“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” the long-awaited fourth film in Eddie Murphy’s action comedy franchise, is now streaming on Netflix. It’s a 1980s throwback that features the return of old cast members like Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, and Bronson Pinchot.
To help communicate the film’s nostalgic vibe, Netflix hired Benedict Coulter, the editor who made the original “Beverly Hills Cop” trailer, to cut a new trailer in the style of his ‘80s work.
The result is a fun, high-energy trailer with a remarkably different feeling than modern trailers. This one skips the “trailer starts now” teaser before the actual teaser and that ubiquitous bass drop sound effect in favor of narration (lifted from the late trailer narrator Don LaFontaine’s voiceover for “Beverly Hills Cop II”) and a familiar song playing just beneath the dialogue for the whole thing: the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance,” which also soundtracked the original trailer.
The new trailer even recreates an iconic moment from the original trailer and movie, when Reinhold’s Billy Rosewood holds up his badge and demands the people shooting at him and Ashton’s John Taggart drop their weapons.
Deadline has an interview with Coulter, who reflects on his career as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand trailer editors, his whirlwind experience making the original trailer, and how things have changed since then.
“These days the stuff is a lot slicker, much more polished, with a lot of sound design and visual trickery. Mine were just kickass bombastic, all balls out, full music. Stop, just go, go, go,” Coulter said. “The funny thing is that at first, I think the first couple of cuts I showed to the director [Mark Molloy], he was like, ‘whoa, whoa. I don’t know if it’s too much.’ I said, well, that’s the style. That’s how we used to cut reels in the eighties. We just threw everything at you.’”
After you’ve watched Coulter’s “Axel F” trailer, check out how it compares to the original “Beverly Hills Cop” trailer…
…And the contemporary “Axel F” trailer.
