La Ron S. Readus
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Bad Boys Proper Movie Trilogy (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2020-10-02 23:00:02 +0000 UTC
Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, and Bad Boys For Life. Outside of Lethal Weapon, it has proven itself to be one of the main quintessential franchises of the Buddy Cop genre and was the spark of a lot of careers. Some we’re thankful for, others...we tolerate.
But with Bad Boys II following 8 years later, and the latest installment of the franchise Bad Boys For Life 17 years after that, it has now established itself as a movie trilogy. But is it a PROPER movie trilogy, and if it's not, how can we MAKE it one? Let’s find out.
INTRO
Bad Boys was released in 1995 by Sony Pictures flagship studio Columbia Pictures, kicking off one of the most popular film franchises to be produced by household name Jerry Bruckheimer.
/With a story by George Gallo and written for the screen by screenwriters Doug Richardson, Jim Mulholland and Michael Barrie, this movie paved the way to making Will Smith the movie theater powerhouse we know him as today, with Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day solidifying his acting cred in the business one year later./
It was also Michael Bay’s theatrical directorial debut, and helped establish him as one of Hollywood’s most sought after action film directors at the time.
Y’know, until he only became known as the Explosion Man.
/Nevertheless, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s take on Mike Lowry and Marcus Burnett respectively helped bring a very...90’s blend of action and comedy and a refreshing splash of COLOR to Buddy Cop films; a genre previously adorned by white and white passing actors before Richard Donner’s 1987 classic Lethal Weapon laid the groundwork./
(Don’t be alarmed, we’re negroes)
The script, their chemistry and Bay’s direction generated over 120 million dollars in profit at the box office. And while it took them years to do it, the decision to make a sequel was a no-brainer
Bad Boys II was released in 2003, and was a huge financial success for the studio, making over 140 million during its time in theaters. Yet while it's definitely the most action-packed installment of Bad Boys, it's also one the most problematic one when it comes to things presented in the story that CLEARLY didn’t age well.
/It was also the film that established the type of humor that Michael Bay would start to be known for in his latter projects./
(Bumblebee! Stop lubricating on the man)
Yet despite this, Sony STILL wanted another Bad Boys sequel after seeing Bad Boys II making 20 million more than 1. But by the time they demanded it, both Michael Bay AND Will Smith required top notch pay due to them becoming hot commodities after the first film, and there was concern that Sony wouldn’t be willing to pay either of them what they were actually worth.
Because of that, it took the studio 6 years to start work on a script for the third installment of Bad Boys and another 9 to get the film into development. What we got as a result was a third installment that takes place 17 years after the events of Bad Boys II called Bad Boys For Life, which, in my opinion, resulted in one of the best things that could’ve happened to the franchise.
CURRENT STANCE
/Bad Boys For Life came out January 2020, and did ridiculously well at the box office. It broke the record for the highest domestic box office debut for the month, raking in over $59 million dollars, and over $420 million worldwide during its theatrical run./
Despite it being the franchise that started his career, it was the first installment that was NOT directed by Michael Bay, and instead directed by the Belgian duo Adil & Bilall, who will also be directing at least 1 episode of Marvel Studios’ upcoming Ms. Marvel series for Disney Plus.
And they did such a bang-up job with the movie that they are now set to direct Eddie Murphy’s theatrical return to the role of Axel Foley with Beverly Hills Cop 4; a franchise I ALSO have plans on visiting soon in this segment.
I say that because in my opinion, Bad Boys For Life fixed a lot of the things that I had problems with in Bad Boys and Bad Boys II.
/The action was evenly distributed throughout the movie, Mike and Marcus’s friendship and comradery matured with their age without taking away from their personalities, and y’know...no shock value jokes at the expense of the LGBT community./
(Oh, he’s a cold-hearted bitch!)
I also thought that having Mike be the focus for the plot was actually pretty smart considering the themes the movie was trying to convey.
/Bad Boys For Life couldn’t really do that with Marcus’s character, because he already came to those conclusions in Bad Boys II in regards to his family and making sure he reveled in the life he had with his wife and kids to the point of making sure he would always be there for them by any means necessary./
Because of how much of a wildcard and a “playboy” Mike is, he was the optimal choice for writers Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan to explore this level of development.
After avoiding it for such a long time, how do you have a character like Mike Lowrey explore the themes of true love and lineage in a way that not only makes sense to him considering the actions of two previous films, but that he also walks away becoming a better person because of the scenario?
/Enter the film’s villain and Mike’s vindictive ex-lover; Isabel “La Bruja” Aretas, and their bastard son Armando, played by Kate del Castillo and Jacob Scipio respectively. She’s on a mission to take down every major cop and official who had a hand in taking down and arresting her and her husband Benito Aretas, a major cartel kingpin. Including Mike, who was deep undercover in the cartel as her husband’s driver in order to get the info necessary to put them down. But he and Isabel fell in love and planned on running away together./
He realized how dangerous she was and turned her in when he turned in Benito, who was killed in prison afterwards. But not before Isabel and Mike conceived a child, Armando, who she gave birth to during the beginning of HER stint in prison.
/When he came of age, he broke her out and began to enact their revenge; all while Armando was ignorant to the fact that one of the people on Isabel’s hit list is actually his father./
Honestly, this is a pretty dope plot. It explores the themes of love and lineage in a way that makes sense to a character like Mike, and the execution brought some of the best dramatic moments the franchise has had in a long time.
But with the way that it currently is, does it make the three films work as a proper trilogy? Unfortunately, no.
The first rule in a proper trilogy is that there has to be an element of the first film’s plot that plays a significant role in the third in a way that makes all three films work together as one cohesive story.
From there, you can use the third film to reveal new information about what's being carried over from the first, and expand upon it in various ways; the most common form being a plot twist.
/Bad Boys For Life, as good as it is, doesn’t check those boxes. The only elements that make it over from the past films are two specifically made in Bad Boys II; one in the form of Reggie -- the boyfriend-turned-husband of Marcus’s daughter that he and Mike intimidated 17 years ago (you ever make love to a man) -- and the other in a "blink and you'll miss it" reference to Gabrielle Union’s character Syd -- aka Marcus’s sister -- when Mike nonchalantly mentions their breakup. (you still mad that I broke up with your sister)/
I still feel a certain type of way about that, but at least she has her own spin-off show called L.A.’s Finest over on Fox, so we’re just gonna move on
So yes. While we have those references and callbacks to Bad Boys II, none exist for Bad Boys. Especially any plot elements from Bad Boys that Bad Boys For Life could expand on.
In a way, you could say that Bad Boys For Life doesn’t even try. Because when Mike breaks down the situation to Marcus after realizing that Isabel’s behind everything, he mentions that the entire takedown of the Aretas cartel happened BEFORE Marcus and he partnered up. PRE-dating the events of the first movie.
So as it currently stands, the Bad Boys trilogy is NOT a proper movie trilogy.
/It TEASED the idea of it being one with the way they marketed Bad Boys For Life, but ended it in a way that made For Life just a third installment of a film franchise that hinted at more installments to come./
And that’s not to say that you can’t continue a franchise after establishing the first three films in it as a proper movie trilogy. All it means is that the arc that emcompasses the first three installments is as complete as it can be in what you can do with it and bring it full circle by connecting it to the first.
But there’s a reason why THIS isn’t the end of the video, Readers. Because while it may not be one, we can for sure do some tweaking to Bad Boys For Life that can make these three movies fall under the proper movie trilogy category.
All we have to do is find a story thread from the 1995 movie that’s strong enough, carry it over to the 2020 movie, and adjust some of the key points in For Life in order to accomplish it. So let's revisit the first movie, and see what we have to work with.
THE THREAD
So, if you go back to watch the 1995 Bad Boys today, you can clearly tell that this was Michael Bay’s first full-length feature film he directed.
You can also tell that Will and Martin didn’t really have their chemistry set yet with how awkward their dialogue and improv moments were.
/I mean, they definitely got it ironed out and proved to gel well together in II and For Life, but the 1995 Bad Boys felt more like a trial period that had more good results than bad ones when we open and pour out all the contents of the mixed bag
Not to mention the stuff that didn’t really age well/ (casual prejudice with the hispanic cops in the beginning of the movie)
Am I saying that the 1995 movie is unwatchable? No, not at all. But if you’ve either never seen it before or just saw the sequels, you just need to be prepared for its HUGE “product of its time” energy it radiates.
Y’know, if you haven’t already caught on to some of the bits and pieces of certain traits and moralities the later installments carried over
With that being said, we don’t have to watch the entire movie in order to find the thread that we’re looking for. It actually happens within the first 30 minutes, in the form of the movie’s McGuffin.
The main villain of the movie Fouchet -- with the help of an ex-cop -- breaks into Internal Affairs and is able to steal a tremendous amount of drugs from evidence.
/Said ex-cop hires some late-night entertainment in the form of Max Logan, who brings her roommate and best friend Julie Mott./
But while Julie is away in the bathroom, Fouchet kills the ex-cop for bringing and showing Max a portion of the stolen drugs in his attempt to “have some fun,” and kills Max thinking she’s the only witness.
/Turns out Julie saw the whole thing and is able to escape. So now Mike and Marcus have to protect her from Fouchet, and there we have our movie./
However, there are a few details within the plot of the first Bad Boys that are integral, yet are left open-ended enough to where they can be used to establish a connection to Bad Boys For Life.
/For example: When Julie calls Internal Affairs after escaping the Al Capone suite, she requests Mike Lowry SPECIFICALLY./
She does that, because Max lets her know that they’re only there because she’s doing Mike a favor and that he can be trusted in case of shit went sour, which it did.
And while it's implied Max only did this favor for Mike because she has feelings for him, Mike asked this favor of her in the first place because Markus and he were assigned to finding the drugs, due to the previous history with them.
/And the previous history is VERY important to their significance as the main characters/ (This was our career bust)
That’s right, Readers. The drugs that were stolen were the result of the case that made them the famous dynamic duo the movie tells us that they are when we’re introduced to them.
It put them on the map in Miami, and brought more attention to Mike Lowry’s state of mind when it came to how seriously he takes police work due to his inheritance.
Because they were the ones who acquired the drugs in this famous bust of theirs, they were put on the case to find Fouchet; the one who stole them
And it’s through the two having to work with two other officers that we get the name and the status of the man they got the drugs from to begin with.
(Guerra, killed in prison)
KILLED IN PRISON, YOU SAY???
So let’s review everything right quick:
We now have two very important strings we can now weave together into a proper piece of thread:
The $100 grand worth of drugs from Mike and Marcus’ first big bust that made them famous, and Guerra -- the name of the cartel leader that they acquired it from.
However, because the film stated that he died in prison just as quick as they dropped his name, that’s the only bit of information we get from him throughout the remainder of the movie.
Remember. When it comes to proper movie trilogies, it’s not the job of the first movie to expand on the lore and exposition it gives; it’s the third. Because it’s supposed to either reveal something new about it, make it play a role in the plot of said installment, or sometimes both at the same time.
And by making a few adjustments, with the way the plot for Bad Boys For Life is set up, we now have a way of restructuring it so that it still keeps its essence, but that it does it with the thread from the first movie. Let me break it down for you:
RECONSTRUCTION
In Bad Boys For Life, there is a drug kingpin named Benito Aretas, who -- along with his wife Isabel -- was taken down by a pre-established Mike Lourey and a group of other officers and officials. He died in prison.
In Bad Boys, there is a drug kingpin with the surname of Guerra that Mike and Marcus took down that put them on the map as two of the best cops in Miami. He ALSO died in prison.
So let's turn Benito Aretas into Benito Guerra, and have the case Mike was deep undercover to be the one that put him and Marcus on the map.
Doing that off the bat simplifies a LOT of things.
Instead of 2 separate cases there's now 1, and there's now a proper plot point in Bad Boys For Life carried over from the first movie that can be expanded upon over the course of the movie that already snugly fits in the plot Bad Boys For Life presented to us.
We just have to address a few points that may or may not affect the movie and do a proper breakdown of how everything would wrap up because of it.
With that being said, let me rip off this band-aid right quick. Making this change would not affect the logistics or involvement of Armando AT ALL.
There is a 25 year gap between the events of Bad Boys and Bad Boys For Life, which puts Armando at the proper age to have been born either during or before the events of the first movie.
Especially since Jacob Scipio -- the actor who portrays Armando in Bad Boys For Life -- was born January 10, 1993; 2 years before the first movie was released.
/And considering how young Marcus's children were in 1995, a one and a half to 2 year old Armando existing during the events of the movie wouldn't be a stretch at all./
Speaking of Marcus, the only thing that would have to change about his role in all of this was that he knew Mike was undercover when they took down Guerra.
Because of protocol along with a combination of Mike's personal discretion and levels of openness at the time, he would still be ignorant to the fact that Mike and Isabel were an item, along with his inner game of tug-of-war in choosing the force over her.
Any knowledge he would have on Isabel would be limited to what was necessary to bring Benito Guerra down.
/Thus allowing his reaction when Mike explains everything to remain unchanged./ (You fucked a WITCH??)
Because the 1995 Bad Boys gives us such limited information regarding their first bust and how they took down Guerra and his crew, Bad Boys For Life -- if it were outfitted to follow the protocols of a proper movie trilogy -- could provide so much context regarding what actually went down. So let's go on and establish some of that context.
First off, let's have the Guerra case be Mike and Marcus's first. That way it holds more significance to it being the one that made the two famous with Miami PD.
/Also, for reasons I'll explain later on, let's have Captain Howard be the one that was running the show./
The individuals on the case are Mike -- who is assigned to go deep undercover as the Guerra's driver to keep tabs on him after asking for the job to prove that he isn't just a "a trust fund baby playing cop"
His best friend and newly appointed partner Marcus -- who leads the team responsible for capturing and arresting Guerra's men from said info gathered from Mike's undercover work
And the individuals Armando picks off during Mike's recovery in the third movie.
The only individual who knows and keeps tabs on Mike's involvement with the Guerra's is Howard, who knows that Mike and Isabel are in love.
/But once he hears word of Mike getting in too deep and the two planning on running away together, he's able to remind Mike that his duties as a cop matter more to him, helping Mike make the decision to choose the force when he gets the Guerra's arrested and Internal Affairs confiscates the $100 thousand worth of drugs./
So now we have more context regarding the Guerra bust. Mike went undercover to gather info on his lackeys that eventually led to his initial takedown
Marcus ARRESTED said lackeys based on the info Mike gave Howard while he was undercover
And Mike turned both of the Guerra's in after being talked off a ledge by Howard when he was forced to weigh his future as a cop and his future with Isabel on the same scale.
It's context that can easily be revealed and expanded upon over the course of the events happening in Bad Boys For Life, and doesn't cross over into any cemented story beats from the first movie.
It also allows us to see how this newly revealed backstory regarding a very important portion of Mike and Marcus's career plays out in the plot of Bad Boys For Life when it comes to the reveal of this adjusted information.
A feat which is also easily remedied with the adjustment of a few story beats. More specifically, the roles of Marcus and Captain Howard.
Because Marcus's involvement was limited to leading the charge in arresting Guerra's goons as info came in, thanks to not being that high up on the need-to-know ladder when it came to taking down Guerra, there wasn't anything he did other than be Mike's partner that warranted him being on Isabel's hit list.
As I stated before, he KNEW Mike was undercover during the Guerra bust.
/But because the info he received regarding the arrests for Guerra's cartel members came from Howard in the form of paperwork and protocol and whatnot, he didn't have an active role in Guerra's takedown that would've put him or his family on her radar./
But that didn't mean he wouldn't have known the names and faces of the higher-ups assigned to the Task Force with Mike and himself while he was assigned to it.
So instead of having Marcus promise God he’d go cold turkey off of violence in order to spare Mike’s life after Armando guns him down, which is one of the factors that lead to his retirement in the movie, I’d propose using that time for Marcus to come to that same conclusion as a result of...doing a bit of detective work
Instead, he notices that every one of said higher-ups that were involved in taking down Guerra was getting offed while Mike was recovering from Armando's attempt at his life, causing Marcus to worry that this attack wasn't a coincidence.
It also makes him frustrated that Howard isn't giving him any useful information once bringing this pattern to his attention.
/And -- considering that he's now a grandfather -- sees it as a sign that it's time for him to retire and that Mike shouldn't be so quick to seek revenge due to these planned hits and how close he is to it upon the initial reveal to the audience that the role he played in the bust involved undercover work./
Howard, meanwhile, is the only one that was officially informed that Isabel escaped prison, and -- being the only one on the Guerra Task Force who knew about their relationship -- pieced together that she has a vendetta against Mike once the other members of the Task Force began to drop like flies after he was shot.
He purposefully kept this information from Marcus to protect him and his family once Marcus presented the pattern to him, since he wasn't directly involved with the Guerra's takedown.
Then -- after seeing Marcus decide to retire -- decided to do so as well and aid in Marcus's attempts to convince Mike not to go after his shooter to keep from drawing Isabel's attention.
/He, of course, fails to do this because he is ALSO on Isabel's hit list and is shot dead in front of Mike. Not only strengthening his resolve, but pulling Marcus out of retirement as well, in order to ride and die with Marcus, one last time./
Y’know, until Bad Boys 4.
CONCLUSION
By turning Benito and Isabel Aretas into Benito and Isabel Guerra and making the undercover job referenced in Bad Boys For Life the bust that put Mike and Marcus on the map in the original Bad Boys, not only makes the narrative for the third movie stronger regarding all the themes it explores with Mike’s development, but better connects the events of Bad Boys For Life to the franchise as a whole in a way that makes it truly feel like the event the movie promoted itself as during its marketing.
Even with more films planned, after the events of For Life -- which, let’s just be honest, was ALWAYS part of the equation -- the Bad Boys franchise would have under its belt an action-packed, cleverly handled, and proper movie trilogy.
Lethal Weapon could NEVER. No, believe me; I’ve TRIED. Lethal Weapon 3 is a fucking ENIGMA.
