Prey

Prey is the best Predator movie, and it's not even close. It succeeds on every level - the cinematography, the creature design, the story, all of it. It's just a beautiful movie from start to finish. Heck, it would have been an excellent film even without the Predator in it. They could have replaced the Yautja with a big bear or something, and it still would have been a good coming-of-age warrior's tale.

You know what, I'll go even farther - this is the only good Predator film. Which is not to say the others are bad, but even the best ones are generally "good for a sci-fi popcorn-muncher" or "good for a macho action/horror film." But Prey has no "good for x" qualifiers, it's just good cinema. What "The Dark Knight" did for superhero films, Prey does for Predator movies. It brings legitimacy to the genre.

But wait, no, I'm not done yet. I'll even say something that's going to shock some of my friends out of their shoes. Prey is a better movie than Aliens. No, I mean it. I love Aliens, and it's still my favorite film. And as you'll see at the bottom of this blog entry, I still rank Aliens number one. 

But if I'm going to be truly objective here, Prey is serious cinema in a way that Aliens is not. Rather than just keep the audience entertained with blood-pumping action and quotable quips, Prey does something rarely seen in either series. It's art. Every frame would look good on your wall. The Yautja has never looked better, the pacing is good, the camera angles, even the lighting.

Oh man, the lighting. That's a whole other rant. Movies are too dark these days. I hate directors who think we need realistic lighting. There's a story about filming LotR: The Two Towers where somebody asked the director where the light was coming from, since the battle was at night. He replied, "The same place the music is coming from." People have to remember that these are movies, and movies are more fun when we can see them. Prey has a few scenes set at night, and all of them are well-lit.

If I have one complaint about Prey, it's that some of the animals look obviously CGI. But they still look fantastic, and the CGI-ness actually helps me, because there's a lot of animal gore that would bother me if it looked too real.

When I started typing this review, I decided I'd update my ranking of the Aliens/Predator movies. I wrote the last one before I saw Alien: Romulus, so it needed updating anyway. In typing out the new list, I remembered I still hadn't seen The Predator (2018). I was planning to skip it entirely since it was so poorly reviewed. But then I decided I'd get it out of the way so I could rank it.

It's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it's definitely not good. The dialogue is often painful, and it has a lot of shallow comedy that feels out-of-place in a Predator film. The acting is ridiculous, like Power Rangers quality. The tone is uneven, and the climax is downright goofy. But it's got some fun action scenes, and overall it's still more entertaining than Alien 3.

And in related news, I've watched the first three episodes of Alien: Earth and I'm loving it so far. I'll blog more about it once it's finished. 

Ranking the Alien/Predator movies: 

1. Aliens (1986)
2. Alien (1979)
3. Prey (2022)
4. Alien: Romulus (2024)
5. Predators (2010)
6. Predator (1987)
7. Predator 2 (1990)
8. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
9. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
10. Alien Resurrection (1997)
11. Prometheus (2012)
12. Alien: Covenant (2017)
13. The Predator (2018) 
999. Alien 3 (1992)