Warning: Spoilers For Prey Below!Prey’s heroine, Naru, uses a smart way to defeat the Predator, and it's even more clever than Dutch's method in the original movie. In Prey, a Predator arrives on Earth in 1719, with Naru (Amber Midthunder) determined to stop it. Even with as much drive as she brings, she and her fellow Comanches, as well as a group of French fur trappers, face a very deadly foe in the Predator, making her victory all the more impressive.
The Predator franchise has pitted many humans against the alien hunter, and they often tend to learn a fair amount about the warrior culture the Predators originate from. This ranges from film to film and includes everything from the Yautja's unique weaponry to their twisted sense of honor. One such oft-discovered aspect about the Predators that is touched upon in every film is their ability to see in the infrared spectrum.
What makes Naru’s battle with the Predator rather different in Prey is how she goes about concealing her body heat from the Predator. In the original 1987 Predator movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch fought the Predator to the death while coated in mud to block his body heat, and Royce (Adrien Brody) uses the same method in Predators. In Prey, Naru comes to realize the Predator's weakness after giving Raphael (Bennett Taylor), the wounded interpreter of the fur trappers, a medicinal flower dubbed an "orange tutsia," which lowers one's body temperature. Once Naru sees that eating the orange tutsia makes one invisible to the Predator's infrared vision, she incorporates the flower into her plan to defeat the Predator in their final showdown.
Prey Proves Naru Was A Better Predator Fighter Than Dutch
Naru is shown at the beginning of the movie to be an aspiring hunter — her goal is a departure from Comanche gender roles, as shown in Prey, at the time. She proves her worth by ingesting an orange tutsia just ahead of facing off with the Predator. Having determined that the Predator will only attack armed prey capable of fighting back, she strategically uses Big Beard (Mike Paterson), leader of the fur trappers, as bait, luring him toward an empty musket to shoot her, only for the Predator to arrive and ascertain him as aggressive prey. Having been missed by the Predator's infrared vision due to eating an orange tutsia, Naru then uses that opening to shoot the Predator with a flintlock pistol from behind, knocking its mask off.
In their ensuing battle, Naru manages to trap the Predator in a deep mud patch. The Predator’s mask is carefully placed behind her, causing its laser sighting to target the Predator, so its spear fatally strikes the creature. Naru's strategy not only swings the effectiveness of the Predator's alien weaponry to her own advantage but it is also much less crude than the mud used by Dutch and Royce, giving her the same heat-blocking advantage without the downside of mud being washed off by water. Like them, Naru is observant about Predator's fighting skills and hunting tactics, and she forms her battle plan from that knowledge, but with a more scientific approach.
Though Naru becomes visible to the Predator's infrared vision again when it starts snowing, her use of the orange tutsia gave her the opening to steal the Predator's mask. Philosophically, Naru follows the same strategy as Dutch and Royce in using one of the Predator's strengths against it. Ultimately, Naru’s triumph in Prey shows her as the skilled warrior that she is by turning the tables on her fearsome enemy with a much stealthier tool than mud to make herself invisible.