Naru and Sarii from PREY

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.

Nope (Dir. Jordan Peele) 2022

Prey (Dir. Dan Trachtenberg) 2022

I really liked Prey

"This is as far as you go. No more. This is it."

Drew the best final girl ( and boy ) Naru and Sarii from "Prey"! The movie has truly won my heart.

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I love Predator franchise and I love dogs . That makes "Prey"my favorite movie of the year. I couldn't resist drawing a fan art.

NARU (Prey, 2022)

Prey (2022)

Sarii and Naru in PREY (2022) dir. Dan Trachtenberg

-”If it bleeds, we can kill it.”-

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(A commission for Prey on Deviantart for @toby4700)

Prey (2022) Dir. Dan Trachtenberg “This is as far as you go. No more.”

Sarii Ikegami

I personally loved it when the racists were complaining about Prey (2022) and said that the dog was too domesticated to be believable/historically accurate and all of Native Twitter was basically like "Lol okay did you think we didn't have dogs back then?"

Sarii

I hope Prey becomes the blueprint for new Predator movies

I hope #Prey becomes the blueprint for new #Predator movies

As someone who was a young teenager in the early 2000s, I missed out on watching a lot of the great action movies from the 1980s. I’ve been slowly catching up over the years, but I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t seen them all. One of my favorites, however, is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator. It was a great eighties movie. I was excited when Prey was announced, because it was such a great…

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