(Los Angeles) After battling powerful foes across space and time, the saga’s invisible alien hunters predator have a new — or rather an old — enemy in the person of a Comanche warrior of the 18e century.
Posted at 1:57 p.m.
The ante-episode Prey (prey in English), which is released Friday in the United States on Hulu, takes perhaps the most unlikely twist in the saga predatorwhich began in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Since then, the bloodthirsty hunting creatures have slaughtered humans in the Central American jungle, Los Angeles and on distant planets, even rubbing shoulders with the monsters of the franchise. Alien in two movies.
The plot of the last opus takes place in North America and much earlier, in 1719, the predator there chasing pell-mell Comanche warriors, French trappers and bison.
During a preview at Comic-Con in San Diego last month, director Dan Trachtenberg explained that he drew his inspiration from the fact that “Native Americans, and more particularly the Comanches, are often relegated to the rank of sidekicks or villains, and never heroes” in the movie industry.
At 19e century, members of this tribe fought Europeans and other indigenous peoples on the southern plains of the present-day United States, earning a reputation as fearsome warriors.
Hollywood has often portrayed them as brutal enemies, as in John Ford’s cult western, The prisoner of the desert (1956).
In PreyNative American actress Amber Midthunder plays Naru, a young Comanche woman who must fight both sexism within her tribe and the invisible monster that stalks them.
Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ decision to “support an action movie that not only has a heroine, but an Indigenous heroine as well…That’s something I don’t think I’ve ever seen,” confided the actress.
The film’s lines were recorded in English, French and Comanche, but the Native American actors then re-recorded their lines so that the feature film could be played in its entirety in the native language, a first for a big production according to producer Jhane Myers, she -even Comanche.