Marvel's Predator (Volume 1) - Predator: Day of the Hunter

Started by Nightmare Asylum, Mar 18, 2021, 06:30:03 PM

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Marvel's Predator (Volume 1) - Predator: Day of the Hunter (Read 68,842 times)

Corporal Hicks

That's some very heavy Machiko vibes. Feels odd given what we know of the series' plot though. I suppose she could have just stolen/adapted, without joining up with the Predators though.

SuperiorIronman

Royce and McKenna have one and we know Nolan's could at least adapt the armor to him. So this suit could be a dedicated suit for human usage. She could've been given one for this trip. After all she'd need a ship.

But something like this I don't know if she could take one. It looks too uniform. Predators are big and even when Noland took one the thigh pads are just shin plates. These are some big creatures and at average height most people aren't going to fit. Though she could simply be bigger than most others. And she'd probably have to bulk up given what she's fighting.

Corporal Hicks

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-predator-ed-brisson-interview/

New interview with Ed Brisson. The preview artwork is the same we've seen, I think. Not read through it yet though.

happypred

Hope we get a recurring Pred character or two and not just a bunch of fodder Preds to big up this Machiko 2.0

Wweyland

Quote from: happypred on Aug 05, 2022, 02:04:22 PMHope we get a recurring Pred character or two and not just a bunch of fodder Preds to big up this Machiko 2.0
Yeah, killing Preds has been done to death already

Still Collating...

I'm all for longer lasting pred characters.

happypred

The Hunter series focused on humans hunting Preds

This looks to be another one of those, but instead of a group of humans, this is like a single girl-power character cruising the galaxy butchering Preds with relative ease

Hadji Murad

Hadji Murad

#187
Reading Predator omnibus 4 - which has some good stories (and the best cover ever). Got me thinking about this. I have to admit, this premise of a human hunting a Predator doesn't fire me up. In a serious story, it cheapens the villain if you do it before the villain is established as a threat.

Predator: Kindred already played with this idea, but it was revealed/implied the Predator wanted him to come after it all along. This was good as it doesn't cheapen the villain and only happens after the creature has slaughtered half the town.

That said, Predator stories, while good, rarely ever achieve anything special. Alien has a bit of a leg up there. Although the first AVP is probably the most solid Alien or Predator comic ever produced - where the plot makes sense and everyone largely behaves as they would. Norwood is also a master.

Quote from: happypred on Aug 05, 2022, 04:23:15 PMThis looks to be another one of those, but instead of a group of humans, this is like a single girl-power character cruising the galaxy butchering Preds with relative ease

I'm not sure why they choose this with Predator. Girl vs monster is a topic locked down and greatly desired by the Alien franchise. Everyone thinks of girls when they think of Aliens. They want to see Aliens after strong women. We wall want it. Give it.

But Predator?

Nobody expects or wants to see a girl-power story. You CAN do it. But why? It's already done by Alien ... the franchise you REALLY want to differentiate Predator from. They're associated so you want them to be distinct. The reader's expectation is that Predator will hunt the toughest men around. Hell, the creature is well established as avoiding women.

Why not create a story that gives readers what they expect and want, but then play with it. Explore the ideas surrounding it.

SuperiorIronman

Nothing wrong with Marvel's protagonist conceptually. I guess beyond the suit if people still have a hate boner for 4.

The protagonist being female shouldn't make her any different to the villains. They in most cases can't tell who they're fighting.

It's not a franchise that is a boys club if that makes sense. It's actually be weirder if neither party encountered a female.

Hadji Murad

Quote from: SuperiorIronman on Aug 08, 2022, 11:53:05 AMNothing wrong with Marvel's protagonist conceptually. I guess beyond the suit if people still have a hate boner for 4.

The protagonist being female shouldn't make her any different to the villains. They in most cases can't tell who they're fighting.

It's not a franchise that is a boys club if that makes sense. It's actually be weirder if neither party encountered a female.

I don't mind a Predator hunting a woman. I just think it lacks differentiation from Alien. Predator has always been a macho franchise that, at least in the beginning, destroyed and made impotent the machismo of its characters. Focus on this theme and explore it.

Alien is a sex rape monster. It makes sense it goes after woman. Predator is the alpha of alphas, the king of the hill. It makes sense it goes after macho dudes as they care about that sort of thing and think of themselves that way. Most women I've met are too smart for that.

SiL

More than one franchise can have a female lead at a time without them being indistinguishable like damn.

Hadji Murad

Quote from: SiL on Aug 08, 2022, 10:12:37 PMMore than one franchise can have a female lead at a time without them being indistinguishable like damn.

For sure. It's just these two franchises are connected, so it's good to distinguish them from one another where you can. Superman and Batman are deeply connected and occupy the same role (fighting crime), but are very distinct from one another, as is the heart of their stories. The more they resemble one another, the less potent they become.

A female lead in a Predator story is fine, there's no rule that says they can't fight a Predator, and a competent female warrior (i.e. Boudica) could definitely defeat one. I just think it's something Alien has locked down and thematically nailed. So by doing the same, Predator will always be in its shadow (which is one of Predator's issues since the association). So play to the story concepts that take it away from that. Predator also has the unfortunate closeness to a slasher villain, which a female lead only hammers home.

I guess the question at the heart of my point is - what is a monster to a man? what is a monster to a woman? They can be the same thing (Jaws). But they can also be different things. A giant penis rape monster is scary for men, but not quite as unsettling as it is for women. As Predator comes for men, and in the mythology of its world has done for centuries ... lean into making it a monster for men and the visceral fears that come from masculinity, violence, and jostling for status. etc.

Prey, for instance, has a similar plot skeleton to Alien. The group doesn't listen to the woman. The group gets killed. The woman has to defeat the monster. But as it's not playing in Aliens world, and doesn't contain a giant penis rape monster, it's the skeleton of the plot, with none of the richer substance.

SiL

Alien established itself by raping a male character - and it was always explicitly described and understood as a rape, and the choice of sex for the character was very intentional.

 Prey added plenty of substance by having the masculine macho monster not take the woman seriously, and get killed because of it. It wasn't very subtle.

The characters can work for either sex.

Hadji Murad

Quote from: SiL on Aug 09, 2022, 12:03:07 AMAlien established itself by raping a male character - and it was always explicitly described and understood as a rape, and the choice of sex for the character was very intentional.

 Prey added plenty of substance by having the masculine macho monster not take the woman seriously, and get killed because of it. It wasn't very subtle.

The characters can work for either sex.

Of course they can work for another. I was clear that a woman can kill a Predator, and likewise men have killed Aliens. I don't have a problem with that part.

My problem is: just because they can work doesn't mean they work as well.

Alien may have established itself by raping a man, but it's explicitly a monster related to female fears. If it gets you it kills you or uses your body to reproduce. Scary for me as a man sure, but this is a fear that women actually deal with in real life. It's a sci-fi nightmare of a fear every woman can deeply connect to - much more than any man can. They can carry, and grow life inside them - and in a healthy society get to choose who they do that with. The inverse of that is someone forcing that life inside them, and Alien takes that even further by having said life be the worst thing in the universe. Alien isn't just a female monster, it's the ultimate female monster. Cameron took these female themes and expanded them to warring mothers and motherhood, which isn't as interesting (at least in execution), but still female at its heart. Alien 3 essentially ends in an abortion.

If Alien had finished with a Ripley dead and Dallas facing off against the Alien, then Dallas going back to LV-426 etc ... all of this richness would be lost. The films would work... but they wouldn't work as well.

Likewise, Predator is a monster with ties to masculinity. Men are overrepresented in violence. Men commit war. Men jostle for status. Men are obsessed with dominance and competition and glory. This is all in the Iliad, one of the oldest, greatest, and most intensely male things ever written. The story is drenched in blood and the tragedy of male aggression and pride, as well as the glory that comes with it. Predator should operate in that thematic world. It should explore it and lampoon it and, like the Iliad, draw out the flaws in toxic male behaviour.  It's a demon who makes trophies of men - but only because we already make "trophies" of ourselves through the spectrum of male competition already.

SiL

SiL

#194
QuoteAlien may have established itself by raping a man, but it's explicitly a monster related to female fears.
It was written by two dudes about what they thought would be scary to happen to them. The rape aspect was taken from certain wasps and how they reproduce.

Ripley's sex is completely irrelevant in Alien and that's one of its enduring strengths.

Contemporary reports said the women in the audience had less trouble with the chest bursting than the guys did.

Women are rarely the victims in the movies and the audience is largely male.

Prey absolutely lampoons Toxic masculinity - by confronting it with a woman that the super macho don't take seriously, because she's not a super macho man. It's perfectly thematically in line with the franchise.

The difference is it doesn't have a manly man beat the manly Predator and maintain the manly status quo at the end. It actually strips the whole thing bare and upends it completely by the end, and can only achieve this level of depth by going against the grain.

You're putting the cart before the horse, starting with the notion that the creatures are more effective at terrorising one sex or the other thematically and working backwards. Just because it works well thematically one way doesn't mean it can't work well thematically the other.

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