The Lethal Weapon series

I love the first three, especially 1 and 2. The first two are the kind of movies I watched over and over again as a kid. The only thing I didn't really like about the third is that the ending isn't as great as the first two.

I really hate 4. There's some entertaining bits in there, but the action and stuff involving the villains seems more like it takes place in between Riggs and Murtaugh's goofing off as an afterthought. The car chase is the only halfway decent action piece, and even there I'm not crazy about the driving through the office building part. Also Gibson's stunt double was obvious throughout the whole movie. I liked the end credits montage though, really showed how much fun they had making those movies together.

Oh and I hate the jumpy slow motion effect they used throughout the series in some scenes.

But yeah, this is one of my favorite movie series.

I have to go with part 1 but I would never really argue with someone who wanted to take part 2, they're that close to each other. Classic moment from part 1, while General McAlister is threatening Murtagh's daughter he looks at Glover and says something like "Spare me son, there's no more heroes left in the world." Immediately the door swings open and Riggs busts through killing everyone.

I'm cool with part 3 but they screwed up by only having one major villain. I liked in the first 2 how Riggs would get to take on the physical villain while Murtagh took care of the brains behind the operation. 3 put an end to that and it became a less interesting film but there are still some fun scenes like when Riggs jumps on to the train and tries to get out his badge. It's a step down in quality but it doesn't hurt the series like ALIEN 3 or SUPERMAN 3 did.

4 really seems to serve no purpose except for everyone to add to their bank accounts. It's just too goofy and with Pesci and Rock there beomes 1 too many guys around for comedy relief. There was always humor in the first 3 but they did a better job of knowing when to cut the jokes and get down to business. There was always a turning point like Murtagh's daugher being kidnapped in the original, Riggs' girlfriend and fellow cops being killed in part 2, and even part 3 had the scene where Glover kills his son's friend. Part 4 had nothing like this, they should have killed Pesci off at some point to sort of serve as a catalyst for the film getting a little more serious. Jet Li is about all there is too enjoy but since he says next to nothing it's a pretty one-dimensional villain.

They go from best to worst in the order they were released.
1 is the best, 2 is almost as good. 3 and 4 can go spit.

Leo Gets...get it? whatever u need, Leo gets.......


while the 1 is amazing pesci's stuff in 2 and 3 is gold and makes them both infinitly rewatchable.....

but....but....but he's blllllleck

Well, it's a photo finish between 1 and 2. Riggs is at his best in 1 with that whole suicidal bit. But ultimately the action in 1 feels a bit generic, and 2 is funnier, so I give it the edge.

3 has a couple good moments, especially the motorcycle chase. Overall it seems a bit bland. The villain is completely forgettable, and the romance with Russo bored me stiff. And Leo quickly wears out his welcome. A little was quite enough.

4 also has its moments, but the cast is too big and it sometimes feels like a cash-in.


Why is it the partners never die in these buddy movies? I would think in the final film of a franchise you'd have one partner make the ultimate sacrifice to save his buddy, and then that would be the end of things. I would have had one of the two die at the end of 4, unless they actually thought there might be a 5.

Bad Boys II is a big offender in this regard. Will Smith makes a big point of saying something like "we ride together, we die together" halfway through the film, causing one to expect a tragic ending. I'm sure we would have gotten one if it were a Hong Kong movie, but Hollywood films seem unable to kill off heroes.

Good point, but why kill off LETHAL WEAPON 5 or BAD BOYS 3?

I thought that I had heard [or read] somewhere that the original ending to LW4 had Riggs dying beneath the pier and test audiences shunned it.

Or am I completely imagining that?

That was the original ending to LW2.

Lethal Weapon 4, at the time, held the record for fastest turnaround for a major motion picture. The whole thing was written, shot and released in less than six months, I think. And it shows. It's like a really fucking bad sitcom, overloaded with way too many characters, with a car chase slapped in the middle.

And the hilarious sight of Gibson and Glover somehow beating Jet Li in unarmed combat, despite being genuinely too old for this shit.

Awful film.

The middle two are OK action movies, but only the first one truly works. That's the one where the entire concept behind the "lethal weapon" hook works - Riggs really doesn't care if he dies. He wants to die. He's genuinely dangerous - to himself and others. He's - hey! - a lethal weapon.

And when Murtaugh's daughter gets snatched, and Riggs tells him "We're going to get bloody on this one", it's important that we feel that potential for savagery. It's not just two cops going after the bad guy, it's a fucked-up and violent man finding the perfect focus for his psychosis - he's unleashed on a deserving target.

Once he gets defanged at the end of the movie and rejoins society via Murtaugh's Cosby-esque suburban bliss, the character - and franchise - lost the heart of what made it unique. From then onwards, it became a chirpy buddy series.

I'll have to go with 1 and 2 as well. LW3 was watchable but LW4 just felt like a tax write-off to me.

As Dan said, the moment Riggs became a caricature instead of a genuinely dangerous human being is when the series died. I think it started to happen in LW2 it was Black's writing that cleverly worked around it, once Shane Black left, they just started writing Riggs as comic relief.

I can see the chirpy designation for the 3rd and 4th film but not really for LETHAL WEAPON 2. For the start of the movie Riggs does seem to have been rehabilitated. But any effects from being part of Roger's "bliss" goes right out the window in the scene where Derrick O'Connor explains how he killed Riggs' wife years earlier ("She didn't die right away, it took a bit of time"). Then Gibson is thrown in the water and when he busts out of his straight jacket he's staring right into the dead eyes of Patsy Kensit. At this point Riggs is even more "lethal" than he was in the original. Once out of the water he calls Roger and sets up his mentality for the rest of the film ("I'm not a cop tonight Roger, it's personal now, I'm not a cop").

I was just wondering if anyone had read Shane Black's original version of LW2 where he kills off Riggs. How different is it from what ended up on screen?

F.T.W. Kid

Instead of asking for a cigarette and cracking wise, he probably just dies.

To be fair though it wouldn't quite make sense for a suicidal cop to stay alive for sequel after sequel. They had to rehabilitate Riggs a little. Plus he's a darn funny caricature when the writing's there.