The Title Of Beverly Hills Cop Has Been A Total Lie For 40 Years Now
Eddie Murphy's Axel Foley, the main character of the "Beverly Hills Cop" film franchise, might be one of the most endearing movie characters of the 1980s. Axel is witty, charming, loyal, fun-loving, fantastic at his job, willing to buck the system when necessary, he trusts his gut, and he's overall great company. He's the type of guy everyone who watches these films would want to go on adventure with.
Martin Brest's original 1987 movie follows a Detroit police officer as he travels from Michigan to Beverly Hills to get justice for his murdered childhood friend. Murphy absolutely dominates the film with his perfect blend of comedic timing, dramatic chops, and physicality. Axel's superpower is being able to read people and situations at a glance, and instantly improvising his way through those situations to get what he needs, often in highly entertaining fashion. His demeanor and joie de vivre gives the movie a buoyancy, one it never would have had if original star Sylvester Stallone remained on the project. (Stallone rewrote this screenplay to be a dark action thriller before ultimately leaving the film, and he eventually incorporated those ideas into the script for 1986's "Cobra" instead.)
But Axel Foley is not the title character in his own franchise. At least, not at the beginning. Despite Axel Foley being a cop who spends most of the film in Beverly Hills, Axel is not the character to whom the title is referring.
"This is my good buddy Billy Rosewood," Axel says when he introduces Billy to another old pal of his, Jenny Summers. "Billy's a Beverly Hills cop."
Beverly Hills Cop is Axel's movie, but the title is about Billy
In the same way that "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" isn't truly about Ferris, but instead about seeing Ferris's best friend Cameron Frye transform from a neurotic tightwad into a guy who's willing to confront his father after ruining his dad's classic 1961 Ferrari, "Beverly Hills Cop" isn't really about Axel Foley. Axel is the catalyst for the film's action, yes, but like Ferris Bueller, he doesn't have a character arc himself. Axel operates as an agent of change in the story, but he doesn't actually change. The person who changes the most, who has the biggest character arc in "Beverly Hills Cop," is indeed Billy Rosewood, played by Judge Reinhold.
Partnered up with his aggressively by-the-book partner, Taggart (John Ashton), Billy begins the movie as a boy scout figure, an innocent who is seemingly destined to follow in the footsteps of the older men in the Beverly Hills Police Department. But through his interactions with Axel, Billy slowly learns the value of trusting your gut, operating on instinct, and even occasionally skirting the rules once in a while to achieve justice. He loosens up, and since the movie is wholly on Axel's side compared to the uptight leaders of the BHPD, the audience gets the sense that Billy's learned the right lessons from his new friend and that he's going to be OK after Axel returns home.
Does Beverly Hills Cop take inspiration from The Thin Man movies?
I'd also argue that since Billy and Axel are the only two characters who appear in all four "Beverly Hills Cop" movies (the fourth movie hits Netflix very soon), the naming convention of this franchise could either be referring to Billy each time, or, perhaps more likely, it's taking a page out of the playbook of a famous film franchise from the Golden Age of Hollywood called "The Thin Man." That first film, which came out in 1934, followed former detective Nick Charles (William Powell) and his wife, Nora (Myrna Loy), as they tried to solve the disappearance of the titular character, a man named Clyde Wynant. But when MGM decided to make sequels, the studio altered the meaning of the title character to refer to Nick himself, presumably so the studio could maintain brand familiarity with audiences.
"Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F" hits Netflix on July 3. That movie seems to directly refer to Axel in its title, but I still contend that in the first film, the person to whom the "Beverly Hills Cop" name most directly applies is Billy Rosewood.