Brian Earl Spilner said:
Ok, who voted for Piranha 2?
It answered a lot of questions that the original Piranha left up in the air, and really had fans of the franchise "craving" answers for some of these ideas that have circulated the Piranha bulletin boards for decades.
1) What is the abandoned military installation we see in the beginning of the original film?
2) What as the original purpose of the hatchery that Maggie McKeown and Paul Gogan discover?
3) Is the skeleton they encounter in the filtration trap there within the remains of a scientist who worked on the project, or is it more of a tonal choice of commentary on man's determination to destroy himself but only after first destroying nature?
4) Was Operation: Razorteeth approved by Nixon, or was it Ford who masterminded the plan?
5) Had the bio-engineered piranha succeeded in destroying the Viet Cong, would the US government have turned this strain of super fish on its other enemies on the Asian continent? Could the mutants debilitated the Soviet Union before it turned Afghanistan into its training ground for military dissidents?
6) Was Colonel Waxman operating on orders from Capitol Hill or was he under the directives of some sort of pseudo-military spin-off that was more interested in biological weapons untraceable to the US than in actually stopping the threat and saving human lives?
7) Is the use of the smelting refuse tanks to unleash industrial waste to kill the piranhas a stroke of genius or a self-inflicted indictment of our slow poisoning of Mother Earth?
With Cameron's early knack of great practical effects, Piranha II: The Spawning is nothing short of a master class on captivating fans of the genre of freshwater fish that go crazy and also start being able to fly while also killing people not just for food, but also for sport.
The Hotel Elysium is aptly named - guests have nothing to worry about in this paradise - or do they? In the same way we saw humans unleash the fruit of our labors in the form of industrial waste to stop the piranha in the first film's climax, now we see the revenge of these vicious miniature killers in the only way they can fight back - rapid evolution. Not only does the piranha gain flight capabilities,but it also is able to live inside a human body like a parasite clinging to a host, eventually freeing itself to murder a nurse in the morgue and escape to freedom by blasting through a glass window.
Outlandish? On the surface, yes. But also indicative of life's incredible power to survive, to find a way as Ian Malcolm would so appropriately describe it 11 years later in Jurassic Park. Main character Anne Kimbrough is so despondent at her loss of the control of the situation that her biological instincts take over and she responds to the stress of it all by initiating a one-night stand with hapless tourist Tyler Sherman. While seducing Sherman temporarily rescues her from her feelings of chaos surrounding her from all sides, it is nothing more than a stop-gap when her estranged husband and local law enforcement officer Steve Kimbrough discovers that she violated his trust two-fold: breaking into the morgue and then bringing another man to her bed.
This blow to their already tenuous marriage gives Steve uncomfortable feelings that often occur when a man in power finds that power has slipped through his finger tips like so much sand on the beach. Not only is Anne meeting her physical needs without him, but his municipality is now threatened by a menace that he cannot comprehend nor put in a jail cell and throw away the key.
As the tension heightens, Tyler comes clean on his secret identity as another scientist from the first film's Razorteeth project.Unsatisfied by the limitations of only being able to attack enemies in the fire, the scientists played their own version of the modern-day Frankenstein and produced deadly fish capable of flying, as they do with deadly efficiency during a ritzy party at the local hotel and resort. Suddenly man's superiority over aquatic life is compromised and panic ensues. While Frankenstein might have inspired their creation, it is Bram Stoker's Dracula who helps put down this winged terror. Anne realizes they o not fare well in sunlight. They use this to form a bold plan, which results in the destruction of the piranha onboard a sunken ship with a pile of powerful explosives. Man's reliance on technology has saved him again, but how much longer can he remain the dominant species on this earth?
