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The awaited sequel to the first Contra sees Arnold, Sly and Thurman return, joined by Karl Urban as Ray Poward Jr, the son of the original Ray Poward. The movie is set years into a war between the Contra Team and the alien forces, aided by Dr. Mandrake. The film continues the action spectacle of the first movie, though adds to the characters of Sheena and Ray Jr. Sheena is now a battle hardened member of the team while Ray is the rookie and has to deal with the loss of his father and living up to his legacy. As Urban's first major film role, he manages to draw on that to play the role very well, giving a small bit of depth to an otherwise popcorn movie. The main criticism is that the characterization doesn't extend to Bill and Lance, who come across as Arnold and Stallone doing rather standard action hero characters (Schwarzenegger especially getting criticized as playing Bill Rizer as if he was just Dutch with the serial numbers filed off) though both are good enough actors to carry through their scenes.

The film's major set pieces were a fight against the Mach 777 and against the Mandrake Spider. The Mach 777 fight saw the team face off against a mech robot piloted remotely by Dr. Mandrake, resulting in another Probotector battle. The Spider Mandrake battle is the climax of the film, where the team has managed to break into Mandrake's hide-out, forcing him to inject himself with alien DNA and mutate into a spider monster to combat the Contra team. The team kills the Mandrake Spider, seeing a message from the leader of the aliens, Gava, revealing that he is coming to Earth.

So, Contra 2 was a step down financially from its predecessor, but this was mainly due to them pushing it back to avoid releasing alongside the new Star Wars film, resulting it entering in late August. The film managed to remain successful in spite of that and plans for a third Contra film are still on the table. It also destroyed Universal Soldier: The Return in the box office, leaving it with only a scant $1 million and killing off any chance of a franchise for that (and Bill Goldberg's acting career) and the film was the #3 highest-grossing in the box office, just below The Sixth Sense.