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Prey director Dan Trachtenberg has tried to clarify whether the upcoming Predator movie is actually a prequel.
Speaking exclusively to TechRadar at the film’s UK junket, Trachtenberg surprisingly revealed that he’s not referring to Prey as a Predator prequel. As Trachtenberg explains, however, there’s an important reason why he doesn’t think the upcoming Hulu film is a prequel in the traditional sense.
“I personally never refer to it as a prequel,” Trachtenberg said. “Although, technically, I think it is. When we first announced [Prey], it was suggested that we were going to tell the Predator’s origin story. This is not what are we doing”.
So what kind of movie is Prey? As it turns out, the answer is much more complicated than we previously thought.
With the Disney Plus film – which will be available on the Disney streamer outside the US – set 300 years before the 1987 Predator movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Prey is technically a prequel film. However, as Trachtenberg confirmed, it doesn’t depict the origins of the Yautja – the actual name of the Predator species – in the same way that, say, Prometheus revealed how the faces and xenomorphs were created. Or, at least, how their original iterations were born, which inevitably leads these creatures to evolve into the facehuggers and xenomorphs we see in other Alien movies.
Turns out there’s a delightfully odd quirk with the runtime for every bit of #PreyMovie – and it’s one that reveals an even weirder feature about the Predator movie franchise. Read all about it on my exclusive TechRadar: https://t.co/AeeS8YimrAAugust 2, 2022
So how do we define Prey as a movie? It is set long before the events of the first Predator film, which took place in 1987, but it is not a story in itself. It could be classified as a pre-sequel – that is, a film that takes place before previous entries in the franchise, but one that was released after them. Again, though, this only muddies the waters more. So all signs point to it being a prequel to the Predator film franchise.
That is, unless it takes place on a different schedule. Many film series, particularly those involving time travel, have begun to mess with the linearity of their timelines, either in an attempt to reinvent the franchise or to tell new stories using established characters we’ve seen before.
The most recent Star Trek films, starring the likes of Chris Pine’s Commander Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock, are a classic example. The creative team behind 2009’s Star Trek, 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness and more set these films in an entirely new timeline – the Kelvin Timeline – to overcome issues with the use of characters seen in his previous films Star Trek, like those starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and Kirk and Spock. Other film series, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and DC Extended Universe (DCEU) – read Marvel Movies in Series and DCEU Movies in Series for more – have also experimented with non-linear or complex types of timelines.
Asked if Prey exists in a separate timeline from the other four Predator films that came before it, however, Trachtenberg wasn’t sure if Disney and 20th Century Studios consider it to live alongside those other productions.
“This is obviously set 300 years in the past, technically [it should exist alongside those movies]”, he replied. “I don’t think it’s a separate timeline, but I could be wrong.”
Despite Trachtenberg’s reluctance to use the word “prequel,” that’s arguably the best and simplest way to describe Prey. Otherwise, we’ll be discussing the matter all day.
For more Prey-based content, read up on the weird quirks that set the latest Predator movie apart from its predecessors. Alternatively, check out our list of the best sci-fi movies ever or watch one of these top five sci-fi shows and wait for the return of Apple TV Plus’ flagship sci-fi series Foundation.
Be sure to check back with TechRadar later today for our spoiler-free review of Prey. And tune in for our exclusive, in-depth chat with Trachtenberg, star Amber Midthunder and executive producer Jhane Meyers later this week.
Prey launches on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus outside the US on Friday, August 5.
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