Beverly Hills Cop IV

[Gavin]

[SIZE="1"][URL="http://movies.ign.com/articles/748/748266p1.html"]http://movies.ign.com/articles/748/748266p1.html[/URL]

Ran across this checking out Eddie Murphy's biography on Wikipedia and thought it was just a case of a prank given the article redirects back to EM's own page. But lo and behold I do a Google search and find out that there really is a fourth incarnation of the comedy series planned for 2009.

Discuss.

In all honest, my main feelings are horror and disappointment at Murphy for being so foolish to attempt to resurrect the classic trilogy, while at the same time being hopeful he may actually pull it off. Judge Reinhold absolutely has to be in it, as does Ronny Cox otherwise it's just going to be another Die Hard IV for me.

My biggest concern is, I suppose, that Eddie Murphy has simply gotten too old to play Axel Foley as we expect him, though no other actor alive could capture that same sense of comic timing for the character.[/SIZE]

[TheShinje]

[size=1][color=midnightblue]The problem with sequels is, as time goes by and more get churned out, character gets lost. Axel Foley was, in the first movie, a wise cracking man from the streets who was forced-by-circumstance to team up with law enforcement. By the time a fourth one rolls around?

Die Hard IV is a good example of how to do the multiple sequels right. John McClane is still John McClane, and his character hasn't diminished over time, nor has the premise slipped away. McClane is still the everyman, fighting impossible odds to save the day, and this has been constant since the first film. Die Hard is a film franchise that is sequelised easily, as long as they don't depart from the everyman fighting the uberterroist, complete with the tacky one-liners and yippie-ki-yay motherf.....'s, it will do just fine.

Beverly Hills Cop is different because the premise that it originated with is limited and nich'e. There's only so much you can do with the Axel Foley character before the character goes from the antihero, reluctant cop to just another cop.

Shrek is an example of this. While it began as one Ogre's quest to win his swamp back, it's become nothing more than a thin excuse to mush 3D renditions of fairy tale characters together, complete with dated pop culture references and lame name puns. Ye Ole Foot Locker? Farbucks? puh-lease!

It's potential success will be gauged by wether they're bringing back the character out of a genuine desire to tell a new story, or bringng back the character to make a cookie-cutter film out ot make quick bucks off the originals name.[/size][/color]

[Gavin]

[SIZE="1"]That's my big worry as well, like how in Lethal Weapon 4 Gibson finally used the "I'm too old for this ****" line, which kind of brought the whole thing to a close, as he'd always been the young hothead against Glover?s veteran permanently near retirement. I mean just compare LW 1 to LW4 and you can really see the difference.

My biggest issue with Die Hard 4 was that nobody made mention of Nakatomi Towers, the crisis with the Airport in D.C. or the Simon Says plot. Seriously, if you found out you were faced by a man who had nearly single-handedly brought down three previous terrorist plots, would you really want to mess with him ? No you wouldn?t.[/SIZE]