Predator 2 (1990): Cast, Characters, And Lore
Predator 2 was a science fiction action horror sequel to Predator (1987) directed by Stephen Hopkins that moved the hunt from the jungle to the streets of Los Angeles. The film followed Lieutenant Mike Harrigan as he investigated a wave of exceptionally brutal killings during a period of gang violence, only to discover that an alien hunter was using the city as its latest hunting ground. The first film followed a military team in the wilderness. This sequel put the same hunt into an overheated city full of armed gangs. The sequel also expanded Predator lore by introducing new weapons, new hints about Predator society, and one of the franchise's most important connections to the wider Alien universe.
Film Overview
Released in 1990, Predator 2 combined science fiction, action, and horror while shifting the franchise away from the jungle setting of the original film. Set in a near-future version of 1997 Los Angeles, the story presented the city as an overheated war zone shaped by gang conflict, police crackdowns, and social collapse. The film also introduced a different kind of protagonist in Harrigan, a street-smart detective whose instincts and persistence replaced Dutch's military style. Crowding the hunt into the city, and giving the Predator new tools and clearer clan culture, opened the franchise up in ways the jungle story never tried. Although missing Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McTiernan, its reputation grew over time as fans recognized how much it added to the mythology of the series.
Plot Summary
In the 1997 Los Angeles heat wave, Lieutenant Mike Harrigan reached a Colombian shootout with Detectives Danny Archuleta and Leona Cantrell. Deputy Chief Phil Heinemann ordered them to hold the perimeter for a federal team. Harrigan ignored that hold, pushed into the loft, and shot El Scorpio off the roof. The City Hunter had come through the skylight under a cloak and killed the rest of the crew before Harrigan cleared the stairs. Harrigan saw a heat-haze shape at the edge of the building and wrote it off as the weather.
Back at the precinct Harrigan brought Detective Jerry Lambert onto Metro. King Willie's Jamaican posse later hung the Colombian dealer Ramon Vega in a Bunker Hill penthouse, then the hunter hit the room and wiped the Jamaicans out. Vega's mistress lived long enough to call the thing El Diablo. Danny climbed into the rafters, found a spear tip, and was killed there. The federal team took the scene out from under Metro, and Harrigan refused to stand down without a real explanation.
They buried Danny in the heat. Harrigan went armed among the cemetery stones with a chrome Desert Eagle, hunting whatever had taken his partner. The City Hunter stalked him under the cloak and did not close. Harrigan then found King Willie in an alley with thrown bones on a crate. Willie had read the hunt in the bones and had no name for the thing killing his people. Willie died soon after in that alley, rapier in hand.
The hunter followed Leona and Jerry onto a subway car packed with armed riders. It killed those riders when they opened fire, killed Jerry when he stood and fought, and spared Leona after a scan showed a second life in her abdomen, a rule against hunting the unborn. Harrigan reached the platform too late to save Jerry.
After the subway, Special Agent Peter Keyes pulled Harrigan into an OWLF trailer with Garber on the monitors. They played him a taped interview with Anna Gonsalves, the guerrilla who survived the jungle hunt ten years earlier. Keyes treated Los Angeles as the next stop on that same trail, and Harrigan as the hunter's chosen prey in the city.
Keyes ran the capture in a slaughterhouse where the hunter came to feed. His team wore refrigerated suits meant to hide them from heat vision. The City Hunter killed most of that unit on the floor. Harrigan broke out of federal custody, went in with a shotgun, and pulled the hunter's mask off after a plasma bolt hit the plate under his vest. Keyes came back with a nitrogen gun, and a smart disc cut him in half.
The fight went up onto the slaughterhouse roof. Harrigan attacked the hunter with its own spear. They both went off the edge and were left hanging there. The wounded hunter armed a self-destruct that counted down toward the city. Harrigan cut through the wrist gauntlet and stopped the countdown. After losing an arm, the hunter fled down the elevator shaft toward its ship.
Harrigan followed green blood down the shaft and fell into a ship hidden under Los Angeles. A net slammed him into a wall. He cut free with the disc, then drove that disc through the City Hunter in front of a trophy wall of skulls. The rest of the Lost Tribe boxed him in. Instead of killing him, the elder known as Greyback handed him the Raphael Adolini 1715 pistol and left him standing as the cloaked hull tore loose. Garber landed at the crater and got no real answers.
Main Cast And Characters
Predator 2 featured a larger supporting cast than the first film and built much of its tension around the clash between police, criminals, federal agents, and the alien hunter moving among them. These characters helped define the film's urban atmosphere and gave the story a broader sense of scale.
- Lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) - LAPD Metro lieutenant who ignored the federal hold, lost Danny and Jerry, and killed the City Hunter aboard the Lost Tribe ship.
- Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) - Special Agent who ran the OWLF capture. A Smart Disc cut him in half in the slaughterhouse.
- Leona Cantrell (Maria Conchita Alonso) - Detective on Harrigan's team. The hunter spared her on the subway after a scan showed she was pregnant.
- Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton) - Detective Harrigan brought onto Metro. He died on the subway when he stood and fought.
- Danny Archuleta (Rubén Blades) - Harrigan's long-time partner. He found a spear tip in Vega's penthouse and was killed in the rafters.
- Deputy Chief Phil Heinemann (Robert Davi) - Harrigan's superior who ordered him to hold the perimeter, then dressed him down after Danny's death.
- Captain Pilgrim (Kent McCord) - Metro captain who told Harrigan to leave Keyes alone and did not expect that order to hold.
- King Willie (Calvin Lockhart) - Jamaican drug lord who read the hunt in the bones and died in the alley with a rapier in his hand.
- Tony Pope (Morton Downey Jr.) - Television reporter who chased the massacres for ratings and treated the gang war as the whole story.
- El Scorpio (Henry Kingi) - Colombian leader Harrigan shot off the roof while the hunter finished the rest of the crew.
- Ramon Vega (José Carlos Ruiz) - Colombian dealer hung in a Bunker Hill penthouse before the hunter wiped the Jamaicans out.
- Garber (Adam Baldwin) - Keyes's man on the OWLF monitors. He survived the slaughterhouse and met Harrigan at the crater.
- Irene Edwards (Lilyan Chauvin) - Harrigan's secretary at the Alvarado precinct.
- Anna Gonsalves (Elpidia Carrillo) - Guerrilla who survived the jungle hunt. Keyes played her taped account for Harrigan.
- The City Hunter (Kevin Peter Hall) - Urban Predator who hunted armed prey through Los Angeles. Harrigan killed him with the smart disc aboard the ship.
- Greyback (Kevin Peter Hall) - Elder who led the Lost Tribe at the end, gave Harrigan the flintlock, and had the City Hunter's body carried out.
- Shaman Predator - Lost Tribe member who stood with Greyback when the clan boxed Harrigan in on the ship.
Los Angeles As An Urban Jungle
Predator 2 replaced the lush jungle of the first film with the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. Set in the near-future of 1997, the city was depicted as a crime-ridden war zone filled with violence, heat, and instability. This change in setting gave the film a fresh identity and showed how a Predator could adapt to hunting in a crowded urban environment instead of the wilderness. Rooftops, alleys, apartments, subway cars, and slaughterhouses all became parts of the hunting ground. Alien tech against a city falling apart made the sequel feel separate from the jungle original.
Mike Harrigan
Replacing Dutch Schaefer as the lead protagonist, Mike Harrigan brought a very different kind of hero to the series. He was not a military commander but a determined police lieutenant who relied on instinct, persistence, and urban survival skills. Harrigan's refusal to let federal agents control the investigation pushed him deeper into the Predator's path. His character also changed the tone of the conflict, because his fight against the Predator was tied as much to personal resolve and street-level experience as to tactics. He became one of the franchise's clearest leads after Dutch, and that gap is what gave Predator 2 its own identity.
The City Hunter
Predator 2 expanded the lore of the Predators through the introduction of the City Hunter. This Predator was adapted to urban hunting and carried a broader arsenal than the jungle hunter from the original film. Its equipment included a plasma caster, wrist blades, a combistick-style spear, a net launcher, and advanced cloaking and vision technology. The City Hunter appeared younger and more aggressive in its approach, relying heavily on its weapons while remaining physically formidable. The film also hinted that this hunter was part of a wider clan structure, helping establish the idea of a more complex Predator society.
OWLF And The Government Investigation
A major addition in Predator 2 was the government's attempt to study and capture the alien hunter. Peter Keyes led a covert task force commonly associated with OWLF, a program created to investigate the existence of Predators after earlier encounters. This subplot gave the film a broader franchise dimension by showing that some human institutions were beginning to understand the threat. Keyes' team used specialized tactics and refrigerated environments in an effort to neutralize the creature's heat vision, but they underestimated how dangerous it was. Their failure showed how smart and adaptable the Predator was, and it also widened the human side of the mythology.
The Lost Tribe And Expanded Predator Lore
Predator 2 revealed the Lost Tribe in its final act, a moment that had a lasting effect on the franchise. This scene introduced the idea that Predators operated in groups or clans rather than always hunting alone. It also presented the elder Greyback, whose presence helped establish the roots of later ideas about Predator ranks and hierarchy. The gift of the Raphael Adolini 1715 pistol implied that Predators had been visiting and hunting on Earth for hundreds of years. The reveal aboard the Lost Tribe ship packed more mythology into a few minutes than most sequels manage in a whole act.
Crossover Hints
One of the film's most famous details was the appearance of a Xenomorph skull in the Predator trophy room aboard the ship. This visual reference suggested that the Predators had encountered the Xenomorph species long before any live-action crossover existed on screen. Although the Alien vs. Predator concept had appeared in comics, Predator 2 brought that connection into a theatrical film. The moment later gained even more significance once the crossover movies were produced. That skull made Predator 2 a key film in the shared Alien and Predator mythology.
Place In The Predator Timeline
Predator 2 was set in 1997, ten years after Dutch's encounter in the Central American jungle. Within the Predator timeline, it continued the idea that hunters returned to Earth and that human institutions had begun responding to earlier incidents. The Raphael Adolini pistol also pushed the lore backward by implying centuries of prior hunts, a thread later revisited in Prey (2022).
Behind The Scenes
Predator 2 was directed by Stephen Hopkins from a screenplay by Jim Thomas and John Thomas, who had written the first film. Joel Silver, Lawrence Gordon, and John Davis produced. Principal photography was in Los Angeles, with the 1997 heat-wave city built around existing streets, rooftops, and the slaughterhouse set. Hopkins treated those locations as an urban jungle rather than a clean science-fiction city. Kevin Peter Hall returned inside the suit and also played Greyback at the end. Alan Silvestri returned for the score and carried themes from the 1987 film into the city hunt.
Stan Winston Studio built a new hunter rather than recasting the Jungle Hunter's face. Winston specified a shallower, steeper forehead with a circular horned brow ridge, thorn-like mandible protrusions, and darker skin, so the City Hunter would read as another individual of the same species, younger and more aggressive than the jungle hunter. The studio also built the new kit, including the Smart Disc, net launcher, spear, and the medicomp used after the roof fight. Hall's height kept the hunter larger than the human cast even in crowded interiors.
Hopkins wanted detectives who read as tired street cops, not gym-built action leads, and he cast Danny Glover after Lethal Weapon had made him a studio name for Silver. Patrick Swayze had been approached first and dropped out after a knee injury on Road House. Hopkins also met Steven Seagal, who wanted Harrigan rewritten as a CIA psychiatrist and martial-arts expert. Hopkins passed and kept the part as an LAPD lieutenant. The unit publicity still put Glover with Rubén Blades, Bill Paxton, and María Conchita Alonso as Danny, Jerry, and Leona.
An early draft would have opened on a golf course, with white-haired Dutch climbing out of a helicopter to team with Harrigan. Arnold Schwarzenegger left for Terminator 2, and Keyes took that federal-hunter slot. Glover was later approached for a third film, and that part became Ronald Noland in Predators. The trophy-room Xenomorph skull was a deliberate nod to the Dark Horse crossovers, put on screen years before any live-action meeting of the two species.
Novelization
Jove Books published Simon Hawke's Predator 2 novelization on 1 December 1990, the second film novelization after Paul Monette's 1987 book. The book is set in 1995, two years earlier than the film, and still dates the jungle hunt ten years earlier. Hawke writes stretches from the City Hunter's point of view. After the Jungle Hunter died, its ship returned to the Yautja homeworld with recordings from the bio-helmet, and those tapes are why this hunter came to test himself against humans. Peter Keyes interviewed Dutch in hospital. Dutch later escaped with radiation burns and vanished.
Harrigan mortally wounds the City Hunter with the Smart Disc, but Greyback arrives before it dies and the fallen hunter lets the elder behead it. The flintlock Greyback hands over is dated 1640, not 1715. Without its helmet, which falls down a drain, Earth's air starts to poison the hunter. The book also has the City Hunter spare Leona because killing a pregnant woman violates the hunt, and its trophy racks hold only human skulls, not the Xenomorph skull from the film.
Comic Adaptation
Dark Horse published a two-issue Predator 2 adaptation in 1990 and 1991, written by Frank Henkel from the Thomas brothers' screenplay. Dan Barry drew the first issue. Mark Bright drew the second. The comic makes the subway massacre a hunt, not a coincidence. The City Hunter follows Leona and Jerry onto the train to goad Harrigan, then rips Jerry's spine out while the cop is on his feet. After Danny dies, it scales a tower with Danny's skull and draws lightning with the combistick, a beat the film saves for Jerry's trophy. Greyback's flintlock is engraved Vito De La Mirandella, Anno Domini 1640, matching the novel's date rather than Raphael Adolini 1715. Keyes is trying to stop the wrist bomb from flattening Los Angeles, not bag a specimen for weapons work.
Video Game Adaptations
Three licensed games put the player in Lieutenant Mike Harrigan's place after the film. Image Works released the first in 1991 for Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum. Arc Developments built the 16-bit versions as an Operation Wolf rail shooter, with Oxford Mobius on DOS and 221B on the C64. Work started in July 1990. Image Works asked for five stages and settled on four, with the opening street fight running twice as long as the rest. Harrigan appeared as a white outline seen from behind so the studio could skip a full Danny Glover likeness fee.
The four stages followed the movie: the Colombian street fight, Vega's penthouse, the subway, and the hunter's ship. The hunter stayed cloaked on the streets, with only the targeting laser giving him away, then stood uncloaked on the ship. Harrigan started with a .44 Magnum that never ran dry, then picked up rifles, shotguns, and a single-shot M-203 grenade that cleared the screen. Civilians walked through the crosshairs. Hits on them wore down his badge, and a lost badge cost him his job. Fox would not let him die on screen, so a depleted health bar sent him out in an ambulance instead. Justin Scharvona wrote a new theme in place of Alan Silvestri's film score, and the Amiga and ST copies opened with a short trailer-style intro drawn by Herman Serrano. An unused plan would have split the screen between Harrigan and the Predator in a race for an object. Konami published the American DOS copy with a static comic-book introduction.
Acclaim and Arena published two different 1992 console games, both with Harrigan as the only playable cop. Perfect 10 Productions' Sega Genesis version was an isometric shooter across seven film locations, from the streets and rooftops through the subway and slaughterhouse to the hunter's ship. Still frames from the movie opened those stages. Harrigan had to pull hostages out before the hunter's three-dot laser killed them, sweep gang members who dropped drugs for the squad's score, and pick up Predator kit along the way. The last stage put him on the ship against clan hunters and an Elder, then handed him the flintlock as the hull left Earth.
Teeny Weeny Games rebuilt that loop as a side-scroller for Master System and Game Gear, with eight-way shooting, a password system, and the same hostage count and three-dot laser. Harrigan could collect grenades, shotguns, machine guns, and armour, and later stages spawned visible hunters as regular enemies. The Predator on those handheld and 8-bit stages stayed invisible while it hunted, marked only by red traces on the ground. Three dead hostages across the whole run ended the game.
Legacy
Predator 2 moved the hunt to 1997 Los Angeles and put the Lost Tribe, Greyback, and the Raphael Adolini flintlock on screen. The trophy room also showed a Xenomorph skull years before any live-action crossover. Prey later rewrote how that pistol reached Earth. Harrigan remains the only lead who killed a Yautja and walked off the Lost Tribe ship alive.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Predator Movies
