Fans of the Predator franchise surely found lots of little winks and nods to the previous films in Hulu’s new prequel, Prey. A line of dialogue here. A piece of set dressing there. Then… that one big reveal at the end you were certainly not expecting. As cool as the one specific thing was, it’s actually even better than you realise. Prey director Dan Trachtenberg explains.
I’m referring, of course, to Raphael Adolini’s gun, which Naru takes possession of and uses against the Predator in the film. Fans should recognise it as the same gun that a Predator gives Danny Glover’s character, Detective Mike Harrigan, at the end of Predator 2. And we do mean that literally: it’s the exact same gun that was used in that earlier film.
“The gun that shows up in the movie, the Predator 2 weapon, is not from the archives [or] not from the vaults,” Prey director Dan Trachtenberg told Gizmodo. “Our prop master sought it out. We did not have it. The only way he could find it was he was watching a YouTube fan replica maker, and he saw it on his shelf behind him and he reached out to him and we got that gun. So that was provided by a fan of the franchise.”
Yes, a Predator fan owned the screen-used prop from Predator 2 and the Prey team borrowed it from him for production. How cool is that? A prop always designed to link into Predator’s history has finally done it.
What’s slightly less cool, though, are the implications of what it means for Naru. The gun is still in the tribe at the end of Prey and the credits certainly suggest the Predators come back. Is Naru’s tribe who the Predator 2 predator got the gun from? Does that spell doom for our hero and her people? And either way, what does any of this mean for the previously accepted canon from the comics of the predator getting the gun from Adolini himself?
Maybe we’ll find out those answers one day, maybe not, but either way, that’s a level of detail and care few franchise films go the extra mile for.
Prey is now streaming on Hulu.
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