Today marks the 30th anniversary of Predator 2 and director Stephen Hopkins stat down with Scream Magazine for an interview about the film. Hopkins explains how they wanted to originally introduce Arnold’s Dutch in the start of the film and how he ultimately had to chose between making Terminator 2 or making Predator 2.
HOPKINS: “I think we got on okay, in fact, the opening scene of the film was supposed to be these guys playing golf on a golf course and a helicopter lands, and there is a guy with white hair golfing and they come and say ‘he’s back’, and Arnold turns around he’s got white hair and a scar across his face. Him and Danny Glover would have teamed-up.”
“Actually what I think it was that Jim Cameron, who I used to work for, he said to Arnold that he wanted him to do Terminator 2 and he didn’t want to both to happen. He didn’t feel like help Terminator 2 if Predator 2 happened with Arnold in it and Jim was preparing it for a long time. I think Arnold had to make a choice and clearly it was a great choice because Terminator 2 is one of the great science fiction films.”
He also confirms the rumors that Steven Seagal almost joined the film but Hopkins met with him to talk him out of doing it as he wasn’t a fan of the action star.
HOPKINS: “I had to go up to have a meeting with [Seagal] at his house which was one of the most craziest afternoons I’ve had, sort of to talk him out of doing it. He’s an unusual kind of twisted kind of guy and in the end I couldn’t see myself doing it with him, it didn’t feel right.”
“He was desperate to do it. I went up to his house and he crushed my hand [makes handshake motion] and took me into a room where all the walls were covered with guns. He told me about how he wanted to play a C.I.A. psychiatrist, who also is a martial arts expert and carried a gun, I listened to him for a long time and he was clearly a little crazy at the time…then he threw his arm around me on the way out and he said ‘I want you to come to my ranch in Santa Barbara because I have a grenade launching range there so we could go launch grenades together’. That didn’t happen. I’m sorry, I’m not a fan of his.”
Predator 2 is considered one of the better sequels and totally worth revisiting for that fun cast along with some interesting action scenes.
PREDATOR 2 – Los Angeles is enduring a heat wave and a crime wave, so the pressure on police officer Michael Harrigan (Danny Glover) to solve a strange string of murders is mounting. Harrigan thinks the culprit can be found among the warring gangs and drug cartels, but FBI Special Agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) knows the horrible truth: Their killer is a fearsome extraterrestrial (Kevin Peter Hall) with keen hunting abilities that include superior night vision and the power to make itself invisible.
SOURCE: SCREAM MAGAZINE
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