Let’s talk about Jackie Chan
Look, you will not find a bigger Jackie Chan nerd than me. I adore the man. I have watched pretty much every Hong Kong action film he ever made, which is insane because he made over 200 of them. Jackie Chan is a legend for a reason. He built a career on doing things no human being should be allowed to do.
He has broken almost every bone in his body at least twice.
He invented parkour before it had a name.
His fight scenes are ballets performed with ladders, refrigerators and any loose object in the room.
He is a martial artist, a singer, a director, a producer, and most importantly, a dancer. His entire style is movement poetry.
But he is also 71.
Seventy. One.
There is absolutely no universe where Jackie Chan today can deliver the kind of bone defying, gravity insulting, adrenaline fused stunt work he was doing in his twenties, thirties or even forties. And he should not be asked to. In my eyes, he sits above Buster Keaton. He has nothing left to prove.
And Chris Tucker…
Chris Tucker is loud.
And that’s great. Loud is a useful skill in a buddy cop movie. But he’s also been off the Hollywood radar for nearly two decades. The comedic formula that made Rush Hour work was lightning in a bottle. The chemistry. The timing. The cultural dynamic.
That works when Jackie Chan is leaping off scaffolding and sliding under buses. It does not work when he has earned the right to sit down between takes because his knees are older than the internet.
So what would Rush Hour 4 even be?
Let’s imagine the options.
Option 1: Let Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker do everything they used to do.
Impossible. And honestly irresponsible.
Option 2: Introduce young new recruits to handle the action while Chan and Tucker mentor, advise and occasionally roll their eyes.
Sure. But then it isn’t Rush Hour. It’s a Rush Hour soft reboot.
Option 3: Make a quieter, more mature buddy comedy about getting older.
Maybe. But is anyone asking for that?
Option 4: Make it purely because the President of the United States wants it.
This appears to be the option they chose.
Nostalgia is not a renewable resource
Hollywood’s obsession with reviving old IP is one thing. Netflix resurrecting long dead franchises is another. But a buddy cop sequel being launched as a political passion project is new territory, even for us.
And here’s the truth:
If you cannot recreate the stunts
If you cannot recreate the energy
If you cannot recreate the chemistry
If you cannot recreate the physical comedy that only young Jackie Chan could pull off
Then maybe… you don’t recreate it.
If this movie does happen, I genuinely hope Jackie Chan gets treated with reverence and not as an amusement park animatronic forced to reenact his greatest hits. Let the man crack jokes, mentor the next generation, kick a henchman or two in slow motion and go home safely.
But Rush Hour was built on movement.
Jackie Chan is movement.
And time catches every action star eventually.
So yes, I love Jackie Chan more than probably anyone at Paramount does.
Which is exactly why I’m comfortable saying:
We don’t need Rush Hour 4.
Not like this.
Not for this reason.
And definitely not because someone in the Oval Office thought, “You know what America needs right now A buddy cop sequel.”
