I ain’t tryin’ to figure out why Predator 2 exists. Predator did well enough, and surely the Predator character was designed for repeatable stories. Sci-fi, horror, action, all are easy enough to sequelize.
So what form should a Predator sequel take? They could go the Aliens route and explore the Predator alien race in greater detail. As this franchise dearly wants to be that franchise, this would make sense. Or they could go the stupid route the Alien movies wisely delayed, and make a sequel remake instead, slapping a Predator in a new location and letting it run through the motions. Guess which approach they took?
Predator 2 takes place in the great big city – Los Angeles, the easiest place for L.A-based filmmakers to care about and film. Naturally, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch character was written into the script (again by the brothers Thomas, Jim and John) – surely his return could guarantee stronger-than-average sequel continuity. But Schwarzenegger wisely turned down Predator 2 in favor of a far more promising sequel, Terminator 2. History bears out this decision; had Schwarzenegger done Predator 2, he’d probably only be a mayor or something. And his primary reason for quitting is pretty damning: he didn’t like the city setting.
(Reportedly Dutch’s scripted role was rewritten for a new character, one Peter Keyes. Considering Keyes is the slimy villain, one who gets sliced in half and therefore killed, it’s just as well we didn’t see Schwarzenegger selling his character out like that.)
With the city setting switch, the action subgenre also changes – from jungle war movies of the 80s to renegade cop movies…of the 80s. It seems a certain underdeveloped notion of the nascent Predator franchise was to plop its titular aliens into different action movie scenarios, then see how it plays out. That’s all fine and well…picture a swashbuckler Predator, or a spy movie Predator.
But Schwarzenegger’s absence is a major problem, seeing as Predator distinguished itself from the usual Alien knockoffs with a traditionally lethal dosage of testosterone. No actor could compete with Arnold there! Ah, but they got the star of Lethal Weapon! Okay, Mel Gibson, I can see that. He’s macho, but in an entirely different way than Schwarzenegger, and his comparatively wiry and agile – Oh wait! They got Danny Glover…You know, the guy who in his action movie debut was already “too old for this shit?” Uh oh. He’s a nice enough actor, but he ain’t no substitute for Herr Gropenfuhrer, I tell you what.
The film’s big opening action sequence is a desperate attempt to sell us on Glover’s action chops. Now, while Predator was a contemporarily set picture, Predator 2 takes place in the distant, far off future of…1997. Um, sure guys. This is a bizarre decision, as the ten year difference from the first story might as well be a three year difference for what distinction it makes. Here we get a sort of occasionally over-designed future, with hideous, bulky “futuristic” handguns that look doubly foolish and anachronistic now thirteen years after the film is supposed to be set. Apparently, the reason for this dating is to justify the creation of a wholly fictional gang conflict in Los Angeles, between the almighty drug powers of the Columbians and the Jamaicans. Look, I was in L.A. in 1997, and I don’t recall any of this – we were too caught up with that damned O. J. Simpson trial (research indicates it was the civil trial by then). Okay, maybe in 1990 I could possibly accept this goony idea, but it starts dating the movie almost instantly.
So anyway, the police are engaged with the Columbians in a violent shootout on the streets somewhere near downtown. Director Stephen Hopkins sure ain’t no John McTiernan. The action is loud, but lacking in all spatial geometry, and his other notable film is A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. That does not augur confidence.
Danny Glover IS Lt. Mike Harrigan of the LAPD, a streetwise rogue cop who doesn’t play by the rules. [Sound of me snoring after writing that sentence.] Detective Murtaugh – excuse me, Harrigan – arrives on the scene in seemingly that same family station wagon from the Lethal Weapon films. Way to build up your own movie on the clichés of others, without the wry satire of Shane Black’s efforts. Harrigan forces his way past Foxish yellow journalist Tony Pope (Morton Downey Jr. – I said Morton) and joins up with his team of multi-ethnic police detective stereotypes: spicy Latina Leona (Maria Conchita Alonso, outspoken critic of Venezuelan generalissimo Hugo Chaves), and, uh, spicy Latino Danny (Ruben Blades, Panamanian singer, songwriter, lawyer and politician – the Predator movies don’t deserve this guy).
Harrigan then breaks through the shootout barricades in his beloved station wagon, in a sub-sub-sub-sub John Woo bit of gun fu. Predictably ignoring orders from an unseen police chief, Harrigan and company are ready to burst in on a crew of heavily armed Columbians when – the Predator kills them! Cue the familiar infrared POV and the visible invisibility effects. Harrigan has a brief run in with the cloaked Predator on the Columbians’ rooftop. Then the beast vanishes even more fully than its mere cloaking device can allow.
Now, we learned before that the Predator species regularly frequent Earth, appearing at moments of greatest conflict to hunt the greatest human warriors for sport. (The comic books starting up around this time would more fully exploit these concepts.) Predator 2 asks us to accept that a little L.A. gang violence would attract a Predator just as much as the strife in Vietnam, World War II, and…Val Verde. I’m sorry, but isolated violence in a first world country does not sit alongside major wars, and it seems a bit self-centered and naïve of the filmmakers to assume otherwise. But whatever, this new Predator (and it is a new individual) is here to bag some gang banger bandits. Its heat vision POV catches glimpse of Harrigan, and the beast is apparently so impressed by Glover’s stuntman’s feats that it decides to focus on Harrigan as its choice prey. Hey, it is L.A., the Predator might as well become some sort of celebrity stalker! But this Predator isn’t just going to go and kill Harrigan – then there’d be no movie. No, it’s gonna go and kill every violent person Harrigan knows (Columbians, Jamaicans, cops, eventually random people nearby), ultimately giving Harrigan a much fairer fight than it ever gives these faceless hoards. And since without the jungle we can no longer have the steady culling of a small cast, this Predator rather settles for a career of psychopathic mass slaughter. This Predator is an asshole.
Outside following the firefight, a Robert Davi-looking guy (it turns out it’s Robert Davi) hassles Harrigan for “breaking the rules.” Make a movie about a cop – whatever the poor bastard’s doing, he’s “breaking the rules.” (Making a sandwich, sitting on a toilet, it doesn’t matter.) Davi explains jurisdiction this and DEA that and blah blah blah, here comes a helicopter disgorging Special Agent Peter Keyes (world class psychopath and Lethal Weapon costar Gary Busey). This is the retooled Schwarzenegger role – on the page Keyes may be a nice guy, but, you know, Busey’s range doesn’t cover that. So yeah, Keyes bosses Harrigan around a bit and yadda yadda, this subplot’s gonna be breaking up the Predator carnage up until the point the climax kicks in.
A tracking shot of staged, controlled movie chaos introduces us to the LAPD station. The Chief berates Harrigan a little more about Keyes and the Columbians and whatnot. Later when I wake up, Harrigan is greeting the newest member of his team, Jerry (the almighty Bill Paxton, checking off another major sci-fi franchise on his resume), who’s just requested a transfer down to Metro Command. Paxton, invaluable comic relief that he is, understands this movie’s inherent stupidness and plays his character as a joke (some would say Busey is doing likewise, others would say he’s simply nutbars).
At night, we smash zoom irritatingly into a downtown penthouse, where this Columbian guy is schtupping this whore. But soon those villainous Jamaicans, who we haven’t actually seen up to now, burst in to kidnap them both.
The scene returns in an entirely different downtown penthouse, this one the Jamaicans’. There is much talk about their all-powerful gang leader, King Willie (sounds like something a guy would call his ding-dang-doodle). It seems that the Jamaicans are mad that the Predator killed the Columbians, or whatever, so they decide to kill themselves a Columbian in a similar fashion – with lots of regressive voodoo nonsense that I’m surprised Jamaican director Hopkins was okay with. But it seems the Predator isn’t okay with Jamaicans killing Columbians because he killed Columbians, so he kills the Jamaicans. To sum up – the Predator kills everyone, and he needs no reason. There are enough jerks here to massacre, at least seven or so, meaning the Predator can earn creativity points and use a different weapon on each one. Some new weapons added to his arsenal in this entry (this is the height of this sequel’s innovations) include a spear, a guided disc blade, a slicing wire net, and some sort of tomahawk. This alone matches the Predator’s body count from the first. Since it takes a minute thirty instead of an hour thirty, clarity is lost. Most of the Predator’s attacks this time around are kind of hard to follow.
Since the Predator’s cloaking shield shuts off for the first time in this scene, I shall respond to the design of this new monster. Seemingly every new franchise horror movie feels the need to totally redesign its creature (see the Alien movies for a continual devolution of the Giger concept), mostly to justify the increased special effects crew presence on each entry. Thus you get those great, nerdy Internet debates about which design is the best, and therefore with movie is the best. There’s a forest here among these trees, guys. As for the Predator of Predator 2, his intended look is “urban and hip,” ‘cause it’s the city now, and ‘cause early 90s youth culture will never go out of style. Oh dear.
Predictably, next the cops, reporters et al show up to assess the bloodbath. Only that whore has survived, muttering something about “el Diablo.” The Predator isn’t around now, so it’s back to conflicts between Harrigan and Keyes. Blah blah blah, Harrigan has Jerry tail Keyes (prompting Jerry to employ his aborted catchphrase, “X is my specialty”), we learn there’s more to Keyes than mere gang policing. Well of course there is! I’ll say it now, though the movie delays it as though it were a world-shattering surprise: He’s hunting the Predator! Yeesh! Naturally, the mystery of the monster is gone now, this movie being a sequel, yet they’ve made that tiresome sequel mistake and aligned us with a character (Harrigan) who remains in the dark for the majority of the movie. Ugh, I’d rather see the Predator stuff developed more rather than endure Cop Storyline # 3.
Harrigan has Danny sneak into the Jamaican crime scene once everyone has left. This is one of those lengthy stalk sequences of a minor character, so we’re all just waiting for the Predator to get it over with. First Danny finds an alien spearhead in an AC vent, then the Predator finds him – dispatching Danny by trying out the old “ceiling yank” kill so beloved by his xenomorph brothers. There is barely any gore – because this kill is supposed to be “scary.”
This movie has only two modes, and now Predator mode is through, yelling at Keyes mode can start. So Harrigan yells at Keyes. One more bit of useful information arrives in these long, useless scenes: Keyes’ men enjoy hanging out at the slaughterhouse. Oh yeah!, let’s get that party started!
Harrigan and crew visit the LAPD forensics team. It seems that somehow Harrigan is in possession of that alien spearhead Danny found – between the Predator and Keyes’ group, I’m not sure in what deleted scene his got his hands on it. The computer scans this item using “futuristic” technology that didn’t exist in1997, and doesn’t exist now. The spearhead is revealed to be made up of entirely new elements – I’m not totally sure of the chemistry here, but it seems fishy.
So now, half way through the movie, our heroes have merely learned that the Predator might be an alien. Nice job, retread sequel, audiences found that out two movie halves ago! Harrigan needs to ask someone else more about this. Keyes’ guys could know! Naw, let’s ask a shriveled old voodoo dude instead! So Harrigan uses his connections to visit the fabled King Willie (Calvin Lockhart). We’re meant to believe that this rogue cop is on regular speaking terms with the violent drug kingpin he’s been trying to murder for the past several years. Okay, fine, whatever, it’s clear why Predator was so much better for having no plot. And where does this drug kingpin live, yet another penthouse? No, the most powerful man in Los Angeles lives in a dank alleyway. I guess they had a set they couldn’t show off any other way. Willie, that dusty Rastafarian caricature, says “Babylon” at random intervals and explains all he knows about the Predator, namely it is from “the other side.” Oh yeah, that’s busted this story wide open! Miffed about having wasted his and our time, Harrigan just wanders off.
And just like a bad slasher movie, the instant our unexpendable main character is gone, the Predator arrives to kill off Willie in his one and only scene. This is an eighty-year-old guy with a sword. How is this good sport? So the Predator decapitates Willie, and shines his skull up real spiffy to show to his girlfriend or something.
Predator off, Keyes on! Harrigan chats on the phone with Jerry, who reveals the latest plot token info on Keyes. He likes to hang out at slaughterhouses…Didn’t we already learn this?!
The movie’s clearly even bored of the Keyes thing, so it’s right back to a Predator scene – of sorts. Harrigan heads to the cemetery to mourn the kid he shot behind an outhouse – Wait, that’s Lethal Weapon 3. No, he’s here to mourn Danny (naturally, of the thirty or so jerks the Predator has killed so far, Danny is one of two with an actual name). The Predator watches from the distance, invisible, really playing up that creepy stalker vibe. A little kid sees the Predator (its cloaking ain’t that great) and threatens him with a toy gun. The Predator can distinguish between fake and real guns, quite unlike the MPAA, so it spares the child – oh yeah, otherwise it’d’ve killed the hell out of this lad. And because all movies like this are convinced children possess no self-preservation instincts, the boy then offers the Predator some candy. Um…Was this supposed to be a comedy?!
And next up is – Oh to hell with Keyes, it’s another Predator scene! Yes! We’re kicking into gear here! Leona and Jerry are riding the crowded L.A. subway – wait, that’s not real. This is obviously a fictional future. Some nonsense takes place involving some gang bangers, and soon everyone on the train has a pistol drawn. Ah, frightened, armed civilians, that’s like catnip to this particular douchebag Predator. And so, surely hopped up on whatever alien version of E and Red Bull he has, the Predator cuts the lights and proceeds to slaughter pretty much everyone. This is the height of the film’s lack of clarity, as it goes into Boll-esque strobe effects to depict the chaos. Not even the dialogue later is able to estimate a body count. So every third second, we see a face screaming, and that’s it. Jerry attempts to defend the innocent, and gets a totally off screen death for his trouble. (So now Paxton’s been killed by a Predator, a xenomorph and a Terminator. Now he only need die at the hands of a Robocop to get his sci-fi EGOT.)
Some five minutes into all of this, and finally Leona pulls the emergency break (there hasn’t been a single station this whole time, which seems unlikely). The Predator grabs her by the throat and is all set to butcher her too when it notices the fetus in her belly. Leona is preggers, and therefore verboten. (I’d have loved to see the Predator face off against Schwarzenegger in Junior.) Anyway, Leona survives, for whatever difference it makes, as she never appears in this movie again anyway.
Harrigan arrives on the scene with the standard bunch of cops and reporters. Here Harrigan pulls a Holly McClane and knocks reporter Pope unconscious. Eventually the invisible Predator leaps across the cars to the rooftops. Harrigan gives chase in his station wagon, and pretty much just bungles into Keyes’ heart of operations (as opposed to, you know, using his detective skills to reach this point in the plot). They subdue Harrigan with surprising ease, considering he’s supposed to be the Predator’s ultimate warrior, and lug him into their van.
Meanwhile, here’s the Predator in the movie’s best moment, playing with his brand new spinal cords:
(It occurs to me that in sequels like this, the monster gets increased screen time to make up for the lessened mystery surrounding him. This can work in some examples, mostly when fans are rooting for the monster. They would probably prefer Predator 2, which keeps its ugly Predator in our faces surprisingly often.)
In the van, Keyes, er, keys Harrigan in on his plans, plans we’d pretty much pieced together an hour ago. See, he’s been tracking the Predator beasties all over this great globe of ours with intent of developing their weapons technology for eee-vil purposes. Keyes even reiterates the safari hunter theme they’ve never really capitalized. Makes sense. Things get weird when Keyes goes into the details of how he’s going to capture this Predator alive.
It turns out the Predator breaks into the nearby slaughterhouse on a regular basis to feed on the delicious feed inside; I’d do the same if I could. Keyes has pumped this warehouse full of radioactive dust or whatever, because allegedly this can short the Predator’s invisibility camouflage. To render its infrared vision useless, Keyes and his however-many cannon fodder buddies shall be wearing bulky hazmat suits that make them cold. I would’ve made the entire warehouse super hot instead, but that wouldn’t work with Keyes’ scheme to actually trap the beast. Um, they’re gonna freeze it with pathetic little blasts of aerosol nitrogen…or something. I can’t even begin to think this plan will work. This is just a roundabout way of delivering about eight more corpses to us, the viewers. And Keyes has told all this to Harrigan, his hated enemy, because…Bond movies!
You know these dumbasses are gonna die and I know it, so I’ll save myself from recapping an entire “suspense” sequence and say this – they die. Oh you silly goons, didn’t you know the Predator can see in spectrums other than infrared? Harrigan has been allowed to watch all this foolishness from Keyes’ van, at which point he escapes the now-incompetent remaining guards. Harrigan spends a good long while amassing all the pistols from his station wagon trunk, while those special agents in the van couldn’t be arsed to just step outside and grab him again.
Harrigan heads inside to engage the Predator in a little standard gun shootout, and we realize there’s a full half hour of movie left – this is gonna be one long climax. I see nothing in Harrigan’s technique that marks him out as a worthier foe than any of the anonymous meatbags the Predator took out en masse. This is one of those hero death battle exemptions that just doesn’t work. Of slight note, this initial battle in the warehouse is where Harrigan removes the Predator’s mask (gotta get that creature design on screen early this time), prompting a repeat of the Die Hard-esque “You’re one ugly motherfucker.” The Predator says part of it this time, even though neither of these guys was in the jungle the first time it was uttered.
They go out on the roof, where Harrigan actually football tackles the Predator over the edge. Apparently weakening from Harrigan’s uncreditable assault, the Predator breathes through a gas mask like Frank Booth. It also gets ready to set off its wrist nuke (what, already?!) when Harrigan slices the bomb and the Predator’s left arm in two! (With the disc blade.) The Predator tumbles, and a complicated series of physics violations sends it somehow into a bathroom in the apartment building across the way.
The Predator recovers in the bathroom, cauterizing its wounds with a delicious mix of blue liquid and porcelain. This movie has now thoroughly resorted to being a comedy, as a pajama-clad old housewife in hair curlers nears the bathroom door with a broom, ready to do battle. Most serious franchises take longer than this to resort to self-mockery.
The Predator continues to flee in terror from Harrigan (?!), ultimately leaping down an elevator shaft. Harrigan continues his endless, ridiculous descent from a skyscraper rooftop to the subterranean alien caves underneath Los Angeles (we’ve known about them in real life since the 20s – lizard people live there).
All of a sudden Harrigan is inside a Predator spaceship, mist-shrouded, covered in tribal decorations, and just as orange as the entirety of Alien3. There is a mass of skull trophies on the wall, including human, Space Jockey, and…xenomorph. “Aliens versus Predator” was already a thing in comic books, but it was this moment (like Freddy’s glove in Jason Goes to Hell) that stupidly got fanboys psyched for a movie matchup that would never meet expectations. And here, in only the second Predator film, the franchise is already at its self-sustained end. Predator 2 is that pointless. So it’s a good thing they laid this seed, to wait until the moment when Alien movies truly started to suck (Alien: Resurrection).
I’ve already kind of explored what the franchise’s next movie will be, but this movie isn’t quite over yet! Harrigan has a final duel with the Predator here in the heart of its ship, each employing blade discs. Kevin Peter Hall can barely move in this Predator suit, made endlessly clear in long shots, and Danny Glover isn’t much more agile himself. So after a battle to the death that makes the lightsaber choreography in A New Hope look good, Harrigan kills the Predator. It’s just that easy! And no nuclear explosion for you, Harrigan.
But all of a sudden nine other Predators have Harrigan surrounded, many of them played by the Los Angeles Lakers! Okay, guys, you obviously put together somewhere around ten Predator suits; why didn’t you go the Aliens route and utilize them?! Well, these Predators are apparently pleased that Harrigan murdered that asshole, E-head Predator, so they spare him. The elder Predator presents Harrigan with a flintlock pistol from 1715; I’d’ve held out for bars of gold.
Having spared Harrigan’s life, the various Predators then decide to put him in jeopardy by taking off right then and there. Harrigan flees the blasting, blasted ship, dodging jet backfire that is this film’s nuke substitute.
The ship gone, Harrigan follows its route out of the deep, subterranean caves…which turn out are part of a massive mound above most of Los Angeles’ skyline. Oh man, bad movies excel at stumbling at that final finish line, don’t they? The movie is now basically over, the contractual sign for cop cars to appear on the horizon. Harrigan concludes everything by uttering a sequel-baiting line, which is always embarrassing when it doesn’t work out (at least, no pure Predator movie would be forthcoming). The camera stares at the darkness for a while, and finally the credits roll.
On its own, the Predator franchise barely counts as something I’d welcome into this blog’s archives. Counting the upcoming Predators, there are only three movies in the main franchise, and I need at least four. The semi-related AVP flicks, however, make viewing these movies essential, and tie them in to the far more legitimate Alien franchise. The Predator character is interesting enough on his own, but for all intents and purposes he’s just a supporting player in the Alien saga. And with two throwaway movies of Predator set up out of the way, we can get back to the real business: Alien vs. Predator. [Shudder.]
Related posts:
• No. 1 Predator (1987)
• No. 3 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
• No. 4 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
• No. 5 Predators (2010)
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