KEN Things Ryan Gosling Can't Live Without | GQ

namor being called “a child without love” by a spanish friar who was cooperating with and supporting conquistador enslavers when namor was literally there because he loved his mom and she loved the surface world and this was her home and they were desecrating it with pure evil.. oh it made me MAD

Black Panther Wakanda Forever was a beautiful representation about how people of color are pit against each other because of hurt and pain caused by colonialism and the fear of it.

Too often we treat oppression as if it is a competition. Who has suffered more, whose history was the roughest, who receives more compassion or hate from the rest of the world. And even when we try to work together often we don’t want to bend in our ways or be open in order to understand another or communicate/listen effectively to come to an agreement on how we can stand together.

In this movie, the UN and the CIA were of course a threat to the protagonists, but they truly didn’t even have to intervene directly. The mere threat of exploitation and colonization was enough to nearly drive Talokan and Wakanda into a frenzy and start fighting one another and hurting each other. And sometimes we get so caught up in the hurt and the vengeance until we’re bleeding out with our hands around each other’s throats and we pause to think “why are we even doing this to each other?”

Ultimately it’s pointless, the endless cycle of pain and hurt and for what? That’s what the colonizers want. The UN/CIA knew nothing about Talokan, but if Wakanda and Talokan had wiped each other out, they would’ve loved nothing more than to sweep up and exploit the vibranium resources left behind without having to do any of the dirty work. Shuri realized that being consumed with vengeance wasn’t going to help anybody, and the fear/threat of losing more loved ones was only going to get more people hurt. It killed Killmonger and it was killing Shuri, Namor and their people. The very people they were trying to protect. They both saw the beauty in each other’s cultures, and they knew it was worth dying to protect, but not like this. Why should they tear each other down like this when they have both fought such hardship to thrive?

Originally Talokan saw Wakanda’s act of opening their borders as a threat against themselves, but it was the fear of what the colonizers would do, and yet Talokan attacked Wakanda for it. In the end, their perspective shifted, and Wakanda also chose to respect their decision to remain a closed culture.

We celebrate each other’s differences in their cultural uniqueness, and we come together to unite over our values in order to support one other.

The only way we stand a chance against the effects of colonization and the systems set in place today is if we continue to find ways to support one another and stand together, instead of doing the work for the oppressors and tearing each other down.

i love reading sad books bc when your own grief is stopped up inside you like a clogged drain you can grieve for a character on a page and understand that you're also grieving for yourself a little bit

Oh, and also...

To anyone complaining about Prey and how Naru isn’t capable of taking down a Predator (spoilers follow):

One of the smartest scenes is her hunting rabbits, she realizes she’s not quick enough to retrieve the axe and pursue her next quarry at the same time, so she attaches a rope for a quick retrieval and we see her victorious with at least half a dozen rabbits on her shoulder.

This movie shows her learning and she doesn’t just do it once, she does it twice.

One of my favorite scenes is her scene when Naru returns to the french camp. She heals the translator as best she can and learns partially how to fire a gun but she forgets the key part and it almost gets her killed so she says fuck that idea. But she doesn’t get rid of the gun. Instead she keeps it and traps a french man who she then watches load and ready the gun he uses and she realizes how to fire the gun then by just observing him. it’s one of the smartest presentation of a character learning in recent cinema history.

and she doesn’t do it twice, she does it three times.

as her brother faces predator she learns how predator technology works by watching. she already has previous history with the three dots shining on a person who then immediately dies, she knows those dots mean danger. so she watches as predator fires his homing arrows and sees that no matter where they’re aimed if that helmet is on, they’re going to land where the helmet marks. she knows from watching the Predator kill her brother, a hunting party, and hundreds of french men that she will not be able to kill this thing in a straight up brawl, that’s basically asking for death. but if she can line him up to kill himself? she’s got this in the bag.

Prey is one of the best movies in cinema history and its because it doesn’t dumb anything down. Naru doesn’t brute force anything, she outsmarts her opponents every time. 

If you didn’t realize she was learning after every encounter then the issue isn’t the movie, it’s you.

Scenery in PREY (2022)

“Not every smart creature is easy to train.” Sarii in Prey (2022)

So many people are misinterpreting one of the opening scenes of Prey, and they’re misinterpreting it the same way in complete opposite directions.

One of the first scenes shows Naru practicing with throwing her hatchet, and then attempting to use it to hunt a deer.  The deer is startled by a loud noise (What we know to be the Predator’s ship) and starts running, and despite a vigorous pursuit by Naru it manages to evade her and escape.

Many people, particularly the “she’s a Mary Sue” crowd but also some others who have criticized other aspects of the film, have lambasted the idea of showing her hunting with a throwing axe and being able to run as fast as a deer.  Axes are not hunting weapons, and no human can run fast enough to catch a deer on foot.  They say this is an example of either “woke” character shilling, or of ignorant/racist portrayals of Native Americans using ridiculous weaponry and bizarre feats of strength instead of the real-life technologies and skills of hunting.

Other people, generally those who are fans of the movie, love that this is an early establishment of her badass-ness and skill.  They say that it shows that she is a predator herself, and sets up her later confrontation with the Predator.

Except what both sides of this reaction don’t seem to get is that, as I said, the deer escapes.  Naru misses both of her throws with her axe, and even with her dog Sarii helping to corral the deer it still outpaces her and runs away.  Later, her mother explicitly points out that her hatchet is meant for harvesting and toolwork, not hunting.  And that no matter how close she got, you can’t eat “almost”.

Both sides of the response take this scene as some sort of victory for Naru, apparently missing the fact that despite all of her exertions she doesn’t bring home any food for her people.  Despite all of her training and skill with the axe the movie shows that it will never replace the bow-and-arrow as a means of distance striking (And even after multiple training montages, the only animal she actually manages to successfully hunt with her axe in the entire film are a couple of small rabbits).

I feel that that is the point of this scene: To show that you need to use the right tool for the job, and Naru has to learn that she can’t just brute-force your way to victory.  She keeps trying to find ways to improve her axe use (it was from her father, I understand why she tries to use it for everything she can), but when preparing for the final confrontation with the Predator she knows that she cannot rely on it as her killing weapon.  So despite continuing to use it as her fighting weapon (And she does very well with it) she arranges several other traps and ultimately plans on using the Predator’s own weapons to finish it off.  She gets in several good hits with the axe, but plans to strike the killing blow with a bow-and-arrow after all (Using the Predator’s advanced arrow-shooting device).

It’s a very clear arc for her and her hunting skills/style from the beginning to the end.  She learned from her failure at the start of the film and changed for the finale.

Prey (AKA Predator 5) is live on Hulu (US) & Disney+ (UK) right now!

Set in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago, “Prey” is the story of a young woman, Naru, a fierce and highly skilled warrior. She has been raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters who roam the Great Plains, so when danger threatens her camp, she sets out to protect her people. The prey she stalks, and ultimately confronts, turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technically advanced arsenal, resulting in a vicious and terrifying showdown between the two adversaries.

“Prey” is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, written by Patrick Aison (“Jack Ryan,” “Treadstone”), and produced by John Davis (“Jungle Cruise,” “The Predator”) and Jhane Myers (“Monsters of God”), with Lawrence Gordon (“Watchmen”), Marty Ewing (“It: Chapter Two”), James E. Thomas, John C. Thomas and Marc Toberoff (“Fantasy Island”) serving as executive producers.

The filmmakers were committed to creating a film that provides an accurate portrayal of the Comanche and brings a level of authenticity that rings true to its Indigenous peoples. Myers, an acclaimed filmmaker, Sundance Fellow and member of the Comanche nation herself, is known for her attention and dedication to films surrounding the Comanche and Blackfeet nations and her passion for honoring the legacies of the Native communities. As a result, the film features a cast comprised almost entirely of Native and First Nation’s talent, including Amber Midthunder (“The Ice Road,” “Roswell, New Mexico”), newcomer Dakota Beavers, Stormee Kipp (“Sooyii”), Michelle Thrush (“The Journey Home”), Julian Black Antelope (“Tribal”).

Predator 2 (1990) dir. Stephen Hopkins Prey (2022) dir. Dan Trachtenberg

Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers in Prey (2022)

This is as far as I go. No more. This is it.

protip for all of you who i am about to bully into watching prey (2022) hulu for some stupid fucking reason doesnt include the comanche dub in the normal languages choices menu, so if you just (like me) immediately click to play and dont go to the movies page, you will not see the option listed, you will only see english and audio description listed. instead, you have to physically open the page for the movie, then click on comanche dub in a separate tab. its very stupid, i dont know why they did it that way, but this is the first movie EVER to be released fully in a native language on release day (and not dubbed decades later), and i can say from the few minutes i spent watching the english language version and then finally figuring out what was wrong, the comanche version is better, and it is how the creators intended the movie to be seen (the studio axed the film being completely in comanche for, idk, capitalism reasons i guess)

here is a helpful photo

PREY (2022) dir. Dan Trachtenberg

PREY (2022) dir. Dan Trachtenberg

You think that I am not a hunter like you. That I am not a threat. That is what makes me dangerous. You can’t see that I’m killing you. And it won’t either.

absolutely travesty that prey 2022 did not get a theatrical release

I’ve seen a lot of praise for the way Prey went back to “the roots” of the Predator franchise with a simple, direct story of the Predator hunting on Earth and the locals caught up in its way.  These observations are very correct, but I also noticed another way that the film echoes the original Predator that it seems nobody else is talking about: It portrays a developed, independent story before the Predator gets involved at all.

The original Predator started as a political thriller/action movie.  The reason that Dutch and his squad are in the jungle in the first place is because they’re on a hostage rescue mission, which unbeknownst to them is actually a front for a CIA operation to suppress an invasion/insurgency against a US-supported government in Central America.  For the first forty-five minutes of the film this is all that the characters are dealing with.

The Predator may be present, with occasional switches to his perspective as he observes the characters and they stumble on the aftereffects of his killings, but it’s not until forty-five minutes in that the characters actually know he’s there and begin reacting.  Until then, you could cut out the sci-fi parts and just present the remaining footage un-altered as a short-film by itself.

The rest of the franchise never replicated this, with the various Predators (Or other alien events) driving the plots from the beginning.  Alien vs. Predator is all about the investigation into the alien presence on earth, Predators sees people taken to a different planet, etc.  For all of them, there’s nothing to the story without the Predator.

Predator 2 kinda tried to do it, with the characters combating a city-wide drug war that was already going on, except that the Predator interrupts that conflict from the very beginning of the film itself.  They don’t know what it is until a while later, but it’s killing characters (Cops, criminals, civilians, etc.) starting in the very first scene and the characters are responding to it all along.

Prey goes back to the real roots of the franchise by showing that the Predator is interrupting lives and stories that are already in progress.  Like with the first film, up to the first forty-five minutes you could cut out all the scenes of the Predator itself and still have a cohesive, complete story.  In this case you could present it as a coming-of-age short film all by itself.

This is one reason that I think this film is so compelling compared to all of the stumbles elsewhere in the Predator franchise: By taking the time to invest in a completely independent story it imbues weight and substance to everything else that happens.