Okay I was gonna keep quiet on this circular echo chamber nonsense but frankly if certain people are going to fill this thread with such ****** takes then I will respond.
Jesus Christ people get over it, Naru outsmarted the Predator after barely surviving previous encounters by observing its weaknesses re sight/heat and the like, luring it into a field of play she knew and could control and won through ingenuity, stealth and using the size of the Predator against itself - exactly like Dutch.
Or was the original movie now retroactively ruined because Dutch only found out about the mud camouflage through sheer luck? Was the original Predator an idiot for recklessly removing its mask and weapons and fighting Dutch 1v1 - what an idiot! Why would he follow Dutch to what clearly was a trap? Lazy marty stu writing! How did Dutch survive that final explosion? ******** male power fantasy!
Was Harrigan a marty stu because he could defeat his Predator through 1v1 combat? Afterall he is by no definition a trained soldier?
You see how everything you said is just double standards right?
Naru does exactly what Dutch does and wins just like Dutch, so why is it okay for him but an insult and stupid when she does it?
After all Naru has more day to day survival skills than any other protagonist in the franchise, this isnt a profession - its her life. Do we think Dutch hunts to feed himself? Do we think he uses the bow and arrow every day? If these things are acceptable for him why not for her? She has better built in reason to be a more seasoned survivalist.
So the problem is that Naru had a character arc? Grew to understand she COULDN'T just charge in and beat foes bigger and stronger than her [like the tribesmen, the colonists or the bear] and learned to use being underestimated to turn an opponents own strength against them. If she was instantly perfect from the beginning you would drag her, and now your dragging her for having growth - choose an end of the stick to beat the dead horse with.
"The Predator let itself be harmed by its own weapons" - firstly that seems like a willful misrepresentation of the scene, she jammed its mechanism and used the Predators own momentum against it [by yielding her space rather than fighting a stronger/bigger opponent as she learnt from her encounters with stronger opponents in the movie] meaning it lurched forward into its own space, allowing her to remove the jam and causing the shield to close with severing force = a force she witnessed several times in the colonist massacre. And again we are applying double standards here - Harrigan picked up TONNES of the Predator's weapons to use against it - why did the City Hunter leave its discuss, spear, and projectile just lying around for Harrigan to pick up and use to cut off its hand and stab it? Aren't they meant to destroy evidence of their presence? That seems like a far more stupid scenario compared to what we see in Prey.
As for the shooting itself bit - yeah, this could well be seen as a "stupid" moment, but considering said Predator had lost an arm, a mandible, been shot in the back of the head, been stabbed in numerous places, and was trapped in quicksand at this point - maybe we can forgive it being consumed enough by the desire to kill Naru that it didnt realize its tracking system was aimed at its own head. Still any critiques of this element at least have some merit.
Also is there any real need to call Naru a "child who could barely save her own behind" - her actress is 26 and she performs about as well as anyone could ever hope to vs a Predator, a camp of murderous colonists, a whole group of men at once and a goddamn bear. Surviving is the feat.
Again if she flawlessly conquered these obstacles you'd [rightly] call her a Mary Sue so why attack the character for having an arc - pick a lane.
