BREAKING: Every other movie in the universe found dead in Miami. Shot to death by Officer Mike Lowery because he just can’t stop shooting people.

Good morning. My name is Diego Crespo. I am here to preach the good word of Bad Boys. The first film is a genuinely solid buddy cop action movie. remember those? We stopped making those. Especially in light of how common police brutality is nowadays. Sorry to bring the mood down but it’s important to distance ourselves from reality when we approach the Bad Boys franchise at this point. And if you can’t, hey, you’re not wrong to do so. Reality sucks. But if you manage to do so, like myself, please follow the white cocaine rabbit down the cocaine hole to experience pure distilled mayhem.

For those that don’t understand, Bad Boys 2 is the most American cinematic experience of the 2000s. It’s a vile, disgusting, hateful film that feels like Michael Bay’s 9/11 fanfiction about going to invade a foreign country where Guantanamo Bay is a refuge of safe haven after blowing up a bunch of villainous drug dealers. That’s somehow not even the craziest part. It’s avant-garde in its approach, accidentally, and its five copies are the material items I am most proud to own. You cannot approach it as a “real” film because it isn’t. Bad Boys 2 is Michael Bay ripping open your skull, planting the American flag in your frontal lobe and doing a line of MDMA while firing two machine guns into the air as fireworks go off in the sky behind him. It’s honestly incredible. But you cannot replicate that vortex of chaotic evil. No, instead we need to bring the bad boys back down to planet earth. We need to see the bad boys… become old boys.

Bad Men doesn’t have the same ring to it, but the vibe seems to be a more grounded entry (he wrote as he watched the trailer bit where Will Smith jumps onto a helicopter while explosions go off behind him). I welcome the approach to “real movie” territory, as without Michael Bay you might as well take it seriously. I still mourn the lost Joe Carnahan Bad Boys (if anybody out there has that draft, my dms are open) but the look of the film feels appropriate. Hey, that’s what happens when you bring on the DP of Revenge (which is a great film). I look forward to the cinematic event of the century and I hope all the new cop recruits they clearly have to team up with die horribly. That’s not even an indictment of the actors, all people who I am a fan of! If they’re carried over from the Carnahan draft, it just feels like his creative wheelhouse would be to kill them all off as a misdirection on that “legacy sequel” stuff the writer has been critical of. Now let’s sit back and watch the trailer another hundred million times.