Warning: Spoilers for Prey Below!

How accurate is Prey in its depiction of the culture and history of the Comanche people? With the newest Predator movie available to stream on Hulu, the reception to Prey as a period sci-fi action movie has been among the best the Predator franchise has ever received. With both its setting and time period, Prey is at once a return to the roots of the Predator series and a completely new take on it.

Set in 1719, Prey sees another visitor from the planet of alien hunters arriving on Earth for a new hunt of humans to make into trophies. As the Predator hunts the Comanche people settled near the forest it arrives in, a young woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder) is the first to realize the danger she and her people face. This leads Naru, as the heroine of Prey, to pack up her bow and arrow and head into the forest with her dog Sarii to hunt and defeat the Predator herself.

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Prey has been praised by members of its cast, specifically Julian Antelope Black, for the efforts made by the production to portray the Comanche culture in the most historically accurate manner possible. Producer Jhane Myers, herself of Comanche and Blackfoot lineage, served as a historical advisor on Prey's portrayal of the Comanche nation. In that endeavor, it is safe to say that Prey did its job extremely well.

How Prey Depicts Comanche Language & Culture

Dakota Beavers and Julian Black Antelope in Prey

With the goal of Prey striving to portray Comanche culture as accurately as possible, alongside simply being a scary and thrilling Predator movie, the film is very successful. The Comanche clothing and village setting dotted with tipis seen in Prey are all very true to their real-life counterparts. The Comanche hunting lifestyle shown in Prey is also quite accurate to them as a society, with the movie also depicting the hostility of French settlers towards the Comanche; however, this element can be taken as an amalgamation of European settlers arriving in America during the colonial era and showing hostility to native tribes, rather than the French specifically.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Prey's historicity lies the Comanche language itself. While the movie was filmed in English, viewers can add a bit more historical authenticity to their experience, with Prey having a complete Comanche dub as an alternate language track offered with the movie on Hulu. Though there are snippets of the Comanche language in the English version of the film, this offers perhaps the purest way for viewers to experience Prey in terms of how it shows the Comanche culture. Prey also gets into more specific elements of the Comanche in the role Naru plays in the film.

The Role Of Comanche Women Shown In Prey

naru amber midthunder

When it came to traditional gender roles in the culture of the Comanche, men were hunters, warriors, and served in other physical roles, with women serving as caregivers looking over homes and children. Prey takes this element of history and makes it central to its story, with Naru determined to become a hunter despite the expected gender roles of her culture. Though she has some level of support in her aspirations from her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), with Naru also knowledgeable of the orange flower's deadliness, she still faces an uphill battle in achieving the role she dreams of.

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Naru ends up taking up the role of a hunter in an obviously unusual way in departing from her people's main encampment to pursue the Predator in the territory it stalks over. Her choice of weaponry in fighting the Predator, including bows and arrows and tomahawks, are also very true to those used by the Comanche. After her victory over the Predator, Naru is rewarded for her courage by being made into a hunter in a traditional initiation ritual.

While the Predator series has long been associated with special forces soldiers, cops, and other contemporary protagonists, Prey presents one of the most grounded and visceral stories the series has ever told with its period setting, possible tease of more arriving Predators, and focus on a Naru's dream of becoming a hunter calling upon her to do so against one of the most vicious hunters in the universe. As for Prey's portrayal of the Comanche people, it is just about as close a representation of their culture and history as any mainstream Hollywood movie has ever presented to the world.

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