The history of the Predator franchise has been a long and winding road, one peppered with sequels, reboots, crossovers, fresh starts, and false dawns. It’s been 35 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger set off into the jungle with the manliest men he could find, and yet a genuinely worthy successor has yet to emerge. That being said, fans are hoping Prey will succeed where all others have failed.
It might be heading straight to streaming, but 10 Cloverfield Lane showed that director Dan Trachtenberg knows his way around an atmospheric thriller that maximizes the tools at its disposal, and it can’t be denied that the concept is a doozy. Set 300 years ago, Amber Midthunder’s Naru will end up going toe-to-toe with the cosmic trophy hunters, without any of the modern-day technology that’s characterized the series to date.
The first teaser trailer promised a fast-paced, frantic, and very R-rated prequel to the Predator mythos, and longtime supporters of the sci-fi action horror saga are crossing their fingers in hope and expectation that this could be the first entry to match the original’s classic status.
To be fair, Predator 2 is solid, and Robert Rodriguez’s Predators deserved the sequel it never ended up getting, but everything else has been very hit-or-miss. The Alien vs. Predator crossovers started off in mediocrity and got exponentially worse, while Shane Black’s The Predator was the laziest kind of legacy continuation. Hopes are high for Prey, then, which has all the potential in the world to live up to the hype.
