Director Mark Molloy said that once Eddie Murphy arrived on the set of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the esteemed actor became the Axel Foley that audiences know and love from the 1984 action comedy classic.
In fact, Murphy looked so young that Molloy forgot he was directing a 63-year-old star, not the 23-year-old from the original film.
“Since it looked so old-fashioned, I just pretended I hadn’t aged. I just said, “Okay, Eddie, come down those stairs!” I was asking him to be physical because it seemed so old-fashioned. “Molloy reminded me, laughing, of a recent Zoom conversation. “Then Eddie looked at me and said, ‘Hey, man, are you looking to kill me here?’What’s going on?’ I actually revisited it in the film. I actually checked Eddie on this one.
New to Netflix on Wednesday, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is notable because the film marks only Murphy’s return to his iconic role of Axel Foley that he created 4 decades ago, but also Molloy’s return as a feature film director.
Acknowledging that legendary Beverly Hills Cop producer Jerry Bruckheimer entrusted him with the keys to the franchise, the Australian filmmaker said he tried not to live off the fact that not only Axel F was his first film, but also the first Beverly Hills Cop film in 30 years. After the release of the third film in the franchise in 1994.
“I’ve tried to overcome that and go into painting because you can let the expectations and the magnitude of what you’re doing get the better of you,” Molloy said. “The smart thing is that he had a very clear vision. “of the movie as soon as I read the script, [screenwriter] Will [Beall] had done a smart job in writing it. The story so sure of how it had to be for a Beverly Hills cop movie. When I read the script, I thought, “This can just be great, but I have to do it in a safe way. “
Once Molloy presented his concept of Axel F to Bruckheimer, Murphy, and Netflix and they trusted his vision, the procedure of filming the first Beverly Hills Cop movie in three decades was far less daunting.
Perhaps the most important thing Molloy pointed out when he met Bruckheimer was his goal to create the exact same tone as the first two Beverly Hills Cop films of 1984 and 1987. Molloy knew it was a threat worth taking, even if he had to stick to it. Following in the footsteps of Martin Brest and Tony Scott, who respectively directed Beverly Hills Cop and its first sequel.
“I told Jerry in the first meeting, ‘I need to make this an ’80s action comedy. ‘I need to go back to the essence of what made those movies so great,” Molloy recalls. “I need to bring this movie comes alive thinking about those movies. I tried to make it realistic, honest, and realistic, but I also tried to make it funny. I need to go back to the principles of building the story around those films. larger-than-life characters.
In addition, Molloy added, if he wanted to make Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F an ’80s-style action comedy, he had to use ’80s-style filmmaking techniques, which means not relying on computer-generated visual effects.
“I wanted to do everything behind closed doors, without fancy visual effects,” Molloy explained. “I wanted to anchor it and do all the action behind closed doors and make it a tactile experience for the audience. It depends largely on the definition of tone.
In Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the action begins in Detroit, where Eddie Murphy’s venerable detective Axel Foley, once back, goes broke and once back leaves a lot of destruction in his wake.
Soon after, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) calls Axel to tell him that his ex-daughter, attorney Jane (Taylour Paige), is being threatened because she represents a guy accused of murdering a police detective.
As such, Foley flies to California to see his daughter and discovers that Billy has disappeared because he is helping Jane with her investigation of the case.
Beverly Hills Police: Axel F also features the return of John Ashton as John Taggart, Paul Reiser as Jeffrey Friedman, and Bronson Pinchot as Serge. The newcomers to the cast are Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kevin Bacon, whose characters have ties to Beverly Hills. Hills Police Department.
Without a doubt, one of the most difficult parts of the directing process for Mark Molloy when directing Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F finds the right balance for the film. It’s true, it’s fun to see all the reminders from the original Beverly Hills Cop. films, but at the same time, Molloy sought to give his own artistic touch to the curtains and make the film his own.
Essentially, Molloy needed to find a way to make the new bankruptcy of Beverly Hill Cop new and familiar.
“When you’re presented with something with such a wonderful story, especially the first two films, I tried to embrace the tone and the way they were made by wonderful filmmakers like Marty Brest and Tony Scott,” Molloy said. I saw the first two films and thought, ‘What can I take away from them and integrate them into a modern world?How can I make my version of the plan that was presented to me?’»
Molloy said he could expand on the original films by expanding the characters’ life stories. Billy Rosewood, for example, left the Beverly Hills police to become a personal investigator for reasons that become transparent as the narrative unfolds. BHPD Sergeant . Taggart became Chief Taggart, and with that came a new set of day-to-day jobs that made him the connection he once had with Rosewood.
“We know those characters and a big component of the story is that it takes place 40 years later, so I enjoyed the script when I read it and I was adamant that we bring in all the original actors,” Molloy said.
“It’s not just about the adventure their lives have gone through since we last saw them, but also about how their relationships with each other have evolved,” Molloy added. “You see that with Rosewood, Taggart and Axel coming back into their lives and how we can play with the chemistry between them now that they’re older. “
Jerry Bruckheimer and Mark Molloy on the set of “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. “
Then there’s Axel Foley, who has an adult daughter from whom he’s estranged and is struggling to reconnect with her.
“When I read the script, what struck me was that we see Axel Foley in another component of his life and an aspect of him that we’ve never noticed before,” Molloy said. “We can see him as vulnerable. I never had the opportunity to see him vulnerable. But now he’s a father and how does that replace him and how do you deal with it?
Molloy said the changes Axel has experienced in his life are something he needs to address.
“That’s what caught my attention as a filmmaker. I tried to give the audience everything they needed from a Beverly Hills cop movie, but I also tried to surprise them with something new with an unforeseen backdrop of the story that surprises them,” Molloy said. It wasn’t just about making the movie, but also about why we were making it. It was one of my windows to the hitale that I clung to.
Beverly Hills Police: Axel F is streaming on Netflix.
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