Donald Trump understands entertainment, never mind the three Razzies he’s scored over the years (including “Worst Supporting Actor” for his cameo as himself in the 1989 film Ghosts Can’t Do It). Long before he became President of the United States for the first time in 2016 and gained the largest audience of his career, Trump was a pop culture insider thanks to his many film appearances and his hit reality show The Apprentice. Which is why it is not surprising that he has found the time, in the middle of brokering international “peace deals” and keeping his MAGA flock together, to greenlight a film. Or rather, express the wish to see it made — given the President’s trigger-happy approach towards those who thwart him, it elicited immediate acquiescence.
What is baffling, however, is the choice of film. Rush Hour, for all its frothy fun and humorous action sequences, is hardly anybody’s idea of a movie franchise that deserves a reboot. The cop/buddy comedy films starred Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan and grew progressively less funny and less successful with each new release (1998, 2001 and 2006). The 2017 sexual assault allegations against franchise director Brett Ratner, which appeared to end his Hollywood career, were only the final clod of mud thrown on the coffin of an IP that had long been nailed shut and lowered into the ground.
But Ratner is back — he’s busy putting the finishing touches on his documentary about First Lady Melania Trump — and so, apparently, is Rush Hour, with the fourth film in the series being officially confirmed by Paramount Skydance. While the revival of a dead franchise may not be the worst news for Hollywood at the end of one of its worst years, the path to its creative rejuvenation certainly does not go through the White House.
