Predator: Killer of Killers

Optional, and the format suits this creature better than a feature does. Three separate hunts in three centuries, animated, with no connecting characters for most of the running time: a Viking raider in 841, a samurai in 1609, and an American pilot in the Pacific in 1942.

The anthology shape solves a problem the live-action films keep running into. A Predator film has one idea, a hunt, and stretching it to two hours means padding it with a squad, a conspiracy or a mythology lecture. At under thirty minutes each, these segments can be only the idea. Each gives its human a completely different set of tools and a completely different landscape, and the aerial section in particular does something the series has never been able to afford.

It also quietly pays off the flintlock from Predator 2. These are centuries of visits to Earth, and seeing three of them back to back makes the species feel like a culture with a practice rather than a monster with a gimmick.

The final stretch brings the three strands together in a way that is either a satisfying payoff or an unnecessary tidying-up depending on how much you liked them separate. Nothing else requires it. Watch it if the historical premise of Prey was the part that interested you.