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Genre: Cop/Action/Comedy
Premise: When his lawyer daughter gets mixed up in a deadly gang-related case, Detroit cop Axel Foley will have to, once again, travel to Beverly Hills and save the day.
About: Axel is back! Newbie Aussie director Mark Molloy came into the film with one directive: Do everything practically. That’s why when you watch Beverly Hills Cop 4, it truly does look like turning back the clock and a film from a different era. It looks from the writing credits that Will Beall, who usually writes dramas, fortified the cop stuff and the dramatic elements of the screenplay. And then writing team Gormicon and Etten came in to add the funny.
Writers: Tom Gormicon & Kevin Etten rewrote cop-writing whisperer Will Beall
Details: exactly 2 hours
If you guys have been reading my posts and my newsletters, you know I’ve been looking forward to this movie.
The cop-comedy, which was a studio staple in the 1980s, has always been primed for a comeback. I’m hoping this movie can start that comeback.
Let’s find out how it did!
Axel Foley is still out there on the streets of Detroit, taking down the bad guys. After a particularly elaborate takedown of an attempted Detroit Red Wings stadium heist, he gets a call from his old friend in Beverly Hills, Billy, who tells him that his estranged lawyer daughter, Jane, who also lives in Beverly Hills, is involved in a gang-related case and was nearly killed by the gang recently.
So Axel gets on the next flight to Los Angeles and, when he lands, immediately starts fishing around for who’s coming after his daughter. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever figured out what was going on there. But what I do know is that the new Captain of the Los Angeles police, Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon), is somehow involved.
After Axel gets in a car chase with a parking cart up the famous Rodeo walkway in the center of Beverly Hills, he’s brought back to the Beverly Hills police department where he gets yelled at by some of his old friends.
That’s also where he meets Bobby Abbot, a buttoned-up cop who just happened to date Axel’s daughter not long ago. Bobby becomes Axel’s informal chaperone around town and the two try and figure out what the bad guys are trying to cover up. When all roads lead to Captain Cade, there’s a big showdown at his Beverly Hills mansion where not everyone survives.
Believe it or not, there are a ton of screenwriting topics to discuss with Beverly Hills Cop 4. To understand why, you have to understand that this was considered the perfect screenplay formula in the 1980s.
A good fish-out-of-water comedy concept was gold back then. And the concepts always lent themselves to plots that could be easily constructed in 3 acts. In fact, it’s movies like Beverly Hills Cop that inspired the most successful screenwriting book ever, Save The Cat.
The juxtaposition of a Detroit Cop showing up in Beverly Hills may be the most perfect scenario for a “Fun and Games” section that has ever been conceived.
Beverly Hills Cop 4 doesn’t mess with that formula much. And why should it? If something works, don’t mess with it. Speaking of another 80s icon, Rocky, the reason that Rocky 5 sucked was because they messed with what worked and took the big fight out of the ring and put it in the streets.
If you’re ever tasked with working with a successful formula and you’re worried, by following it, your script will be predictable and cliched, you address that issue the same way that Beverly Hills Cop 4 addressed it. You build a new central character dynamic.
That is your story within the story and what allows the reader to experience something new. In this case, the new 3-way conflict is between Axel, his estranged daughter, Jane, and the buttoned-up young cop he has to work with in Beverly Hills this time around, Bobby Abbot.
The twist on this new relationship is that Jane and Bobby used to be in a relationship, which, theoretically, adds an extra layer of conflict between Axel and Bobby.
You’ll notice that while I said this is the way you want to approach these things, I did not say that it worked. In fact, the “working” part is the hardest part to get right. Because while I understand why the writers came up with this dynamic, the end result only occasionally paid off. Had it worked, the movie would’ve been gangbusters. But because it was so weak, it left the movie feeling ho-hum.
Let’s look at it piece by piece so we can understand what happened.
We’ll start with Axel and his daughter Jane. The reason the writers chose this dynamic is because it would create obvious conflict. You want conflict in every major relationship in your script. So, by the letter of the screenwriting law, it was the “right” choice.
But the choice had a complex hurdle to overcome. This is a comedy. If the conflict is too intense, too serious, their scenes will drag the story down. We don’t come to comedy movies to get serious. We come to laugh. With Jane being so serious, there was no spark between her and Axel. Their scenes felt like drama scenes and were the worst in the script.
How do you fix that? You find a way to make Jane funnier or you get rid of the Jane storyline and replace it with something funnier.
Next up we had Bobby. Again, Bobby was the “right” thing to do as a screenwriter. Here you have Axel Foley, one of the most over-the-top comedic characters in cinema history. You need a straight man to play against him so ultra-buttoned-up Bobby was a perfect choice ON THE PAGE.
But outside of the best scene in the movie – the helicopter scene – this pairing was a dud that generated little comedy. Why?
This is where screenwriting gets hard, guys. Cause not everything is within your power and if the director or actors interpret things differently than the writer intended, it can cause a cataclysmic chain reaction that can take the whole movie down.
The reason the Axel-Bobby pairing was a dud was because the writer assumed that Eddie Murphy was going to be playing the 1980s version of Axel Foley, the guy with an unlimited amount of energy and who chews up every scene he’s in.
But that’s not how Murphy chose to play it. And, to his credit, his choice makes sense. But Murphy figured that it’s been 30 years since we’ve seen Axel. He’s probably calmer. So Axel isn’t this crazy outlandish guy anymore. At one point, when he’s trying to pull one of his silly scams to get a better hotel room, he stops, mid-sentence, and says, “You know what, I’m too tired for this. Just give me whatever room you want.” That’s the Axel we get here.
The reason this is relevant from a screenwriting perspective is because the screenwriter wrote Bobby as bland as possible so that he’d be as polar opposite from Axel as possible. That contrast would create a ton of comedy.
But because Foley is more calm in this one, there’s less contrast between the two characters, and that lack of contrast makes them bland together.
Now, good screenwriters will look for additional ways to combat these possibilities and that’s exactly what happens here. They add an additional element of conflict with Bobby having had sex with Axel’s daughter. This gives Axel even more reason to dislike Bobby, which gives us more opportunities for the two to butt heads.
The problem is, Axel’s okay with it almost immediately. He makes one quip about it then it never comes up again. Not only that, but the sexual relationship ended months ago. So it’s not even happening now.
I have a good idea why they chose to do that despite it hurting the screenplay. Once again, this is why screenwriting is hard so pay attention. I’ll bet money that in earlier drafts, Bobby and Jane WERE DATING NOW. But, at some point, someone realized that their relationship might be more interesting if they were apart. Which I understand. If they’re apart, then the audience will want to keep watching to see if they end up together.
But what often happens in these re-drafts of key elements in the screenplay, is that the screenwriter forgets why it was so important for Jane and Bobby to be dating now, which was that it created more conflict with Axel. When you’re with a screenplay for a long time, you don’t remember why you did certain things and therefore, changing them, doesn’t seem like it would cause any problems.
But changing anything central to your story will always cause issues. And that was a big one that they missed. Cause think about it. Why are we here to watch this movie? Is it to see if two former lovers get back together again? Or is to see Axel Foley be as funny as possible? It’s the latter. So any choices you make need to support that direction.
Look, this movie wasn’t bad. It was pretty fun. But the two main characters you placed in Axel’s orbit weren’t good enough to make this movie stand out. And Axel needed to be bigger. I know the character is older. But he doesn’t look that much older. If Eddie had the energy and played the role a lot bigger, I think this film would’ve worked.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me (if you’re bored, I’d still say watch it)
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Before you make a change to the core of your screenplay (major characters or major plot beats) ask yourself why you made the original choice. Then ask, from the change you’re about to make, is the upside you’re going to gain from that new direction big enough to supplant whatever you’re going to lose by eliminating the old direction? Everything affects everything in a screenplay. So a seemingly minor change usually has bigger ramifications than you think. Do your due diligence and figure out what’s going to be lost before you make that change.
