Predator 2

Predator 2 is a 1990 American science fiction action film written by brothers Jim and John Thomas, directed by Stephen Hopkins, and starring Danny Glover, Ruben Blades, Gary Busey, María Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Peter Hall. It is the second installment of the Predator franchise, serving as a sequel to 1987's Predator, with Kevin Peter Hall reprising the title role of the Predator. Set ten years after the events of the first film, in Los Angeles, the film focuses on the Predator, a technologically advanced alien hunter, and the efforts of a disgruntled police officer and his allies to defeat the malevolent creature.

Predator 2.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byStephen Hopkins
Produced by
Written by
Based on
Characters
by
  • Jim Thomas
  • John Thomas
Starring
Music byAlan Silvestri
CinematographyPeter Levy
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • November 21, 1990 (1990-11-21)
Running time
108 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$35 million[1]
Box office$57.1 million[2]

The film received generally mixed reviews, despite earning a moderate return at the box office, grossing $57 million worldwide, compared to the previous film's $98 million gross on a smaller production budget. It also achieved the status of a cult classic.

This would be the last film appearance of the Predator until 2004's crossover film Alien vs. Predator. A sequel, Predators, was released in 2010.

Plot

In 1997, Los Angeles is suffering from both a heat wave and a turf war between heavily armed Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels. A Predator watches a shootout between the police, Jamaicans and Colombians, observing as Lieutenant Michael R. Harrigan charges into the firefight to rescue two wounded officers and drive the Colombians back into their hideout.

The Predator assaults the Colombians, causing a disturbance that prompts Harrigan and detectives Leona Cantrell and Danny Archuleta to defy orders and enter the hideout. They find the Colombians have all been killed. On the roof, Harrigan shoots the crazed gang leader and catches a glimpse of the camouflaged Predator but dismisses it as an effect of the extreme heat and his acrophobia. At the station, Harrigan is reprimanded by his superiors for his disobedience. He is introduced to Special Agent Peter Keyes, leader of a task force investigating the cartels, and Detective Jerry Lambert, the newest member of Harrigan's team.

Later that evening, Jamaicans enter the Colombian drug lord's penthouse and murder him, but they are then slaughtered by the Predator. Harrigan's team sees the drug lord's body and the Jamaicans' skinned corpses suspended from the rafters, noting the similarity to the earlier Colombian massacre. Keyes arrives and kicks Harrigan's team out. Danny later returns to continue investigating. After he finds one of the Predator's speartip weapons in an air conditioning vent, the lurking Predator kills him. An enraged Harrigan vows to bring down Danny's killer. Forensic analysis reveals the speartip is not composed of any known element on the periodic table. Seeking answers, Harrigan meets with Jamaican drug lord King Willie, a voodoo practitioner. King Willie tells Harrigan that the killer is supernatural, and that he should prepare himself for battle against him. Harrigan leaves before the Predator kills King Willie, taking his head as a trophy.

Tracing a lead indicating Danny's killer had recently been in a slaughterhouse, Harrigan arranges to meet his team at a warehouse district to investigate. Cantrell and Lambert take the subway to the rendezvous when the Predator, hunting Harrigan's subordinates, suddenly attacks. Lambert and numerous armed passengers are killed, but Cantrell is spared after the Predator's scan of her body reveals that she is pregnant. Arriving on the scene, Harrigan chases the fleeing Predator but is intercepted by Keyes' men. Keyes reveals that the killer is an extraterrestrial hunter with infrared vision that uses active camouflage and has been hunting humans for sport throughout armed conflicts, most recently in Central America (as depicted in the previous film). Keyes and his team have set a trap in a nearby slaughterhouse, using thermally insulated suits and cryogenic weapons to capture it for study.

When the Predator arrives, the trap is sprung. However, the suspicious Predator uses its mask to scan through various electromagnetic wavelengths to identify the team's flashlights, and it easily outmaneuvers and slaughters the men. Harrigan attacks the Predator, badly wounding it before it rallies, destroys his weapon, and closes in. Harrigan is saved by the sudden reappearance of Keyes, who tries to freeze the alien but is bisected by its throwing disc. The Predator chases Harrigan to a roof and the two foes clash, leaving them hanging from a ledge. The alien activates a self-destruct device on its forearm, which Harrigan severs with the throwing disc, rendering the device harmless. The Predator falls through an apartment window and flees.

Harrigan follows it down an elevator shaft and finds a spacecraft in an underground chamber. Inside the ship, after discovering a trophy room with different skulls, including a Xenomorph, Harrigan battles the predator in a final duel and kills him with the throwing disc. A whole group of Predators suddenly appear and collect their dead comrade, while their leader greyback spares Harrigan and presents him with an antique flintlock pistol as a trophy. Harrigan escapes from the ship as it takes off. He reaches the surface just as the remainder of Keyes' team arrives. As Keyes' subordinate Garber curses their lost opportunity to capture the alien, Harrigan privately muses that the beings will return.

Cast
  • Danny Glover as Lieutenant Michael "Mike" R. Harrigan, an LAPD Officer who is investigating rival Jamaican and Colombian drug cartels. He is stubborn and often is criticized by the superior officers for not obeying orders.
  • Kevin Peter Hall as City Hunter / The Predator, a member of a warrior race which hunts aggressive members of other species for sport, uses active camouflage, a plasma weapon and can see in the infrared spectrum. Hall also played the Elder Predator, the leader of the Predators at the end of the film.
  • Gary Busey as Special Agent Peter Keyes, posed as a DEA agent leading a special task force investigating a drug conspiracy as a cover for his attempts to capture the Predator. The character is a replacement for "Dutch," the protagonist of the first film, after Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to reprise the role.[3]
  • Ruben Blades as Detective Danny Archuleta, a member of Harrigan's team and a long time friend of his.
  • María Conchita Alonso as Detective Leona Cantrell, an LAPD cop involved in the Jamaican-Colombian gang wars.
  • Bill Paxton as Detective Jerry Lambert, an LAPD cop, transferred from another precinct into Metro Command. His role is often that of comic relief.
  • Lilyan Chauvin as Dr. Irene Richards, the chief medical examiner and forensic pathologist of Los Angeles. She aids Harrigan, in spite of being completely cut out of the official investigation by Keyes' team.
  • Robert Davi as Deputy Chief Phil Heinemann.
  • Adam Baldwin as Garber, a member of Keyes' task force.
  • Kent McCord as Captain B. Pilgrim, an LAPD cop and Harrigan's immediate boss.
  • Morton Downey, Jr. as Tony Pope, a journalist who reports the gruesome and murderous homicides left by the Predator. He is constantly criticized by the police for interfering with investigations.
  • Calvin Lockhart as King Willie, the boss of the Jamaica Voodoo Posse. He appears to be psychic because of his voodoo beliefs.
  • Elpidia Carrillo reprises her role as Anna Gonsalves from the first film in a cameo appearance. She is seen aiding government agents in a video tape, showing the devastating after-effects of the first Predator's self-destruct device to the U.S. Army. Carrillo filmed an additional scene in which she talks to the camera and describes the events of the first film, but this scene was cut.
  • Henry Kingi as El Scorpio, a violent member of the Colombian Scorpions.

Production

Once 20th Century Fox approached Predator screenwriters Jim and John Thomas to write a sequel, they pitched six ideas, one of which was "putting the creature in an urban jungle", which the studio liked.[4] The eventual setting was Los Angeles, portrayed as a city blighted by gang warfare in the midst of a severe heat wave, creating the ideal "hot spot" in which the Predator would search for hunting targets. The script was then developed in just three weeks.[5] A goal of the sequel would be to expand on the Predator's origins and motives, showing the creature has been visiting the planet for centuries, is not psychopathic, but just interested in hunting, and depicting its spacecraft on screen.[4]

Producer Joel Silver invited director Stephen Hopkins, who drew his interest while directing A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.[6] As Hopkins joined production before the screenplay was finished, he worked closely with the Thomases in the script revisions and storyboarding the sequences they had written. Silver brought in two actors he had worked with in Lethal Weapon, Danny Glover and Gary Busey.[7] Due to a dispute over salary, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred as Dutch in the first film, declined to return to the sequel.[8] Production was split between location shooting, mostly at night, and soundstage filming.[6]

The main Predator was designed to look more urban and hip than its predecessor. Design changes included tribal ornamentation on the forehead, which was made steeper and shallower, brighter skin coloration and a greater number of fangs.[9] Describing the new Predator's design, Stan Winston said, "Broad concept's the same. The difference is, this is a different individual. A different individual of the same species. As in a snake is a snake, but different snakes are different. Their colorings are different, different parts of their characteristics, their facial structures, subtle differences."[7] Production designer Lawrence Paull said that with the Predator ship, he attempted "a space vehicle unlike anything that had ever been designed before", a snail-shaped vessel whose interior was "both technological and reptilian, where the creature and its ship blend and work together". Given the Alien franchise was also by Fox and featured effects work by Winston, the crew decided to add an Alien head among the trophy skulls in the Predator ship.

The writers decided to set Predator 2 ten years after the original, which was the then-future of 1997, leading to some developments like new video technology and a then-nonexistent subway in Los Angeles (the Los Angeles Metro Rail started operating the same year the film hit theaters). For the set design, Paul aimed for a "kind of retrograde future that's equal parts Brazil and Blade Runner mixed in with modern-day technology", with "big and outrageous" structures but simpler prop design, such as boxy and colorless cars.[6]

The MPAA initially gave Predator 2 an NC-17 rating, so several cuts were made to bring it down to an R rating.[10]

Music
Main article: Predator 2 (soundtrack)

Alan Silvestri returned to score the sequel, conducting the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra. Whereas the first film did not have its music released until years later, a soundtrack album for the sequel was issued on December 11, 1990 from Varèse Sarabande. On December 1, 2014, the label issued Predator 2: The Deluxe Edition.[11]

Release

Home media

Predator 2 was released on VHS in 1991,[12] on DVD in 2003,[13] a two-disc special edition in January 2005,[14] and on Blu-ray on June 9, 2009, in North America.[15] The film was released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray on August 7, 2018.[16]

Reception

Box office

Released on November 21, 1990, Predator 2 was #4 at the US box office in its opening weekend, with a gross of over $8 million behind the films Dances with Wolves, Three Men and a Little Lady, and Twentieth Century Fox's own film Home Alone. The film grossed a total of $57 million, $30 million of which was from the USA.[2] The worldwide box office revenue totaled $57,120,318 in ticket sales.

Critical response
Further information: List of accolades received by the Predator film series § Predator 2

The film received mostly mixed to negative reviews, though reviewers were generally impressed by the casting of Danny Glover as an action hero. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 29% based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 4.78/10.[17] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[18] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[19]

The reviewers for The Washington Post were split: Rita Kempley enjoyed the film, saying she felt that it had "the dismal irony of RoboCop and the brooding fatalism of Blade Runner", and felt Glover "brings an unusual depth to the action adventure and proves fiercely effective as the Predator's new nemesis."[20] Desson Howe felt the film was "blithely unoriginal" and numbingly violent, but also praised Glover's ability to bring warmth to the center of a cold film.[21]

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "an unbeatable contender" for the "most mindless, mean-spirited action film of the holiday season".[22] Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, in giving the film two out of four stars, suggested that it represents an "angry and ugly" dream. He also felt that the creatures' design had racist undertones where "subliminal clues [...] encourage us to subconsciously connect the menace with black males."[23]

Despite the initial negative reception, Predator 2 has since become a cult classic, often viewed as being underrated.[24][25]

Other media

Sequel
Main article: Predators (film)

A sequel Predators, was released in 2010.

Novelization

A novelization of the film written by Simon Hawke was released on December 1, 1990 by the publishing company Jove.[26] The novelization provided a small amount of information regarding the fate of "Dutch" from the first film. Keyes recalls memories of speaking with the battered Major while infirmed in a hospital, suffering from radiation sickness. "Dutch" is said to have escaped from the hospital, never to be seen again. Furthermore, the novel tells a great deal of the story from the Predator's point of view, such as its humiliation of having its mask removed by Harrigan, and its reasoning for not killing Cantrell due to its discovery of her pregnancy.

Video games

The film was adapted twice as a video game; the first for computer in 1990 and the second for Sega Genesis in 1992.

References
  1. "Predator 2". The Numbers. Retrieved August 23, 2014.
  2. "Predator 2 (1990)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 8, 2010.
  3. "Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Didn't Return for Predator 2". ScreenRant. February 4, 2020. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  4. Shapiro, Marc (December 1990). "Predator Season". Starlog (161).
  5. Jim & John Thomas (2005). Writers Commentary track. Predator 2 DVD: 20th Century Fox.CS1 maint: location (link)
  6. Shapiro, Marc (December 1990). "Predator 2 Stalks The Concrete Jungle". Fangoria (99).
  7. The Making of Predator 2 (Documentary). Predator 2 special edition DVD: 20th Century Fox. 2005.CS1 maint: location (link)
  8. "Arnold Schwarzenegger - Money Stopped Arnold Schwarzenegger Starring In Predator 2". Contactmusic.com. June 8, 2011. Retrieved August 23, 2014.
  9. Jody Duncan & James Cameron (2007). The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio. p. 336. ISBN 1-84576-150-2.
  10. Byrd, Matthew (August 14, 2017). "15 Movies That Were Originally NC-17". Screen Rant. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  11. "Predator 2: The Deluxe Edition". www.varesesarabande.com. Archived from the original on December 28, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2014.
  12. "New Video Releases". The New York Times. May 16, 1991. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  13. Gross, G. Noel (February 9, 2003). "Predator 2". DVD Talk. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  14. Gross, G. Noel (January 31, 2005). "Predator 2: SE". DVD Talk. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  15. Zupan, Michael (June 20, 2009). "Predator 2 (Blu-ray)". DVD Talk. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  16. Hartman, Matthew (August 7, 2018). "Predator: 3-Movie Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Ultra HD Review | High Def Digest". ultrahd.highdefdigest.com. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
  17. "Predator 2 (1990)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved June 29, 2019.
  18. "Predator 2 Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved May 13, 2018.
  19. "CinemaScore". CinemaScore. Archived from the original on July 22, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  20. Rita Kempley, 'Predator 2', Washington Post, November 21, 1990, Accessed January 6, 2011.
  21. Desson Howe, 'Predator 2', Washington Post, November 23, 1990, Accessed January 6, 2011.
  22. Janet Maslin, Predator 2 (1990) Review/Film; The Quarry: Humans, The New York Times, November 21, 1990, Accessed January 6, 2011.
  23. Roger Ebert (November 21, 1990). "Roger Ebert, Film Review for Predator 2". suntimes.com. Retrieved July 9, 2007.
  24. https://www.film89.co.uk/in-defence-of-predator-2-1990/
  25. https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3370679/youre-one-ugly-mother-fcker-predator-2-turns-25-today/
  26. Predator 2: A Novel at Amazon.com
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