So far, Donald Trump’s control of the media has involved a lot more stick than carrot. Thanks to a combination of outbursts and indiscriminate legal threats, the powerful figures at the centre of a rapidly consolidating industry find themselves with little option but to bend to the president’s every demand. Unfortunately, what he’s demanding is Rush Hour 4.
Just a few days ago, this seemed like a weird overreach, like when Trump used a keynote speech at a McDonald’s to demand more tartare sauce on Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. But in this case it really happened. Trump told majority Paramount Skydance shareholder Larry Ellison that he wished someone would make Rush Hour 4, and now Rush Hour 4 is being made.
So now we find ourselves in a situation where the president of the United States is dictating the sort of films that should be made. The problem with this, of course, is that Trump has famously awful taste in movies.
You know this already. What sort of figure can look out across the entire spectrum of cinema and decide that the thing that most deserves to be made is the third sequel to Rush Hour, starring a septuagenarian Jackie Chan? Was there even a third Rush Hour film? Who knows.
But other signs were there. Famously, one of Trump’s most beloved films is the 1988 Jean-Claude Van Damme martial arts movie Bloodsport. Even more famously, his favoured way to enjoy it involves forcing one of his sons to fast-forward through the exposition so that he can just watch the bits where people get kicked in the face. Then there’s also his critique of Citizen Kane to consider, in which he forgets all the stuff about the isolation of wealth and suggests that Charles Foster Kane should “get a different woman”.
Again, at the time this all just seemed like a bit of silliness. This is a man who appears to have filled the Oval Office with spray-painted home decor moldings, so of course his taste in film is bad. But now it’s completely evident that what Trump wants, Trump gets. In other words, brace yourself for the second coming of gormless action flicks.
Trump’s approval of the Rush Hour series is already an indication that he only likes the bad Jackie Chan films. Not for him the hyper-kinetic ballet of Police Story or Armour of God; he much prefers the ones where Chan has to deliberately dumb himself down for western audiences who chew popcorn with their mouths open.
And that means that, now that Trump has Chan right where he wants him, it is only a matter of time before he demands a sequel to Shanghai Noon, the western comedy he made 25 years ago with Owen Wilson. And, sure, technically there already was a sequel to that – the London-set Shanghai Knights – but that was too fancy. Forget it was ever made and do another kung-fu cowboy film, by presidential decree.
And surely Trump’s love of Bloodsport means that a Van Dammeissance is due. Let’s have a Timecop 2. Let’s have a second Double Impact where the Van Damme twins discover a secret triplet. Let’s have a fourth cyborg. Let’s have a fifth Universal Soldier. I realise that the original was a Steven Seagal film, but let’s make a sequel to 2002’s Half Past Dead starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Let’s call it Quarter to Dead. This is what the American people deserve.
Of course, this would only be the starter for something that Trump has been slowly piecing together for a while now. Remember back in January, when Trump made Sylvester Stallone a special ambassador to Hollywood? Do you think he did this because he truly thinks that Stallone has enough heft to encourage more US-based film production? Or, as I suspect, did he do it because he is desperate to see Tango & Cash 2 rushed into production?
It has to be the latter. You could set a million quantum computers to work for a decade, and they would all agree that, whichever way you look at it, Tango & Cash is Trump’s favourite Stallone film. It’s not Rambo, because that series started with too much liberal hand-wringing. It’s not Rocky, because that series started with the hero losing. No, it has to be Tango & Cash.
Like Trump, Tango & Cash is from the 80s. Like Trump, it has a funny name. Like Trump, it was hated by the critics but loved by enough of a bewilderingly large percentage of the population to turn a profit. Tango & Cash is everything that Trump wants in a film. It’s dumb. It’s violent. It barely makes sense. Nobody has ever clamoured for a sequel to Tango & Cash but, mark my words, we will have one by the time Trump leaves office.
