the whole premise is different here, they threw out Alien VS Predator as canon and made this the first visit of a predator to earth. Hence, why we see him working his way up the food chain taking trophies as he observes the planet's predators. Predator and subsequent movies (not including xenomorphs) showed us a more accomplished, fully kitted out antagonist who only had eyes for humans, knowing they were the top predators and who was very careful going about his killing, hunting individuals and even in group scenarios picking individuals off from 'cover' and even knowing when it was time to run and come back another day.
In this movie we have what i assume is an inexperienced Yautja (as they call themselves, Predator is our name for them), which is mirroring Naru's journey of 'killing something that is trying to kill you' - kütaamia, as they called it. Whatever, it's a rights of passage movie for Naru and possibly for him. We see him get tagged even by the animals he hunts before moving on to humans. And later while fighting humans he gets absolutely blasted on a few occasions, the dude is taking some major damage - with next to no armour and a more primitive first aid kit. Unlike the more advanced Predators we're used to, he's more than willing to jump into a crowd and go toe to toe, one of the reasons he takes such a beating over the course of the movie. Retreating, reassing and coming back to fight another day isn't even in this dude's vocabularly, he's more animalistic with everything in your face (the grizzly fight was a great example of that).
In the final fight, it begins with him being shot clean through the head at close range, even for a Yautja, that shit is debilitating. So they built up the possibilty that this very smart but physically insignificant comanche had a chance against a predator that has been beaten the shit out of by the time we get to the finale. She beats him with her brain effectively, which is what arnie did really in the first one, even he couldn't hope to match the physical prowess of his enemy.
Now i dont like the helmet kill at the end - they do set this up in we see her observing that it is his helmet that enables him to target his projectiles. But for me, it's still too much of a stretch for her to intellectually breakdown and then utilise a technology so alien to her and so outside of her brain's scope of understanding, even tho we have witnessed she's a very smart individual that can think outside of the box. With the predator having taken so much damage and in a vulnerable position, i'd liked to have seen a method of delivering the coup de grace more in keeping with her times.
So yeah, overall i think they did a good job there. If this was the Predator from the original movie, everything would've been wiped out without laying a glove on him with his armour, plasma weapons and smarter approach.
On a side note, something i wasn't aware of that i thought was cool - in the final act she whistles to attract the predator to the trapper bait to kick things off. Traditionally whistling at night is forbidden by comanches as it's viewed as calling down spirits. Which is a nice nod to her character - i dont give a fuck, whatever it takes - and the native lore we saw at the very start when she tells her brother she had seen a thunderbird, a supernatural being of power and strength - to her this is a corporeal spirit and i think that's fucking fair enough