Prey’s Best Action Scene Almost Got Cut Entirely

Prey, the 2022 Predator movie set against the backdrop of the Comanche Nation, brought the franchise back to its roots. The film’s stripped down style put man against beast in the movie, and one of its biggest scenes pit the alien trophy hunter against some deadly opponents, French fur trappers. Having capture Amber Midthunder’s Naru, the trappers use her and her brother Taabe as bait to capture the Predator, setting the bait amid the charred ruins of the forest. This sequence ends up being one of the movie’s best, with fans getting to see the kind of slaughter by the Predator that they expect. What fans may not know though is that the sequence almost didn’t happen at all.

Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview for Prey‘s upcoming 4K release, director Dan Trachtenberg opened up about this specific sequence. On paper the scene is one that seems to have the hallmarks of things movie fans are tired of seeing, a dimly lit sequence where action is partially obscured by smoke and visual effects. For Trachtenberg, getting that right was of the utmost importance, because he has the same complaints that other movie fans have when it comes to sequences like this.

“I’m an action movie lover and very, very focused and aware on how much clarity and geography affects excitement,” Trachtenberg revealed. “Certainly cutting pattern and faster speed and rhythm affect your emotion, affect your pulse, but they don’t help with your understanding and enjoyment of the choreography….So we pre-vis the heck out of it to best understand it. Me and the DP just thought a lot about the shot structure and shot design and how every shot can link to each other and letting things play out in longer takes and making sure there’s cool beats and then action happens. It’s really very specific, high point, low point, high point, low point of what’s happening. And so story and fun is happening inside the sequence.”

Filming for the sequence however had one major problem which is what almost forced it to get cut, and it’s that they were filming outside using actual smoke. Trachtenberg tells us that this is why the scene as almost cut, they couldn’t get the smoke to go the right way on set, and since they’re filming outside they had to figure out a new way to handle it (at least when they couldn’t marry practical smoke effects with CG smoke effects).

“It was basically math between directionality where we’re shooting and the placement of where the smoke machines were,” Trachtenberg adds. “And the big epiphany was putting them on a truck that was driving around to smoke out the set. So it wasn’t just like all these machines in different places. It was keeping that in motion as understanding where the wind was going. Somehow our AD had this crazy sense of the wind’s going to be in this direction for so long. Let’s do this, let’s place it here. And it was crazy.”

Prey will be available on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD October 3, with over two hours of all-new bonus features.