New List, Who Dis?

Film: Predator 2
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Just like almost every May, the They Shoot Zombies list of 1000 most highly acclaimed horror movies has been revamped and retooled. This year, the list returned six films previously cut and added another 26, many of them from the last couple of years. There were a few older brand new additions, though, including Predator 2. This seems like an odd addition. It’s much more a science fiction/action movie than a horror movie, although there are certainly some clear horror elements. Anyway, I figured this would be a good way to herald in the new version of the list.

The original Predator was released in 1987 and presumably took place in 1987. The sequel, released three years later, takes place in that far distant future for the time of 1997. In this world, Los Angeles (and presumably other parts of the country and world) has become a war zone of criminal gangs fighting each other and the police in broad daylight. Into this rides our good cop Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover). Our opening sequence will show him taking out a number of criminal thugs, not realizing that there’s also our title character in the mix.

Let’s be honest here—there’s not a lot of plot to these movies and that’s probably for the best. We’re going to have a number of players of opposing forces with the Predator (Kevin Peter Hall) at the center of it. We’ll have criminal gangs, the police, the media, and government forces who are aware of the hunter all converging on Los Angeles during a heat wave. The details of this are less important than the actual action on screen and the personalities involved. The people you expect to die are going to die and the people you expect to live are going to live. That’s how these movies work.

So let’s talk about the players here. On the sides of the gangs, there’s no one really noteworthy aside from one of the gang leaders named King Willie (Calvin Lockhart), who barely makes it to the second act. The media is represented by Tony Pope (Morton Downey Jr.), who is essentially immune to what happens because he doesn’t carry a weapon. For those who don’t know, Downey Jr. was one of the early adopters for the confrontational television style, the Rush Limbaugh before Rush Limbaugh, and he basically plays himself here.

The government forces are led by Peter Keyes (Gary Busey), who leads a team trying to capture the Predator. It’s not going to be much of a shock when I tell you that the government forces are going to be arrogant, overmatched, and just more cannon fodder despite all of their plans and technology. The cops are led by Harrigan, who is teamed with his partner Danny (Rubén Blades) and with other cops Leona Cantrell (María Conchita Alonso) and new transfer and wild card Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton). Again, it’s my contention that anyone who has seen any movies like this knows who will live and die, so I leave it to you to determine which of those two will survive to the credits.

Recently, there have been a few new films in the Predator franchise that have done great work in expanding the mythology of the Yautja species, showing more of their society and how they function. At this point in the franchise, though, there isn’t that much information. We know that they have what look like dreadlocks, a variety of cool high-tech weapons, hunt for trophies, and won’t attack something that doesn’t have a clear way to defend itself. Predator 2 does very little to add to this, only giving us a view of what a Yautja in Los Angeles would look like.

In fact, there are some places where it feels like the Yautja doesn’t act in the way it should if we want to stick to the mythology. We need to have all of the different confrontations here to make what plot there is work. This means that even though the Predator is involved in the first fight sequence, he leaves the cops alone. Why? He has multiple opportunities to take out a lot of the players, but if that happens, we won’t get the dawning knowledge of Harrigan and the police and we won’t get the conclusion that we desire.

There are also issues here with the characters themselves. One of the key moments in the first film is when it’s determined that the creature won’t attack someone or something that isn’t armed and prepared to fight back. Harrigan makes that same conclusion after the Yautja attacks a subway train—he only killed people who were armed—and then repeatedly goes charging into places where he knows the creature is armed to the teeth.

Predator 2 isn’t bad (and certainly not the worst film of the franchise by far), but it’s a far, distant cry from the original film. The update to an urban environment is a natural progression, and having Danny Glover in his “I’m too old for this shit” days is a good choice as well, but this really should have done more to expand the franchise.

Why to watch Predator 2 : Moves the Predator franchise to an urban jungle instead of an actual jungle.
Why not to watch: It’s more of the same.