Australian director Mark Molloy has taken on no mean feat when it comes to announcing himself as a feature filmmaker. After rumblings of a fourth franchise film in the Beverly Hills Cop series for the better part of three decades now, Molloy has finally brought Eddie Murphy’s loveable wisecracking detective Axel Foley back into the fray with Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
As the film, which sees Detective Axel Foley back on the beat in Beverly Hills, teaming up with a new partner and his old pals to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy when his daughter’s life is threatened, arrives to stream on Netflix, Mark spoke with our own Peter Gray about if he felt any pressure taking on such an iconic film series, working with Eddie Murphy, and the importance of filming the action free from green screen effects.
Obviously I’ll start by saying congratulations. This is your first film and you take on something as iconic as the Beverly Hills Cop series…
(Laughs) Yeah, just a nice, small indie film. No stress. No scale.
How did this come about for you? For a first film, how does something like this get to you?
I’ve been directing commercials for years, and I was just looking for long form projects. I actually started on a very different film to Beverly Hills Cop in 2019, but COVID happened and (we) shut own halfway through. I’m always interested in telling stories for audiences. That’s my main…that’s what drives me. But then I got a call one day from Jerry Bruckheimer (series producer), who had seen the work I’ve done and he was like, “I want to make a movie together! I love what you do.” He sent me a bunch of scripts, and I actually said no to (them), and then he sent me Beverly Hills Cop 4, and once I read it, I said yes.
Is there pressure in taking on such a beloved IP? One that I believe you’re also a fan of?
I think being a fan adds pressure, but it also helps too, because I could see (the film) through a fan’s eyes. There’s quite a few scenes in the film that is just me being like, “I’m a fan.” It’s where I want to be right now, I’m going to place this here with these elements around. And hopefully other people who love it as much as me want to be there too. For me, I’m a huge fan of the first two films. I’ve never seen the third one. So a big part of my approach to this was I love what’s been in the past. I want to embrace the past. I want to embrace the style of films they were and what made them great films. I want to try and pull that into a contemporary world and create a film with the same spirit as (the originals).
When I was growing up I was at the right age to see the third film as a kid, and then I saw the first two when I was a little bit older, because they’re the more adult-skewed ones. The third film is the one that everyone kind of has that relationship with where it’s just not as well received. I did like the line that Joseph Gordon-Levitt says about the third mission not being (Axel’s) “finest hour.” And in referencing the other films, you obviously can’t do this without Eddie Murphy, but then there’s Judge Reinhold and John Ashton too. Was it always in your mind that you needed to bring back these characters for this story to work?
Totally. I think, for me, yes it’s Axel Foley, but I think it’s his relationships with those other characters, and especially when we’re talking about (the) 40 years that have passed since. Axel is coming back and stepping into a world and finding out what’s changed. It’s definitely the Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop, but it’s not just that. I wanted it to be bigger than that. There’s a whole other world of Beverly Hills Cop that we want to step back into, and that’s the other characters and the music. You know what I mean? It all comes together to make the world work. So I was really steadfast about bringing everything back. Especially as many of the original cast as we could.
I will say, I loved when the character of Serge comes back. That scene is fantastic, because you can tell it’s Eddie Murphy and Bronson Pinchot just playing off each other and having so much fun, which is very much what their first interaction in the first film was. I imagine in terms of Eddie Murphy improvising, you just let him play? There’s no reeling him in?
Definitely. I don’t need to reel Eddie Murphy in. That’s definitely not what you do when you’ve got someone as iconic as him. I just wanted to create a space for him to thrive. That was a big part of my job, to just create a world on set where Eddie could walk in and do what he does best. That’s really what I’m doing when I cast across from him. I want people who can improvise with him and make sure the script is in a place that it’s there, but there’s room to move. Really just talk with the actors about their process and create the right element.
Some of the funniest bits in the movie is Eddie just improvising. He’s brilliant. I grew up on Raw and Delirious, and it’s like now I’m working with Eddie Murphy? It’s amazing.
I remember watching Raw a few years ago, and you just know they could never make anything like that now. I really liked with Axel F that, as much as it’s catering to the original fans, it needs to be a film that new audiences can have access to as well. It balances that line of being a film you’ll understand if you haven’t seen the original, but it just hits harder if you’re familiar. And one thing I really appreciated was that this looks like a film made on location. There’s physical action. I assume that was very much a necessity for you? For this to actually feel like Beverly Hills?
It wasn’t just about filming on location. It was that I had a bigger ethos for the film. My ethos for the film was what I love not just about Beverly Hills Cop, but all those action comedies from the 1980s. They’re grounded. They’re comedies, but there’s an honesty to them, and the stakes are real. The stakes are all real, and they’re quite gritty films. That was a big part of my ethos, was to ground this. I wanted to shoot everything on location. Even the car stuff. When anyone is driving around, there’s no green screen. We’re doing it all for real.
And it was that way when it came to the action too. I wanted to do it all in camera. We threw cars off buildings, we flew helicopters down the street…we did it all in camera. There’s a tactile nature to that, and there’s a spontaneity, and mistakes can happen, and I love that. And in terms of the look of the film, I like old zooms the way Tony Scott did it in Beverly Hills Cop. I love the way Tony did it, and I wanted to go down the same path.
Given that you are doing everything physically and in camera, were there every any moments that you worried had gotten away from you? Anything that you conceptualised that you started to think, “How will we pull this off?”
Yeah, lots of time (laughs). But that’s kind of the fun of it, isn’t it? Like, shit, this is kind of crazy! I’m going to fly a helicopter in live traffic through a downtown street, with people running around. But that’s the beauty of getting to shoot it all in LA. Apart from Detroit. But working with all these craftsmen, and no one really shoots in camera anymore, so I had people asking when the green screen was going to be pulled out (laughs), but I knew that’s not how we were going to do this. It was all going to be done for real. I never once questioned it. Maybe because I’m stubborn, but from when I first read the script I had a very clear vision for how I wanted to pull this film off. That never changed from the first read.
Honestly, that makes me so happy to know you’re a director who values that. So many action films just don’t look real, so now I know what to expect from a Mark Molloy picture.
(Laughs) I hope I don’t fuck it up. But not just with Beverly Hills Cop, with any of the work I do, I’m always trying to ground the story back to character. That’s what it all comes back to for me. I think nowadays it’s all about the spectacle more than the story. Sometimes the action can outweigh the story, and what I really love is that even in a big action sequence, like the helicopter sequence, it’s more about what’s happening inside the helicopter. That’s what really speaks to me. So, I built the scene around the dialogue, not the action.
And just as I wrap up, I want to ask if there’s any other classic film series you’d like to revive or continue?
Ooh, that’s a hard question. I don’t know. I have to think about that one. There are so many amazing films from that time. Gosh, you’ve stumped me.
Yeah, just thought I’d leave a no pressure question to the end. But, as a fan of this series, and as we’ve heard for so long about a Beverly Hills Cop 4, it was such a treat to watch this and have it be worth the wait.
Oh, that’s a big prize. Thank you so much. That really means a lot.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is streaming on Netflix from July 3rd, 2024.
