Besides both being sequels to popular 1980s movies that arrived decades after the first outing, you’d be hard-pressed to make many direct comparisons between Eddie Murphy’s comedy smash hit Coming 2 America and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the Terminator franchise for the first time in a dozen years as part of fifth installment Genisys, but the resurgent funnyman has named Alan Taylor’s disappointing failed reboot as a direct source of influence.
Coming 2 America might not be drawing rave reviews from critics, but it hits all of the expected high notes that appeal to fans of the original, and as a result, Amazon appear to have been vindicated in their decision to shell out a mammoth $125 million to acquire the distribution rights from Paramount, with the streaming service touting it as the most-watched digital premiere of the entire COVID-19 era.
Murphy has already admitted that he’s got an idea for a third outing as King Akeem, although another long-awaited sequel could be next up if the script for Netflix’s Beverly Hills Cop 4 comes together to his satisfaction. In any case, in a new interview, the leading man revealed how he drew a bout of surprising inspiration from Terminator Genisys when trying to crack Coming 2 America‘s story.
“You know what happened, I was watching, one of those Terminator movies with Schwarzenegger. and they used the special effect where they made him really young. I was like, ‘If they did that, we could do a scene where we’re young’, and that was the piece that made it all sort of fall into place.”
The de-aging fad has been plagued by inconsistency and regularly falls into the Uncanny Valley, but it certainly serves the story of Coming 2 America in context by adding a new scene onto the end of footage from the first movie to establish both Leslie Jones’ character and the one night stand that wound up being the driving force of the entire narrative.