#gaming with stormee

[stormee-sky]

" Hey Stormee, what games do you play? " These. 😁

[steveyockey]

At its core, the Predator is a modern science fiction take on the concept of “the great white hunter.” The term applied to real-life figures like Alan Black and Frederick Selous, along with fictional creations like Allan Quatermain. These figures were often Europeans or Americans who traveled to Africa to hunt exotic game. This was the time when Africa was known as “the dark continent” and its inhabitants frequently portrayed as “primitive.” These hunters quickly built a mythology around themselves.

Similar to Richard Connell’s classic short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” the Predator essentially takes that idea to an absurdly heightened extreme: What if a big game hunter pursued human beings rather than animals? Much like the Americans and the Europeans traveling to Africa with their guns and traps, the Predator arrives on Earth with more advanced technology to stalk and kill its prey. Much like those hunters take ivory from fallen elephants, the Predator takes trophies of its own.

While riffing on these colonial tropes, Predator was a product of its time. It followed a military team led by Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), which is co-opted by Dutch’s old friend Al Dillon (Carl Weathers) for a top secret black ops mission in Central America. It was a rather timely premise for a science fiction action film, with its June 1987 release neatly intersecting with the televised Iran-Contra hearings that covered shady American activity in Nicaragua.

Part of the genius of Predator lies in the obvious thematic layers running through the movie. Just like the Predator is an alien presence on Earth, Dutch and his team are well aware of the fact that they have no business on “the wrong side of the border.” Early in the film, Dutch and his team tear through a rebel base with ruthless efficiency, demonstrating their superior training and firepower. The irony is that the Predator will be just as effective in dismembering them.

Like many action movies of the decade, including Return of the Jedi and Top Gun, Predator has been read as a relitigation of Vietnam. It is about an American foreign intervention that goes disastrously wrong. However, like in the Rambo movies, Predator’s protagonists succeed by appropriating the tactics of the Viet Cong, by staging low-tech guerrilla warfare against a technologically superior foe. There is an element of America working through what Nixon called “the Vietnam Syndrome.”

Trachtenberg and Aison understand that Predator is a movie about the horror of colonialism, but they push the metaphor even further in Prey. After all, the heroes of Predator are a black ops team that are themselves engaged in extending the influence of the United States into Central America. The most prominent indigenous character in Predator is Anna Gonsalves (Elpidia Carrillo), the only survivor of the raid on the guerrilla camp, who spends most of the movie as an unarmed hostage.

Naru feels less like Dutch and more like Anna. Like Anna, Naru is the most prominent woman in a predominantly male cast. Like Anna, Naru spends extended portions of the film as a captive hostage, overpowered by both her own tribesman Wasape (Stormee Kipp) and later by a French trapper (Mike Paterson). Like Anna, Naru survives her first encounter with the creature because it doesn’t consider her a threat. However, unlike Anna, Naru asserts agency within the plot of Prey.

Rather than focusing on an external force intruding into another nation, Prey focuses on an indigenous population. The film is set on the American frontier, primarily within the Comanche Nation. Repeatedly throughout the film, the Predator is likened to the European settlers who are encroaching on the North American continent. Naru repeatedly encounters traps set by those hunters, which are not too dissimilar to the technology employed by the Predator itself.

At one point, Naru stumbles across a field of skinned buffalo. It directly evokes the skinned bodies hanging from the tree in the original Predator. For a moment, it seems like the alien creature might have done this, until Naru recovers a discarded cigar. The horror is man-made. It is an image taken directly from American history, tied explicitly to the subjugation of the Native American population. To quote an anonymous army official, “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”

Central to Prey is the importance of standing up against imperialist aggression. Taabe turns a trophy skull on the Predator’s belt into an improvised weapon. Naru is undergoing the kühtaamia, a ritual in which she must hunt a creature strong enough to hunt her. “You think the reason for kühtaamia is to prove you can hunt,” Sumu (Stefany Mathias) warns Naru. “But there’s only one reason: to survive.” Taabe summarizes the importance of the ritual in setting boundaries, “When the lion comes, you tell that thing, ‘This is as far as you go. No more. This is it.’”

[familiar-bonds]

beware of shocking weather around Stormee, Thundree, and Tempestee.

They are light as air, so use their shockingly electric tails to keep themselves touching the ground.

[stormee-sky]

I mean, she didn’t exactly specify.  😂 😂 😂

[stormee-sky]

Carpe Noctem. ♡♡♡