Yautja Fest - Predator 2 (1990) - Midnight Viewing

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Weary way.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We can kill a.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Shouting out their way? What the hell are you?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yahuja Fest? That's right, we got a name. No, thanks
to you listeners, it's Yaucha Fest because I couldn't bear
to keep saying predator Fest because it sounds like a
Mara Lago mixer HP. Hey, how you doing, brother?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Doing wonderfully? How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Father alone? I'm in the midst of a yaoucha fest.
I couldn't be better.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
What's better than youch youcha fest?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Youchta yaoucha? Come mom? Brother?

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah with j Fest.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Winky dinky youcha?

Speaker 3 (01:27):
I thought you were going to say it was blinking,
blinking and nod, winking, blinking and nod.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Winky dinky dog. Say it with me, Winky dinky. Do
you want the hoe cakes?

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Hoecakes?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
You want the wine ho cake? A little bit of
Hollywood shuffle for y'all.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Witherspoon, right, John Witherspoon.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
The Great John Witherspoon. Absolutely, we're not here to talk
about John Witherspoon or Hollywood shuffle. We are talking Predator.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
To Los Angeles nineteen nine seven. It's the hottest summer
on record. Pollution is choking the city. The gangs control
the streets. As bad as things are, they're about to
get worse, much worse.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Whoever killed it's gonna be I'm a fish.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
It has almost no weight, but it cuts like steel.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Incredible. Who did this?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Took out four men art with machine guns by hand.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
You don't know what you're dealing with. Other world life
forms drawn by heat and conflict.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
He's on Safari, Lions, Tigers, the bears, oh.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
My, Danny Glover, Gerry Busey, Ruben Blades, Maria Councta, Alonso,
Bill Paxton.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Predator two.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
He's in town with a few days to kill this Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Predator two directed by Stephen Hopkins, written by Jim and
John Thomas, based on characters by Jim and John Thomas,
Produced by Joel Silver, who Else and starring Oh geez
my list shit and starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Rubin Blades,
Maria Concitta, Alonzo, Bill Paxton. Finishing his trifecta of alien

(03:56):
murders and things from the future sci fi murders. Let's
call it the Paxton Trifectair also with Robert Dave, Adam Baldwin,
Kent McCord man from fucking car fifty four.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Adam to Merant, Adam twelve. Yeah, I was gonna say emergency,
but it's Adam twelve.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Adam twelve. My favorite episode of Adam twelve. Can I
just say there's an episode where he and his partner
are discussing how he's decided to start taking a bag
lunch to work, and the scene goes on for ten
minutes and it's just this back and forth just makes
economic sense for me. Adam twelve anyway. Also within also
with Martin Downey Junior.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Oh, go ahead, No, I was just about to say
Adam twelve was my oldest brother's favorite show that in
chips you can't get enough of them.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
There's a reason I love your oldest brother best. And
also featuring Kevin Peter Hall returning as a The Predator,
but not the Predator because this is a different Predator.
He's very different. Indeed, HP Predator two released November the
twenty first, nineteen ninety Sir, I guess we were seniors

(04:56):
in high school.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, there was we were rising. That was early in
our seniorhood, and I believe we both I don't know
that if we saw.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
This, Willow, did we not see this together.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
I was going to say, I don't think we saw
it together, but I did remember. I did see this
in the movies, though I do that much, I do remember.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now this is the second film in the series. Evidently
twentieth Century Fox immediately wanted a second film once the
first film was a massive success, so Jim and John
Thomas were called upon. They provided six different possible scenarios
and everyone agreed and urban Jungle is the way to go. Now.
They set this one in Los Angeles, but they needed

(05:35):
to make some adjustments because Los Angeles doesn't have a
subway system, and some of our techniques here are going
to be a little bit more futuristic. So this film
takes place ten years after the previous one, setting it
technically in the future, came out in nineteen ninety takes
place in nineteen ninety seven. HP, What were your thoughts then?
What are your thoughts now?

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Overall thoughts overall in the movie.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Overall, we'll get granular in the moment.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Sure, at the time, I remember enjoying it quite a bit.
It was a departure from the first one. They I
liked the substitution of the urban the concrete jungle. If
you will for the Leafy Jungle. I liked it at
the time. That's my short review. How about yourself?

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, I really liked it in a lot of ways.
I liked it more than the first film only because
I enjoyed putting it in an urban setting. The jungle
setting was great for a one off kind of remote scenario,
but the thing scenario or alien to aliens more like,
which this film parallels in more ways than one. So

(06:40):
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I remembered it nothing but fun.
Then it probably sa not a few times since then.
But what are your thoughts now, friend? You know what?
Fuck it, we'll get into that HP. What's the story here?

Speaker 3 (06:54):
So the story is as you said, it's nineteen ninety seven.
There's it's it is. But it's an exaggerated, heightened version
of la in the future. Not to say it's like
a Judge Dread type of situation.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
But it's a Demolition Man scenario, certainly.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
That's it. It's as if Demolition Man took place. It
was a few years before the beginning of Demolition Man,
where there's still elements that look like the real current world,
but you have Morton Downey who's playing this sort of
the video telejournalist, the sort of muck raking. That's a
terrible word that makes me sound like I live in

(07:34):
you know, the forties or something. But he's playing Morton Downey.
Folks who don't remember Morton Downey was Was he the
original late night, hyper crazy, cheap ass talk show host.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
There was a regional fella in California named Wally George
and basically, if you were able to tune into a
Wally George show, you saw the Morton Downey Junior Show.
In fact, Mortin Downy Junior appear on the Wally George
Show before he had his own show, so it's safe
to say that the format and the character he portrayed

(08:08):
were already in existence, but not nationally. So he basically
he's Oreos to Wally George's hydros.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Hydrox, Yeah, which I think we all can agree. Hydrox
was the superior cookie, but it is not remembered now
because Oreos had better marketing. But anyway, it's a future.
There's a gang war going on, and it's the hottest
summer on record or something. It's a very hot summer
and there's a gang war going on between the Jamaican

(08:36):
gang and the Columbian gang and police officers are dying
left and right. There's a little bit of RoboCop in
this movie too, not satire to that degree, but definitely
a heightened reality.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
If you will, you can tell you that Thomas Brothers
are having a fun time caricaturizing Los Angeles because there
were gang wars going on, and there were all like
incredibly heat waves and droughts and such that had been
going on previously. Not to this level. This is exaggerated,
This is Judge Dread levels of exaggeration, but again without

(09:09):
the satire.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Correct correct. And Danny Glover is leading a team of
he's a cop and he has other cops. Maria Cancido
Alonso is on his I don't know is he a sergeant?
Is he I don't know what his title? Captain, lieutenant Mike,
that's right, Harrigan. And he has a team that works
Ruben Blades. Interesting, by the way, Father Malone, I, I

(09:31):
too was worried that I was going to mispronounce his name,
because naturally I'd want to say ruben blades or is
it blades? But I did look up an interview that
he gave for the walking Dead, and he basically said,
when I grew up, I called myself Blades, and then
later people in Panama called me blades, so it's blades,

(09:51):
it's blattes. I don't care. So I guess we'll continue
to call him blades out of some form of respect,
but it could go either way anyway.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
When I saw this movie, I called him Ruben Blades
and I thought he was shaking too. I thought he
was the coolest motherfucker on You know. He was a
musician and I had one of his albums and in
the liner notes of the album it had his home
phone number and if you called it, he picked up.
And I know because I called him, and then I
panicked and hung up afterwards. But it was Ruben Blades.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Good for him.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
He was.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Also he was the Helado de Coco guy in Do
the Right Thing. Was the little bit part he was, hey,
come get you come you want coconut dear? What would
you want? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
That was what I loved him. I miss him.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Ruben blood is I think he was. I want to
say he was also in Mobid of Blues. Wasn't he
the guy that sent the thugs to beat up Spike Lee?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
We can only hope like one of his other noble deeds.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
He's great. He's actually one of the things I really
liked about this movie. Anyway. There's this gang war going on,
and in the midst of all of this heat and
chaos and destruction, the predator A predator, not the Predator
has as Gary Busey's character says, he's on safari. He
plunks himself in the middle of all this chaos to

(11:06):
go hunting. That's true, that's the story on that show.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
I love that he's just hanging out and watching this
fight going on at the beginning, don't you. Yeah, I do.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
It's I will say this, if we're going to start
to get into this movie.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
You know, let's get into it, because this opening scene
is fucking ridiculous. I get they're trying to paint this
as a comic bookie cartoony version of LA, a sci
fi version of La heightened. The reality version of LA.
The gunfight that's going on in the streets would be
talked about to this day had it happened back in
like nineteen ninety seven, Like there was a heat style

(11:39):
gun battle you remember in Las on the streets of
Los Angeles. There are a couple of guys with bank robbers,
and they ended up like shooting their way out. That
was all anyone could talk about for years and years
and years and years and years. Can you imagine this
fight going on? There are lines of cars, There are
lines of Colombian warlords, including El Scorpio. What was that
fella's name? I gotta find his name.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
He was good only that This is the kind of
heightened scene where they're having this gun battle, and in
the midst of it, some of the gang members are
thrusting their faces into piles of cocaine to get themselves
like hyped up for this gun battle. In drives in
Danny Glover, they try to paint his character as being
a renegade from the very beginning. There's some officers down

(12:24):
and they can't get to them because of the fears
gun battle. So he commandeers a car and he drives
it in and he puts it's a crazy gun battle
and I have So there.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Are a couple officers in the middle of the street
and caught in the crossfire. He breaks the door off
of a car, uses it like as a battering ram,
and then ends up blocking the gun toting fiends from
the officers and they're able to pull them to safety. Hooray.
What I love is if you read anything about the
making of the film. Initially, director Stephen Hopkins wanted Patrick

(12:56):
Swayze in this role, and he wanted it to be
a buddy film of Patrick's and Arnold Schwarzenegger are running
through the streets of Los Angeles fighting the predators. And
then that didn't pan out and either direction. Schwartzenegger wanted
too much money and Patrick Swayzy was not available. So
Joel Silver reaches out to his old lethal weapon pal,
Danny Glover, and while he was doing that, Stephen Hopkins

(13:18):
was interviewing Steven Segal for the role of Detective Harrigan,
who was interested in doing it but wanted to change
his character so that he was a CIA operative and
like a martial arts expert, and Stephen Hopkins was like, no,
I want this to be more of an average Joe.
So sorry, no, thank you, Steven Singal. And now I

(13:39):
wonder what Stephen Hopkins' definition of an average Joe is.
Because Danny Glover shows up here, breaks the door off
of the car, slams it, and then saves those guys
and then everything. They all run into the building. They're
all high on cocaine. They have a fucking arsenal up there.
He's running up there as well. It's one hundred and
nine degrees out here. This is not average Joe. This
is Superhero. This basically would have been Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
It would have been And I have to I have
to say part of my problem with this gun battle
and the movie a lot of the movie in general,
is the action I don't think is directed very well.
It's there's not a great sense of context. I think
one of the things that's wonderful about the First Predator
is you always understand where they are in relation to
the Predator and what's happening. And that's key to a

(14:25):
good action sequence. Diehard, that is a textbook case and
how to direct and how to direct action in a
motion picture. This is just there. There's a lot of
slow motion. There's just wants and gun battles. Maybe that's
the point is it's so chaotic, but I kept losing
my bearing on where things were happening that it just

(14:46):
became a lot of noise and storm un drying without
a lot of character to it. What did you think
of how it was directed. The action.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
I remember really liking the direction for some goddamned reason
because it it is poorly directed. What you're saying, you
never get a sense of geography in this movie at all.
There are fights going on with multiple characters involved in
multiple situations, and you never know where any of them

(15:15):
are or where they are in relation to each other.
It is chaotically edited. Even you know this shit going
on because stuff is blowing up and people are flying
through the air and bullets are being spat in every direction,
but it's not like you ever know. It's not like
there's a story being told here.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
And it only gets worse when the predator shows up
because then he's camouflaged. The whole point is you don't
see him until he wants to see you, and it's
just now like it's all geography at all. Context is
lost because now they're shooting at something else. It's edited,
like you said, very poorly, very choppily edited. I guess

(15:58):
that's partly the time that this movie was made is
to blame, because that was the style of action picture
at the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
But but just the moments where Harrigan gets the car
in between the gunmen and the police the gunman at
that point all run into the building and then suddenly,
because they need them there again, they're there again. There's
like a whole other line of guy shooting so that
Harrogan can blow them all away. Speaking of which, Harrogan
gets behind a group of four gunmen who are firing

(16:26):
on his fellow officers, and he goes hey so that
they can all turn around, because it would be somehow
immoral to have shot these guys in the back. What
the fuck is happening? No, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
I love Danny Glover. I think he's perfect in the
lethal Weapon movies as the over the hill cop who's
too old for this shit. I don't think he was
right for this movie. As happy as I am that
an African American got the lead role in an action picture,
and I know he was psyched because of interviews where

(17:00):
he said he jumped at the chance for him to
go toe to toe with the predator and be a badass.
That's totally awesome, right on the problem is I maybe
he just wasn't Maybe he was directed a certain way.
He's often bellowing his lines and it's I don't know,
he just he's such a good traumatic actor, and he's

(17:23):
good as the sort of a buddy and a buddy
cop movie. I just don't think he was right here
because he just seems to be laboring all the time,
not laboring, and I'm too old for this shit, because
at no point is that actually spoken in this movie. Gratefully,
but I just didn't buy him as the hardened lieutenant

(17:44):
who's trying to keep it together in the midst of
this gang war. That what did you think? Father alone?

Speaker 2 (17:49):
I think Schwarzenegger has a presence in action movies where
you don't need to know anything about the character because
it's Arnold Schwarzeneger. And in a case like this, where
we were dropped into a whole new movie with a
whole new set of characters, we need someone of equal standing.
I think Danny Glever could have been that had this
character been written a little bit better, had they given

(18:11):
us one scene of introspection or his home life or
anything at all that drives this man. Because I know
nothing about him, I began the movie the same way
I ended the movie as far as my knowledge of
this guy. Look, I'm not mister screenwriter. Screenplay tricks like,
I don't need a character arc necessarily. I don't have

(18:32):
a problem with the character beginning and ending the same place,
but I need to know something about them other than
he's really good at his job.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Oh you're going to say something. No, yeah, I remember
enjoying him when I saw it for the first time.
I thought it was pretty cool, it was interesting, it
was an action.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Let's talk you know before you go there, because you
brought up Stephen Hopkins. So I just want to double
back on him for a second, because in my mind
he was a good director, and rereading the list of
movies that he made, no, he is not, because he
made name Fordham Street, Dream Child, which is terrible. He
made this, which is pretty good, but it's only it's
good kind of despite him. Then he made the Judgment Night,
which hilariously HP I found myself watching about two weeks ago. Really,

(19:14):
it was just on. It was like one of those
Roku channel has a list of potential movies that are
playing right now, and he pressed the button and it
just starts and thuning. Oh, but I haven't seen Judgment Nights,
and since it was in theaters, I wonder if it
held up. Oh man, no, not at all. It is uttered.
Garbage soundtrack is still great.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
I was gonna say the soundtrack is still awesome, but
I agree with you that it doesn't hold up. Another
movie that I liked at the time, and then I
rewatched it later and said, oh, this isn't so good.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Speaking of terrible movies, he follows that up with Blown Away,
the most adult one. But let me speak as an
Irish person here, the most let me speak as a
Boston Irish person here, the most insulting, IRA fucking knockoff,
bullshit movie. I've ever seen a movie where Jeff Bridge
jumps on a motorcycle in back Bay to drive to

(20:04):
the Esplanade and then somehow goes over the Longfellow Bridge.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, not a lot of geography there either. I actually
it's funny. I could have sworn that this was the
same director who did one of the Bill and Ted movies,
but I had him mixed up with Stephen Herrick.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Me nuts too, me the same thing. I thought, you
know what, I don't know much about this guy, but
I know he directed one of those Bill and Ted movies,
so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
As I was watching and going is this guy a
bad director? Because this is not well directed at all?
The ghost and the darkness. Remember that, Remember Lost in
Space with Joey Tribiani. Yeah, in the gleap like merchandising monkey.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
Yeah, that was the funny story. I came out. I
visited you in Vegas. It was my fortieth birthday. Do
you remember this? And I was staying. We were staying
at the Planet Hollywood Hotel, which I don't think is
even still there.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Is it Planet Hollywood the hotel?

Speaker 1 (21:01):
No?

Speaker 2 (21:02):
What is it now? I think it's still Planet Hollywood.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
I don't know. We were staying in the Lost in
Space room.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
It had no Planet Hollywood as a restaurant is closed.
Planet Hollywood as a hotel is still there.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
It's still there, Okay. Like I said, we every room
I think had a different theme, a different movie. And
we were in the Lost in Space room that had
a couple of props that were encased in loose sight
in a table or something, and it was, oh, okay,
it's Lost in Space with Gary Oldman.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
All right, did it have Heathers? Did it have a
display of Heather Gram's will to live?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
No? But yeah, I agree when I looked him up
and said, oh, this isn't the same guy I thought
he was. Because I thought this for years, probably until
fairly recently. I didn't know that it wasn't the same
guy from the Bill and Ted pictures. But this was.
It was not it was not directed. Well you know
he the actors performances are all over the place. The action,

(21:55):
like we said, is not very interestingly done, and.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
It's just just the costume choices alone in some cases.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Oh, we haven't even talked about Bill Paxton. So Bill
Paxton you mentioned him at the top. He's in this.
The thing is I love that he was in it
because we all were such fans of his back then
he was in his prime with aliens and true lies
and this he in this picture. He looks like he
should be swing dancing to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy with

(22:24):
Heather Graham. They put him in these like bowling shirts
and Fedora's.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
He looks of fire, which he's in pretty much.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
The only thing missing was like a wallet chain. He
just he looked. It was weird. And he's supposed to be.
He's a cop who transfers to Danny Glover's Harrigan's unit
because he wants to be where the action is the
low ranger. But there's no evidence whatsoever with his performance

(22:56):
or with the character truth be Told that he is
this badass. He's he comes off. Think of him in
True Lies, when he's putting on the charm to Jamie
Lee Curtis and pretending to be a secret agent. That's
the guy we get here, the guy with a patter who's,
you know, always on the make. He's always trying out

(23:17):
a line on Alonso or some woman in a bar.
Like I. I was mystified at his character. What the
point of it was, Father Malone. I guess that's more
the writing than the directing.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
But still, yeah, it's fifty percent Hudson from Aliens and
fifty percent that guy from True Eyes, like an uncomfortable
balance that doesn't ever come off. And yeah, I don't
know if it's the writing or what, but I don't know.
It's a weird combination of a poor writing and maybe
poor choices on Bill Packson's part. I think, in an
attempt to get away from Hudson, he was trying to

(23:50):
play this like overeager guy like he's it's weird. He's
trying to give this guy's vulnerability when he needs to
be just a cocky prick, so he's way so slick.
He was slick, but like everything he was saying was
like awkward and socially, you know, inempt. So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
So that was disappointing rewatching it all these years later,
because like I said, I love him in almost everything
I see him. In this case, it was just a
lot while. But but there are things. Let's let's turn
this around. Let's continue talking about the plot of the movie.
So in the midst of this gang war, the Predator
crashes in and at this crime scene. Actually no, they

(24:31):
later there's a the Colombian drug lord is basically like
a bunch of the Jamaicans break into his his mansion
or whatever, and they're going to kill him, ritualistically kill him.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
And it's all like Frank Lloyd right as Tech right.
So it's so which also echoes the kind of blade
Runner apartments, which is also that sort of Frank Lloyd
right as Tech tile.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
The funny thing is they're gonna they say that they
hunt they this drug lord up by his feet and
they're gonna cut his heart out because they say they
want to do it ritualistically. They're gonna do voodoo. They're
gonna they're gonna kill himvoodoo stuff.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
And they they've dipped a chicken leg and blood and
they're like writing on his chest sigils and stuff, like
freaking him out with all the voodoo thisss.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
But here's the thing. They're Jamaican. Yeah, they're not hate
and they're Jamaicans. I thought that was I didn't catch
that when I was a kid, obviously, but now I'm like,
that's interesting. Anyway, as they're killing this drug lord, the
predator is broken in and kills everybody in the whole room.
And then as the cops Danny Glover and Ruben Blade,

(25:38):
so they're investigating incomes in CIA group led by who
fought him.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Alone, Uncle red Garabuse. Oh mah, I love Garret Busy.
He's you know what he's post this is post motorcycle accident,
but not he hasn't fucking completely lost it this.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
I think think this was his first picture after the accident,
so he hadn't it hadn't progressed to looney Tunes yet.
So he's he still has a good he's still helding
it together pretty well and good than this. Yeah, he's
really good. Because so he Glover Harrigan knows something is
up because these CIA goons come in and there.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
They basically what if they swapped roles, Actually.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
That would have been interesting because you would have been
more likely to believe Danny Glover until you realize what
he's actually up to. Because initially, keys, like the character
Gary Busey plays, tries to come on, hey, you know,
I don't want to step on your toes. I'm just
trying to do my job too. But it very quickly
becomes obvious that there's more to this whole situation than

(26:47):
meets the eye. Because the CIA guys come in and
they established jurisdiction, they kick everybody out. There's something going
on in what you find out. Look, this is a
you know, thirty year old movie. Pretty much spoiler alert
abound here. They have been tracking the predator for since
the incident in the jungle actually with Donald Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
They because one explosion total total three hundred city blocks
in area, and now they want that goddamned weapon. They
want the predator.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
They want the predator, and they've even there's mentioned they
don't followup, but they've actually even interviewed Anna, the woman
that they took prisoner in the first movie who actually
helps them escape on the chopper. So they know all
this stuff about the predator and they what effectively what
they've done is they've tracked the predator here. They have

(27:39):
studied his habits. They know where he is living, they
know where he's feeding, and they know what his effective
radius of hunting his hunting grounds are. So they've got
this whole situation at a slaughterhouse where they're going to
try to finally capture the predator using all this technology.
They've doused the room and radio accletive dust so they

(28:01):
can track the predator. They're using special suits that block
out body heat so that the predator can't see them.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
And you may know, they know that the predator can
only see in one spectrum of light. How they know
this good question.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
But and actually they're wrong about that.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
In fact, it's hilarious. It's the best part of the
movie honestly, where he's like looking around and he kind
of hears something and he gets a sense that something's
not right, and then he just goes switch switch, Oh,
there they are.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, And that sequence, although it's the most indebted to
aliens because what you have is so Adam Baldwin Linderman
from My Bodyguard and from what I understand it all
around grumpy guy, not a good guy.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
You know what's funny about him? He's a up until
this moment, I think I would have just said, oh,
Adam Baldwin right wing lunatic, right, But now I don't
know how much of a lunatic he is. Maybe he's
just a conservative asshole, you know what I mean. Like,
maybe he's not that bad anymore comparatively speaking. Maybe he
is pretty mild, but at one time he was. Maybe

(29:07):
he just doesn't want to pay taxes as much as
everybody else, you know what I mean. But he doesn't
want to overthrow the government. Maybe he's that level.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
It could be maybe I should reap. Maybe it's time
for a reappraisal given our currency.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Let's look at Charlton Heston like on a in a
whole New light man, you know what I mean, Like
patriot Charlton Heston. Yeah, so he.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Kind of made for a while, he made a career
of playing kind of these second bananas in these movies.
He is effectively Keys's second in command. He's the one
with with Harrigan in the command center as Keys and
his team are moving through the slaughterhouse getting ready for
the final capture of the predator.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Get your people.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
Right, that's that's because what you have is you even
have that the view screen with everybody's remote camera footage
and one yeah, and one by one they're winking out
as the Predator's killing everybody in this slaughterhouse. Pun intended,
but all kidding aside that this is my favorite sequence

(30:10):
of the whole movie because it's what the movie is
lacking for the most part, in my opinion, is from
the first movie is suspense. The first movie, there's no
end to the suspense. They're moving through the jungle, there's
things cracking, and they're always on edge, and you as
the viewer on edge as well. This one's they've substituted

(30:30):
suspense for action and gore in a lot of ways.
This was the only sequence where it's a little more
suspenseful because, as you said, the predator comes back. They
know he's going to be back, and they feel like
they've got him trapped. He's falling into their trap. But
then as you said, he stops, confusing them. They're like,
why is he stopping? And then he switches his vision

(30:52):
to another mode where he can see the UV lights
and then he's just off to the races. And you
see all this cool tech. They've added all this cool
tech to this picture, Father Malone. They have they introduced
he's got spears that he's throwing around. He has that
disc saw blade thing that he's throwing around. It's a
really cool sequence. I thought, probably the best one in

(31:14):
the movie.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
I would say, Oh, totally agree with you. Absolutely. It's
we haven't mentioned that the scene before us, the subway scene, right,
we haven't mentioned Ruben Blade is getting killed or any
of that stuff. But anyway, none of that matters because
here we are. We're in the slaughterhouse. And what I
liked about the scene isn't so much the tension because there,
as far as I'm concerned, that whole scene takes place

(31:35):
from the predator's point of view, The whole tension that
exists in the first film is because we don't know
what's following. It's fine on the view, yeah exactly. It's
like we've now seen the shark in Jaws. You can't
just be hinting at it now. And they a good
half to three quarters of this movie is really just

(31:57):
the early CGIFN the Predator being invisible, and that's fine,
but we know what he looks like and we want
to see him. Yeah, there are times when it makes
no sense when he's invisible, you know what I mean,
Like why would he be cloaking himself all of the time?
Why would he wear his mask all the time for
that matter. But anyway, point being, once we get to

(32:17):
the slaughterhouse and the particles of dust are the radioactive
particles are lining his skin like the cloaking device no
longer works. So it's really the first time we get
to see the Predator in action and not only decimate
those guys. But the fight between him and Danny Glover
is great, man, And I hadn't remembered the fight at
all from seeing it as a kid. So when he's

(32:38):
chasing Danny Glover likest amidst the hanging halves of beef
that you know it is a slaughterhouse, and they're just
shoving the signs of beef back and forth, so it
becomes kind of pendulum. I was thinking, like, oh man,
why doesn't the Predator just slice through them with his
giant wrist blade. Got'd be so awesome, and of course
he does. Once they introduce the disc, the Boomrang disc

(33:00):
that he has, it cuts through all of them. It
was great that the whole sequence is fantastic, including that,
because all we get is it slicing and slicing through
all these sides of beef and then we can't see
but we can see Gary Busey's legs underneath, and the
legs just fall over. Awesome.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
It's probably my favorite single shot of the whole movie.
That and there was another sequence that I thought was
actually interesting. I'd forgotten about it. So at one point
we're going to backtrack a little bit. Danny Glover, I
keep saying his name, Harrigan is going to go talk
to the head of the Jamaican gang. King Willie is seeing.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Willy played by Calvin Lockhart, the amazing Calvin Lockhart from
Cotton comes to Harlem and the Baron.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
He's really good in this.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
He's great man. He's so scary, and it's unlike any
other performance I've seen of the guy.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
He's exaggerated, but in a good way. Like this guy,
he's exaggerated without losing the danger of this gang lord.
So he knows sort of preternaturally that he doesn't know
that the predator is an alien, but he knows he
looks at it from a supernatural perspective. And after they
have their quick conversation him and Harrigan, the predator goes

(34:12):
to kill him. I don't know exactly why or how
this happens, but they square off. First off, there's a
great shot of the predator as he's cloaked. He's walking
towards King Willie walking through water, and it's really cool
because it's this tracking shot from the perspective of his
feet and they're cloaked, so you see these cloaked feet

(34:33):
walking through and it's not cg because this was too
early for that, or maybe just before it was. You
could really be done easily, so it was a great shot.
Then King Willy takes out it takes a sword out
of his cane. It's one of those sword canes, and
he's ready to square off against the predator and he
screams and the screen cuts to a shot of his

(34:54):
face with mouth agape, and then you realize that it's
not his head been cut off of his body, and
the predator walks towards the background holding So what you
thought was a scream of let's get it on, is
really the scream of him dying, and it's a really
interesting juxtaposition, and I thought it was a very cool

(35:15):
little because it's a nice shorthand for this fight that
he could never win anyway, So I thought that was
kind of that was a creative direction there.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, we didn't need to see that fight, and it
is a great transition, and that sequence and the slaughterhouse
sequence are the things that I took away from this movie,
I guess. So it's why I remembered it being well directed,
because that shot is great, and maybe the prosthetic is
really good that they've made of Calvin Lockhart, so you
buy it that it's just we've cut to a close

(35:46):
up of him screaming, and then it's just the head
being dragged away.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Some of this there's bits in pieces, little fleeting images
and shots that work that are frustrating because in the
hands of somebody, I don't want to keep using McTiernan.
But let's say for a minute that McTiernan could make
I think by then, I think it would have been
too expensive to hire McTiernan, because he'd already done Die Hard.
He was his star Wars on the Rise. He wasn't

(36:11):
going to do a sequel and at this point in
his career, so it's hard not to think about what could.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
This have been.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
In a better set of hands Fottom alone, it would
have been a much more interesting picture, I think.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
I think so. I think the script needed to work
as well, though, obviously like the Jerry Lambert character, the
Billy Billy Paxton, the Bill Paxton character. Yeah, and just
you know, a little more depth, Like they've created this
big team so that they could pick them off one
by one. But we're not given any character depth to
our leads. So what are we supposed to get from

(36:44):
our peripheral characters. And here's where casting is so important.
Because Ruben Blade, I don't need to know anyth about him.
He brought everything to that character. I know that guy.
He's super cool. I want to hang out with him.
Maria Conshiela A Lonzo is a terrible fucking actress and
I don't know what she's doing here at all.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
So to man, they wanted a female actress with edge,
and not to say that.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
She Latina does not automatically equal edge. They could have
found a Latina actress who is a fucking badass. Instead
they got the girl who's not good in a fucking
romantic comedy.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
It didn't work at all.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
But I think specifically of Touch and Go with Michael Keaton.
She ruined that movie.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
That's another good call, another good call by you. I
want to talk. I want to backtrack for one minute.
I know we're jumping all over the places.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Is our wants That's okay. We're wearing invisibility cloaks. They
can't see us doing it.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
You made reference to a sequence that happens just before
Harrigan goes to the slaughterhouse to see the Predator go
up against the CIA team. There there's a subway. It's
a subway sequence where Maria can cheetah Lonzo's character in
Bill Paxton. They're on the subway and it's actually some
of it's actually kind of funny because there's a gang

(37:57):
of punks for a black a better term their textbook.
They could have come from the movie Breaking. They look
like punks, basically like TV chips punks.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Basically all the gangs in this movie could have stepped
out of the Warriors. Do you remember that the fucking
Jamaican gang the posse are wearing in that fucking sequence
in the Mayan theme thing like the flashiest, stupidest, like
shiniest clothing I've ever They seem Oh, I didn't even
want to say it just seems awful anyway.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
So this sequence, so the funny part of this, the
part that I found amusing, was this gang starts to
hassle this little nebishy guy in the suit, this white
guy in the suit get Bernie gets and then he
freaks out and pulls out a gun to say I
don't want to use this, and the gang just laughs
at the guy. But then everybody else on the subway car,

(38:45):
everyone Grandmother's people on the way, everyone pulls a gun,
which is the one part that I thought the exaggeratedness
of the whole futuristic angle I thought was pretty funny.
But what worked conceptually is at that shortly they're after
the predator breaks into I think sensing all of this,
all these guns and all this action, the predator breaks

(39:07):
into the subway cars. It's running and all the lights
go off and it's very it. They try to be
stylistic by having it be stroby because the lights are
flickering and there's guns going off and everything, and that
it was so disappointing because it could have been a
great sequence, if artfully directed, but it just it wasn't.

(39:27):
It was just so again, I couldn't keep track of
what was happening. It's even worse because it's shrouded in
darkness the subway car, so you can't see where the
alien is or the predator is, or what it's doing
or how it's dispatching these poor people on this subway car.
It's just it was a big fail. It could have
been a there's two or three action sequences that could

(39:49):
have been really cool that are just limp.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah around this time. No, not around this time. Okay,
So there was no subway in Los Angele Less at
the time, so this was they had to film. So
whenever they're in a tunnel, they seem to have gone
on location to some tunnel, But whenever they're in the
train itself, it looks worse than the train from the
Trial of the Incredible Hulk that we saw recently. Yeah,

(40:15):
it really looks like a set on a fucking sound stage,
and it's unacceptable in this movie. And then shots of
the predator like crawling on the scene crawling on the
roof of the thing. It just looks like it's on
us also sitting on a set somewhere, like the chaotic
moment when the predator gets on board, Like you said that,
Like the lights go out because I guess they want

(40:36):
it to be atmospheric. The lights don't go out on trains, no,
for no reason. When you're in a tunnel. It's just
everyone would freak the fuck out. It wouldn't be any
no one would be riding the fucking subway if lights
went out for that extended period of time. It's not
like they shot out the lights or anything. And on
top of that, the predator remains cloaked for the entire sequence,
and then it keeps because it's strobing. There's really no difference.

(40:58):
It just seems like a set of lines drawn on
to the frames no matter what. So it just I
don't know, it just seems poorly composited. Everything about the
scene is terrible.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
But it's again hearkening back to Aliens, where there are
fights that happen in darkness that are only illuminated by
the machine guns and the weaponry.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
This is the scene in This is the scene in
the lab when they come up through the ceiling when
they're like, yeah, they're in the room. That's this exactly,
except it's just it's all chaos. There's it. What's crazy
about it is there's really just the predator and Bill
Paxton's character, and that's the whole scene, him making his
way to Bill Paxton slowly while Maria Cancio Alonso forces

(41:44):
everyone back to the front of the train. Why they
haven't stopped the train by the way, anyway, So you
have less geography, you have less characters to deal with,
because James Cameron had a whole fucking He's still had
half the fucking platoon left in the fucking in the
lab bay when the Aliens came in, and I knew
where everyone was at every moment. Here it's two guys,

(42:04):
and I'm like, what's going on the entire time? Plus
we're on a set. Girl.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
It was a bummer. Really. What I kept thinking is
I'm watching this is man, I'd love to be watching
Aliens right now because it's so because it's so indebted,
like I said, to Aliens, indebted to a lot of
different pictures of that time. But I think most clearly
in the fact that Bill Paxton is there front and center.
You can't help but get that vibe that they were

(42:33):
looking for. They wanted a little bit of that edge,
that aliens vibe, and they just it's a shame because
the Predator is a fucking great character, and the idea
of having him going nuts in an urban center like
Los Angeles, I thought it was and is still a
really cool idea. It's just not executed well on any

(42:54):
number of levels.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah. I was stoked for the futurism, and then it's
not really futurism at all. It's just that they needed
the subway there. And the technology that the CIA guys
have is more advanced than they could possibly have. The
lab at the police station has apparently like a radio
radiography you know, a radioactive whatever the fuck that is,

(43:16):
like a carbon dating machine basically, yeah, yeah, let's put
it in this spear and find out, Oh, it's not
from this earth.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
Yeah, it's like an electron microscope in the middle of
some cash strapped police department in LA. They would never
have that because what happens is Ruben Blades's character has
gone back to the Dominican mansion because he spotted the
tip of a spear stuck in an air vent from
the battle that happened there, so he recovers it in

(43:43):
the In the process of doing so, the predator kills him,
but he manages I don't recall exactly how, but Harrigan
is in possession of this spear tip and he gives
it to the like the forensic examiner and the police department.
And another thing that really bugged me, I just remember this.
I don't know if you notice this, but it really
fucking bugged me is so much of this movie the

(44:04):
dialogue is looped after the fact. Did you notice that? Yes,
very little of it is actually recorded in on the
day on the set. I don't know if they just
had maybe they were filming in Los Angeles for some
of these scenes and that they just couldn't get the
sound correct. But it just drove me. No matter how
good the looping is and how much they try to

(44:26):
make it match, it always bugs me. It's like bad
lip syncing. That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
My favorite line in the movie, which is reminiscent of
my favorite line from Evil Did to the Workshed, is
when Danny Glover at the beginning of the movie opens
the chunk of his car to pick which weapon he's
going to choose. You know, this average Joe. He's got
like a dozen handguns and machine pistols in there, and
he takes out this hand cannon and then says to himself,

(44:53):
not big enough, and then takes out a shotgun.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
It's really, it's bad. It's a bummer. It was really.
I was bummed out watching this because I had such
fond memories we both did and the it. But let's
turn this around a little bit. Father Little we bagged
on this movie pretty good. But let's turn this around
a little bit. If I may, what worked for you
in this movie? Actors, sequences, special effects did what was

(45:20):
positive for you?

Speaker 2 (45:22):
The redesign of the Predator, I think is really good.
This new Predator. He's a little more sleek, he's a
little more tribal, he's a little more fanged. I noticed
his face is a little meaner. I liked that. I
liked finding out that it's actually the Predator making those

(45:42):
vocalizations and not just a recording back at you. This
I did not like. Okay, I want to keep heeping
praise where it belongs. But now that I'm thinking of it,
I have to say it. The movie just seemed the
dialogue was just a choc a block full of whatever
was on the latest T shirt. Spencer gifts because shit
Happens is featured throughout, which was remember that, like the Yeah,

(46:06):
that was a phrase that sort of came about at
this time. And what was the other one? Oh, the
I hate in a sequel to a movie where they
have a callback line where the characters involved would not
have known that line from the previous film. They did
it a lot in Alien Rodulus get away from Her,
You bitch, what that hasn't happened yet? What are you

(46:28):
even talking anyway? So in this one, Danny Glover takes
the mask off of the Predator and he says, you
are one ugly mother, and then the Predator grabs it.
He goes motherfucker. I was like, what why? Okay, ripley, Jeane, everybody,
so you say predator and she goes nuts. Really, Jane,
calm down, what was that? You were one ugly motherfucker?

(46:51):
Like that? I guess that they were trying to yippy kaye.
That is that what they're trying to do, Because there.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
Were a few sort of typical art any lines in
the first Predatory sorry, go ahead, that's okay. This was
still the time of the Quippi action vehicle. You have
to put a little humor in there, even like Freddy
and night Right elm Street like he became a quip machine.
He was more funny than he was SCARYO after a fashion.
But because you have Arnold throwing a machete through guy

(47:22):
and it says stick around things like that or that
hit the spot from running Man you need, It's almost
like they feel the need to defuse some of terror
and like the horror of it by throwing in these
little catch that I thought was really annoying because it's
so clearly it's almost like fan service to the original picture.

(47:43):
Hey do you guys remember how funny it was in
the first picture. Now it's funny here too, write don't
you love it? I agree? That totally fell flat for me.
And there's other bits. I think the efforts at humor
overall in this movie, Like there's a lot like the
Morton Downey Junior characters played for laughs and it he's

(48:03):
the typical smarmy journalist who gets punched in the face
at the end. I didn't like him at all. I
didn't think he served any real purpose.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
But other than that, they wanted to make fun of
journalism at the time they were taking the cue from
RoboCop there, I think they were trying to sure that
was their attempt at satire. You know what I hated
about the Montinny Junior sequence. By then reporters, every reporter
on any show, when they were holding a microphone, the
microphone would have a little cube around the right around

(48:32):
the bottom of the phone thing, right, a little cube
with the logo on it. In cheap movie productions, they
always have they've double printed something and then they just
tape it around the microphone. And he has this little
fucking taped together piece of shit. And I just kept thinking, like,
this is supposed to be like a network nationwide show,
and why is that? Because the fucking prop master was

(48:53):
too busy trying to find you know, shotgun shells or something.
You know.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah, but kind of looping at the stuff that I
liked that I thought was still a sort of yeah,
we're talking about like right, sorry? Is so the the
climax of the movie, after the predator wipes out everybody
in the slaughterhouse, it effectively becomes a fight. But over
the course of a city block or two between Harrigan

(49:19):
and the predator. They battle their way through an apartment building,
ultimately making their way to the predator's ship, which is
underneath the slaughterhouse. An apartment building near the slaughterhouse. Basically
it's sitting there and Harrigan has made his way to
the ship trying to chase the predator. And I thought,

(49:39):
to me, even going back to a movie like Close Encounters,
to me, there's something creepy about investigating a flying saucer
when it's taken seriously. When I'm not talking about just
flashing lights that are blinking in sequence or out of
sequence or what have you. This was the the design
of the alien ship. The pre 's ship was sufficiently

(50:03):
creepy for me because it's basically cloaked in kind of
smoke or just the you know, vapor.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
There's a low lying flat fog.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah, it's a fog, and that's where you see there's
a famous shot where he's looking around the ship and
he sees a wall of trophies, and that's where the
famous shot of the alien skull is there. Because it
kind of introduced the idea that the predator and the
alien are in the same universe coexisting. I thought that
was really cool.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
That is the one thing we can really thank Steven
Hopkins for who when he was at stan Winston Studios,
saw one of the skulls and went, oh, we can
put this in there, and and then he opened up
a door that has never been closed.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
And then never ever been closed again. But the ship
is it's giger esque where there's no controls, there's nothing
that it's all sort of these rolling walls that have
an odd texture, almost like bone or just I don't know,
I can't describe the texture of it. And that's where
the final stand between the predator and Harrigan takes place,

(51:07):
and in fact he actually he finally kills the predator.
But maybe the coolest part of this whole thing is
after he's killed the predator, about five or six other
predators de cloak themselves all around him. So here we
are his audience members thinking, yeah, he did it, he
killed the predator. No, because now there's no way he's

(51:28):
going to get through these six or seven and they
all have unique designs, introducing this idea that there's maybe
there's like a ranking society within the Yauch Race.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yaouce yaouche yeaoch.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
So I thought that was not only was that pretty
pretty satisfying, but the weirdest part of this whole thing,
and there's no way they would have known that this
would be called back thirty years later, is they carry
off this dead predator and knowledgement of yeah, you know,
we respect you. One of the predators before he leaves

(52:06):
throws harrigan an antique flintlock pistol that's inscribed to Raphael
Adelini seventeen fifteen. I think there's the date, which at
the time, the idea is, oh my god, these predators
have been coming to this planet for hundreds of years.
But what I think is great is that fucking mastermind Trachtenberg.

(52:29):
He brought back that fucking pistol in Prey, which linking
these movies that have really no business like Predator two,
is in no way on the level of Prey, which
I think in near masterpiece.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
But it's kind of cool.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
You gotta admit, father Malone that somehow now these universes
are linked and it creates this mythology around this pistol
and these creatures.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yeah, sometimes prequels are fucking cool. It's just that sometimes
we don't need to know every little thing about every
fucking tree branch. Sometimes you know, a little that was
just a little, as you said, that was a little
easter egg, just to let the audience know the predators
have been here forever, and to open up the possibility

(53:14):
of telling all these different stories. Not ever I think
believing we were going to tell that story of that pistol,
which pray is ultimately it is a prequel to this movie.
It's kind of you, you know, it's funny. Gary Busey
when he's debriefing Danny Glever, this is an alien, you idiot,
stopped coming to the crime scenes. He mentions Ewo Jima

(53:38):
and Cambodia and be Root as other times that they
they know that the predators have visited us. What I
love about that ending. First of all, Lawrence Paul was
the production designer on this, and I agree with you.
His design for their ship is fucking great, and it
in a way mirrors the Frank Lloyd Wright design apartment.

(54:00):
The Mayan kind of carvings, because all of the there
seem to be sigils and symbols carved everywhere on this ship.
The low lying fog is troubling. Why what is that?
Why you guys are wearing masks or you visit or
do you take the masks off and you breathe that
what is happening? I don't know, and I don't need
to know, but I'd like to know.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
In its obfuscation, the ship becomes all the more believable
to me, because I have a feeling if any of
us ever got on an alien ship, it wouldn't like
I said, it wouldn't look like lost in space to
call back. It would look mysterious and weird and not
meant for humans. And that's exactly what you get here.

(54:44):
And I think that's if you're going to try to
redeem the movie. It almost redeems the movie put it
that way to me because it's so the mystery of it.
I was captivated by all over again.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
I here's the only good thing about it watching it
again now in that final scene when you realize there's
seven or eight of them, that this was a hunting party,
What were they doing? Where were they? Were they just
in other parts of the city, you know what I mean?
There's this is where their ship was so and these
guys are on foot. Yeah, what other fucking trouble. I

(55:17):
you know, you could very easily make another movie that
takes place at the exact same time that Predator two
takes place in Los Angeles, in other parts of the
city with the rest of that gang. The Predators fascinate me, man.
The Yahoucha fascinate me, man. And there's precious little mythology
about them that the films have given us. I know,

(55:39):
the novels and blah blah blah blah blah, but extended
universes don't matter. What we're given in the films is
very little. And I know the new one, bad Lands,
is going to change a lot of that. I'm curious.
I still haven't watched the trailer. I'm curious if the Predators,
if the Yaucha themselves will speak to one another and
we get to hear that language. To spoil it for you,

(56:01):
do they.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
He speaks a line in the trailer Predator speaks.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Does he say speak in English or no?

Speaker 3 (56:09):
No, it's subtitled it's his language.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Oh wonderful, Okay, good.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
I couldn't look. I think I mentioned that Predator two
was the last Predator movie that I saw in the theater.
What I didn't say, was that was the last Predator
movie that I even saw period until Prey popped up
on my radar and it was impossible to ignore because
the reviews were so strong, and that made me a

(56:34):
Predator fan all over again. And now I could not
be more excited for Predator bad Lands because I have
such total and utter faith in the filmmakers that they've
cracked the code on making a good, solid Predator movie
that doesn't short change you on any of the things

(56:56):
that you love about the Predators. And as you just said,
like it's gonna peel back more of the mythos and
the mythology around the race of yaouches that I think
is so compelling and so exciting for I. My hat's
off like they've built a better mouse trap. That's the
amazing thing.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Here's another thing I like the bread Predator too, and
it actually ties into what we're talking about in that
we don't know very much about the Predator. So anytime
we get a breadcrumb of anything, I'm excited. Here we
get a much more extended sequence of the loving attention
the Yaoucha pays to his trophy. He's buffing that skull

(57:38):
by the end, he's got a buffing machine polishing it.
I thought, wow, you know he really cares.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
He does because I think in the first one you
see him lovingly stroke one of the skulls. But you're right,
you see more of the process by which he leaning
that thing. Enf Man.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
We get to see King William all manner of undress
in this film thanks to our friend the Yauchi. Here.
The other thing that I like that they show us
here when Danny Glover and Harrigan to the au are fighting,
he cuts off the predator's forearm. The predators has armed
the explosive. I think a little prematurely, a little premature

(58:16):
on the predator's part there. He should that's a last
ditch thing. Come on, don't just throw that around will
I nill I. But he's gonna blow himself up, right,
So he cuts the arm up and then we get
to see the predator like deal with the wound. I
love seeing the predators deal with their wounds. That's fucking awesome.
They did it in the first film. He has to
suiture himself up a little bit. And now now this
one has to deal with a whole fucking limb gun.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Oh boy, that and that was such a weird sequence
because what he does is he breaks his way into
a bathroom in this apartment and he grabs, he smashes
a bunch of the tile off the wall. I don't
I have no idea what this has to do with
anything with the practicality of medical triage. But he gets

(58:59):
all of this tile, he breaks it up in his hands,
he lights like a Bunsen burner. He puts it into
the Bunsen burner with some kind of chemical, this blue chemical.
It becomes a paste, and then he slathers that paste
on his stump and on his bullet wounds on his chest.
But what does a bunch of wall tile have to

(59:21):
do with I was left to more questions and answers
there father alone. It was cool, but I didn't quite
understand what was going on.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
I love that I didn't understand what was going on.
He knew what he was doing. He recognized that tile
is apparently whatever's the some property in there is going
to help him couterize his wounds.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Yeah. The other thing that is, it's funny, we're we're
talking a little bit. All I was, I guess talking
making reference to prey. And one of the things that
is unavoidable. Which look, Kevin Peter Hall is awesome as
the Predator. He is, there's menace in every move that
he makes. But the thing that is is a bummer.

(01:00:00):
Now looking back and having all these other newer movies,
these newer Predator movies coming out, it's a little like
when you're a kid and you see the light saber
duel between Darth Vader and ben Kenobi and the Death
Star the very first movie, and it there's not much happens, right,
They're not flipping, they're not doing But now when you
look at a Jedi lightsaber duel now in modern day

(01:00:23):
as a you know, modern meaning twenty twenty five, they're
flipping there. There's karate influences, there's all this kind of stuff.
The Predator, like the Predator then, was dealing with the
limits of the costume. There's a big This costume weighed
like something on the order of like hundreds of pounds

(01:00:44):
on this sky. There's only so much Kevin Peter Hall,
being as big as he is, he's not going to
be doing all kinds of crazy action stuff. You can
do that now because of the benefit of modern effects.
But it's a little bit of a bummer that we
don't get to see the predator do his thing like
we see him do and pray in some of the
other pictures.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Yeah, I had a similar experience after the run of
the recent Planet of the Apes movies and then going
back and watch the originals and going, oh boy, these
are really are some people in masks. I know, I've
been impressed my entire life, but this is a little tough.
Now I'm going to have to re re immerse myself
into this.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
It's true. You can say what you want about the
Tim Burton reboot or reimagining, but those ape costumes were
pretty fucking cool. That was if that really truly looked
like an orangutan evolved to human like proportions.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Well, you're talking about practical makeup. I'm talking about the
CG fest with Andy serkis all the recent rise of
the Planet of the Apes, and we've got completely computer
generated characters and they are talking and emoting and unlike
anything that the nineteen sixty eight prosthetics could afford.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
It's pretty amazing. But despite that, like I said, there's there.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Are saying you know, you made the analogy about Star
Wars going back and watching the Obi Wan and Darth
Vader fight. Now, it's kind of pathetic. It's they're practicing
just kendo, so they're just kind of clacking the blades
against each other. Was just how you fight in kendo.
Nobody knew that they were going to be fighting a
la saber via, you know, speed fighting eventually. So but

(01:02:23):
do you remember when those lunatics made I think it's
called like scene eighty six where they refilmed what that
fight would have looked like between Obi Wan and It's
on YouTube. It was a very popular video.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
I do remember that. Funny enough, I actually rewatched that recently.
I saw it when it was when it went viral
a few years ago, but I did rewatch it recently.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
You know, at the time it came out, I was like,
come on, you guys, calm down with this shit. Do
you really need this? And now I agree with you.
Maybe they ought have just cut that into Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
You know, there's a line between this, you know, making
it better and making the special edition right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Well, you know, mister Lucas is very fond of reimagining
his own works, so maybe he ought to take the
fans queue there and go back and do Star Wars again.
Maybe that's maybe that's an experiment Disney ought to auto
allow him to do redo the three again now any
way you want.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
I would go see it. I may not like it,
but I would go seek.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Yeah, go see it. Man so yeah so.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
But I guess that's maybe that's part of the charm
thinking about it, of those early Predator movies where they're
dealing with the constraints of that big, bulky costume and
there's only so much that this actor can do. So
I guess it. I don't know. I guess it works
for the time, but it is pretty impressive to see
what you can do with modern effects, like in Prey

(01:03:44):
and bad Lands. That's going to be awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
That's not what we're watching next, friend, that will be
Alien versus Predator on the next yaouca fest. Have got
anything more to say about this?

Speaker 4 (01:03:55):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
One thing I didn't mention, and you didn't mention it either.
I'm surprised, given our shared night mister Walter's podcasting and
so forth, you didn't note the fact that in Predator Too,
we have a full fledged DC CAB reunion. You never
mentioned it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Adam Baldwin, Gary Busey and they working together and Hackenberry. Wow,
And we also have a Lethal Weapon reunion in Gary
Busey and Danny Glover.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
That's true. And Steve Kahan.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Steve Kahan is who Steve Kahan.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
He was a big Richard Donner guy. He was in
He was in Maverick in the Lethal Weapon movies. He
was the captain. You know. That was another It's a
minor thing. He's not in it that much, but he's there.
But yeah, I was surprised you didn't note the fact
that Albert Hackenberry was in this with with Gary Busey.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Hey man, I only noticed the Lethal Weapon reunion this time,
watching it like my brain was too scrambled. Plus I
had I was thinking every time I saw Adam Baldwin,
I kept thinking the thought that I already expressed, which
is he that bad? Now I'm going to have to
reassess this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Yeah, I don't know. And I thought, by the way,
I thought just then you were going to make a
joke and say, you know, I'm not going to hunt
the predator on January eighth, because that's ill. This is birtha.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
I let you say it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
I don't. I didn't do it justice. But but no,
My final word on this is, you know, we've said
it all it was. It's disappointing, but I'm hopeful that
I know that by the time we get to Pray
that there's a re rejuvenation in the series. I'm hoping
some of these middle pictures are going to satisfy me
a little concern.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Wait till we get to the Predator.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
Is that the the Shane Black one?

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Yes? All right, oh boy, you're gonna love it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
I can sense the sarcasm, so a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Ah well, anyway, until next time, until the next yahoucha fest?
Where can people find you when they're looking for you?
Mister h p all right?

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
As I alluded to her or mentioned earlier, I co
host the night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with Father Malone here.
I am also an occasional guest on The Culture Cast
with Chris Dashu. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast.
And finally, I have a band camp site hpmusicplace dot
bancamp dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
As for me, you're listening to my show, Hey, people
in Las Vegas and the Las Vegas area come around October,
might want to stop by the Nightmare in Vegas Convention
where you'll find the Midnight Viewing Crew on display. We
will be We're going to have a full day, full
two days of presence there at the convention October the
fourth and the fifth stop by. We're gonna be recording

(01:06:37):
all goddamn day long, and they're gonna be have special
guests and such. It's a long ways off, but you know,
planting the seed as it were. We'll talk to you
again on Monday for another Father Malone's weekly round up,
and next Friday we'll probably be a Tails from the
dark Side or a Fusco Fest or something. There's too much,
there's too much content. I don't know what to do
with at all. Oh my God, take me away Predator

(01:06:57):
to I think.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
You know who he is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
I won't have.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
I don't know who he is, but I know who.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Is the other aside, what are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
The spirit world? Man? You see, it's always the same.

Speaker 5 (01:07:25):
There's no stopping what can be stopped, no killing what
can't be killed.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
Hey, make sense, man, the same that's killing your people
and mind it's from the others.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
I can feel him all around.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
You can't see the eyes of the demon until him
come carling.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
M h.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
H.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
You can killing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:57):
Time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
There's something out there writing in the spook. In languish,
I look about

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
What dying hell I

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Yautja Fest - Predator 2 (1990)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Yautja Fest - Predator 2 (1990)