Amber Midthunder has reflected on the first time she saw the Predator in real life for the first time while shooting Prey.
Prey acts as a prequel to the first Predator movie and takes place 300 years in the past. It follows a young Comanche warrior, Naru, who battles an unknown alien creature in the Great Plains of North America.
Though the movie takes advantage of some impressive special effects, the Predator itself is played in full creature mode by former basketball player Dane DiLiegro.
Midthunder joked to Empire that the first time she saw the Predator in full costume, she knew she could take it!
"I saw him for the first time by accident. There was some sort of show-and-tell or test happening with him out in the woods. I just heard these murmurs and people were walking away, and I was like, what's going on? I saw it, and I literally go, 'Oh, I could take it! I could take that, no problem'.
"I was just mostly mesmerised by the artistry and the detail of the suit and the head and everything. Because at that time, the mysticism of how it all got onto a person's body, that veil had not been lifted. I just saw a monster in front of me, and I was like, 'Wow!'
"It was so neat, because I'm not acting to a tennis ball on a stick, I'm looking at a real Predator in front of me, you know, with the teeth and the eyes and the skin colour.
"And they put this goop on him that when he touches me, it's gross. It was just all very real. Then I was just very fascinated by it and taking it all in."
The secrecy of Prey
The production of Prey was kept under wraps for most of pre-production when it went under the running title of Skulls.
Midthunder has revealed that it wasn't until a long time down the road that she was actually informed that she was filming a Predator movie.
"I knew that it was a film only about a young Comanche woman who wanted to be a hunter, and I don't even know if I knew the exact time period," she explained.
"I don't know if that was decided at the time, or if I had that information. But I only had two scenes. It was a scene between me and Naru's mom Aruka in the tipi, who's now played by Michelle Thrush. And then Dakota Beavers' character Taabe, another scene of them by the fire. Those two scenes are still in the movie – very, very different now than when I had originally read them, but they stayed the same for a long time.
"That was in February of 2020. And then it disappeared because of COVID and then came back. I heard about it, and I was like, 'What is that movie?' Because it had been gone for so long, and I was like, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, that one! The Comanche one that I know nothing about!'
"And then it started again, and eventually somebody told me, quite close to the last audition, 'Oh, this is a Predator movie.'
"And I was like, 'What? Oh, my God! How's that gonna work?', and went through all the questions that everybody, I think, has cycled through. 'What? How would that..? What is that gonna look like? What does that mean?' I went through all those things, and then read the script, and then I understood."
Prey received positive reviews from critics, many of whom have stated that the movie is the best in the franchise since the original Predator.
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