How I Spent My Summer Vacation Film

[Narkis Eatman]

ThePredator franchise has taken some wild twists and turns, most notably in the Predator vs. Alien detour, which provided two films and continues to inform the ongoing Predator story, of which Prey is the latest. First we have to talk about universes.

I\u2019m back from vacation. Did I miss anything exciting? Tell me how you spent (or will spend) your summer vacation in the comments and I\u2019ll randomly select someone to receive a free signed copy of Corporate Rock Sucks.

As I mentioned last week, my sister moved to Costa Rica during the pandemic and set up her podcasting business at her home office. It\u2019s called Heartcast Media and if your organization is in need of a professional podcast service, check it out. Also, she has the most adorable branch manager in Costa Rica.

I spent a lot of time outdoors during my trip to Costa Rica. I walked in the jungle, swam in a lake, took a dip in the ocean, and saw a staggering amount of wildlife\u2014and not just because I visited an animal sanctuary.

Aside from last week\u2019s newsletter and a short review of Patrick O\u2019Neil\u2019s excellent Anarchy at the Circle K for the next issue of Razorcake, if I wasn\u2019t exploring the countryside, I was vegging out in front of the TV. This is something I literally never do\u2014and not just because I don\u2019t have a TV.

I consume most of my media on my computer. If I go to a hotel I almost never turn on the TV, but when I\u2019m a guest at someone\u2019s house I\u2019m a sucker for the tube. (Do people still call it that since TVs don\u2019t have tubes anymore?)

Keep Breathing is about an attorney from the city whose plane crashes in the wilderness and every decision she makes determines whether she lives or dies. The story makes use of frequent flashbacks in a This Is Us kind-of-way. At first, I wasn\u2019t a fan of the frequent interruptions in the story, but they\u2019re skillfully done and push the scenes forward in interesting ways.

We didn\u2019t watch Keep Breathing all at once so when I was swimming in the shallow end of a warm lake or hiking in the jungle with a tour guide I thought about the lawyer and her ordeal in the wild. Could I survive?

In Costa Rica maybe. It\u2019s not that big. The odds of running into someone on an ATV or an experienced guide are pretty high\u2014if I don\u2019t run into a jaguar first or lay down for the night on a hill of fire ants. Honestly, I don\u2019t think I would make it through the night in a hammock in my sister\u2019s back yard, though this was a subject of frequent debate.

This is the appeal of shows like The Deadliest Catch. Viewers at home sit on their sofas and speculate as to whether they could brave the waves while bucketing about a storm in the Bering Sea. (The answer is no, you couldn\u2019t. Maybe for a day, on plenty of rest, but not after a twelve hour shift when your clothes are wet, your hands are like claws, and your back is screaming in agony. Trust me on this.)

When it\u2019s brute strength vs. the wilderness, the wilderness always wins, which is also one of the takeaways from Prey, the seventh installment in the Predator franchise. I fucking love Predator. My favorite \u201980s movies are horror movies and Predator is a fascinating horror-action hybrid.

Predator\u2019s action bona fides are impeccable. It\u2019s got Arnold Schwarzenegger in an ensemble cast with Jesse Ventura, making it the only action film to star two future governors. Plus, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, and Shane Black. Black had just written Lethal Weapon when Predator was being filmed. Naturally, the producers wanted him to do a re-write of Predator, but Black refused so he was killed off seven minutes into the movie. I endorse this kind of pettiness 100%. This, and other tidbits about the making of Predator can be found in this outstanding oral history.

Predator almost didn\u2019t happen. The production ran out of money and the creature\u2019s costume was a total flop. The original predator was going to be then unknown Jean Claude Van Damme who was allegedly fired because he couldn\u2019t stop kickboxing. Also, JC is very short and the Predator is very tall. Most movies whose productions are halted never recover. Cast and crew members leave the project and the result is often a disjointed mess. Predator is the rare exception.

My appreciation for the film went up several notches several years ago after I traipsed around the jungle in Mismaloya southwest of Puerto Vallarta where part of the film is set, which Nuvia wasn\u2019t too thrilled about but indulged me nonetheless. (The location in the film is described as the fictional Central America banana republic of Val Verde, which was created for Schwarzenegger\u2019s Commando.) Then, when we took a boat to meet up some friends in Boca de Tomatlan and unwittingly recreated the opening scene to Predator (sans helicopters):

If people think of Predator as a horror movie, it\u2019s because of the creature at the heart of the film. Predator doesn\u2019t speak. Predator doesn\u2019t have any super powers. It is not, famously, unkillable.

It\u2019s got dreadlocks. It\u2019s got mandibles. It\u2019s got high tech armor that renders it invisible and sensors that can detect heat signatures. It can see you but you can\u2019t see it, which is a brilliant device for ramping up suspense.

But check this out. Predator isn\u2019t an \u201Cit\u201D but a species of super violent hunters from a distant galaxy that periodical comes to earth to hunt humans for sport. It\u2019s nothing personal, this is just what predators do. The predators even have a code: they don\u2019t kill creatures that don\u2019t pose a threat.

The Alien franchise basically ignores the Predator connection, but the Predator franchise does not. Predator\u2019s interactions with Xenomorphs are an important part of the saga that is richly explored in comic books and novels. (The Predator is aptly summarized here.)

What\u2019s remarkable about this is that we still don\u2019t know a lot about Predator. We don\u2019t know Predator\u2019s origin story, which is an essential part of a horror movie that features a creature.

What makes Predator so fearsome in Prey is that no one in this world has seen anything like Predator before. It is an analog, pre-industrial world where one\u2019s skill in the wilderness determines one\u2019s success as a hunter. The Comanche aren\u2019t brawny combat veterans with bulging biceps and outrageous weapons, but skinny young men with bows and arrows who are hopelessly outgunned by the Predator\u2019s superior firepower.

The hero of the film is Naru, played by Amber Midthunder, a healer who years to be a hunter. Her desire to hunt makes her an outcast: she is rejected by the men who don\u2019t respect her prowess as a hunter and also by the women who don\u2019t understand her. Even her mother, who wants to spare her daughter the hardships she is bringing on herself, is frustrated by her Naru\u2019s determination to follow her own path. The only one who is unquestioningly loyal to Naru is Sarii, a rescue dog who was trained specifically for this film.

If you haven\u2019t seen Prey, watch it immediately. If you\u2019re hungry for more Predator fandom, you\u2019re in luck. Ander Monson\u2019s memoir of his obsession with the film comes out next month from Graywolf Press.

And if you\u2019re still reading, don\u2019t forget to enter the book giveaway by telling me how you spent your summer vacation in the comments. If you\u2019re already got a copy, I have other books you might be interested in\u2026

Remember when you were in elementary school and one of your first assignments each fall was to tell the class how you spent your summer vacation? No, I don't either, but they tell me that's the way it used to be done - and maybe still is. At any rate, I was able to enjoy three fantastic experiences myself this summer, and that seemed like as good a "lead" as any to introduce the sharing of my experiences with you, my faithful readers.

Part one of my memorable summer took place from June 11 - 21, when my brother, sister and I did a kind of repeat of our "once in a lifetime" trip of last summer. It turned out it wasn't a "once in a lifetime" trip, after all - but that's a good thing. Last year, the three of us traveled to eastern Iowa to do some exploring of family roots, and this year, we traveled even farther east to continue our exploration. Our journey began in the state of New York, but before we began, we were able to enjoy a couple of days with my brother's son Jon and his wife and her family at the family's lake home near Binghamton, New York. A very enjoyable and memorable start to our trip.

Before I go any further, I should point out that my brother Doug is the real avid genealogist in the family. My sister June and I helped out when we could, but we readily admitted that we were mostly just "along for the ride," as we enjoyed the chance to get together and see the local sites of interest.

Our first stop was in Syracuse, where we checked out the appropriate courthouse and other resources, looking for more information about our great-great-great-grandfather John Whitney, who has become somewhat of a "man of mystery" in our search for our roots. I , of course, was thrilled to be in the town in which such college sports standouts as Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little and Carmelo Anthony first came to national prominence, and I had my photo taken outside the Carrier Dome, where the Syracuse Orange of Coach Jim Boeheim display their basketball talents. Our next overnight was in Buffalo. Like Syracuse, a very blue-collar, "Rust Belt" town, Buffalo is the home of the late NBC newsman Tim Russert, Buffalo Wings, and the former NFL home of some guy named O.J.

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