Why The Undersung PREDATOR 2 Deserves More Love
In '80s action cinema, musclemen ruled supreme: from Arnold Schwarzenegger cracking heads in Conan, Commando, and The Terminator to Stallone's increasingly bombastic Rocky and Rambo franchises, it was a decade of excess, testosterone, and slow-mo explosions. But as Nick De Semlyen argues in his excellent book Last Action Heroes, post-Die Hard, things began to change, with bulging biceps giving way to everyman anti-heroes: a trend perfectly embodied a few years later in 1990's Predator 2.
The first Predator is, of course, a classic: existing at the apex of action, sci-fi, and horror cinema. It's a fearsome trifecta of genre trappings that made a sequel all but inevitable. So, when 20th Century Fox approached the original screenwriters, Jim and John Thomas, for a follow-up, they pitched the ultimate hunter being relocated to an “urban jungle.”
Director Stephen Hopkins – fresh off A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child – soon joined the production, initially envisioning Patrick Swayze as LAPD cop Lt. Harrigan who would team up with Dutch (a returning Schwarzenegger): indeed the Dark Horse comic series Predator: Concrete Jungle (1989-90) had a similar plot (though in the comics Dutch was ultimately changed to his equally-muscular brother John). However, due to a pay dispute, Schwarzenegger did not reprise his onscreen role, and script rewrites saw Harrigan take center stage, with the part eventually going to Danny Glover.
Glover already had a prior relationship with producer Joel Silver, the Hollywood mogul behind Lethal Weapon (Silver would also recruit Weapon alumni Gary Busey and Steve Kahan for the cast). This, combined with a more nihilistic tone, made Predator 2 a different beast from John McTiernan's original: nastier, grimmer, and more violent; it even garnered an NC-17 rating for its original cut.
Right from the opening moments, Predator 2 takes no prisoners. Whilst the OG boasted a slow-burn build-up before the Yautja made its first onscreen kill, Hopkins' sequel goes for the throat, fading in on the sun-scorched streets of LA in the middle of a violent drug war between Colombian and Jamaican cartels and the police. As gun battles rage, we see the Predator's trademark heat vision before it swoops in and takes out a squad of coked-up gangsters in gore-soaked style.
Action cinema has often leaned toward right-wing rhetoric, but in 2025, it's difficult to watch these early moments without thinking of the current political climate. With its portrayal of America being under siege from immigrant drug gangs, tabloid hacks calling for “martial law,” and Harrigan as a cop with a history of brutality, Predator 2 feels like a Trump-era dystopia (no wonder The Washington Post noted the film shared “the dismal irony of RoboCop“). There are, however, subtleties amid broad strokes: Harrigan is black and clashes endlessly with white G-Man Keyes (Busey), and for every bad guy racial stereotype (King Willie) there are several positive representations in characters such as Danny (Rubén Blades) and Leona (Maria Conchita Alonso).
Harrigan's crew is soon joined by Lambert (Bill Paxton, one of the few actors to have been killed on screen by a Terminator, Predator, and Alien), and the police begin to realize that there's a new player in town racking up a body count. Following a particularly gnarly sequence where a Jamaican voodoo ritual is interrupted by the Predator, things get personal when Harrigan's partner, Danny, is killed.
If there's one thing Predator 2 excels at, it's the set pieces. From these early moments (skinned bodies swinging in police flashlights) to later kill sequences (the Yautja's cloaked feet stomping through street water; the strobing nightmare of the subway attack), it's all beautifully shot by DP Peter Levy. Add to this the Predator picking up some cool new catchphrases (“Want some candy?” “Danny boy”) and you've got yourself all the ingredients for a cult classic.
The Predator's lore is also wonderfully expanded. Whilst fulfilling the cardinal rule of sequels – “more blood, more gore” – the creature itself remains (at least at first) delightfully aloof, gradually revealed in close-ups, jump-cuts, reflections, and invisible shimmers. We see its fetishization of weaponry – its shoulder cannons, spear, discus, and razor net mirroring Harrigan's trunk full of guns – and in perhaps one of the film's most iconic sequences, its trophy room. After the Predator fixes a newly polished human skull to the wall, the camera pulls out to reveal the bones of a Xenomorph, forever joining the Alien and Predator in the same cinematic universe. A universe that continues today with Predator: Badlands, where evil supercorps Weyland-Yutani play a key role.
As corpses begin to stack up, Harrigan chases the Yautja to the slaughterhouse district; another incredible set-piece. As well as tipping its hat to Aliens (the beeping motion sensors, and the command center freakout), this moment also explores interesting ideas of speciesism. As Harrigan runs past the swinging carcasses of cattle, there's a clear parallel to the Predator's strung-up victims from a few scenes earlier, inviting the audience to consider whether humans are as monstrous as the Yautja.
Harrigan ultimately chases the Predator to its ship, and as the pair face off, the cop scores a lucky shot (“Shit happens!”), cleaving its stomach in two. Standing over his vanquished foe, he turns only to find a three-pronged laser sight trained on his head, confronted by a whole platoon of Yautja. It's a great twist which invites further questions: have they been hunting in LA too? Or were they monitoring the one Harrigan killed, perhaps assessing it in some rite of passage? It's never explained, and remains beautiful in this ambiguity.
As the other Predators carry off their fallen brethren, an elder Yautja stops, turns to Harrigan, and – perhaps as a mark of respect – tosses him a 16th-century pistol. It's a moment that hints that they've been here before (the pistol later used as a touchstone in Dan Trachtenberg's prequel Prey) and that they might one day return. As Harrigan puts it in the film's final moments to one of Keye's goons, “Don't worry, asshole… you'll get another chance”.
The credits roll and Alan Silvestri's score soars (one of his finest – strong words for the composer of Back to the Future), and Harrigan's story ends on a high. Although the film has since garnered a cult following, its initial reception was largely muted, with The New York Times calling it “mindless” and “mean-spirited.”
“It's so over the top,” Hopkins mused years later. “I just sort of went for it and made the biggest, boldest, loudest movie I could make. I was only 29 years old – I was like a rampant child, running around Los Angeles, blowing the shit out of everything and making things as bloody as possible.”
Whichever way you cut it, Predator 2 more than holds its own and – despite five further franchise entries (and two AvP crossovers) – it remains a monument to the moment '80s genre cinema bled into the '90s, a fascinating time capsule and classic in its own right. You could do worse than to hunt it down.
