FAQ

Because Peter Keyes' team were tracking the predator. They told Heinemann to make sure nobody entered the building, in the hopes they'd be able to trap the predator there or at very least, gather evidence to further track it. Likely they also knew the predator would slaughter anyone in the building as well; cartel or cop, and so wanted to minimise casualties.

Caught in the middle of a territorial gang war between Jamaican and Columbian drug gangs, LAPD lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) learns that an alien predator (Kevin Peter Hall) is stalking and killing members from both sides, much like a big game hunter, taking trophies and hanging his victims upside down. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) wants to keep the killings a federal matter, but when the Predator also starts killing members of the LAPD, Harrigan decides to go after it.

No. Like the first movie, Predator (1987) (1990), Predator 2 is based on a screenplay by American screenwriters Jim and John Thomas. It shares many similiarities with the 1989 Dark Horse comic Predator Concrete Jungle. Many scenes from the comic are in the movie. However, the movie was novelized in 1990 by American author Simon Hawke. It was followed by Predators (2010) (2010). A spinoff movie, AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), that unites the Predator with the creature from Alien (1979) (1979), was released in 2004, followed by a sequel, AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007), in 2007.

It's been 10 years since Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his rescue team encountered a Predator. This is evidenced by the film's events taking place in 1997 as indicated textually at the beginning. A reference to the 1987 events is made when Keyes tells Harrigan that the first encounter with a Predator was in the Central American jungle and only two people lived to tell about it.

It's a different Predator. The Predator in the first movie blew itself up with one of its own devices (possibly nuclear but more likely generative of some sort of electronically-charged blast) that, according to Keyes, obliterated the equivalent of 300 city blocks. The Predator in this movie is also different in appearance. The monikers assigned to the two Predators are Jungle Hunter (Dutch's Predator) and City Hunter (Harrigan's Predator). However, behind-the-scenes, both the Jungle Hunter and the City Hunter were portrayed by the same actor, Kevin Peter Hall.

This Predator was meant to be a younger and less disciplined hunter than in the previous movie, which might also answer the question of why this one has much more advanced weaponry and armour than in the first film, in addition to just expanding the character. This one is also much more ambitious, e.g., instead of hunting in a secluded area like the Central American jungle, he hunts in Los Angeles.

Keyes explains to Harrigan that the Predator seems to be able to "bend light". This could mean that the Predator's technology creates a field around him, which causes rays of light that hit a side of the object to be absorbed and retransmitted from the opposite side (or, depending upon the angle of incidence, from an adjacent side), like as shown here (for a spherical object). This would make the rays seem to pass right through the object, creating the illusion of invisibility. This effect would work best on smooth surfaces where the light hits the object in a more or less straight angle. With irregular objects and moving objects, there are more distortions around the edges and on bent surfaces, where the light is more likely to break, comparable to a glass bottle, which is quite transparent in the middle but not around the edges. If this is the case, the invisibility device does not so much render the Predator invisible but rather transparent. Such a concept does occur in nature. It's called a gravitational lens.

The Predator's reasons for skinning its victims and hanging them is not explained in this movie nor in the first movie. It was established in Predator that the Predator is a "hunter", and hunters will often gut and dress their prey while still in the field. Game animals are also sometimes left hanging for days or weeks in order to season the meat before consuming it. However, the Predator in this movie goes to an abattoir (slaughterhouse) to feed on beef, so it's unlikely that it is also feeding on humans, although it's possible that maybe it takes so long for human meat to cure that the Predator would have gone hungry while waiting, so he was saving the human meat for later. It was also established in Predator that the Predator removes body parts, e.g., skulls, spines, and hearts, as trophies, but then again, human hunters taxidermize the heads of their animal prey and hang them on their walls as trophies even if they have eaten the meat. Another theory that's been suggested is that the skinned bodies were deliberately left hanging as a warning to other humans in the area, either taunting them or letting them know that they are also being hunted. In other words, the Predator is taunting its prey, as it is stated in the movie, "to scare the shit out of its enemies" like the Jamaicans do. Another possibility that has been suggested is that the skinning and hanging of their victims is a religious or hunting ritual. Some human cultures have the tradition of marking a novice hunter with the blood of his or her first kill. Skinning the victim could signify that the prey is rendered "naked" and defenseless. Hanging the prey upside down may, according to a Predator, prevent the spirit from ascending, trapping it inside the body, making the kill more valuable. Another theory is that the Predator may do this to victims it finds unworthy to become "trophies". Harrigan, King Willy and Jerry all put up a significant fight against their foes and also stand their ground against the Predator when faced one-on-one, whereas a whole group of Colombians and Jamaicans panicked and were dispatched very easily. Notice that it wasn't mentioned that Danny was decapitated either, so given the way he panicked and begged before he was killed and his fight only lasted all of 10 seconds, the Predator felt he was not trophy-worthy.

In the first film, when the Predator removed its mask, its vision was all red and different from the thermal vision. In this film, when the mask is removed, vision is completely thermal. This may be a goof or a change for artistic reasons. The point of view of the first Predator (when unmasked) is very condensed and hard to make out what exactly is being seen on screen. In Predator 2, the Predator is unmasked for a good portion of the film, so there are quite a few more shots from the Predator's perspective, and manner of presentation may have been deemed to be easier on the eyes of the viewer to be shown the thermal vision.

An in-universe reason could be that this Predator got cybernetic upgrades to his eyes. Allowing him to see in the more focused thermal vision mode.

Her husband and the father of her child is Rick Cantrell, a used car dealer who met Leona while she gave him a ticket for speeding. This fact is mentioned and verified in the Predator 2 novelization. He was never seen in the movie, however. Many audiences speculate that it may have been Danny, as they are seen flirting in the police station at [21:12] right after Lambert gets called into Mike Harrigan's office, and later when Harrigan confronts Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) Leona tells Harrigan "I loved Danny, too".

Two theories have been offered. (1) She uses an invisibility cloak and also has a silent run. This is supported in the first AvP film when Lex sees the ship decloak not 20 yards from her while she was standing in the open, and she didn't even notice it. (2) The Predators on the ship had all taken turns hunting in the city which may have taken decades. So they landed before the technology to detect her was invented and the area wasn't developed yet or the population was minimal at the time so nobody saw her, which might explain how the ship wound up being located in a tunnel beneath a building. However, part of this theory is extremely unlikely, as the types of killings done by the Predator were unheard of in Los Angeles at the time. Had there been repeated visits to the area at more or less regular intervals, the LAPD, sheriff's office, California state police and the FBI would have records of similar cases. Assuming that the ship's cloak and silent run are sufficient to avoid visual detection by pedestrians and bystanders, this does not rule out that the ship was detected by radar. This would certainly explain why Keyes and his team are very quick to intervene during the gang war at the beginning, forbidding Harrigan and his team to enter the building. As Keyes explains, they have quite some knowledge of the Predator species and their modus operandi, so when they detect unidentified flying objects that are not visually confirmed, they probably know what they are dealing with.

Simply put, yes, they can. In every Predator film, the Predators all have their masks removed for extended periods of time and seem to have no difficulty breathing, not to mention being able to howl, growl and roar. The City Hunter from this film was without its mask for almost the entire third act of the film, but it was also shown to have a small device it put over its mouth and took three or four deep breaths. After this, the device is never used again. It was likely because City Hunter was severely wounded and was either having difficulty breathing or the mask held a sort of stimulant to keep him going until he was able to treat his wounds. Another point to add to this is when Harrigan is on board the Predator's ship at the end of this film. He is able to breathe perfectly fine and the elder Predator didn't have its mask on. Therefore they were both breathing oxygen. It seems to be a common misconception that the Predator's mask is used for breathing, yet no other part of their equipment shows to be air tanks (though this doesn't rule out the possibility that the mask uses some sort of air-filtration unit, seeing as how it appears to be airtight, perhaps warranted by the smog or pollution levels of the city).

No, they can be killed and obviously have a high mortality rate given the nature of their culture. However, it may be inferred they age slowly and have an extended lifespan. The elder Predator that gives Harrigan the pistol was clearly frail. The pistol dates 1715 which may suggest that Predator survived his "trial" and claimed that as his trophy during his "coming-of-age" ritual. If that is true then it could be surmised they have a lifespan of around 300 to 400 years. There is also the possibility that the apparent long lifespan is due to time-dilation from space travel. It is part of the theory of relativity, and it has been proven that traveling at fast speeds causes time to slow down for the person traveling. If we assume that the Predators' space travel includes getting to very high speeds, visits to Earth every hundred years might only be a few months apart from the Predators' point of view, meaning they have no different a lifespan than humans do.

Drug consumption and some scenes of violent stabbings had to be removed for the Australian VHS release that was classified MA 15+.

The Predator was prepared to kill the boy, but upon scanning the toy gun the child had, it revealed the weapon was fake. Therefore he had no need to kill him and the boy would not have been an honourable kill.

After Predator and before Alien vs. Predator, Alien vs Predator - Requiem and Predators. In terms of the Alien chronology, the glimpse of the Xenomorph skull in the Predator's trophy cabinet is actually our first glimpse of the species, preceding Prometheus by at least 100 years.