IF IT BLEEDS, SHE CAN KILL IT
No one forgets the first time they come face to face with a Predator. For Amber Midthunder, the 25-year-old star of Prey, the moment came a few days into production on the film’s Calgary location shoot, when she stumbled on a lighting and costume test in the woods so secretive even she wasn’t aware what was happening. “There was a humming, and I saw a big group of people,” Midthunder says, regaling TF over Zoom from her home in California. “I walked further, and then I saw [the Predator]. I was lasered in. The first thing I said was: ‘I can take it.’ And then I got in my regular brain, and I was like, ‘That’s terrifying!’ But the first thing that came out of my mouth was: ‘I can take it.’”
Midthunder’s confidence in the moment – misguided or otherwise – spoke to the mettle of her character, young Comanche hunter Naru. As an indigenous woman, Naru represents something radically different for the series, which has traditionally put all-American men with biceps the size of basketballs in the extraterrestrial hunter’s tri-laser crosshairs. “I believe it’s the first time there’s been an indigenous female protagonist in an action movie ever,” Midthunder grins. “That is historic, and an extremely big deal.”
