn't even a predator, this
Speaker 4: would be really interesting to see them hunting and doing
Speaker 4: their thing.
Speaker 3: But I usually say this in a crime movie, but
Speaker 3: I just love seeing professionals speed professional exactly.
Speaker 4: That's the point I'm making. You said it beautifully there.
Speaker 4: It's they know what they're doing. These are trained, you know, bowhunters,
Speaker 4: and that's what they do best, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 4: because the predator is just so far beyond them technologically.
Speaker 3: Sorry, man, he's got laser guided bolts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bolts, it's and that's the I mean sequin after sequence.
Speaker 4: I keep saying, well, that sequence is great to that one.
Speaker 4: They're all great because what happens is that the search
Speaker 4: party is waylaid by the predator. One of them is
Speaker 4: basically like like that that three dot laser has the
Speaker 4: ability to kind of separate. So he shoots one in
Speaker 4: the guy's eye, one in his hand, and one in
Speaker 4: his heart, and then he goes over like I said,
Speaker 4: and retrieves the bolts because of course he has to
Speaker 4: retrieve them. He's not shooting energy based weapons. And again,
Speaker 4: these are fierce warriors. They they attack this thing with
Speaker 4: everything they've got, and it just it's almost heartbreaking to
Speaker 4: see them just be waylaid because you want to pull
Speaker 4: for them because they're so badass, all of them. They
Speaker 4: do they Like I said, the predator gets his licks
Speaker 4: through the whole movie and he gets stabbed and sliced
Speaker 4: and whatever, but ultimately it's all for no because he
Speaker 4: just he cuts a swath through all of these warriors.
Speaker 4: So she runs away from the predator barely kind of escapes,
Speaker 4: but she is snared by a metal trap that that
Speaker 4: we've seen earlier. Her dog, Sati was also snared in
Speaker 4: a trap, and she rescues us, but she it's a
Speaker 4: bear trap.
Speaker 3: By the way I mention it. Her dog early on
Speaker 3: gets its tail caught in one, and then she frees
Speaker 3: the dog, and then we see that she's a herbalist
Speaker 3: because she puts some sort of paste on the dog.
Speaker 3: And I love that scene because this is seventeen nineteen
Speaker 3: and she's never met a European and she certainly doesn't
Speaker 3: know what a steel chain is, so her reaction to
Speaker 3: it is great, where she's just trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what it is and what it can be used for.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that pays off here because she finds herself.
Speaker 4: It's true. Yeah, she kind of picks up the chain
Speaker 4: and she's not really sure what to make of it.
Speaker 4: But so she gets snared by this bear trap and
Speaker 4: they these French trappers take her prisoner and take her
Speaker 4: to camp and put her in a cage basically, and
Speaker 4: she realizes that these are the people that kill those
Speaker 4: buffalo from earlier, and one of them, this fellow Raphael,
Speaker 4: can speak Commanchi. It has to be said, by the way,
Speaker 4: before I get into this, that this movie plays a
Speaker 4: little fast and loose with language, right we can. The
Speaker 4: example that I always point to is Hunt for Red October,
Speaker 4: where the Russians on the submarine speak Russian up until
Speaker 4: this point where they zoom in on one of their
Speaker 4: mouths and it sort of transitions into English, giving the
Speaker 4: audience this idea that, well, they're still speaking Russian, but
Speaker 4: you're hearing it as English. Now this movie, they don't,
Speaker 4: there's no transition. Sometimes they speak commanche, sometimes mostly they
Speaker 4: speak English, And I think it's just it's easier for
Speaker 4: the audience to kind of figure it out. It's my
Speaker 4: understanding that there is a all commanche dub of this
Speaker 4: movie that you can watch. I don't know, I want
Speaker 4: to see it. You did see it, okay, all subtitles
Speaker 4: that that would be a really clever way to watch it.
Speaker 3: I think I turned off the subtitle really Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well you already kind of knew what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course that I did have the advantage of
Speaker 3: having seen the movie previously. Yeah, Honestly, Joe Danteos often
Speaker 3: says this, He'll watch a movie on an airplane without
Speaker 3: the sound on, because you should be able to watch
Speaker 3: a movie without the sound if it's actually any good.
Speaker 3: And this is definitely one you're gonna watch without the sound.
Speaker 4: Sure, So she's imprisoned and this fellow, Raphael tries to
Speaker 4: reason with her. So it's clear that these trappers are
Speaker 4: trying to trap the predator. They're aware of the predator
Speaker 4: and they're trying to figure out a way to trap
Speaker 4: it for some reason or another or kill it, hunts it,
Speaker 4: and he Raphael is asking her for help, and they've
Speaker 4: also turns out they've also captured her brother, Tabe, and
Speaker 4: they end up essentially torturing him in the midst of
Speaker 4: all of this, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they cut him up. First of all, Listen, there's
Speaker 3: this really corpulent French dude who is the sort of
Speaker 3: main antagonist leader of this scroup, and he basically has
Speaker 3: to be restrained from shooting and killing her over and
Speaker 3: over again because she's not giving up any information. And
Speaker 3: then the implication somebody comes up in whispers in his
Speaker 3: ear and it's just really lacivious. No, keep her alive
Speaker 3: because we can rape he eventually. So these guys are
Speaker 3: bad fucking news. And then really their ultimate plan is
Speaker 3: they take Tabe out, cut him open, like bleeding him
Speaker 3: because they don't know what the predator is. They just
Speaker 3: think it's some beast out there. And then they tie
Speaker 3: those two together in an open field with on a
Speaker 3: fucking true like a dead tree as bait.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it reminded me of the end of Raiders
Speaker 4: of the Lost Arc where one hundred in it. You know,
Speaker 4: where they that's it. They're helpless to watch what's happening
Speaker 4: around them, and that's what's happened to.
Speaker 3: Don't pick up any weapons. What don't pick up any weapons, Toby,
Speaker 3: that's right, keep.
Speaker 4: Your eyes shut. So they brought them out there, like
Speaker 4: you said, as bait for the predator. But they've the
Speaker 4: trappers being you know, these evil, stupid people that we're
Speaker 4: supposed to root against. They've they've grossly underestimated the intelligence
Speaker 4: of both both the comanche and also the predator in particular,
Speaker 4: because they're expecting it to come in and, you know,
Speaker 4: attack these helpless people at this on this tree, but
Speaker 4: instead it knows to kind of outflank them, and it
Speaker 4: comes from behind. As they're focus straight ahead, there's the
Speaker 4: predator coming from behind them, and it becomes this big
Speaker 4: conflagration and really showcases the sort of bad assness of
Speaker 4: this predator he has. It has to be said, I've
Speaker 4: already talked about the tomahawk that can be like retrieved
Speaker 4: with this cable. The Predator has this wrist shield that
Speaker 4: kind of expands and contracts at will, so it's embedded
Speaker 4: in this gauntlet and it can become this telescoped shield.
Speaker 4: That was actually inspired by one of my favorite games
Speaker 4: in the PS four, which is the remake of, or
Speaker 4: the reboot of God of War, because Crados in that
Speaker 4: movie has this thing called the Leviathan Acts that he
Speaker 4: can throw and then it comes back to his hand
Speaker 4: if you hit you know, R two or something like that.
Speaker 4: So is the shield because he has a shield on
Speaker 4: his wrist gauntlet that does the same kind of stuff
Speaker 4: that the Predators does, which I thought was kind of
Speaker 4: a nice touch. I don't know, it reminded me of something.
Speaker 4: And then I read that and I said, oh, that's
Speaker 4: exactly what I was thinking about. Did you ever play
Speaker 4: God of.
Speaker 3: War that Urchin did? Of course, Yeah, I play a
Speaker 3: great game, many iterations of it. Yeah, so it was
Speaker 3: actually directly inspired by that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's as far as IMDb's trivia is concerned, it
Speaker 4: was inspired by it.
Speaker 3: Well, I can't trust anything on IMDb trivia. That might
Speaker 3: be just some fucking idiot who likes God of War
Speaker 3: and went, oh, that reminds me of God of War.
Speaker 3: Then't that inspired it? Let me add that click could
Speaker 3: be or maybe we've seen an earlier iteration of a
Speaker 3: predator shield and they thought, what would a predator shield
Speaker 3: look like if you could use it also as an
Speaker 3: offensive weapon, because that's what ends up happening here. He's
Speaker 3: being shot by muskets, which is hilarious, and he's sort
Speaker 3: of taking it because he probably could. But then he's like,
Speaker 3: fuck this, and he pops out this little shield that
Speaker 3: you know that well. At one point somebody shoots him
Speaker 3: in the head and ricochet kills him, which.
Speaker 4: Is great because he's staring this guy in the face.
Speaker 4: It's a standoff. The guy's got a musket pointed red
Speaker 4: at his head, and the guy shoots and just ends
Speaker 4: up killing himself with a musket Ricochet's back. But so
Speaker 4: he's got this shield and at one point he has
Speaker 4: a guy backed up against the tree and he's got
Speaker 4: his kind of his forearm against the guy's head and
Speaker 4: the guy, I think he has a gun that he's
Speaker 4: ready to shoot, and all the predator does is kind
Speaker 4: of flecks his wrist. The shield pops out and effectively
Speaker 4: decapitates both the guy and the tree behind him, and
Speaker 4: I think even like the Predator, they looped in him
Speaker 4: going like ugh, like kind of grunting, like, oh that
Speaker 4: was kind of interesting. What yeah again.
Speaker 3: My favorite moment from Alien versus Predator was when the
Speaker 3: Predator catches the little face hugger and he like shutters afterwards,
Speaker 3: like any little moment of character. We don't get them
Speaker 3: all that often, so I loved that moment because the
Speaker 3: Predator was like cool, I took his head off, and
Speaker 3: I took this tree down, like.
Speaker 4: He's disarming trappers with hatchets and flipping them in the
Speaker 4: air and throwing them into people's heads. This is the
Speaker 4: point at which this is the only point at which
Speaker 4: we actually are behind the predator, because we've seen how
Speaker 4: nasty and evil these French, this trapping camp, how bad
Speaker 4: they are. So it's really it's one of those great
Speaker 4: sort of sequences where were like, yeah, you know, just
Speaker 4: fuck him up because we want to see, especially the
Speaker 4: corpulent one that you mentioned earlier. He's the one that
Speaker 4: we really want to sort of see get his just desserts.
Speaker 4: So during all of this, Naduru and Tabe are trying
Speaker 4: to escape. But as you said, like nad who has
Speaker 4: realized again being one step ahead of everybody, that the
Speaker 4: predator won't hunt them since they are in a threat,
Speaker 4: so don't pick up a weapon just you know, and
Speaker 4: the predator completely ignores them through this whole crazy thing.
Speaker 3: Just like dancing around fucking killing everyone in the periphery everybody.
Speaker 4: And at one point, so the predator eventually walks into
Speaker 4: another bear trap and the trappers like are you know,
Speaker 4: are exultant. They throw a net over him. You figure, okay,
Speaker 4: they really think they've got the upper hand, but no,
Speaker 4: it lasts about three seconds and he shrugs the net off.
Speaker 4: He shoots one of his own nets. I think we've
Speaker 4: seen this in another one of these movies, but.
Speaker 3: Not like this.
Speaker 4: This is brutal because he throws a net over a guy,
Speaker 4: and what the net does effectively is tightened endlessly. So
Speaker 4: eventually it tightens so much that whoever is inside of
Speaker 4: the net becomes just atomized goo. Basically it's a really
Speaker 4: horrific way to die.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean on this in alien versus predator,
Speaker 3: and one of the aliens to our lead alien, our
Speaker 3: lead Zeno morph was marked by that net remember it
Speaker 3: like broke out of it because they acid ate through
Speaker 3: it before it made that grid mark on it, right, Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so those do that, but not this was again because
Speaker 3: this movie is so much better than that movie. The
Speaker 3: effect is fucking incredible.
Speaker 4: It's awesome. So finally Tabe and Naderu escape and Tabe
Speaker 4: goes to get some horses, and Naduru has got to
Speaker 4: go back to the camp that she was held prisoner
Speaker 4: in because her dog is still there and she wants
Speaker 4: to rescue the dog. I mean, who you know again,
Speaker 4: I love this character. She's going back to this place
Speaker 4: because her dog has been held captive. So she goes
Speaker 4: back and what follows is we alluded to this earlier.
Speaker 4: It's this hand to hand fight scene that is meant
Speaker 4: to be a single shot. It's obviously cheated in a
Speaker 4: couple of places, but man, it is brutal. She just
Speaker 4: wipes out everybody in camp basically, and after freeing the dog,
Speaker 4: this guy, Raphael, who was the only one who tried
Speaker 4: to talk to her and reason with her, he comes
Speaker 4: stumbling back to camp because he's been his foot has
Speaker 4: been cut off. He's stumbling back and he knows that
Speaker 4: she knows medicine, so he begs her to help him,
Speaker 4: and in return, he's going to give her his flintlock
Speaker 4: pistol and show her how to use it. Right now,
Speaker 4: what I didn't pick up the first time through is
Speaker 4: that he has this metal object embedded in his stump
Speaker 4: and it's this telescoping knife blade thing that the predator used.
Speaker 4: It didn't catch because it's sort of looped in a
Speaker 4: circle until she takes it out and kind of expands
Speaker 4: it at one point. But it was I don't know
Speaker 4: why I missed that first time through, but.
Speaker 3: We'd seen the we'd seen the predator unfurl it earlier.
Speaker 3: We also, by the way, since we're dealing with this
Speaker 3: guy getting his stump taken care of by our lead,
Speaker 3: we get one of my other face and I know
Speaker 3: your favorite sequence is too, the predator repairing himself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have to have that, yeah.
Speaker 3: Which in this it's a kind of a paste that
Speaker 3: he puts on and another great character moment he's as
Speaker 3: he's putting it on, you can kind of tell him like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's smarts, like he unlike most predators will just like
Speaker 3: howl like with like I can take this sort of pain.
Speaker 3: This PREADU is a little touchy about it.
Speaker 4: Like the only thing missing is there's always one weird
Speaker 4: aspect we've talked about in Predator two, when he's preparing himself,
Speaker 4: he has to like grind up like a subway tile
Speaker 4: into a paste that he then slaps on his stump.
Speaker 4: We don't get that here. That's the only thing missing here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he should have like broken off the hoof of
Speaker 3: an antelope or something and added it to the mixture.
Speaker 4: Just grind it up. I don't know, but yeah, that
Speaker 4: we Every Predator movie has to have that sequence where
Speaker 4: it takes a moment for itself self care for the predator,
Speaker 4: and he kind of, you know, fixes himself up before
Speaker 4: the final battle. But meanwhile she's having this She's helping
Speaker 4: this guy Raphael, and she ends up. He teaches her
Speaker 4: how to use the flint lock, and she gives him
Speaker 4: more of that orange herb so that he won't bleed out,
Speaker 4: and it reduces his body temperature to the degree that
Speaker 4: when the predator comes looking at the camp, it comes
Speaker 4: to the camp, she sees that it doesn't notice him
Speaker 4: on the ground, and that gives her this spark of oh,
Speaker 4: he couldn't this is the same thing that happens in
Speaker 4: almost every Predator movie. Like you know, Dutch figures out
Speaker 4: he can't see me because he's covered in mud in
Speaker 4: this case, and.
Speaker 3: Brody figures out, Hey, he can't see me because I'm
Speaker 3: covered in mud. And then finally somebody goes, hey, there's
Speaker 3: something else. It's cold. The temperature he can't see coal, right, smart,
Speaker 3: I'll lower my body temperature and he won't be able
Speaker 3: to see me.
Speaker 4: It's great. So she has that revelation. And what I
Speaker 4: think is great about the scene is that you think
Speaker 4: that he's going to make it because he just sort
Speaker 4: of lies prone on the ground and doesn't move, and
Speaker 4: you can see the predator's point of view that you
Speaker 4: can kind of see the outline, but you know that
Speaker 4: he hasn't caught on that there's a guy there, but
Speaker 4: he's walking and he ends up stepping accidentally on this
Speaker 4: guy's foot, which makes him cry out, which then attracts
Speaker 4: his attention, and he's dead. I mean, it does no
Speaker 4: good ultimately, but it's just sort of funny that just
Speaker 4: by accident this guy was discovered. I don't step ah
Speaker 4: stab yeah, dead, just gone.
Speaker 3: And then he did give her a flintlock that got
Speaker 3: one shot, and I like that she's constantly levying what
Speaker 3: the target is, Should I use this one shot that
Speaker 3: I have for the rest of the movie. I mean,
Speaker 3: not that there's a ton left of the movie, but
Speaker 3: she does make the decision over and over again. Is
Speaker 3: this worth it? Is this worth it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, at least once she tries to shoot him
Speaker 4: and she realizes that she didn't get the steps all right,
Speaker 4: because she shoots and nothing happens, and she goes, oh,
Speaker 4: that's true crap, you know, And then she's got to
Speaker 4: figure out where she went around.
Speaker 3: But that's when she's actually decided she's gonna make the shot,
Speaker 3: because at one point she sees Frenchy like out like
Speaker 3: on some waterfall, and she's I should kill him. I
Speaker 3: could kill him right now. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So at this point, after the predator kills Raphael, she sorry.
Speaker 4: The dog comes up barking, and the predator turns and
Speaker 4: as he's about to kill this little dog that we've
Speaker 4: become attacked.
Speaker 3: God, it's the worst moment of the movie. I was
Speaker 3: so tense.
Speaker 4: It's awful. But then Tabe rides in on a horse
Speaker 4: that he said he was going to get and he
Speaker 4: starts attacking the predator, and he does a pretty damn
Speaker 4: good job of fucking the predator up. I mean, he
Speaker 4: basically is doing this thing where he's circling on the horse,
Speaker 4: he's stabbing, he's doing all this stuff, and Nadu his mask.
Speaker 4: The predator's mask gets knocked off of his head when
Speaker 4: Taba attacks, and Nadhu notices that the mask fires automatically
Speaker 4: whatever it's seeing. So when the predator makes the decision
Speaker 4: to shoot, it's the mask and the direction that the
Speaker 4: mask is facing that determines the direction of the bullet's
Speaker 4: you know, father alone.
Speaker 3: And she's seen the targeting laser dots in action before,
Speaker 3: so she knows if those are on, those are where
Speaker 3: that the projectiles are going. Yeah, but earlier on she
Speaker 3: fell into a bog and freed herself.
Speaker 4: Yes, And that's actually a very tense sequence.
Speaker 3: She's a great sequence.
Speaker 4: In the midst of her hunting, she does she falls
Speaker 4: into I mean, it's not really quicksand, but the idea
Speaker 4: is it's basically a quicksand it's his bog and she
Speaker 4: can't get herself out. And in the last ditch effort,
Speaker 4: she's got this axe with the rope on it and
Speaker 4: she manages to pull herself out of it. That will
Speaker 4: also become relevant for the conclusion of the movie. I'm
Speaker 4: glad you mentioned that. So Tabe is still fighting off,
Speaker 4: trying to fight off this predator while now he was
Speaker 4: struggling with the pistol. She can't quite figure it out,
Speaker 4: and finally Tabay tells her to run because he only
Speaker 4: considers I'm a threat. She's not a threat yet, and
Speaker 4: he is ultimately killed by the predator, giving her just
Speaker 4: enough time to escape, which is a sad moment because
Speaker 4: we've become very attached to Tabe.
Speaker 3: I loved him, man, and it's.
Speaker 4: Great, and it's just it's such a wonderful bond and
Speaker 4: it's really all up there on the screen. So then
Speaker 4: that evening Naduru is and sorry, they spy that that
Speaker 4: one super evil trapper, the real over you, real corpulent
Speaker 4: one that we keep talking about across the river. And
Speaker 4: this is where initially she's she gets the pistol out
Speaker 4: and she's going to aim to shoot him, but then
Speaker 4: you can see it dawns on her. She comes up
Speaker 4: with a different plan. She's going to use him to
Speaker 4: try and attract the predator, And this is really one
Speaker 4: of the more really really a brutal moment, probably maybe
Speaker 4: the most brutal in the whole movie. Fatherm Alone. So
Speaker 4: she speaks up on him. Well it's justified, but it's
Speaker 4: still pretty fair play.
Speaker 3: And this is literal turn he that guy knocked her
Speaker 3: out and then used her as bait for the predator.
Speaker 4: So she sneaks up on him and knocks him out.
Speaker 4: And then it's later and it's dark and he is
Speaker 4: woken up. But what is he woken up by? Father Malone?
Speaker 3: Rats gnawing at his stump of a leg.
Speaker 4: She's cut off his leg, yeah, to hobble him basically,
Speaker 4: and there are rats that are gnawing on the leg
Speaker 4: in his sleep. Just put yourself in that position, like
Speaker 4: you wake up what you think is just some sort
Speaker 4: of nightmare, and you look down and there's rats gnawing
Speaker 4: on what was your leg?
Speaker 3: I mean, she it's I refuse to put myself in
Speaker 3: his shoes or shoe because I would never put myself
Speaker 3: in a position where I was keeping a Native girl
Speaker 3: in a cage and then using bait for a monster.
Speaker 3: Fuck that guy. I'm glad he woke up with rats
Speaker 3: having a buffet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting he didn't
Speaker 4: have it coming, because he most certainly did. He's awful
Speaker 4: and we're just waiting for him to get his come up,
Speaker 4: and so this is only the start of that. So
Speaker 4: Nadu is very calmly sitting by the fire and talking
Speaker 4: to him.
Speaker 3: Okay, she is the only part of the movie I
Speaker 3: did not like, because.
Speaker 4: It's all I like this alone.
Speaker 3: It's all the subtext of the movie. It's everything that
Speaker 3: we've already been watching and accepting of. Like you say
Speaker 3: I can't do this, I'm going to do that. You
Speaker 3: tell me I can't do this, Well I will. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we know, man, we were on this journey with you.
Speaker 3: To me, though, is clumsy as fuck.
Speaker 4: I To me, I see it as we finally see
Speaker 4: how far she's come and what she's willing to do.
Speaker 3: We just saw it. She kind off the guy's fucking
Speaker 3: leg and she's waiting for the fucking predator and she's
Speaker 3: gonna take it on hand to hand, say a word.
Speaker 4: That's fine to me. It didn't bother me, but I
Speaker 4: could see where maybe it's a little bit too much.
Speaker 3: But everything look if everything else weren't so fucking perfect.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't care that speech would not stand out in
Speaker 3: any of the Predator movie.
Speaker 4: I guess I just found it sort of chilling because
Speaker 4: of the circumstance and because of what we know is coming.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 3: So you see that in her eyes. Man, that's fair.
Speaker 4: But again, like I said, I didn't have a problem
Speaker 4: with it. But what she's done is she's put a
Speaker 4: rifle nearby, and he kind of scrabbles his way over
Speaker 4: to pick it up. And what as she's talking to
Speaker 4: him and basically saying to him like, you don't realize
Speaker 4: that I'm killing you right now, Like you have no idea,
Speaker 4: and he's swearing at her in French, and you kind
Speaker 4: of get a sense for what he's saying. And she
Speaker 4: eats more of that herb that makes the body go cold,
Speaker 4: and this is all part of her plan, so she
Speaker 4: gets cold. He's holding the rifle at that moment, the
Speaker 4: predator finally finds them. He's been tracking them based on
Speaker 4: this the blood from this guy's stump, and he's effectively
Speaker 4: holding a rifle at the predator. She knows that the
Speaker 4: predator will now cons or him a threat and not her.
Speaker 3: And this is how you leave somebody as bait fucker.
Speaker 3: You put a rifle in their hand next to a fire,
Speaker 3: to a creature that sees mainly in temperature.
Speaker 4: It's a wonderful sort of conclusion to the saga of
Speaker 4: this French trapper that we've come to hate so much.
Speaker 4: So he after the Predator kills the trapper, that's when
Speaker 4: Naduru finally decides, I'm going to use this pistol. So
Speaker 4: she gets way up close to the predator, shoots him
Speaker 4: in the head, which knocks off his helmet, and she
Speaker 4: she runs off with And this is there's an analog
Speaker 4: to like what Dutch at the end of the first
Speaker 4: Predator movie, where he's crafted all these traps and he's
Speaker 4: figured out a way that he's going to try to
Speaker 4: beat the predator at his own game. So predator continues
Speaker 4: to track.
Speaker 3: This is the elegant ending of Predators.
Speaker 4: It is, it really is. So so she has taken
Speaker 4: the bloody leg that she's taken from the trapper and
Speaker 4: she trails it to this bog basically, so the predator
Speaker 4: tracks via this leg, this cut off leg, this amputated leg,
Speaker 4: and she then jumps onto the predator and just starts
Speaker 4: wailing on it with the hatchet. It's this pitched fight
Speaker 4: that commences, and she's getting more and more good hits
Speaker 4: in on this thing. I mean, it's really a battle.
Speaker 3: But to the.
Speaker 4: Movie's credit, never for one moment do you think to yourself,
Speaker 4: there's no way that this you know, this woman could
Speaker 4: do anything to this giant predator. We've seen so much
Speaker 4: of Nadu. It's so believable father alone, that she could
Speaker 4: take on the predator toe to toe and beat it
Speaker 4: in this well.
Speaker 3: What I like is that they never pull punches when
Speaker 3: it comes to him hitting her back, like he will
Speaker 3: just fucking toss her away like a rag doll, and
Speaker 3: she has to take that, you know.
Speaker 4: But it's brutal. At one point, she she's trapped. He's
Speaker 4: got the shield and he's got her trapped.
Speaker 3: And he keeps saying, this is my favorite but god
Speaker 3: damn one again seeing go it's incredible.
Speaker 4: And he is bearing down. He's trying to cut off
Speaker 4: her head with this thing, and.
Speaker 3: She has went bare hand between two rocks and that
Speaker 3: has slowed the descent of this blade. But he keeps
Speaker 3: shoving further, and he keeps cutting further through the rock.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 4: But then this is a move that I've never seen
Speaker 4: anyone do in these movies. She rips off one of
Speaker 4: the tusks off the predator's face and stabs him in
Speaker 4: the face with it and then ducks down. That is brutal,
Speaker 4: that's hardcore. We've never seen somebody do that. Seriously, I
Speaker 4: can't say enough about how you know how formidable she
Speaker 4: is during this fight, during the whole movie. Really, I've
Speaker 4: bought into it, hook line and sinker. Finally, she maneuvers
Speaker 4: this predator back to the bog that you'd mentioned she's
Speaker 4: trapped in earlier, and she's she's carefully propped up the
Speaker 4: helmet behind the predator so that it's facing the predator.
Speaker 4: When when it's coming after her and the predator shoots
Speaker 4: a bolt at what he thinks is her, he doesn't
Speaker 4: realize the mask is behind him. The bolt takes like
Speaker 4: a left turn at Albuquerque Circles all the way back home.
Speaker 3: They should be noted that the bolt gun you can
Speaker 3: just use in your hand, and if the targeting system
Speaker 3: isn't on, it's just gonna fly like a regular spear
Speaker 3: gun would. So he doesn't realize that the targeting system
Speaker 3: is on and it's on him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he thinks he's just gonna shoot her and
Speaker 4: that'll be it. But the thing takes a wide bank
Speaker 4: left and shoots him in the head and that's it.
Speaker 4: Finally she bested the predator. It's an amazing moment. So
Speaker 4: she carries the severed head of the predator back to
Speaker 4: her camp, just the way that Tabe carried the lion
Speaker 4: carcass back. And she also has what we now know
Speaker 4: is the famous Adelini pistol from Predator to this guy,
Speaker 4: Raphael was Raphael Adelini. The inscription on the pistol, So
Speaker 4: that's a really awesome tie in back to Predator too.
Speaker 4: And she presents these things to the presiding war chief
Speaker 4: and she tells them in no certain terms, they need
Speaker 4: to move to more protected ground. They're not safe there anymore.
Speaker 4: And as a result of this, what happens, she has
Speaker 4: made the new war chief of the tribe.
Speaker 3: What I love is that when he came, when her
Speaker 3: brother came back, his face was painted in blood. And
Speaker 3: when she comes back, her face is painted in bioluminescent blood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all that bioluminescent blood. It's fantastic and what a
Speaker 4: great ending. It just everything came full circle. She's finally
Speaker 4: got her due as the hunter that we all knew
Speaker 4: that she was. And it's fantastic. And then the credits roll.
Speaker 4: But that's not it. What happens with the credits, Father Malone?
Speaker 4: What's the interesting thing they do here?
Speaker 3: Are you talking about? How they have a it's not animated,
Speaker 3: but we get drawings of the characters while the credits
Speaker 3: are rolling, and then rather ominously, at the end, it
Speaker 3: shows more predatorships like descending out of the sky.
Speaker 4: It effectively tells the story in a Native American animation,
Speaker 4: like these sort of drawings, and that's the final image,
Speaker 4: is more of those ships coming. Even the soundtrack at
Speaker 4: that point has this sort of mournful like this idea
Speaker 4: that she thought that they're safe and that she conquered
Speaker 4: this threat, but.
Speaker 3: Oh no, she knew that there were going to be
Speaker 3: more on the way, so she's like, we need to
Speaker 3: get out of here.
Speaker 4: That also could be true also, but man, what an ending?
Speaker 4: What an ending?
Speaker 3: I would like to mention one thing we found to mention,
Speaker 3: which is the we don't get a predator self destruct
Speaker 3: device in this but we do get a predator mass
Speaker 3: destruction device that is so beautifully rendered. It's during the
Speaker 3: French trapper sequence. Leaves this little thing, this little device,
Speaker 3: this little mechanism, and three little balls pop up into
Speaker 3: the air and are hovering, and then beautifully we cut
Speaker 3: to overlooking this miss shrewn valley where Nadu turns and
Speaker 3: watches and there's a concussion that goes off that knocks
Speaker 3: down all of these trees. It's beautiful, it learnt what
Speaker 3: happened now? Is that a precursor to the explosive device.
Speaker 4: I think we just chalk that up to being a
Speaker 4: more primitive version of the I mean, it definitely killed
Speaker 4: whatever was in that radius. And the funny part of
Speaker 4: that scene is these like balls, discs or whatever they
Speaker 4: are that rise up. These French trappers don't know what
Speaker 4: to make of it. They're just kind of stick and
Speaker 4: you would think, like, they don't know what this is.
Speaker 4: This is the seventeen hundreds. This may as well be
Speaker 4: magic to them, and they just sit there and watch
Speaker 4: it and what's going on here?
Speaker 3: You would too? So would I? Right it happened to
Speaker 3: me right now, I would probably watch what's going on here.
Speaker 4: At the very last minute. I think they some one
Speaker 4: of them realizes, oh well, let's get out of here,
Speaker 4: but it's too late. And that shot from above where
Speaker 4: all you see are the ripple like sort of almost
Speaker 4: like lightning that ripples through that area because it's all missed,
Speaker 4: strewn and fog ridden, and it really is cool. And
Speaker 4: there's a lot of the weaponry for the predator we've
Speaker 4: talked a little bit about. It is all really cool
Speaker 4: in this and there's nothing that is that beggars belief
Speaker 4: for the time period. He's got like this sort of
Speaker 4: staff that can extend and break apart and he can
Speaker 4: throw it like a lance or you know, do this
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. He's got the wrist shield, he's got
Speaker 4: you know, the mask that effectively has a targeting system
Speaker 4: integrated into it, but it reads like bone and not metal.
Speaker 4: It's great. I mean, he's just such. He's a scarier predator,
Speaker 4: I think than most because he is so savage. I
Speaker 4: think he's a little more savage than the other predators
Speaker 4: we've seen. And maybe that part of that is the
Speaker 4: idea that maybe the code isn't quite as formal. He
Speaker 4: seems to be a little bit more you know, as
Speaker 4: savage and maybe not quite as bound by code as
Speaker 4: the others.
Speaker 3: He is much more pharaoh, but he does take the
Speaker 3: time to carefully preserve his trip. We get that coyote,
Speaker 3: we get the coyote skull getting getting polished up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a very I mean that's CG obviously,
Speaker 4: but that is a very That's kind of a gruesome
Speaker 4: scene because it's you really see all of the matter
Speaker 4: and flesh just dissolve away from this skull and all
Speaker 4: it's left with is just the bone that he then
Speaker 4: hooks right onto his belt. It's really quite it. Again,
Speaker 4: it has to be CG, but it doesn't read as
Speaker 4: bad CG. It all feels pretty pretty realistic to me.
Speaker 3: Now, we rated the Predator movies previously in the last
Speaker 3: episode with Daha, and what we ended up with was Predator,
Speaker 3: The Predator two, Alien Versus Predator, Alien Versus Predator Requiem.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go first, Pray Predator, Predator the Predator, the
Speaker 3: rest of the list. Basically, this is the best in
Speaker 3: the series.
Speaker 4: It's a very hard thing for me to judge objectively.
Speaker 4: I would say this is the best made movie. It
Speaker 4: works on so many levels. Just the fact that as
Speaker 4: we said, you could take the Predator rout and it
Speaker 4: would still be a really kick ass movie. It's I
Speaker 4: just it's hard for me to rate it higher than
Speaker 4: the original because there would be no prey if there
Speaker 4: wasn't a Predator, but gun to head. If this is
Speaker 4: objectively determining which is the best quality made movie, I
Speaker 4: would have to agree with you. I'd have to go
Speaker 4: pray first.
Speaker 3: This does everything that first movie was trying to do,
Speaker 3: and it does it better, and it gives us characters,
Speaker 3: and it gives us community, and it gives us a
Speaker 3: fucking on top of everything else, it gives us a
Speaker 3: look into a world that is rarely shown in American film,
Speaker 3: which is a fucking travesty. Just the Native American community
Speaker 3: on display here and played by Native Americans. Gasp.
Speaker 4: There's a lot more going on with this. This compared
Speaker 4: to the first Predator, this is a pretty sprawling movie. Predator.
Speaker 4: The original is obviously just mainly limited to those five
Speaker 4: or six you know, Special Forces guys and the Predator,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of it's almost claustrophobic in the way
Speaker 4: that it's just them versus this Predator. Where's this We've
Speaker 4: got nothing but open spaces. This is such a beautiful
Speaker 4: looking depiction of that part of the United States, and
Speaker 4: it's just so it's really apples and oranges fa them alone.
Speaker 4: It's hard to make a direct comparison because there's such
Speaker 4: two different, very different movies. It's hard for me to
Speaker 4: decide that's true. I'd say Pray Pray gets the win.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, Man, Alien and Aliens are different movies,
Speaker 3: but Alien is a better movie. I'm sorry, it's.
Speaker 4: Fair again, it's and it's no. I don't think it's
Speaker 4: a disservice to Predator that this is because Pray had
Speaker 4: the benefit.
Speaker 3: We improved the formula. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 4: That's the thing. Pray had the time in the history
Speaker 4: to look and see what worked and what didn't and
Speaker 4: what can we try to reinvigorate the formula. So in
Speaker 4: a certain sense, they were kind of traveling and Predator
Speaker 4: the first Predator's Wake. But I got handed to Dan
Speaker 4: Trachtenberg and his whole team of writers and filmmakers because
Speaker 4: they literally built a better mouse trap. It's incredible.
Speaker 3: I can't say enough good about it. It's the one
Speaker 3: action film of recent memory that I've watched multiple times.
Speaker 3: And still felt exhilarated during the action sequences and frightened
Speaker 3: in certain sequences and really responds to these characters. If
Speaker 3: you're hearing snoring, by the way, that's ripley Gene, who
Speaker 3: has climbed into my lap and has decided to go
Speaker 3: to sleep.
Speaker 4: Look. I finally had the pleasure of meeting Ripley g
Speaker 4: last week, and boy, I wanted to take her home
Speaker 4: in my carry on luggage. She is as more adorable
Speaker 4: than I ever thought she was. She's just such a
Speaker 4: sweet pup, and I can't I'm trying to think I
Speaker 4: can't hear her snoring, but I did hear her snoring
Speaker 4: then though.
Speaker 3: Very okay, good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: She she always has trouble watching movies with animals, and
Speaker 3: she certainly was alarmed for a lot of the my
Speaker 3: rewatch of this film during the dog sequences, but she
Speaker 3: eventually calmed down and actually watched this movie. I'm not kidding. Wow,
Speaker 3: it's impressive, and was really concerned during action sequences, So
Speaker 3: I was just so proud of her.
Speaker 4: He tried to watch. We watched Clue when I was
Speaker 4: there father alone, and I recall that a couple times
Speaker 4: during Clue, I don't recall exactly. Maybe it was when the.
Speaker 3: Was during the dog sequence at the beginning. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: she had to leave the room at that point. That's
Speaker 3: what it was.
Speaker 4: I forgot about that part. Good stuff.
Speaker 3: But anyway that look, if you haven't seen this movie,
Speaker 3: please well we just spoiled fucking everything. But if you
Speaker 3: haven't seen it, watched it. If you haven't seen it,
Speaker 3: watch it again, watch it with the commanche on it.
Speaker 3: It's fucking fascinating. This movie was great. I love every
Speaker 3: bit of it.
Speaker 4: Likewise, and this is coming. Anyone who's heard Yahucha Fest
Speaker 4: throughout all these movies that I've watched, you'll know that
Speaker 4: I came into this series with a bit of trepidation because,
Speaker 4: aside from the first couple of movies that the rest
Speaker 4: didn't really interest me all that much, and it was
Speaker 4: the law of diminishing returns. This brought me back into
Speaker 4: this series in a big way. It made me go
Speaker 4: from Predator that's kind of ran its course to I
Speaker 4: cannot wait to see what Tracktenburg does with bad Lands.
Speaker 4: This is gonna be amazing, And every trailer that I've
Speaker 4: seen of that movie gets me more and more, almost
Speaker 4: to the point where I'm a little nervous now that
Speaker 4: it can't possibly live up to this hype, but I
Speaker 4: trust them, I really do.
Speaker 3: I do too. I am so looking forward to it.
Speaker 3: I'm also looking forward to his next film. You should
Speaker 3: be looking forward to it too. You're gonna hear it
Speaker 3: in two weeks we're gonna be talking about Predator, Killer
Speaker 3: of Killers, the first anathology. How fucking appropriate here on
Speaker 3: midnight viewing of the Predator series. Until then, Where can
Speaker 3: people find you when they're looking for you?
Speaker 1: HP?
Speaker 3: What are you working on? What's going on?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: I'm not far. I co host the Night Mister Walters
Speaker 4: Taxi podcast alongside my erstwhile co host here Father Malone.
Speaker 4: I host the AO. I host the Noise Junkies music
Speaker 4: podcast as well, and I have a band camp site
Speaker 4: which is hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 3: As for me, you're listening to it. You're listening all
Speaker 3: the time. Thank you everyone for your listening, by the way,
Speaker 3: really appreciated. The numbers have been sort of cuckoo of
Speaker 3: late midnight viewing. We're on Father Malone's weekly roundup is
Speaker 3: on Mondays. We're looking at current streaming, current theatrical and
Speaker 3: every Friday here you're either hearing HP and I talking
Speaker 3: about a fest or you're hearing let's talk about a
Speaker 3: horror anthology television series. What are we doing here with
Speaker 3: This is the Iota Fest. We're wrapping it up soon.
Speaker 3: Obviously we're working our way towards bad lands. But fear not,
Speaker 3: because another fest is right behind it. Over on the
Speaker 3: Patreon channel, you can listen to Moranus Fest that's going
Speaker 3: on right now. That is the Rick Moranus Fest. HP
Speaker 3: and I are looking at the cinematic efforts of mister
Speaker 3: Rick moranis. But starting December, HP and I are going
Speaker 3: to be taking a cinematic trip through the stars. Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ Almighty, We're going to be taking a look at
Speaker 3: Star Trek. Everybody join us for those.
Speaker 1: Pleach we can kill it?
Speaker 3: What ding hell are you
Speaker 1: H