Predator 2

Skippable on a first watch, and worth coming back to, because almost everything the franchise knows about its own creatures started here rather than in the original.

The move is to take the hunt out of the jungle and into a near-future Los Angeles in a heatwave, with cartel violence in the streets and a police department losing control. Danny Glover replaces Schwarzenegger as a detective who is angry rather than capable, and the film is much pulpier and more crowded than the original: a subway massacre, a federal cover-up, a lot of shouting.

What it loses is the stalking. A city is full of noise and witnesses, so the creature has nowhere to be patient, and the film replaces slow dread with set pieces. What it gains is mythology. The trophy room is here, and so is the skull on the wall that implied a shared universe decades before anybody filmed one. The ending, with the elders appearing out of the dark to acknowledge a worthy opponent and hand over a flintlock pistol dated 1715, is the single most consequential scene in the series: it establishes that these creatures have been visiting for centuries, which is the premise Prey and Killer of Killers were later built on.

Uneven, tonally all over the place, and far more influential than its reputation. Watch it after the modern films rather than before them, when you will recognise what it set up.