Predator 2 (1990)

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Cast: Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Rubén Blades, María Conchita Alonso

Have I Seen It Before: Yeah, but with only the thinnest of memories. As we approach Predator: Badlands I feel that need to run through the series.

Did I Like It: And I’m not entirely sure why. All the films in the series are so pointedly different, only the faintest wisps of a canon is built from entry to entry. We’ll probably never get to this film on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but for listeners of the show I had to have Kenzi explain to me the rich tapestry of the Yautja that came to a head in Prey (2022), and how most of it happens in the background of this particular film.

And that would pretty much wrap up the “what’s good” section. A xenomorph skull is the kind of thing films are filled with these days, and apparently there’s more. The film certainly makes an attempt to be different than the original Predator (1990), and I can’t imagine spending any more time with Dutch (Schwarzenegger) would feel derivative in any franchise outside of those created by James Cameron*. The rifle at the end is the seed from which the mighty oak of Prey.

That’s about it.

The rest of the film is an action movie for action movie’s sake. Run, run, run. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Who are we running from? Who are we shooting towards? Why does it matter. These are not the kinds of things we can address in a 108 minute runtime, and you wouldn’t be particularly interested in the answers. This is made all the more aggravating when it becomes clear that this Predator film is only fitfully interested in being about the Predator. It’s a hodgepodge of warmed over ingredients from other franchise sequels of the era. I’ll bet all the money in my pocket that Bill Paxton was cast mainly to tap into the energy he brought to Aliens (1986), and nearly every second of this film is consumed with the same lack of amiability that weighed down RoboCop 2 (1990), released only a few months earlier.

*If you do ignore the Terminator films, Arnold really has a lot more restraint about sequels than I think we ever give him credit for.

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Mitchell Ryan, Gary Busey

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Let’s reckon with a strange question before I get into any qualities of the movie. Why is there so much sturm und drang as to whether or not Die Hard (1988) is a Christmas movie (it, is by the way, but that’s a discussion for another review), when this movie gets hardly a peep?

I wonder if it is mostly that by the time that these silly movie debates held on the internet became a thing, Mel Gibson as one of the all-time leading men had firmly become a thing of the past.

And that’s the thing I’m most struck by here. We’re supposed to like Mel Gibson. Feel sorry for him. Even with this being the ur of the modern buddy action movie, it’s hard to separate Mel Gibson the man from Martin Riggs the character. All of that manic energy will soon be harnessed into something pretty ugly. Makes it difficult to have a good time, and isn’t that the point of a movie like Lethal Weapon?

I was struck recently by reading that Richard Donner’s first choice for Riggs was his Superman (1978) discovery, Christopher Reeve. I have a hard time imagining that, as even when Reeve played slightly unhinged and despicable, he had a gentleness that couldn’t fully be erased. That he went ahead and made Superman IV - The Quest for Peace (1987) was probably the wrong move for him, but I probably would have been able to more fully dwell on the action, the chemistry between Riggs and Murtaugh, and Donner’s direction.

Now, it all feels a bit too weird for words. No one knows the fate of the long-threatened Lethal Finale now that Donner has passed on, but I can’t help but imagine that one being really weird.