Predator 2 (1990) - Page 7

After seeing PREDATORS, I can say with confidence that P2 is still the *second best* movie with a Predator in it. Predator 2 isn't a perfect movie, but it has a bunch of colorful characters, a fun CRIME RIDDEN 90s setting, and some cool Predator moments.

As for AVP, aside from the stuff you can laugh at near the end of the movie (Predator/Human super team-up, Predator snapping a baby alien's neck), it's a complete bore.

Granted, it's not a film where realism is all that present, but 2 things about P2 have always bugged me(3 if you count the botched Busey death effect)...

-The building where Busey's team gets mauled. It's some sort of giant multistory freezer building? At most you have people going up 3 floors, then when Glover emerges and attempts to navigate the ledge he's on maybe the 15th-20th floor.

-Before Glover finds the Predator ship, he falls a ludicrous distance and catches himself with his fingertips?

Nitpicks, maybe, but hey this is the thread for it. Maybe I'm misremembering something. Might have to do a double feature of this and the first soon.

I was severely disappointed in this movie when it came out. In fact, being only like 12 or 13, it was the first time I put it together that a director, Stephen Hopkins, could be a kiss of death. The first film series he'd ruined was Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child. There were so many good ideas to Predator 2 that I fooled myself into watching it again on HBO about six months ago. The part where it lost me completely was where Glover finds a necklace or something hanging off a tree limb in a cemetery. So...the Predator fucks with people? The Predator is a dick? And then Glover pulled his gun on a child. He fell apart pretty quick. Stephen Hopkins has a tin ear for any genre I've ever seen his attempt. It's a mystery to me how he continues to get work. I've my fingers crossed for Nimrod Antal. I may wait for the DVD though.

Man, I don't get the love this film gets. Yeah, the meat factory sequence is pretty cool, but the movie is horribly dated. Fucking Morton Downy, Jr? In some sort of future trenchcoat with shoulder pads? While people are calling PREDATORS lazy, P2 is at least as lazy: it contains nearly every action movie cliche that exists, and is completely by the numbers.

I think the new film is better.

I always kinda assumed the three floors of the structure we saw from the inside weren't the structure as a whole

See Maclaine, John for a just as ridiculous a moment that never gets called out.

I'm not sure how mine was. Apparently, it's condescension if you disagree with it.

Most likely, it just always bugs me when they don't throw in a simple shot of his running into a stairwell or something that wouldn't interfere with the pacing at all.
True, but the elevator shaft fall in Die Hard at least seemed to hurt him, and Willis was a younger guy, with no doubt stronger fingers!
Also in P2, after catching himself, Glover falls again!

You're missing the essential truth tho that Harrigan was the fucking MAN - he could run up stairs faster than you could blink and fall thirty stories and catch himself with his teeth!

DIE HARD had so much verisimilitude going for it that McClane could have done something as silly as, oh I don't know, shoot a fucking car at a helicopter and the audience still would have bought it.

I'm still weirded out that the predators take Harrigan winning really, really well while the member in the previous film literally tried to decimate Dutch suicide bomber-style. The most recent film just compounds this confusion, really.

Still, I'd fucking love a Predator film set in the American Civil War. It would make a perfect prequel to this AND be awesome.

Agreed - and as usual with these sorts of ideas Dark Horse already went there...

I think it's more that the predators don't want to leave their tech lying around. They dropped Harrigan off with nothing but a flintlock. Dutch, on the other hand, would have walked away with working hunting tech if the predator hadn't gone nuclear.

Of course, AvP kinda shits on that with leaving behind the combistick.

A Predators setting during the early 1900's in the Mexican Revolution, or a late 1800's west setting would make for some Wild Bunch-esque awesomeness.

The Predator in the first one was on a solo mission, and we can only assume that in the second one, that one was the champion of the group, or the chosen one to go out and take trophies in L.A., so when Harrigan defeated him, that earned him respect and his life.

Good take. I always figured it was a rite of passage of sorts.

I enjoy Predator 2 exactly for what it is: violent, entertaining schlock.

Predator is great fun. It has memorable chararcters, great one-liners, and fantastic chemistry between the guys, but it's a better-than-average '80s Arnie action picture. It just seems like since the original no one knows what the fuck to do with the alien, besides making it into a sci-fi-slasher hybrid.

i question that the peoplew who don't like this movie don't have a 'fun-center' in there brains...i mean...its not the first one for sure..its an entity all on its own thats hilariously awesome. so much fun in this b-grade flick

Well, the original film had a three armed Carl Weathers so ...

I'll give AvP (a few) points for Lance Henriksen doing the thing with the hand (a la Aliens).

Did anyone else know about the existence of this Predator 2 "outtake"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQEJL...layer_embedded

Yeah I've seen it. It's weird how that just appeared out of the blue about a year ago. Was it on some special edition they released overseas or something?

I remember that video was posted in The B-Action Thread some time back. With all the extras on the Predator 2 disc, it's strange that they wouldn't put something fun like that on the special features.

I'm thinking it was just done specifically for the cast and crew.

They should have still thrown it on there so we could see Harrigan boogie down with the Predators after he defeated the one they sent out into L.A.

"Here's a flintlock pistol. Want to dance?"

"Yeh. Les git down!"

I was 3 at the time, so can someone explain to me why people were so terrified of Jamaicans and Haitians in the late 80's/early 90's?

It's an alright movie. The gangland stuff is completely and totally useless, and so much of Danny Glover's dialog is ADR that it hardly even feels like a real performance, but it's fun enough.

There was a lot of talk at the time of Haiti being an AIDS epicenter. I'm sure that helped.

Okay, so I've formulated my thoughts a little more on why I like this movie. Pooping helps me focus, what can I say?

It feels like FRANK MILLER'S PREDATOR, as I've said earlier in the thread, but it feels like a Frank Miller comic without the unpleasantness (homophobia, misogyny). So you've got like these ultracops fighting ultragangsters with an ultramonster thrown in the midst. You could argue that the ultragangsters being very ethnic is a bit reminiscent of Miller's questionable side, but the only white guy on the good guys' team is the goofy comic relief dude.

The heroes, the bad guys, the angry chiefs, the no-nonsense gubbinment dudes, ... they're all painted in such broad strokes and the performances all dialed up to 11 I can't help but enjoy myself.

But Luca why would you enjoy a movie with homophobia and misogyny arglebargle

That's interesting. Too bad that AIDS fear didn't lead to more depictions of flamboyantly gay gangs. If King Willie liked willies, that'd be something a bit more interesting.

By the way, I don't buy that Predators are offing gang members because they're "worthy prey" or anything like that. There can't be that much thrill in the hunt when you're invisible and have a thousand weapons. In the first movie he was stalking a team that's trained to detect when their being followed. The Predator in this movie doesn't do anything but run into crowded rooms and kill motherfuckers.

My pet bullshit theory is that after the original Predator died in Guatemala, word (or clicks, I guess) spread throughout the Predator ranks that Earth was a hunting hotspot. Another Predator heads to LA a few years later and engages himself in a deadly conflict - a three-way brawl between two drug cartels and the police - in hopes of finding a similarly worthy opponent.

A better question is how they snuck the giant Predator clan ship into a basement. It probably had cloaking fields, but still, surely someone would have noticed the atomic-blast brightness of the Predator ship engine while it tried to fit itself into a boiler room. Predator II is full of plot holes, I tell you!

Actually, the predator got lucky that Dutch and company were even there. He was likely hunting the people that were already there, the guerrillas, and got lucky that Hopper's team and Dutch showed up.

Worthy prey doesn't mean giving the prey a fair chance. A big game hunter isn't giving a lion a fair chance after all. We use camo, big guns, duck calls, artificial scents, etc. None of this is particularly fair.

After the mauling of Busey's team, Danny Glover flees up a very tall ladder and ends up on the roof, from which they end up on the ledge.

I like the way the Pred spares Maria Conchita Alonso's life once it realises she's pregnant.

 

It has a CODE OF HONOUR!

"Voodoo magic.  Fucking voodoo magic mon..."

Holy crap.  I just watched this last night for absolutely no reason in particular.  Now this thread has been resurrected.  This must be a sign!  Or not, whatever.

 

I listened to the writers' commentary for the first time, and yeah, they were going on and on about the 'code of honour' of the Predators, that he would only hunt/kill people that were real sport or a real threat.  So because all the people in that subway car had guns, the Predator of course was entirely justified to fucking slaughter every living thing within sight.

Nah, no more than a fisherman. Gotta let the next gen grow othewise the hunts become much shorter.

Everything in this movie is a hallucination after the "Doo yjou whant too smoke some ganja mon?" scene!

Another reason for this Predator just rushing in and killing large groups could be as simple as it's personality. Yes they have a code of honor, but each one is different. It wants to prove itself. Plus since it's with a group, it probably thinks that if it shows off how fearless it can be by taking out groups rather than one on one, it's standing with the group increases.