Beverly Hills Cop Retrospective: Beverly HIlls Cop II

Beverly Hills Cop II
1987
Director: Tony Scott
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Brigitte Nielsen, Dean Stockwell, Jurgen Prochnow, Ronny Cox, Paul Reiser
Sponsored By: Playboy
Rated: R

Fuck Rambo!
      ~Sergeant Taggart


The second Axel Foley adventure falls into that sequel trope of being "more of the same".  A lot of times back in the day, if you got a sequel, you just got the same movie repackaged.  I'm not saying its an exact remake, but all the beats are the same and very little progresses.  Its an entertaining movie no doubt, but there's nothing here that really needed to be explored.

Beverly Hills Cop Retrospective: COBRA!!!!

Cobra
1986
Director: George P. Cosmatos
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen, Andrew Robinson, Brian Thompson, Lee Garlington
Rated: R

I don't deal with psychos.  I put 'em away.
                ~Marion Cobretti

Oh helllll yes I found a way to work Cobra into a retrospective!  I was pretty happy when i realized I could pull this off.  Cobra came out of the script Stallone was wanting to use for Beverly Hills Cop and took with him when he walked away.  We discussed it last time and I didn't go much further on it, wanted to leave it as a tease.  He used an adaption of the novel Fair Game (which was also made into another movie with that title starring Cindy Crawford and Billy Baldwin - I won't be covering that one).  Stallone may have dropped many story elements that coincided with Beverly Hills Cop, but a few characters, story elements and sequences remained the same.