Hey Hollywood, stop turning my youth into garbage

Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 3:45 PM Central

by John Couture

Sometimes a retread can be a good thing. Balding tires, Birkenstocks losing their cork one step at a time and hockey skates with one too many sharpenings are all things that should be retread.

Iconic movies that form the basis of my youth and the very fiber of who I am today should not.

But yet, George Lucas is destroying my memories, one CG gopher at a time. This isn't a hate piece directed solely at Lucas, but even in baseball you only get three strikes before they call you out.

Rather, this is me getting up on my little virtual soapbox to send a missive to Hollywood: STOP MESSING UP A GOOD THING!

Here's an idea, why don't you create something new?

But no, hot on the heels of a $126 million dollar opening weekend for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Paramount announced today that they are bringing Eddie Murphy back to Beverly Hills for a little more Axel Foley love.

Beverly Hills Cop IV? Really? When was the last time that Eddie Murphy did anything worthwhile in a live-action movie? Beverly Hills Cop II? Doesn't anyone else besides me remember the painful disaster of an interstellar UFO wreck that was Pluto Nash?

And don't even get me started on UFOs. "Space between spaces" my backside, I don't know if I'll ever be able to recover from this past weekend's latest installment of "Flush My Memories Down the Toilet," hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Some movies should take a lesson from former First Lady Nancy Reagan and "Just Say No!" Back to the Future is a great example. No one, and I mean no one, wants to see a jittery Michael J. Fox attempt to get the DeLorean up to 88 MPH again.

First, it was Star Wars, then it was Indiana Jones, and don't even get me started again on the taming of the Terminator franchise. Now, it's time for Beverly Hills Cop to get the "21st Century Treatment."

You can bet that it will come with a squeaky clean PG-13 rating (so much for the "foul-mouthed jerk from out of town" and sexual innuendo) and Axel's illegitimate love child who is looking for a father figure while following in his unknown father's footsteps in crime-fighting.

Beverly Hills Cop III ended in a California theme park just different enough from Disneyland to avoid a lawsuit. Hasn't the series suffered enough indignation?

Heck, I bet even Judge Reinhold has more sense than to touch this thing.

But wait, I haven't even revealed the best part yet. Brett Ratner is apparently in negotiations to direct. Yes, that Brett Ratner.

Hey, I have a wacky idea. Why don't we get Ratner and Uwe Boll together for a caged director death match. Two men go in. One man comes out.

It's bound to draw more than any of their recent fare added together.

And it's not just the craptacular stinkfest that Beverly Hills Cop IV will ultimately be, but it's also the indelible mark that it will leave on a franchise that I thought "jumped the shark" when Axel Foley broke into the amusement park.

You've already given the first two movies a black eye, do you really want to go in for the kill?

But, that's not the world that we live in. No, we live in a consumerist society that is driven more by the almighty dollar that whatever is actually put up on the screen. Gordon Gekko got it right all those many years ago, "Greed is good."

Where will it end? I can already see some wild-eyed Paramount exec staring off into space coming up with reasons as to why Titanic 2: Electric Boogaloo would make for a great flick.

Please Hollywood, stop the madness before it's too late.

As always, we love to hear what you think on this topic. Something tells me that my email box will be overflowing soon.