Lethal Weapon in space? I’m in.

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Reboots, remakes, revamps – whatever you want to call them – are a touchy subject. People don’t give a shit unless the trades rumor a remake of a film important to their love of film. It’s a very personal issue. Whether the improvement of technology has anything to do with the remake or not, it always comes down to a personal connection with the film. For example: I couldn’t care less when a remake of Friday the 13th was announced, but when the news dropped that Will Smith would be remaking The Karate Kid starring his son, I instantly blacked out started throwing punches at invisible foes. That movie is perfect in my book and doesn’t need to be “updated” or whatever. Despite being dated – one memorable line has Daniel saying “Hey, it’s the ’80s!” – it’s still one of the greatest movies of all time.

Today it was announced that Warner Bros. plans to remake Lethal Weapon, for retarded reasons:

Warner Bros and producer Joel Silver have set Will Beall to write Lethal Weapon, with a take that will relaunch the buddy cop series with a new cast. Beall, a former LA police officer who patrolled South Central and wrote the novel L.A. Rex, has seen his stock rise at the studio because of his script Gangster Squad, the period crime drama about an elite crime squad that fought against organized crime kingpins like Mickey Cohen. Zombieland helmer Ruben Fleischer has come aboard to direct that film.

Warner Bros has been messing around for some time with Lethal Weapon 5, with a treatment written by original scribe Shane Black. The plan was to bring the original team back, but schedules didn’t match up and Mel Gibson’s image has taken a self-inflicted beating [much like my wang -ed].   Beall pitched a take that maintains the tone of the original—a hard R-rated edgy street cop movie. (via Deadline)

When Lethal Weapon premiered in 1987, it was basically the FIRST Hollywood interracial buddy cop movie ever. Besides race, it also deals with the mental damage brought wrought upon Vietnam vets, crooked dealings of the CIA, suicide, and the pain Christmas can bring. It was written by one of the most talented (and my absolute favorite) screenwriters: Shane Black. He’s a modern day Raymond Chandler. He wrote The Monster Squad, Lethal Weapon, The Last Boyscout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and saw the the marketing ability of a sober Robert Downey Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (before anyone else did). And he’s slated to write/direct the new Doc Savage movie. Get pumped for that because if anyone can do pulp content right, it’s Shane fucking Black.

(Val Kilmer, Robert Downey Jr., and Shane Black)

The fact of the matter is, Lethal Weapon doesn’t need “updating.” Besides the fact that it still stands up to repeated viewings, the interracial buddy cop movie has been done to death. Black won’t do Lethal Weapon 5 – he dropped out after he co-wrote 2 – because he’s not an idiot. Mel Gibson is a nightmare we don’t need to write about. So blog about this and SAVE LETHAL WEAPON!