PREDATOR 2 (1990) This is to Predator what Danny Glover is to Arnold Schwarzennegger I'm not sure if it was this, or Total Recall, which was the first R-rated movie I got into as a minor and managed to remain in without being ejected. You wouldn't believe the tight-assedness of theatres around here, around that time. It was disappointing though; not just because it didn't measure up to its predecessor, but it also had some competition in the form of a Dark Horse comic book with which it had a lot of similarities. Both took place a few years in the future in a major city during a heat wave, with the Predator getting into all sorts of trouble with both the cops and organized crime. The comic was pretty cool. This, not so much. The year is 1997. No jet packs yet, but guns are made to look "futuristic" by sticking a little more metal to them. Gang violence has gotten so bad in L.A. that you don't even bother setting your alarm anymore, taking the 6:30 shootout for granted. The only kind of cop that can tackle this kind of crime is a cop like Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover), who has this big rap sheet of behavioural disorders and conflicts with authority. (there were a lot of cops like this in the movies around 1990) Both the gangs and cops have a new problem, though - there's another Predator hunting out there, and it's interested in an urban jungle this time. You remember the Predator, right? Big, lizard-like guy, wears a cloaking device, face like a vagina with tusks, hunts humans for sport? If you couldn't figure it out from Predator (and hey, a lot of people couldn't), Predator 2 goes to great lengths to explain everything to you - that he's a hunter, that he wears a cloaking device, all that. After all these scenes in Pred-O-Vision, just to make sure we get the point, we're explicitly told that the Predator sees in infrared ("It sees heat" - yeah, thanks for pointing that out. So why do freshly killed bodies look so different from live ones?). The Predator can severely disfigure a car roof by stepping on it, suggesting that it weighs about eight hundred pounds. Must've made jumping from branch to branch back in the jungle tricky. One of these gangs is a "Jamaican voodoo drug posse" (probably the same one as in Marked For Death). They'll kill you, but first, they'll take your soul! I wouldn't worry about them though; they don't seem to bother the cops, they're just here to get slaughtered by the alien. Also lining up for the role of "meat on the hoof" are Ruben Blades (who does a lot of screaming for a guy whose death, we're told, was instantaneous), Maria Conchita Alonso and Bill Paxton (at his most annoying) as the cops, and Gary Busey (one of his worst performances ever) as a shadowy government guy with an agenda of his own. Predator 2 is pretty bloody and violent, though the FX are a little less convincing than in the original. The action is good though, particularly a slaughter on a subway train. It's the plot that sucks. Oh yes, it does suck. This movie is written as if it were the first of its kind. It's ideal for people going in with a blank slate, people who either didn't see Predator or forgot all about it moments after it was over. But if you remember five minutes of Predator, you'll be about half a movie ahead of the cops at all times during this movie. When it's finally unmasked at the end of the movie, the only thing I thought was "Hey, its forehead is more steeply sloped than last time!" By the time the cops are caught up, we're re-enacting a scene from Aliens, cutting back and forth between a botched attempt to capture the beast in a slaughterhouse and the helpless bunch who looks on though video cameras, shouting "Get out of there!" The Predator has a few new weapons this time, like a self-tightening net made out of garrotte wire, an R-rated version of Batman's batarang, and a huge spear which retracts into itself for portability (later to be recycled on a few sci-fi TV shows). It might hunt for trophies, but it eats at a local slaughterhouse. What a waste. Ted Nugent must be rolling in his arsenal. The ending just flat-out sucks - it's not just that it's incredibly contrived (what's this ship doing down there? And how does Harrigan hold his own so well in hand-to-hand combat with an unfamiliar weapon against an experienced opponent? And how does the Predator fall for what I think we can all agree is the Oldest Trick In The Book?). It feels like a bone cynically thrown to those of us who hoped that this sequel would expand the notion of the Predator somehow, those of us who spend the whole movie thinking c'mon, show us something we didn't see in the last movie. We see one room inside a Predator spaceship, and briefly see several other Predators. Most tantalizing, in their trophy cabinet is several alien skulls, including an Alien skull (a cute reference to the Aliens vs. Predator comic of the time...the movie's been in limbo ever since). Then it's over. Goddammit! I missed the sincere, unselfconscious macho of Predator, which had Jesse Ventura calling himself a "goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus". Here, we've got a tough chick who brings jokers into line by grabbing them by their balls. And one of those "reluctant hero" heroes. It's written by the same two guys - this time, though, it's directed by Stephen Hopkins, then a fresh graduate of the Nightmare On Elm Street school. There's nothing about this movie that suggests to me that any time during its creation anybody felt they were making something special - there's a void where this movie's personality should be. When people talk about movies made on an assembly line, they're talking about movies like this. On the plus side, it makes me want to re-read the comic, which I'm gonna go do right now. BACK TO THE P's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE