In “Prey,” Naru is shown failing over and over again. While hunting a mountain lion, she gets knocked out and has to be carried back to the settlement. While trying to hunt a bear, she is forced to escape by hiding in a beaver dam and only survives because the Predator comes along and kills the bear. She’s disarmed and overpowered by her brother’s friends when they seek to take her back to the camp, and soon after that, she’s kidnapped by the French trappers. The majority of the fights that Naru engages in end with her running away. But then, running away was also the approach that helped Dutch survive the Predator.

In a scene early on in “Prey,” the Predator observes a wolf hunting a rabbit, assesses the role of the two animals, and chooses to fight the wolf while letting the rabbit run free. The moment is echoed later in the movie when Naru and Itsee (Harlan Kytwayhat) are running from the Predator. Itsee is killed, but when Naru gets caught in a trap and left helpless, the Predator observes her for a moment and then lets her live. From this, Naru deduces something crucial about her opponent: it has identified her as a prey creature, and therefore of no interest.

While big guns and bulging muscles were a major part of the marketing for “Predator,” Dutch also observed that the best way to escape the Predator is to go without a weapon and appear harmless, since an unarmed opponent offers no sport. When Anna (Elpidia Carrillo) attempts to grab a gun to fight back against the creature, Dutch is quick to disarm her in order to save her life. 

The Predator itself is, first and foremost, a hunter, and it can only be defeated by thinking like a hunter.