Now, before lighting your torches, sharpening your pitchforks and striding off toward the comments section, it's important to remember that isolated quotes can lose context. But, that said, Brett Ratner has been talking to MTV about Beverly Hills Cop 4, and what he has to say may not appease the worries of fans who question the existence of the sequel.
"We’re trying to revitalize the franchise. He was one of my favorite movie characters of all-time, Axel Foley, by far the coolest movie character,” Ratner told the site. “It’s an honor to be able to direct another Beverly Hills Cop film.”
That's all well and good. It's been many years since Foley hung up his gun, so it's entirely reasonable to want to make some tweaks, but it was his following comments that might provoke ire. Ratner plans to make the film PG.
"10-year-old kids, 12-year-old kids don’t really know the old Beverly Hills Cop. So it’s an opportunity to make it new for kids. The same way it felt for me watching Beverly Hills Cop when I was a kid, that’s what I want to do for kids today."
Now, 10-12 year olds shouldn't have been watching Beverly Hills Cop, because it was rated R in the US and 15 in the UK, as were the sequels. They had lots of swearing and shooting in them, which, in our opinion, are part and parcel of the Beverly Hills Cop experience. We understand that most of Eddie Murphy's audience now is in the pre-teen range, but very few of his films for that audience have been any good (Nutty Professor was fun).
PG-13 might seem to be the zone where this film can make the most money, but an R-rated sequel that actually took Murphy back to the kind of material that he works brilliantly with – and let's not forget that Murphy at his best is near untouchable – could serve everyone. The film isn't unsuited to Ratner, who does have slick talents that could work on a BHC film, so a film that aims for the tone of the first could do great things for Murphy and Ratner, as well as the studio and the seemingly forgotten people in this equation: Beverly Hills Cop fans.
Can you envisage a Beverly Hills Cop film for kids that can still be good?