In an era where notable IP is the name of the game, making sequels to popular movies decades after they were originally popular has gone from being an occasional novelty to a normal form of business. What’s often referred to as the legacy sequel, or legasequel if you will, has seen everybody from Tom Cruise’s Maverick to the Ghostbusters to Bill and Ted return decades later. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, now available with a Netflix subscription, is just the latest of these, but it’s also one of the best.
Since we’re certainly going to continue to see these legacy sequels for the foreseeable future -- several including Twisters and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are on the 2024 movie schedule and will be here before the summer ends -- we might as well do them right. So for all studios looking at their older franchises and trying to figure out how to make them bankable again, watch Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, because it understood the assignment.
Axel F Doesn’t Forget What A Beverly Hills Cop Movie Is
As simple as it seems, the first thing Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F does right is it made a Beverly Hills Cop movie. That may seem obvious, but many legacy sequels seem to have forgotten what it was that made the original movie, or movie series, popular, and the sequel becomes something else entirely unlike the original movie we liked. Axel F has a simple enough premise that contrives a reason for Detroit police detective Axel Foley to go to Beverly Hills and solve a crime. Along the way, hijinks and comedy ensue. It's very much like the other three movies, in a good way.
Compare it to something like Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Likely due to the poor reception of the attempted Ghostbusters reboot, the sequel movie treated the original movies and characters with nostalgic awe, as if the franchise hadn’t made its name with a tone of sarcastic impertinence. The reverence with which the sequel treated the story flew in the face of what the franchise used to be.
Axel F doesn’t try to up the stakes or try to make Beverly Hills Cop seem like it’s more important than it is. It's fun and funny, and overall a very successful movie franchise. The plot fits into the others. The stakes are about equal. The characters don't feel like entirely different versions of their previous selves.
Beverly Hills Cop 4 Acknowledges The Passage Of Time
It’s been 40 years since the first Beverly Hills Cop movie was released, and 30 since the last one came out. That’s a long time in between sequels. Eddie Murphy was in his 20s when he made the first movie. Murphy's 63 years old right now. While he looks pretty damn good for his age, there’s no argument that time has passed.
Many legacy sequels sidestep the fact it’s been a long time since we’ve seen these characters. For example, The Matrix: Resurrections certainly doesn’t ignore the passage of time, but if the same movie had been released three years after the Matrix trilogy ended, nothing would have needed to be much different.
Other movies, like the recent Jumanji films, are sequels in only the broadest sense. They acknowledge the original movie from three decades ago is canon, but the story and the characters in the new film are unrelated.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F makes the passage of time mean something. All our returning characters are older. They’re in different jobs. They’re at or close to retirement because a 63-year-old Axel Foley needs to start thinking about hanging it up. Yes, they still get up to the action-hero stuff, it is a movie after all, but the fact that decades have passed isn’t ignored, it’s embraced.
The Beverly Hills Cop Fan Service Is Handled Properly
One of the elements of the onslaught of legacy sequels that I could usually do without are the references and the “fan service.” I'm talking about those little elements in a new movie that are designed to make you remember that you liked the old movie by calling back to it as if you can’t just watch the old movie anytime you want.
While Axel F doesn’t completely ignore the fan service, it does the next best thing: Including it in ways that can allow people who won’t get it to still watch and enjoy the film without even realizing the movie is making a callback.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F includes two of these moments very early on. The song that plays over the opening credits of the original Beverly Hills Cop, Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” also plays over the credits of the new film. The opening theme song of Beverly Hills Cop II, Bob Seger’s “Shakedown” also gets played before the movie’s first action sequence is over. Yet, if you haven’t seen those movies, it’s just music. Really great music.
Bronson Pinchot's return to the franchise as Serge is portrayed obviously as a character you're supposed to know, but his character isn't made vital to the story. And arguably he gets upstaged in the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F cast by Nasim Pedrad playing an entirely new character.
Some jokes are certainly funnier if you’ve seen the other films, like the reference to Beverly Hills Cop III not being Axel’s best work, or when Billy asks if Axel has taken Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character to a strip club. The latter line doesn’t have much context if you’re not familiar with the first two movies (or the tendency of '80s films to include scenes in strip clubs for no reason beyond the very obvious), but the line is followed by a joke that will quickly help you forget the reference if it didn’t mean anything to you.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Is A More Accessible Movie, And It's Better For It
If this were another movie somebody would have made a Beverly Hills Cop 4 that was about a copycat recreating the robberies of the Alphabet Bandit or made the criminal one of Axel’s former undercover busts out for revenge. If part of the value of the legacy sequel is introducing a franchise to a new audience, the barrier of entry must be low. It’s cool to be part of the crowd that “gets it,” but it doesn’t usually make for good movies and it can hinder any chance a returning franchise might have to make an impact the second time around.
To be honest, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is perhaps still only the third-best Beverly Hills Cop movie, but that’s all it ever needed to be. It’s a solid entry in a franchise. It’s one that fans will want to watch again, not simply write off.
