  (Supplied photos) |
HOLLYWOOD -- Time for a little pop quiz:
You head over to your local movie-plex where your viewing choices would include Indiana Jones back cracking the old whip and Eddie Murphy as smart aleck cop, Axel Foley.
What year is it?
The answer we were looking for was actually 1984, but given what's been going on sequel-wise lately, you might as well have answered 2008.
Just as Harrison Ford makes a triumphant return to the role he introduced 27 years ago in Raiders of the Lost Ark, comes word that Eddie "Never Met a Sequel He Didn't Like" Murphy has committed to a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie, to be directed by Brett Ratner, of Rush Hour renown.
The last time Eddie flashed the Foley badge was for 1994's BHC III, which got us thinking -- of, say, Murphy, Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Sean Connery and Jack Nicholson, who went AWOL for the longest period in between sequels?
Let's start with Murphy.
Assuming the new one arrives as scheduled in 2010 (first he has to finish working with Ratner on a remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man), that would make 16 years in between Cops.
Ford, on the other hand, previously went the Indy route for 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, giving him the lead with a 19-year interval.
Willis had been itching to get his butt-kicking John McClane character back into action for years, finally seizing the opportunity with the summer of 2007's guilty-pleasure hit, Live Free or Die Hard.
It did the trick, taking in some $134 million at the box office and helping folks to forget Perfect Stranger, and though it felt as if no time had passed at all, it was actually 12 years since Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Sean Connery thought he had said never again to James Bond after Diamonds are Forever, but absence can make the heart grow fonder, as he discovered when he agreed to don 007's tux for 1983's Never Say Never Again.
Essentially a remake of Thunderball, the movie also arrived 12 years after his previous Bond issue.
Then there's Jack Nicholson, who always counted Jake Gittes, the Chandler-esque private eye in 1976's Chinatown, among his favourite roles.
After numerous delays, The Two Jakes finally went into production with Nicholson working both sides of the camera, but the murky results felt like too much water under the bridge.
The sequel hit theatres in 1990 -- 14 years after the Roman Polanski film.
Which brings us to Sylvester Stallone, who, in late 2006, stepped back into the ring as Rocky Balboa -- in Rocky Balboa -- and delivered a swift right hook to the smirking skeptics with a surprisingly spry and poignant return to form.
It had been 16 years since Rocky V.
Sensing he might be on to something, Stallone also resurrected John Rambo for this year's Rambo, but the return of the over-the-top '80s icon proved to be a critical and commercial misfire.
So while Stallone is the winner, with a full 20 years passing since 1988's Rambo III, with victory comes a few words of after-the-fact wisdom:
When weighing a Rocky or Rambo redux, just say "Yo."
