Video Scripts: Lethal Weapon 3, The Blob (1988), Lethal Weapon 4
Cody shares three more of the videos he has written for JoBlo YouTube channels.
I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last couple years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered
Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, one for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel and two for JoBlo Originals.
For the non-horror Revisited series, I continued my journey through Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon film franchise by looking at 1992's Lethal Weapon 3:
Lethal Weapon 3 script:
INTRO: The success of Lethal Weapon 2 had proven there was a large audience that was eager to follow the continuing adventures of LAPD sergeants Riggs and Murtaugh. Warner Bros., franchise director Richard Donner, and stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were committed to giving the people more of what they obviously wanted. Lethal Weapon 3 reached theatres three years after its predecessor. And while this sequel wasn’t as impressive on a story level as the previous two films, it still delivered a good amount of action and fun Riggs and Murtaugh banter. So the audience made it the most successful entry in the series. Lethal Weapon 3 may not be the best Lethal Weapon, but it had the biggest box office. And it’s time for it to be Revisited.
SET-UP: The first Lethal Weapon had started as a spec script written by Shane Black. Director Richard Donner then brought Jeffrey Boam in to perform rewrites that lightened the tone and reduced the violence. Black was hired to write the initial script for Lethal Weapon 2, and while Boam ended up doing substantial rewrites on that one, Black and collaborator Warren Murphy did provide the basic story for the film. So when it came time to push Lethal Weapon 3 into development, Black was the first writer to be contacted. And he declined to be involved. He didn’t see any reason to keep telling stories about Riggs and Murtaugh, despite the financial reward. So Donner and producer Joel Silver turned to Boam once again.
At Donner’s suggestion, Boam came up with a story that has a ticking clock element to it. Roger Murtaugh is eight days away from retirement at the beginning. The story plays out over the course of what is meant to be his final week with the LAPD. A week he hopes will be as easy and peaceful as possible. But his partner Martin Riggs keeps dragging him into trouble. In the opening sequence, they check on a report of a bomb being spotted in a car parked in the garage of an office building. Riggs and Murtaugh are homicide detectives and no one has been killed here, so this isn’t their job. The building has already been evacuated, Bomb Squad is on its way to deal with the explosive. But Riggs convinces Murtaugh to go into the building with him and look for the bomb. And then Riggs decides that he is the one who should try to defuse it. While he has displayed some knowledge of bombs from his time in the Special Forces, he cuts the wrong wire on this one. The explosion goes off early, the building crumbles, and Riggs and Murtaugh are to blame. So they’re busted down to patrol duty.
While they’re on patrol, they witness an attempted robbery of an armored truck. One of the criminals escapes during the ensuing action sequence. The other is apprehended. But they both end up dead, murdered by former police officer Jack Travis, who has gotten into the construction business, but that’s not how he pays his bills. He has been stealing confiscated weapons and ammo from police lock-up and selling them, putting them back out on the streets. Arming gang members. Which is another part of his criminal enterprise that Riggs and Murtaugh accidentally discover. Murtaugh is just trying to cook Riggs a delicious burger at a food stand when Riggs notices gang activity nearby. A gunfight breaks out, during which Murtaugh kills a gang member armed with an automatic weapon. The gang member happens to be an old friend of Murtaugh’s teenage son Nick. And the weapon he was shooting at Riggs and Murtaugh with was supposed to be in lock-up.
The case of the missing weapons is being investigated by Internal Affairs. And in Boam’s early drafts of the script, the lead investigator was a man who was Riggs’ equal. Someone just as crazy and just as skilled in martial arts as Riggs is. Donner liked the character and wanted to keep their presence and personality in the script, but with a major change: he asked that they be rewritten as a woman Riggs could fall in love with. Boam already had Riggs finding a girlfriend in those early drafts: Murtaugh’s daughter Rianne. She had developed a crush on Riggs as soon as she saw him in the first Lethal Weapon. But she was only a teenager at that time. Now that she was in her early twenties, Boam was going to give her the chance to turn her crush into something more. Donner preferred the idea of Riggs falling for the Internal Affairs investigator instead. So that’s what happens in the finished film, but there are scenes left over from earlier drafts where Murtaugh suspects there’s something going on between Riggs and Rianne.
The Internal Affairs investigator became a woman named Lorna Cole in a draft of the script Boam wrote with The Karate Kid creator Robert Mark Kamen. A draft that happened after Boam was fired from the project and then re-hired. Boam said that, Lorna Cole aside, the second draft he turned in was almost identical to the finished film. But after reading that draft, Donner said he wanted to go in a different direction with a different writer. So Boam was fired and Donner brought in Robert Mark Kamen, who had done uncredited rewrites on Lethal Weapon 2. In fact, Kamen has said he was responsible for making the villainous diplomat in that film South African. After Kamen worked on the Lethal Weapon 3 script for a while, the decision was made to bring Boam back onto the project. At first, Boam and Kamen were forced to write together. Then Boam demanded that he be allowed to work on the script alone. And while he would have liked to have finished the script before filming began, Donner kept him doing rewrites throughout production. He wasn’t the only writer working on the script in late stages, either. Carrie Fisher was also brought in to do some revisions, with a focus on the Lorna Cole scenes.
Fisher didn’t receive credit for her work on Lethal Weapon 3, but Boam being replaced by Kamen and then replacing Kamen led to the film sporting a strange list of writing credits. Although he was uncredited on part 2, Kamen wanted to be credited on part 3. So he got his credit. And the Writers Guild decided Boam should be credited three times. Once for the story, which he established in his first two drafts. Once for the screenwriting his did on his own. And again for the draft he wrote with Kamen. That’s how you get the credit block of Story by Jeffrey Boam, Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam and Jeffrey Boam & Robert Mark Kamen. Boam thought this was ludicrous and that he should have been the only credited writer. He told The Occasional Critic Don Porter, “It’s a mind-boggling credit that makes a mockery out of the concept of authorship.”
One of the latest additions to the script was the character of Leo Getz, who had been played by Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2. Boam’s script included a line that said Leo had moved away to New York, but Donner wanted him in the movie. So a few scenes were added where we see that Leo has left banking and money laundering behind and gotten into real estate. He’s trying to sell Murtaugh’s house for him, and is able to help dig up information on the bad guys. He also tries to go out into the field with Riggs and Murtaugh again, but that doesn’t work out for him. Leaving him with a gunshot wound in a hockey rink. And flat tires on his car.
Gibson, Glover, and Pesci were on board to reprise their roles. Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Damon Hines, and Ebonie Smith were brought back as Murtaugh’s wife and children. Steve Kahan would return as police Captain Ed Murphy, who briefly gets mixed up in the action this time. Mary Ellen Trainor appears as police psychologist Stephanie Woods. The biggest new roles to cast this time were Jack Travis and Lorna Cole. Online trivia claims that A-listers like Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, and more were considered for Travis. But the role went to character actor Stuart Wilson. Similarly, the Internet claims that Jodie Foster, Michelle Pfeiffer, and even Winona Ryder – who was only twenty at the time – were up for the role of Lorna. But the job went to the lesser known Rene Russo, who was initially disregarded by Donner because he thought she was lacking edge. But she lobbied for and got a second audition where she was able to read four scenes with Gibson. And during that audition, she proved she could project the toughness required for Lorna. She was then given a month of martial arts training so she could show off some moves in the character’s fight scenes.
Lethal Weapon 3 had a budget of thirty-five million, a five million increase from the budget of part 2, which had twice the budget of the first film. The production also benefited greatly from three different cities having structures that needed to be demolished. A new City Hall building had been constructed in Orlando, Florida and the city had to get rid of the old building. Warner Bros. came in and paid for the demolition so they could film it for the beginning of the movie. In a post-credits scene, Riggs and Murtaugh arrive at the scene of another bomb report just in time to see the building fall. They got out of there quickly so they don’t get in trouble again. The crumbling building in that scene was the former Soreno Hotel in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Oddly, Riggs and Murtaugh never show any interest in figuring out the identity of this mad bomber who’s blowing up buildings all over their city.
The fiery climactic action sequence takes place in an unfinished housing development Jack Travis has been working on. This location was a real, abandoned housing development in Lancaster, California that had been sitting there, being an eyesore for a couple years. City officials were very happy when they heard that Warner Bros. wanted to come in and mess things up. They were hoping the filmmakers would knock the whole thing to the ground. But Donner and his crew couldn’t be as destructive as it appeared. They had to make sure they could film multiple takes in these structures.
REVIEW: Lethal Weapon 3 delivers everything you expect from a Lethal Weapon movie. But the story is a bit lacking in this one, and the thrills aren’t as thrilling. The intensity is gone. Boam felt the film came up a bit short because everyone behind the scenes had a different idea of what made the franchise work. Everyone knew the chemistry between Gibson and Glover was vital. But the writer believed that Riggs and Murtaugh still had to be part of an interesting, action-packed story. Donner wanted to focus on the characters’ interactions at the expense of everything else. He just wanted to take an episodic jaunt through what may be Riggs and Murtaugh’s last week together as partners.
This means he didn’t care at all about the villain’s side of the story. And the fact that not even the director cared about Jack Travis really comes through in the film. Everything involving Travis feels like an afterthought. An obligation, because an action movie has to have a bad guy. He’s never as intriguing as the villains in part 2. Never comes off as being as dangerous as the villains in part 1. There are attempts to make him seem like a serious threat. He shoots Leo. He forces Captain Murphy to help him get into the lock-up. He kills a rookie cop Riggs and Murtaugh have befriended. He’s to blame for selling the gun that ends up in the hands of Nick’s friend. He injures Lorna. But even with all that going on, he never manages to be a great villain.
With each sequel, the series leans further into comedy. Part 3 is very lighthearted most of the time, but also features some very serious moments. This causes some jarring tonal shifts. The characters are yukking it up one minute, then a devastating death will occur. Being forced to kill Nick’s gang member friend has a major impact on Murtaugh. So much that he becomes a drunken mess. Then Riggs visits him and they’re laughing again within minutes. That quick visit makes things a lot better for Murtaugh – but on the way to the resolution, we do get an excellent emotional scene. Where we see just how much Riggs and Murtaugh care about each other. It’s a moment that may bring tears to your eyes.
Although Donner mainly cared about the Riggs and Murtaugh scenes, Murtaugh drops out of the film for nearly twenty minutes after that unfortunate shooting. Riggs is too busy to miss him much. Those twenty minutes are used to build up the relationship between Riggs and Lorna. Including the famous scene where they fall for each other while comparing scars. A romantic play on a moment from Jaws. Riggs had found love in Lethal Weapon 2, but that didn’t turn out well for his significant other. And that relationship never seemed to have much depth to it. The Riggs and Lorna pairing works much better, and Gibson and Russo did a great job of playing their romance. Their characters are equals, and you understand why they’re drawn to each other.
Animal lovers will also fall for Riggs more during his time with Lorna. Following a lead, they end up at a location guarded by a Rottweiler. And Riggs convinces Lorna not to harm the threatening animal. He can shoot people all day, but he can’t bring himself to hurt a dog. So he makes friends with the Rottweiler, bonding over their shared love of dog biscuits. Which Riggs has been chowing down on to distract him from his nicotine addiction. When Riggs and Lorna cross paths with henchmen and bullets start flying, Riggs makes sure the dog is safe and takes it with him. Riggs and Murtaugh also save a cat from the exploding building at the beginning of the movie. Their care for animals makes these guys even more likeable.
Lethal Weapon 3 isn’t on the same level as the two previous movies. But it’s nice to spend time with Riggs and Murtaugh again, and the story is just good enough to scrape by. It’s serviceable. Boam had a terrible time putting together the script and seemed to know that it had come out lacking. But he could also see that the end result was a decent action comedy people could have fun watching. As he said to The Occasional Critic, “I’m happy with it because I think an audience likes it. I feel like I’ve seen the dark side and out of it has come this frivolous piece of entertainment that causes people to laugh and be happy. And I think, ‘I guess it was worthwhile. I guess it works, I guess it’s okay.’ It’s not a great piece of filmmaking … but people enjoy themselves when they’re watching it. So I feel like we’ve succeeded. Working on this movie made me feel that the pain and misery of the experience would be translated to the screen. And it wasn’t. The people who watch it have no knowledge of how hard it was to get what was on there. Or how frustrated we were in not getting something up there. They just see it and take it at face value. They want to be entertained, they want to like it, and we have given them something I think is enjoyable for two hours. I think they will feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth and the time was well-spent.”
LEGACY/NOW: The film does have the reputation of being a lesser sequel, and critics weren’t nearly as pleased with this one. While the reviews of Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2 add up to eighty percent and eighty-two percent fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, Lethal Weapon 3 gets a rotten splat. Only fifty-eight percent of the reviews are positive. But being slightly underwhelming certainly didn’t hinder its success. A whole lot of movie-goers showed up to spend their time and money on Lethal Weapon 3 when it was released on May 15th, 1992.
Domestically, the first Lethal Weapon had made sixty-five million dollars. The international release added another fifty-five million, so the film ended up with a total of one hundred and twenty million. Lethal Weapon 2 did much better. It earned one hundred and forty-seven at the domestic box office, with international numbers bringing it to a total of two hundred and twenty-seven million. Lethal Weapon 3 fell just short of part 2 domestically, earning a little under one hundred and forty-five million. But the international numbers were even bigger on this one, boosting it to a total of three hundred and twenty million. That’s a number the next sequel couldn’t reach. So Lethal Weapon 3 is the box office champion of the franchise. It was the fifth most profitable film of 1992, and the second most successful film of the summer. Bested only by Batman Returns.
As with all of the Lethal Weapon movies, the third film was also a success on home video. And, like its predecessors, it received an extended cut release that was marketed as a director’s cut. Even though Donner wasn’t always pleased with the scenes these extended cuts put back in. The extended cut of Lethal Weapon 3 does feature an extra scene that was welcome: one where Rianne stops by Riggs’ trailer to talk to him about her troubled father. And we see Riggs hanging out with both his dog Sam from the previous movies and the Rottweiler he adopts in this one. For one thing, it’s just good to know that Sam is still around. But this scene always should have been in the movie because it gets mentioned when Riggs goes to check on Murtaugh. Murtaugh is enraged to hear that Rianne was at Riggs’ trailer, because he suspects that Riggs and Rianne are hooking up. If the scene had been in the movie, the audience would know exactly what happened when Rianne stopped by Riggs’ place. Murtaugh has no reason to be upset.
This movie was so successful, Warner Bros. decided to reward Richard Donner, producer Joel Silver, and Mel Gibson by inviting them to a celebratory lunch. Where they were each going to be given the surprise gift of a brand new Land Rover. The three vehicles were purchased and ready to be gifted. But Donner told Warner Bros. he was going to invite Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, and Jeffrey Boam to the dinner as well. So the studio had to scramble to buy four more Land Rovers to give to the four extra guests. Years later, studio head Robert A. Daly would say, “It cost us three hundred and twenty thousand dollars to buy those Land Rovers, and we were criticized left and right for the expense. Do you know what it got us? Lethal Weapon 4, which made two hundred and eighty-five million.”
Donner, Gibson, Glover, Pesci, Russo, and – for a while – Boam did all return for Lethal Weapon 4, which didn’t come along until six years after part 3. Even though the filmmakers had years to develop that sequel, it ended up being a very rushed production. It wasn’t particularly well-received by fans, but it did make Jet Li a star in the United States. And we’re going to be looking back at Lethal Weapon 4 in the next episode of Revisited.
For the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? video series, I dug into the making of one of the coolest remakes ever, the 1988 version of The Blob:
The Blob script:
When the Blob first appeared in 1958, the creature was presented in very simple ways. It was just some silicone that had been dyed red. For some shots, it was a balloon that had red silicone smeared on it. But when The Blob was remade in 1988, the creature got a substantial upgrade. The special effects artists working on the remake were able to make the Blob even more dangerous and frightening. And that helped the film become one of the most popular remakes ever made. So let’s look back at the making of The Blob ‘88 and find out What the F*ck Happened to This Horror Movie.
The story of The Blob began when film distributor Jack H. Harris decided to produce his own independent monster movie. The concept was inspired by a 1950 police report about a pulsating, glowing purple glob that fell from the sky near Philadelphia. Then evaporated as police watched. In the film directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., the Blob comes to Earth in a meteorite. When an elderly man pokes the meteorite with a stick, it splits open and the Blob emerges. It envelopes the man’s hand, gradually covering and absorbing his entire body. The Blob proceeds to ooze its way around a small Pennsylvania town. Consuming every living thing it comes across. Growing larger with every person or animal it eats. Teenager Jane and her boyfriend Steve, played by a pre-fame Steve McQueen, know what’s going on. But they can’t convince the authorities there’s a man-eating blob rolling around town. It doesn’t help their credibility that Steve and his drag-racing friends are often getting in trouble. It isn’t until the Blob disrupts a movie theater’s screening of a horror movie that the whole town realizes what’s going on. Then they have to figure out how to stop something that just seems to be a ball of slime. Here’s a hint: this thing doesn’t like the cold.
Made on a budget of around one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, The Blob was a hit. It earned four million dollars at the box office and became one of the most popular horror movies of the 1950s. It was so popular, in 1972 TV star Larry Hagman decided to direct a sequel: Beware! The Blob, also known as Son of the Blob. For that film the Blob was again played by red silicone and balloons, as well as red plastic sheeting and red powder blended with water. But ‘70s audiences weren’t impressed by the return of the Blob. The sequel was a financial failure. Following that letdown, Harris wasn’t interested in producing any more Blob movies. But then in the 1980s, Chuck Russell got in contact with Harris, hoping to secure the remake rights.
Russell had experience as a production manager, an assistant director, a producer, and a writer. He wanted to direct, but the studios didn’t show much interest in his original ideas. So he thought a remake of a well-known property would be the perfect way to get his directing career going. The famous property that was the most appealing to him was The Blob. As he explained to Fangoria magazine, “The original Blob was a special film, and I got obsessed with doing my version of it, of updating it and using some of the expectations from the original. I think it shook people up so much because it’s so primal. … It’s a monster in its simplest form. There must be something about this thing that can slide under your door or squeeze through an air vent, or quietly dissolve somebody in the next room, that’s very elemental. It just makes monstery sense. It’s a fear of the worst death: being eaten.”
Harris agreed to let Russell remake The Blob. So Russell wrote a screenplay for the remake with his friend Frank Darabont, who had met when they were both working on the slasher Hell Night. They kept the set-up from the original film. The Blob falls from the sky, an elderly man sees it hit the ground. He pokes the meteorite with a stick, the Blob emerges and covers his hand. Some local teenagers find the man and take him to the hospital – where the Blob consumes his entire body. As the Blob proceeds to ooze and eat its way through their small town, the teens take it upon themselves to stop this thing. But Russell and Darabont added in their own twists and turns, so even viewers who were familiar with the original Blob wouldn’t know where this one was going. All of the characters in the remake are new; they basically split the Steve McQueen character into two different people. There’s clean-cut football player Paul Taylor, who goes out on a date with cheerleader Meg Penny. And there’s long-haired, motorcycle-riding Brian Flagg, who is often running into trouble with the law. Paul’s role is sort of like Janet Leigh’s in Psycho. He’s built up to be a major character who will be involved throughout the movie. Then turns out to be one of the Blob’s first victims.
Russell and Darabont also made changes to what the Blob is. Making it even more dangerous. They envisioned it as being like an inside out stomach. It’s acidic, corrosive. Any living thing it touches begins to melt and gets absorbed. It starts out with a lighter color, but becomes redder as it fills with the blood of its victims. And this Blob has tentacles that it can reach out and grab people with. It also comes from a different source. The original Blob was just some slime that rode to Earth on a meteor. In the remake, we learn that this Blob is an experiment in biological warfare. A virus that was created by the government and sent into space on a satellite. Conditions in space mutated it, turning it into a plasmic life-form that hunts its prey. It became so active, it knocked the satellite out of orbit. That’s what falls to Earth here; not a meteor, but a crashing satellite. And a team of heavily-armed government agents, a biological containment team, show up to take the Blob back home to their lab. Any civilians who get in the way are deemed expendable.
With the script in place, Russell pitched The Blob to various studios. One company that rejected the project was New Line Cinema. But they could see that Russell was a promising talent. They hired him to direct A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and to rewrite the script with Darabont. So the Elm Street movie ended up being Russell’s first directing credit. The Blob remake found a distributor along the way, and Russell was able to start working on it as soon as he was done with Freddy Krueger.
Russell assembled a strong cast for the film. Shawnee Smith plays the heroine Meg, who goes from being a demure cheerleader to firing an M16 at a monster and blowing stuff up. Donovan Leitch was cast as the ill-fated Paul. Kevin Dillon plays Flagg. He hated the hair extensions he had to wear and a lot of viewers make fun of the character’s hairstyle. But that’s the way Russell wanted Flagg to look. The three young leads were given a supporting cast that’s filled with interesting character actors. Jeffrey DeMunn, Joe Seneca, Beau Billingslea, Art LaFleur, Candy Clark, Jack Nance, Bill Moseley. Comedic improv teacher Del Close had already appeared in the ‘70s sequel Beware! The Blob, but that didn’t stop him from being cast in the remake.
Of course, the real star of the movie is the Blob itself. And this time the creature was brought to the screen by a large special effects crew led by Tony Gardner. CGI was an option for the Blob effects, but it was decided that it wouldn’t look good enough. The movie would need to feature old school, in-camera practical effects. And the crew used every trick imaginable to make this Blob look impressive. A lot of tests were done with different slimes and methacil, a food thickening agent that’s often used in fast food milkshakes. There was so much methacil on the set of this movie, it put Russell off of drinking milkshakes for decades. Gravity tricks were put to use, where the camera would be tilted as slime slid across a surface, making it look like it was crawling on its own. For some shots, clear acrylic spheres were placed in slime to give it mass. Sometimes the Blob was a sculpture coated in urethane, with methacil dressing. Sometimes it was launched from air mortars. There were foam tentacles and animatronic ones. There was miniature work and even some shots of stop-motion that Russell wasn’t satisfied with. For many shots, the Blob was played by silk quilts that had pockets filled with methacil in them.
Since Paul is the first person we actually see the Blob consume, Russell knew his death had to look amazing. And the crew definitely pulled that off. There were some complicated elements involved in the creation of the death scene. Rotating rigs, Plexiglass, bladders. But a lot of it was accomplished by pulling layers of nylon and silk over the crew member sitting underneath it all.
Russell had been impressed by the remake of The Fly, and even hired that film’s cinematographer Mark Irwin to shoot The Blob. Irwin described the challenge of working with the title creature during an interview with Fangoria: “The biggest problem was to make the Blob look the same from beginning to end, because it’s made of radically different things all the time. There are miniatures, half-scale and full-scale sets. The lighting is geared toward the ingredients, shooting it underwater, shooting it at night, on glass, in a tank. It’s propelled and puppeted and air-driven and motorized and moved in many, many different ways. It’s hard to get it to look exactly the same each time, and yet so far we’re succeeding. It also changes color throughout the film.”
Although the budget of The Blob was reported to be nineteen million dollars, Russell has said that it was actually under ten million. And yet they were able to accomplish all of the special effects and deliver a film that turns into a large scale adventure by the end. Most of the filming took place in Abbeville, Louisiana, a small town location chosen because Russell wanted the town in the movie (Arborville, California) to have one main road. Filming began on January 11th, 1988, aiming for a summer release. Production wrapped up on May 26th, but second and third units were still shooting Blob footage during the editing process. Russell had to bring on two editors to get the footage cut together more quickly. There was a bump in the road when distributor Cinema Group Pictures went bankrupt. But TriStar Pictures swooped in and got The Blob into theatres on August 5th, 1988.
The film got middle-of-the-road reviews. And given how popular it is now, you may be surprised to hear that it was not a hit when it reached theatres. In fact, Screen International wrote that its box office was disastrous. The Blob ended up earning eight million dollars during its theatrical run – an amount lower than its budget, no matter which number you go by. Russell understood that part of its failure was due to it being released in a hectic summer and not having a good ad campaign. Still, its underwhelming reception was enough to make him question the approach he had taken to the material. Maybe making The Blob in this way had been a mistake. But the film reached its audience soon enough, and its reputation improved. Russell would go on to say that while The Blob could have done better at the box office, he still considers it to be a hit because it’s so well known. This remake of the 1958 classic ended up being considered a classic in its own right.
Russell wanted to make a movie that would allow the concept of The Blob to reach its full potential. In that way, the film was a huge success. And decades later, genre fans are still enjoying its wild ideas and sickening, mind-blowing visuals. You can’t have any greater success than that.
And then the Revisited series wrapped up the look back at Lethal Weapon with 1998's Lethal Weapon 4:
Lethal Weapon 4 script:
INTRO: After the success of Lethal Weapon 3, it was a given there would be a fourth film in the franchise. But the next sequel proved to be surprisingly difficult to get into production. Until Warner Bros. realized they were heading into 1998 without a surefire summer hit on their hands. They gave LETHAL WEAPON 4 the greenlight and the movie was thrown together in a mad scramble. Twenty-five years later, it’s time to look back at the results of that rush job in this episode of REVISITED.
SET-UP: With a global box office haul of three hundred and twenty million dollars, Lethal Weapon 3 wasn’t just the biggest hit of the franchise. The 1992 release was considered to be the most profitable film in Warner Bros. history. So studio executives and producer Joel Silver immediately started looking forward to Lethal Weapon 4. Less than a year after Part 3 reached theatres, Silver attempted to buy an original action spec script called Simon Says. Which he intended to have rewritten into the fourth Lethal Weapon movie. But Simon Says ended up at 20th Century Fox instead – and two years later, it reached theatres under the title Die Hard With A Vengeance. Silver didn’t let that deter him from his sequel ambitions. By the summer of 1993, Silver and Warner Bros. were plotting to make two Lethal Weapon sequels back-to-back. Jonathan Lemkin, who had done uncredited rewrites on Demolition Man, was hired to write the script for Part 4. He came up with the idea of our heroes, LAPD Sergeants Riggs and Murtaugh, going up against a criminal organization that has been smuggling Chinese immigrants into the U.S. Silver liked the set-up, but didn’t feel the script was good enough. So he turned to Lethal Weapon veteran Jeffrey Boam.
Boam had been with the franchise since the start. He did uncredited rewrites on the first movie. Earned credit for rewriting the script for the second movie. And was given three separate writing credits on the third movie. He didn’t have a positive experience doing constant revisions on Lethal Weapon 3, but decided to give the series one more chance. He took the job of writing Part 4, and tossed out Lemkin’s story in favor of coming up with his own. Boam’s idea was to pit Riggs and Murtaugh against a Neo-Nazi group that’s carrying out terrorist attacks in Los Angeles. A concept that hit too close to home when a domestic terrorist attack was carried out in Oklahoma City in April of 1995.
Never mind making back-to-back sequels. Figuring out Lethal Weapon 4 was proving difficult enough on its own. And one of the franchise’s stars didn’t care if it would ever make it through development hell. Interviewed on the set of Maverick, the comedy Western he made with Lethal Weapon series director Richard Donner, Mel Gibson indicated he was bored of playing Riggs. He said, “My answer to more Lethal Weapon‘s? Nah. … I’m not interested now.” He suggested that any scripts developed should be sent over to Bruce Willis to become more Die Hard sequels. The chance of Gibson doing another Lethal Weapon dropped even lower when he was looking to raise the budget for his directorial effort Braveheart. Warner Bros. offered to put sixty million dollars into Braveheart if he would officially sign on for Lethal Weapon 4. Gibson was insulted, feeling that Braveheart was a project worth investing in without side deals. A couple years later, the studio managed to get back on his good side. Gibson was contracted to make a movie for Paramount, and he wanted it to be the Point Blank remake Payback. Warner Bros. owned the rights to Point Blank, but they let the movie happen at Paramount. And handled the international distribution.
The studio’s reconciliation with Gibson came at the right time. 1997 wasn’t a good year for them, with the underwhelming Batman & Robin and the failure of The Postman. They were hoping to have a Tim Burton Superman movie and a version of I Am Legend starring Arnold Schwarzenegger for the summer of ‘98. But it was becoming clear those projects wouldn’t be ready. In fact, the Burton Superman movie never happened at all. I Am Legend didn’t reach theatres until 2007, with Will Smith in the lead. So their summer ‘98 line-up was looking weak. The best they had to offer was a couple thrillers, the animated film Quest For Camelot, and a big screen update of the ‘60s TV show The Avengers. They needed something that would be a guaranteed hit. And, to save money and time, it needed to be a movie that wouldn’t require extensive CGI. It needed to be Lethal Weapon 4.
They decided to move forward with the story Lemkin came up with. The smuggling of Chinese immigrants. Channing Gibson, a longtime TV writer who is not related to Mel, was hired to write a fresh draft. And in hopes of making things move faster, the writing duo of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who would go on to create the shows Smallville and Wednesday, were hired to write their own draft. It was around October of ‘97 when the scripts were turned in, and Gibson’s draft got the more positive reaction. So while Lemkin, Gough, and Millar would all receive story credit on the film, it was Gibson who was kept on the project. He would continue working on the script throughout filming.
Richard Donner was always on board to direct, and wasn’t concerned about making the film in a hurry. He was used to reworking the scripts for his movies during production. He was quoted as saying, “I’m confident I will have a finished script by the end of principal photography. Besides, our actors are very good at improvising.” But first they had to make sure all the actors would be coming back for the sequel. And so much money went toward paying the cast, many industry professionals questioned if it would be possible for the film to make a profit. Rumors at the time indicated that nearly fifty million dollars of the budget went to the cast. And that the studio also gave up around forty percent of the gross to the cast in back-end deals. Gibson was said to receive twenty million dollars, plus seventeen percent of the gross. Returning as Murtaugh, Danny Glover received gross points for the first time in the franchise. Rene Russo was brought back as Riggs’ love interest Lorna Cole – who would be pregnant with their child in this film. Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Damon Hines, and Ebonie Smith return as Murtaugh’s wife and kids. Steve Kahan would be back as police Captain Murphy. Mary Ellen Trainor as police psychologist Stephanie Woods. There was trouble getting Joe Pesci to sign on to play Riggs and Murtaugh’s pal Leo Getz. Leo wasn’t included in the initial drafts of the script. But he got added in when Pesci agreed to take one million dollars a week for three weeks of work. Eddy Ko and Steven Lam were cast as Hong and Ping, standouts among the Chinese immigrant family Murtaugh befriends. And shelters in his house when he hears they’ll be deported.
Warner Bros. wanted to add a new detective into mix, someone who might appeal to the younger audience. So Chris Rock was hired and given a two million dollar payday, and the writer had to figure out how to work him into the script. At first, Rock’s character Lee Butters was supposed to be a gay man. The idea was that it would be funny if Murtaugh becomes convinced that Butters has a crush on him. Murtaugh suspecting Butters is gay and attracted to him is still in the film. But it was decided that Butters should be straight and secretly married to Murtaugh’s pregnant daughter Rianne. A fact that was kept from Murtaugh because he didn’t want his daughters to date cops.
Kim Chan was cast as criminal kingpin Uncle Benny. Who is part of a scheme to smuggle Chinese immigrants into the U.S., and then sell them into slavery. But Uncle Benny isn’t the main villain. He’s also working with members of the Chinese triad crime syndicate, represented by a man named Wah Sing Ku. Who is having counterfeit money made to pay off a General to release a group of former big-time triads called the Four Fathers from prison. Wah Sing Ku is a man of few words. He gets his point across by taking people down with his martial arts skills. And really pisses Murtaugh off when he murders Hong. The first choice for the role of Wah Sing Ku was Jackie Chan. The martial arts action star who recently had breakthrough success in the U.S. But Chan didn’t want to play a bad guy, so he turned down the offer. Jet Li was then given the chance to have his own breakthrough success in the U.S. Li was a big star in China and known for playing heroes. But he did a great job playing a villain here.
An unsung hero in this film is Calvin Jung as Detective Ng*. He and he his partner, played by Tony Keyes, are so underappreciated that the partner doesn’t even get a name. And yet they are the ones who actually figure out what’s going on with Uncle Benny and Wah Sing Ku. Riggs and Murtaugh would be lost if it weren’t for Ng and his partner, who even get to participate in the climactic shootout.
Lethal Weapon 4 started filming in January of 1998, just seven months before its July 10th release date. Channing Gibson continued trying to put the script together the entire time the movie was filming. Actors were handed new scenes every day. Characters were changed in the midst of production. There would be times where Gibson would be writing scenes in longhand on set while the cast and crew waited to see what they were about to shoot. And he wasn’t the only person working on the script. At one point there were five writers working on the film simultaneously. Including Jeffrey Boam, who thought the whole Chinese triad story was weak and not worthy of being in a Lethal Weapon movie. Other writers were Michael Curtis and Greg Malins, who were writers and executive producers on the TV show Friends. And Fred Dekker, who wrote The Monster Squad and The Predator with original Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black.
REVIEW: The finished film does have that “too many cooks in the kitchen” feeling. You can tell they were rushing through production without a clear picture in mind of the movie they were making. Lethal Weapon 4 has rightfully earned the reputation of being the worst entry in the franchise. It’s a bit sloppy. There are story elements that go nowhere. Like Riggs and Murtaugh being promoted to Captains because the police department can’t get insurance with them on the streets. These Captains proceed to cause just as much destruction as they ever did as Sergeants. But the department gets insurance and they’re Sergeants again at the end of the film. It’s pointless, and yet it’s in the movie. Although there are some humorous moments with Uncle Benny and intense moments with Wah Sing Ku, the villain plot isn’t interesting or engaging. There are too many side plots for us to really care what’s going on with the bad guys. We’re busy watching Riggs face fatherhood and worry that he’s getting too old for this. Plus the story of Rianne’s pregnancy and secret marriage to Butters. Murtaugh thinking Butters has a crush on him. Internal Affairs suspecting Murtaugh is crooked just because he has money. Most of which comes from his wife’s secret career of writing romance novels. Leo becoming a private investigator… and delivering a heartfelt monologue about his childhood pet. A frog named Froggy. The folks at the Razzies slapped Pesci with a Worst Actor nomination because of that monologue.
The darkness the first two movies had is almost completely gone. This sequel is primarily a comedy, with story elements that feel like they were lifted right out of a sitcom. Chris Rock also takes multiple opportunities to act like he’s performing a stand-up routine. It’s far from the level the franchise started on. But it’s still an enjoyable movie. Riggs has cut his iconic hair, but hasn’t lost any of that magical chemistry he has with Murtaugh. It’s always fun to watch these guys interact with each other and the people around them. Even if those interactions lean into absurdity. Donner was always most interested in the personal lives of Riggs and Murtaugh, and that is still clear in this film. It provides some laughs and some decent action.
One standout action sequence is a unique car chase that includes a fight in a home that’s being hauled down the freeway. And a moment, added by Fred Dekker, where Riggs and Murtaugh are launched into a building and have to drive through an office to get back onto the road. Where the chase continues. Other standouts include any action scene involving Jet Li. Whose martial arts moves were so quick, Donner had to ask him to slow down. He was moving faster than the camera shutter speed, his punches weren’t being caught on film. The final fight in the movie was supposed to be a one-on-one brawl between Riggs and Wah Sing Ku. But after seeing what Jet Li could do, Donner realized the audience wouldn’t believe that Mel Gibson could beat him on his own. So the final fight became a two-on-one scuffle with Riggs and Murtaugh taking on Wah Sing Ku together. And this scene, set under a pier on a dark and stormy night, is the closest the movie ever gets to being as hard-edged and thrilling as the first two Lethal Weapon‘s. The fight is awesome and brutal. And features a glorious moment where Riggs spins and lifts Wah Sing Ku with the piece of rebar Murtaugh has run through him.
Apparently Mel Gibson had requested that Riggs be killed off in this movie. There are a couple moments in the final confrontation with Wah Sing Ku that could have been the end of Riggs. But of course they didn’t really knock him off. His death wouldn’t have fit in with the overall tone of the movie anyway.
LEGACY/NOW: It has never been clear exactly how much Lethal Weapon 4 cost to make. Warner Bros. has said that it had a budget of ninety million dollars. That’s enough to make it the most expensive in the franchise by far. The previous movie had a budget of thirty-five million. But others have speculated that the cost of Lethal Weapon 4 was more like one hundred and twenty million, or higher. Add fifty million for marketing and the rumors of the stars having a big percentage of profit participation. You can see why there were questions of whether or not this movie could make any money for Warner Bros. But that was for the studio to worry about. What we do know is that the movie managed to draw in a sizable audience. Although there was some filming going on as late as mid-May, Donner had it ready for its July 10th release date. And it was the number one movie of its opening weekend.
The most expensive Lethal Weapon movie was not the most successful one. The second and third films did better than Part 4 domestically. Where it earned just over one hundred and thirty million at the box office. Add in one hundred and fifty-five million more from the international release, and that boosts Part 4’s take over two hundred and eighty-five million. It fell short of Part 3’s three hundred and twenty million haul. But despite receiving middle-of-the-road reviews from both critics and fans, it is the second most successful film in the franchise.
And while talk of another sequel has frequently come up over the years, Lethal Weapon 4 remains the last film in the franchise. Riggs and Murtaugh did return on the small screen, played by different actors in a TV series that lasted for a few seasons. But Mel Gibson and Danny Glover haven’t played them in a long time. Richard Donner and Channing Gibson had an idea for another sequel, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. Absent from the series since Part 2, Shane Black returned to write a lengthy treatment for a fifth film. Black’s idea was to take Riggs and Murtaugh to New York City just in time for the worst blizzard in east coast history. They’d have to make their way through the snow to fight a private military team that has been smuggling antiquities. Not even a Shane Black treatment could get Lethal Weapon 5 into production. Donner went on to develop another script with Richard Wenk. A writer who has contributed to action franchises like The Expendables, The Equalizer, and Jack Reacher. But the project didn’t come together soon enough for Donner to be able to direct it. He passed away in 2021 at the age of 91. Mel Gibson has said he will take the helm and get the movie made as a tribute to Donner. Now we’re waiting to see if it’s ever going to happen.
In the meantime, we have four entertaining movies to revisit. A couple of them are great. A couple of them are comparatively underwhelming. But they’re all a good time, and that’s courtesy of Richard Donner. He captured magic on film when he cast Gibson and Glover in Lethal Weapon – and then he gave us three more servings of that magic. Donner isn’t with us anymore, but his four Lethal Weapon movies, and the other movies on his filmography, will continue being watched and enjoyed for a long time to come. We thank him for the entertainment he provided.
More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!
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