Predator 2 (1990)
★★★½ — Predator 2 (1990)
Released in 1990, Predator 2 arrived three years after the original film turned a fairly straightforward jungle survival story into one of the defining sci-fi action pictures of the late eighties. Where the first film drew much of its tension from isolation and claustrophobia, the sequel takes the bold decision to transplant its alien hunter into the urban sprawl of a near-future Los Angeles, a city imagined as a pressure cooker of gang warfare, police burnout, and social disorder. It is a genuine tonal gamble, and one that proved divisive enough on release to send the franchise into a long hibernation before it resurfaced again in the early 2000s.
The film was directed by Stephen Hopkins, who came to the project having made his name in television and with the low-budget horror A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. It was produced across three companies, Davis Entertainment, Lawrence Gordon Productions, and Silver Pictures, the latter two of which had been involved in the original. Hopkins keeps the picture moving at a reasonable clip across its 108-minute runtime, and he leans hard into the grimy, sun-scorched aesthetic that the premise demands. The script, credited to Jim and John Thomas who wrote the first film, widens the mythology around the Predator species in ways that franchise devotees have debated ever since. Leading the cast is Danny Glover, an actor whose profile at the time was very much bound up in the Lethal Weapon series, where he had been playing a rather different kind of world-weary LA cop. Here he plays Lieutenant Mike Harrigan, a detective who finds himself on a collision course with something far beyond any criminal his precinct has seen. Alongside him are Gary Busey, playing a federal agent with an agenda of his own, Rubén Blades and María Conchita Alonso as Harrigan's colleagues, and Bill Paxton in a role that gives the film some of its looser, more freewheeling energy. Paxton in particular brings the kind of wired, unpredictable screen presence he had already shown in films like Aliens, and he is well used here. It is, on paper, a polished but unremarkable ensemble for the genre, though several of the performances do more with the material than you might expect. If you have seen Glover in Lethal Weapon 2 or indeed his later work in Shooter, you will have a decent sense of the range he brings to this kind of action-heavy role.
Deserves more love than it gets. Look, it’s no Predator, but this sequel deserves way more love than it gets. Swapping the jungle for a sweaty, chaotic Los Angeles is an inspired. The urban setting gives it a whole different energy, grimy, intense, and almost dystopian. Danny Glover steps up surprisingly well as the lead. He’s no Arnie, but he brings a street-smart, worn-down cop energy that totally works for this version of the story. Watching him go toe-to-toe with a Predator in a city full of crime and corruption is genuinely fun. The kills are brutal, the Predator gets more screen time (and gadgets), and the whole vibe feels nastier and more unpredictable. The Xenomorph skull in the Predator ship was the ultimate tease, the crossover promise that blew every nerdy mind in the '90s. Flawed, a bit messy, but wildly entertaining and criminally underrated.
That Xenomorph skull moment really does deserve its own footnote in franchise history, a blink-and-you-miss-it Easter egg that had people rewinding their VHS tapes across the country and genuinely set pulses racing for a crossover that would take another fourteen years to materialise. For me, that single prop says something about the ambition behind this film that its reputation has not always given it credit for. It is rough in places, no question, and it never quite lands the same sustained dread as its predecessor, but there is real craft in the production design and a genuine willingness to push the mythology forward rather than simply repeat what worked before. I find myself coming back to it every few years and enjoying it considerably more than I probably should, which is, honestly, the best thing you can say about a sequel.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1990 | Watched: 2025-04-09
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Predator 2 (1990) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More with Danny Glover: Shooter (2007) · Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) · Lethal Weapon (1987)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
