My guess as to to gun given to Danny Glover at the end of Pred 2:
We know that predators value the hunt, and find honor in killing (hence why they don’t kill unarmed people, or the pregnant lady.) Now, rather than suffer the shame of defeat, they usually kill themselves if it appears that they are going to lose (happened in 1, almost happened in 2 but DG cut the thing’s hand off.) So, as seen at the end of Pred 2, the other predators don’t kill DG, because he is clearly a worthy foe. They give him a gift, in fact, for defeating one of their own in honarable combat. My guess is that the gift was a gun that belonged to the last (maybe first?) human to kill a predator.
It’s a different Predator… If Glover had to fight the predator in the first movie with homemade weapons and in hand-to-hand combat he’d lose, of course.
The gun given to Glover at the end is a trophy of his win… and a groovy tie in to make another sequel, as it shows the hunting trips are a periodic thing.
I always had the impression that this Predator was on it’s FIRST hunt, which is why it made so many mistakes…had it been in the Jungle it would have faired better…but the city had too many distractions and unpredictable events.
And the complete Mac line (my favorite in the movie):
“You ghostin’ us motherfucker! I don’t care who you are in the world, you give up our position one more time, I’ll bleed you. Real quiet. Leave you here.”
The sequel featured the late Morton Downey, jr. which was kinda fun, but the big ripoff of Aliens where the guy in the vehicle monitoring the team’s lifesigns freezes up, forcing the main character to go in and rescue the survivors… that ain’t cool, man.
What I never get is why Predator 2 is set in 1997… a 1997 that looks suspiciously like 1990! I mean, what was the point? Just so they can say the Preds come to earth every 10 years? Well why even bother making that up, then? It’s stupid and it limits sequel possibilities.
Pred1>Pred2. Predator 2 had Bill Paxton in it, for god’s sake.
And now it’s time for Predator 2 trivia: When the characters ride the LA subway, they are actually on Bay Area Rapid Transit. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but I think they use the downtown San Francisco and Oakland stations, which are more cramped and darker than this one.
They put it in the very near future to establish the ferocious gang fighting that served as the backdrop for the whole movie. Or did you not watch the entire first quarter of the movie?
That’s a point in its favor.
I really can’t see how anyone can say Pred1 is great while Pred2 was shite.
But even then it seems like it would have been a lot easier to just say that there was a lot of gang fighting (whether there was in reality or not at that time) than to set it in a near-future that looks in every way exactly like the present. It still seems odd to me.
I still like the movie, just not as much as the first one. Actually, a big reason why is the subject of this thread: Danny Glover? Pft.
Danny Glover is a distinguished, respected actor of stage and screen. Ahnold is… well, he’s Ahnold, isn’t he? Just Ahnold all over the place.
Here’s a silly movie-scifi thing in Predator 2: when they try to analyze the bladed projectile that the Predator left behind, we’re told that it’s not only an unknown alloy, but an unknown element. Yet it’s also quite light. Apparently nobody involved with the movie ever took Chemistry in high school.
Morton Downey Jr. is dead? Now that I know that… I feel nothing.
In real life, LA of 1990 looked a lot like LA of 1997. I really don’t think you’re understanding the “near future” concept… what were you expecting, flying cars? Jetpacks?
I guess I’m just not understanding your criticism. Are you saying it SHOULD’VE looked a lot different? Despite the fact that, in real life, it didn’t?
While I don’t hate “Predator 2” with perhaps the same passion as the OP, there were a few things about it that really pissed me off ie:
it contained pretty much every gimmick from the first movie, overdone to a ridiculous degree eg instead of leaving the odd splash of luminous green blood, the title monster now gushed gallons of the stuff; instead of viewing the world in one form of weird, altered-colour vision, the Predator now used several modes; instead of having a few surgical tools to use in treating its wounds, it now had a virtual operating theatre’s worth contained in its suit. Oh, and loads more stupid weapons too.
the destructive force of the first Predator’s explosive suicide device was made to sound like the equivalent of that unleashed by a small nuclear weapon (even though Arnie managed to escape the explosion from it without too many difficulties).
male human life seemed depressingly cheap in the film (as it does in so many), but as soon as there was the slightest possibility that a woman might be hurt by the Predator, the film-maker introduced some really lame reason for the monster to spare her. Those who constantly bitch about violence against women in movies (as though we men are any more thrilled at the thought of being victims of violence than women are) take heed!
the line about the claw/spear/whatever the fuck it was (I don’t remember) fired by the Predator being made from a metal that was not to be found on the Periodic Table was fucking hilarious. Either the metal was some exotic superheavy transuranic element that, in real life, probably would have had a half-life measurable in nanoseconds (and, as an aside, why do physicists waste their time creating shit like that?), or it was some truly weird substance with a non-integral number of protons in its atomic nucleus.
Congratulations to the OP for bringing up this subject, and reminding us all that, no matter how long ago cinematic crimes were committed, someone, somewhere will remember them, and ensure that the rest of the world NEVER FORGETS! PREDATOR 2, NEVER AGAIN!
Incidentally, a friend of mine who also saw this movie reckoned he pissed himself with laughter when the (rather short-lived) character of King Willy appeared in it. Where I live (Australia), there is a wheat-based breakfast cereal called Weeties whose icon is a giant, anthropomorphized grain of wheat called King Willy Weeties. My friend reckoned that that character was the first thing that popped into his head when King Willy was mentioned in the movie!
The same thing happened in the first movie. He could have attacked the woman a couple of different times, when she was with the soldiers, but instead she was spared.
And from what I remember, the woman in Predator 2 was harmed, but she wasn’t killed because Predator found her to be pregnant. She was taken to the hospital.
Oh, no, I’m not saying that there should have been jet packs or anything, I’m just semi-confused as to why they bothered setting it in the near-future at all. It just seems unecessary to me since they didn’t really do anything with it other than, as you mentioned, the gang thing, which it seems to me like they could have done without the time jump. On the other hand, I guess it does help to explain why, say, Arnold’s character from Pred1 doesn’t pop up. Of course, I’m also the only one I know of who has this criticism (and it’s not really even that, it just bugs me a little), so it’s probably just my own issue or something.
On a side note: Bill Paxton is cool? When did that happen?
My only argument is that I still watch Predator about once a year but I’ve only ever seen Predator 2 like, twice. I trust myself that I haven’t rewatched it for good reasons.
We have something similar in America but they’re called Weedies and Dr. Dre is on the box.
