How ‘Rush Hour’ accidentally changed cinema forever, and made it much worse
Proving that we really do live in the strangest timeline, the long-mooted Rush Hour 4 is finally becoming a reality, and it’s apparently all thanks to the President of the United States.
Rumours of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker reuniting for a fourth go-round have been floating in the Hollywood ether for the better part of two decades, but Home Alone 2 star and WWE Hall of Famer, Donald Trump, must be a really big fan if he’s pulled the strings to make it a reality.
Of course, the obvious question is whether anyone is really asking for a fourth Rush Hour? Sure, the first three films earned over $850million at the box office, but they were very much products of their time, as evidenced by the opening instalment now coming with a disclaimer attached that warns how “certain depictions, language, and humour may seem outdated and at times offensive.”
There’s also the fact that Jackie Chan is now in his 70s, inevitably losing a step or two from his rapid-fire heyday, and Chris Tucker is in his mid-50s with one movie to his name in the last decade. Then, there’s the Brett Ratner-shaped elephant in the room. He hasn’t helmed a film since Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules in 2014, and Warner Bros severed all ties with him three years later after he was accused of sexual assault.
In short, it scans as a very bad and completely pointless idea. Besides, Rush Hour has already inflicted enough damage on modern cinema after the opening buddy caper toppled the first domino toward creating Rotten Tomatoes, which has had an increasingly detrimental effect on how people consume and interpret film criticism.
One of the most concerning modern mindsets is that Rotten Tomatoes is the be-all and end-all. Good score? Good movie. Bad score? Bad movie, but it’s not as simple as that, and these days, plenty of people would agree that it’s done more harm than good to the overall perception of how films are quantified and qualified among the internet-using masses. And to think, it’s all Rush Hour‘s fault.
The seed of the idea was germinated by Senh Duong, who was so enthusiastic about the impending release of Rush Hour that he wanted to build a website where he could consolidate and aggregate reviews of Chan’s filmography. It was officially launched in August 1998, weeks before the first film arrived in cinemas.
Writer and director Neil LaBute’s Your Friends & Neighbors was the first non-Chan picture to be added to the nascent Rotten Tomatoes, and, simply put, things haven’t really stopped snowballing from there. During the early post-launch weeks, it attracted fewer than 1,000 visitors per day, but it would be one of the online understatements of the century to say that things have exponentially grown since the late ’90s.
Enough actors, writers, filmmakers, and producers have cried foul about how much stock users put in Rotten Tomatoes scores to make it a genuine concern and a bit of a scourge on cinema when so many people are so invested in ranking, debating, and arguing over a movie’s percentile rating. It’s been bad for the discourse, of that there’s no doubt, and it all started with Rush Hour.
