Lethal Injection

A few years back, I had read on Wikipedia, so you can take that for what it’s worth, that they are working on a script for another Lethal Weapon movie. I read a little bit of what the site said they had in its script and it sounded atrocious.

Riggs! Murtaugh! Don’t make another sequel because you’re just going to fuck it up. Not those men in particular but the writers, directors and casting directors will turn that shit into a Hallmark movie. Mark my words!

First and foremost, both Riggs and Murtaugh as characters and in real life as well are little bit long in the tooth. Shit! Let’s not kid ourselves; These folks are dealing with root canals. These cats are fighting off periodontal disease.

Nobody’s going to believe these folks are running down the “bad guys.” I don’t think these guys would do that even if they could. Lt. Murtaugh has been using his famous catchphrase, “I’m too old for this shit” since the first Lethal Weapon movie which came out in 1987.

1987! By my math, that’s 36 freaking years ago. At that time, Murtaugh’s character was around his late 40’s. Let’s say that the character was 45 which Danny Glover was a little younger then in real life. Danny Glover was around 41 years old when he did the first movie.

Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) was probably around 30. Gibson was born in 1956 so that would make him approximately 31 years old at the time of the film’s release. Pretty much the same age as his character.

So 36 years later, it would make their characters 82 and 66 respectively and 77 and 67 in real life. Nobody’s going to believe that these cats are jumping across buildings and dodging bullets at the same damn time.

Matter of fact, Murtaugh, at age 82, is going to be living the retired life if his character is living at all. And Riggs?! He’s young enough where he could take over as the Captain but I don’t see that guy crunching numbers.

He might’ve tried that for a few years and then walked away to do something else. So because of these action hero’s advanced ages, you’re going to have to go out and find some hot, new talent that can be major figures in the new movie.

And you know that the casting on these movies is complete and utter garbage. They will select some guys that should be nowhere near a big budget action film but should be doing Lifetime and Hallmark movies and I’m not knocking that. It’s just that those things are…… Just not the same!

Plus, I don’t think they can tell a better story then they did for the 4th film. I’ve often heard that the first two films were more of a darker film then the next two that came later in the series and I agree with that. But those films also emphasized family too.

I know, I know! A woman, high on peruvian grade cocaine, jumping off of a balcony building from a high rise building with her bare tits showing doesn’t sound like a family feature. But take Martin Riggs character for example. His character was suicidal in the first film.

The reason he felt that way was because the person who cared for him, his wife, was killed and he blamed everything and everybody for that loss. If a man doesn’t have the love of a family or anyone, then what does he have. That’s why he was moving so recklessly because nobody cared about him

They would just send him off to the next precinct. The first person that cared for him, outside of his wife, was Murtaugh and you saw how their on-screen relationship developed and how Riggs did change. He did care about whether he died or not and he cared about Murtaugh dearly.

Remember that scene in Lethal Weapon 3 when Murtaugh kills that young man in the shootout across from that food vendor’s spot. Murtaugh was so broken up by it that he went to his yacht and his family couldn’t find him so Riggs heads out to search for him

A few punches thrown but at the end they hug it out and Riggs consoles Murtaugh. And what was such a serious scene that had just a bit of comedy relief in it so that the viewers could take it in. Once you get people laughing, then you can slide the truth to them.

I mentioned Lethal Weapon 4 earlier. You remember when they showed the ending credits where they showed all the casts and the crew that worked on all those movies over the years set to an Eric Clapton song which fit the scene like a glove. They can’t even come close to a story anywhere near that.

Another thing which is out of their control is that those movies were made in the late 80’s and 90’s. People view those times through rose-colored lenses.

They look at that time period and the decades prior as a better time. Heck, they even viewed the world back then as a much better place and maybe even their own lives as well.

Hollyweird has to realize that for ever beginning, there’s an end and they need to let classic films rest in peace before they butcher them to pieces with these poorly, built remakes and/or sequels. Sometimes it’s best to let things……Simply be!