Prey star Amber Midthunder reveals what her biggest concern was while making the franchise film. The series began 35 years ago with the 1987 sci-fi action thriller Predator, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a member of an elite team of commandos who find themselves on a jungle mission that is swiftly derailed when they realize they must face off against a violent extraterrestrial hunter. That film was followed by three sequels and two crossovers with the Alien franchise, all of which transported the Predators to a different locale, including suburban America, Los Angeles, Antarctica, and even the Predator home planet in 2010's Predators, which starred Oscar winner Adrien Brody.
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Prey, which premiered exclusively on Hulu on August 5, 2022, is the biggest swing that the franchise has taken yet. Rather than merely finding a new setting for the Predator to stalk, they found an entirely new time period, traveling back hundreds of years to 1719. The film follows a young Comanche woman, Naru (Midthunder), who wants to be a warrior despite the societal expectation that she will focus on medicine. Her opportunity to make her case arrives when a vicious Predator begins to stalk the nearby forest, and she is one of the few people with the skills to stop it.
Collider recently sat down to talk with Midthunder about her role in Reservation Dogs season 2. However, the conversation couldn't help but turn to her recent action-packed role in Prey. She revealed that the biggest sticking point for her was "how Native people would feel about it." She wanted to make sure the film did right by the underrepresented group, and she was incredibly grateful "to have Native people, in general, respond well." Read her full quote below:
Really, the thing that I was thinking about the most, in making the movie, and then releasing the movie, was how Native people would feel about it. Indian country’s response to the movie was really what I felt the most anxious about. That was the biggest thing that was weighing on me, what the response for that would be. I feel like that’s who the movie was for and that’s what the movie was about, so to have it come out in that way, and to have Comanche people respond well, and to have Native people, in general, respond well, was a huge sigh of relief.
While it is always a nerve-wracking prospect whether or not a film will be received well by the community it intends to honor, the creators of Prey put their all into making sure the film was as historically and culturally accurate as possible. This included producer Jhane Myers, who is a member of both the Comanche and Blackfeet Nation, creating entire binders full of reference materials to help the film bring the world to life, including a historically accurate toothbrush. Hulu even includes an option to watch a Comanche language dub of Prey performed by the full cast.
In addition to Midthunder's worries about Prey being assuaged, the film has been an incredible success for the streaming service. Although a sequel has not yet been officially confirmed, there is an increasing likelihood that it will happen. If Prey 2 is able to make it to screens, hopefully it will continue to focus on cultural accuracy to make the world of the 1700s Comanche tribe come to life even more.