Prey (2022) — the near-perfect female protagonist arc
Writing a female character is a challenge for men. The difficulty stems from the fact that you write the type of woman you like. Then you are shoehorned into molding it to the whim of the studios with their motives adhered to PR and image, especially the horde of cognizant eyes ready to rip you apart virtually. Even if you put aside the extraneous pressures, there is an internal desire while crafting this character to make sure that it satisfies, at least, some of your fellow men and a lot of the women. So why do I sound like the core criteria for a memorable female character written by men is the approval of others, especially men? That is because of the genre and context of this movie, Prey.
Preceded by and set in the same universe as a list of mediocre sequels and one exhilarating and original action film, The Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, this movie had to prove and revive a dead franchise. Also, this was touted to be the prequel (with regards to the timeline it was set in, which was during 1719 in the Great Plains of Northern America focusing on the Comanche tribe) to every Predator film ever released until now. So one advantage it had was one of the primary features of indigenous tribes is their entanglement with nature and the hunter instinct inherent in them. The premise itself presents several juicy prospects for a Predator film.
They decided to add one big risk factor, a female protagonist in this largely male-embedded environment. This brings me back to my original point. The key obstacle in writing this character is to sketch an arc where she obviously takes down the beast at the end but is adjudged worthy of doing so. You cannot make her larger than life while at the same time you cannot undermine her strengths throughout and suddenly pass a surge of a superpower with which she takes the Predator down. There needs to be potential, which is nurtured in nature by trial and error, battling the wild in the wilderness as fear turns into the impetus for victory which results in the Ultimate final face-to-face, where she defeats the demon following a brief yet equally matched battle. Conveniently, this was also the core plot point in the movie, proving her worth to her tribe. So this ends up satisfying the male crowd for how she earned her worth and the female crowd because the feminine faculty was still maintained. This movie is that rare gem where the strength of a female character is exhibited through slick direction and clever writing rather than spouting lines about her struggles and larger societal issues of women with a pinch of white supremacy to tick all the political PR boxes.
Before ending this with the aspect that stood out to me the most about this movie, I should first get the picturization out of the way. The color tone matched the vast plains haunted by the uninvited guest with its low saturation. But the most commendable element was the lighting as half of it is set during nighttime, any incongruent changes to the illumination would result in either incoherent brightness or pitch blackness which would render whatever brilliant staging mere movements of silhouettes. But the crisp contrast between natural black and contained lighting managed to provide a gloomy yet tense visual to savor. As a result of this, the choreography of action sequences was enticing enough to poke your adrenaline now and then. The final battle had distinct subjects on the canvas so the choreographer could not get away with shoddy staging under the cloak of dim illumination. During the day, the sprawling plains as it was in the 1700s were filled with the landscape’s vastness apropos to it where impending danger was being signaled via the music score.
Now, this is not a movie that will stand the test of time and remain an indelible mark in the history of horror/alien movies, let alone in the general category. But it has some insights for posterity if they peruse a little. The base of it is how to encompass multiple things in an established franchise without coming off as propaganda or reflecting the lack of creativity in Hollywood lately.
Let us first see how the propaganda bit was circumvented (almost!). If you look at the movie as a whole, it is not exactly a Predator film but rather a girl who goes through a series of battles and comes out as a hunter, acknowledged by her tribe. She first fights the pity of her brother (which is a sub-product of his love for her, not in a malevolent manner) and the derision and borderline humiliation by her tribesmen (which stems from misogyny if you view it through modern labeling). Then later in the movie, she has to fight to escape from being the hostage of the French colonizers, the evil straight white men, the go-to trope of modern writers, slots in perfectly into the story without being told so explicitly to the viewer. More than all of this, she has to fight the fact that she is still not an expert at hunting and her amateurish attempts can have dire consequences. This is evident by how she puts herself in danger twice before becoming the badass hunter she turns into later. She as a character never had any inhibitions or second thoughts about her ability (which goes beyond hunting to the realm of mechanics and engineering). But you cannot translate her confidence to the viewers’ mind without justifying it with initial setbacks to eventual triumph. When all these battles are done, the final face-off between her and the Predator was more of a formality than anticipation.
If you dig a little deeper, even the Predator itself did not see her as much of a threat or formidable opponent until she made so. And all of these were brilliantly linked as a setup and pay-off point in the screenplay while playing out as character-developing pivots.
We can make out the propaganda tools here or the usual suspects in modern social commentary. These are Feminism, Imperialism/Colonialism, White Supremacy, and Indigenous Knowledge (this one is not so prevalent outside of the putrid depths of social media). The creativity part emerges from how they took a known story and revised it to modern sensibilities without the burden of making this process obvious. While doing this, they sketched an almost perfect female action-hero arc.
For those modern movies that Prey on the viewers through their lackluster writing on top of social justice threats, this movie is the perfect Predator
Originally published at http://thevicariousview.wordpress.com on October 11, 2022.
