Predator 2 Trivia
Posted by Darkness on November 10, 2006 (Updated: 22-Aug-2023)
Below you’ll find various bits of Predator 2 trivia
Pre-Production
- John McTiernan was offered the chance to direct but turned it down to work on The Hunt for Red October.
- The opening of the film would have taken place on a golf course with a man with grey hair playing golf when an helicopter suddenly lands. Men get out and the man with grey hair turns around and it’s Dutch. Schwarzengger was always going to play the same Dutch character who would team up with Harrigan to take down the Predator.
- According to writers Jim Thomas and John Thomas, a Predator sequel had not been planned and they had to wait to see how successful the Predator comic book series would be. After the series was well-received, producer Joel Silver was convinced Fox to make the sequel.
- During the finale when the elder Predator hands Danny Glover the flintlock pistol dating from 1715, writers Jim Thomas and John Thomas had thought of an idea for a potential Predator movie which would take place in a time where was no modern weapons available to combat them.
- With more production time than the original Predator, Stan Winston, Stephen Hopkins and Lawrence G. Paull came up with ideas and designs with more exotic weapons (the telescoping spear, the speargun, the smart disc, the net, etc.) for the Predator to use to differentiate this film from the previous one.
- The storyline is similar to the of the Predator: Concrete Jungle comic series. Written by writer Mark Verheiden, it sees Dutch’s brother track down a Predator in New York city. Reportedly, producer Joel Silver sent his representatives as well as the Thomas brothers to talk to Verheiden to see where the comic book was headed. The story in Predator 2 is very similar though Los Angeles was chosen as the film’s setting.
Cast
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked to reprise his role as Dutch Schaefer in Predator 2 but there are few varying accounts of why he didn’t do it. Some early reports suggested he didn’t like the story while producer John Davis said in 2011 that the deal broke down when Schwarzenegger had asked for $250,000 more than what they offered him. In our interview with Stephen Hopkins in 2021, he said that James Cameron told Schwarzengger that if he did Predator 2, he wouldn’t be able to do Terminator 2. So Schwarzengger just did Terminator 2 instead.
- Bill Paxton previously starred in Aliens.
- Elpidia Carrillo, who played Anna in the first Predator film, has her name listed in the sequel’s credits. She appears briefly during the scene inside Peter Keyes’ mobile headquarters. When Keyes (Gary Busey) describes how the creature activated a self-destruct device in the first film, you can briefly spot Anna on one of the video screens. Carrillo filmed a debriefing scene in which she talks to the camera and describes the events of the first film, but it was cut from the sequel.
- Patrick Swayze was approached to star in the film but was unable to because he was injured during the filming of 1989’s Road House.
- Steven Seagal was also considered but Hopkins just didn’t like him.
Production
- The scenes where the Predator attacks the subway were shot on a huge soundstage at Fox. The scenes where the train is actually moving was shot in Oakland, California, with actual subway trains running.
- Rubén Blades was giving a live TV interview to Joan Lunden for Good Morning America from the set of the movie. During the interview, director Stephen Hopkins didn’t realise it was a live interview and walked on camera and ordered Blades back to work very loudly. Blades and Hopkins did another interview days later to apologize.
- For the sequence where King Willy meets his demise at the hands of the predator in the alley, wind and water fans were used to simulate the predator walking on water before it is finally seen during one quick shot as its image is reflected on the water.
- The gunfight in East Los Angeles was shot in three long days with the exception of the interiors of the building which was shot on the Fox lot.
- The slaughterhouse sequence took about four days to shoot and was extremely difficult, according to director Stephen Hopkins, due to the amount of water used and the lighting of the sequence. Respirators were required during the slaughterhouse sequence due to the debris and chemicals that had filled up inside the set. You had to film from lots of different characters point of views and then sync up all the VHS tapes when we see them in Keyes’ trailer.
- When the Predator gets shot in the slaughterhouse sequence by Danny Glover, Kevin Peter Hall had blood packets filled with the luminescent fluid from a “glow stick” mixed with K-Y jelly attached to his body to create the glowing, green blood.
- Kevin Peter Hall had studied African tribal dances in order to get into the feel and flexibility of the Predator and to give him a personality
Post-Production
- This was the first film to be given the NC-17 rating in the US for its graphic violence before it was re-cut to its final theatrical length. The film was re-cut over 20 times, according to director Stephen Hopkins, because of more graphic shots of mutilated bodies and decapitations by the Predator.
- The following scenes were deleted from the final cut of the film:
- A subplot involving Maria Conchita Alonso’s character pregnancy.
- The chase sequence where Danny Glover tracks the Predator all the way to the slaughterhouse distract was extensively longer.
- Gore and mutilations in all the murders the Predator had done including Bill Paxton’s in the tunnel.
- The Predator’s sounds consist of pre-recorded animal sounds from cats, tigers, lions, bears, etc.
Other Things
- In the climax of the film, we see the Xenomorph skull in the trophy cabinet. This wasn’t in the script. As Hopkins was touring Stan Winston’s studio, he saw the xenomorph skulls on Winston’s wall and said “We have to have that in the movie”. He quickly storyboarded it in there. Fox wanted to cut it out but Hopkins fought to keep it.
- The Jamaican voodoo posse gangs seen in the film were based on actual gangs that were terrorizing New York City and Kansas City at one point in the 1980’s.
- Bill Paxton was one of two actors to have been killed on screen by an Alien, Predator and a Terminator. The other was Lance Henriksen.
- Shortly after filming had finished, somebody had stolen various props from the set including a xenomorph skull. It still has never been recovered.
- The last name of the character “Danny” (Rubén Blades) is “Archuleta”. J. Tom Archuleta was the second assistant director of both this movie and Predator.
- Voodoo is seen to be used by the Jamaicans in the film but it’s not actually practiced in Jamaica but in Haiti. The Jamaican religion similar to voodoo is called obeah.
- In preparation for Predator 2‘s 30th Anniversary in 2020, Disney/Fox were going to re-release Predator 2 in cinemas with a brand new transfer based on the 70mm print with new colour grading. Hopkins and Peter Levy oversaw it. But after The Predator was released in 2018, the studio assumed it would re-ignite the Predator franchise but it really didn’t. So the new anniversary re-release of Predator 2 was shelved.