A history-making sci-fi thriller that confidently rescued a franchise from itself overtakes a double dose of Will Smith on streaming

Terminator, Planet of the Apes, Back to the Future, Alien. Few genres are as defined by their franchises quite as much as science fiction, but not all of these serialized adventures can claim a sturdy track record.

Predator, up until recently, was one such franchise in need of a dire change. Despite going two-for-two with Predator and Predator 2, 2010’s Predators marked a disgusting low for blockbuster cinema, and 2018’s The Predator did little in the way of clawing back its reputation. All this, while being associated with the Alien vs. Predator clown show. Thankfully, Prey came out nearly three summers ago now, so those woes have long been replaced by a hunt-happy luminary that continues to enjoy streaming success today.

Per FlixPatrol, Prey has emerged as the top film on Tubi in the United States at the time of writing, outsmarting the likes of a third place Independence Day and a sixth place Bad Boys, whose combined efforts in the past had a massive effect on the blockbuster sphere, Will Smith, and, more regrettably, Michael Bay.

Set in the year 1719 on the North American Great Plains, Prey stars Amber Midthunder as Naru, a young Comanche woman whose hunting ambitions clash frustratingly with her tribe’s expectations of her. A tracking excursion eventually pits her against the likes of grizzly bears and French fur traders, but her biggest problem by some distance is the wrist blade-equipped monster that looks a lot like the alien that Arnold Schwarzenegger will fight a few centuries from now.

Prey made history as the first feature-length film to be dubbed entirely in the Comanche language, with all of the actors providing voiceover work for that version of the film. It also made history as the first Predator film released this millennium to not suck, and those two achievements are more closely tied than one may think.

The cerebral anchor of Prey‘s bloody hero-versus-Yautja proceedings is the interest it takes in the relationship that all of these characters have to the act of hunting. Prior to North America’s colonization by the British, the Comanche regularly hunted bison, and the film’s conflict is partially driven by the fate of the local bison population that Naru’s tribe relies on.

Pay attention to the how and the why of how Naru and her tribe, the Yautja, and the French fur trappers all hunt. Notice how Naru (the protagonist) directly puts herself in danger for many of her hunts and does so for the sake of survival. Notice how the antagonistic French fur trappers also hunt for survival, but avoid putting themselves on the line for it, opting instead to let their bear traps do all the dirty work so they can safely deliver an undignified death to that which they trap.

And finally, notice how the Yautja — the primary antagonist(!) — doesn’t even hunt for the sake of survival, and simply kills everything in sight because it can. Indeed, it’s satisfying enough that Prey is viscerally effective on a purely technical level, but the line of thinking it plays upon is deliciously unique, and speaks to the unthinkably fertile narrative potential that franchise films are capable of occupying. Alien: Romulus, Prey‘s distant cousin, is another fine example.