Jackie Chan Knows Exactly What Went Wrong With Rush Hour 3

While Jackie Chan's Hong Kong action movies were huge overseas, it wasn't until the mid '90s when he really started to capture the attention of American audiences. It's easy to see why his magnetic presence carried over considering his stunt work was (and still is) jaw-droppingly impressive. Couple Chan's popularity with the rising star power of Chris Tucker and you have the "Rush Hour" franchise, a trilogy of globe-spanning action comedies that revitalized the buddy comedy for a new generation.

Hong Kong Chief Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) would clash with the loud-mouthed LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) as they found themselves getting into all sorts of explosive hijinks. A lot of the back-and-forth humor stemmed from the pair commenting on their various culture shocks, which certainly places these movies in the period in which they were made. Even with a lot of the casual racist and sexist jokes feeling awkward by contemporary standards, there's still an affection for these movies because of Chan and Tucker's natural screen chemistry.

Although critical reception was mixed on the "Rush Hour" movies at best, they were mostly a smash hit with American audiences. Chan has complicated feelings about the whole affair, as they weren't exactly the kind of movies he wanted to keep making, yet they kept making money in Western markets. 2007's "Rush Hour 3," however, saw the series hit a wall that it's never really recovered from. It received the franchise's worst reviews with a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is ironic given the first film inadvertently led to the site's creation. There were plenty of factors that contributed to the trilogy capper's failure, and Chan has a pretty good idea of what they were.

In a puppy-laden interview with "Buzzfeed," Chan was asked how he would rank the "Rush Hour" movies. The martial arts superstar didn't give an exact order, but the way in which he talked about the sequels said just about everything. I'll give you a hint. Chan didn't have a lot of nice things to say about the over-budgeted threequel (via Variety):

"You know what, the first one: little money, little time. We shot it like, 'Go, go, go, go!' The second one: a lot of money, a lot of time. The third one: too much money, too much time. Too much money is no good."

To give some context to Chan's statements, the first "Rush Hour" was made on a modest $35 million budget, while its sequels' monetary resources rose exponentially with each installment. "Rush Hour 2" nearly tripled its budget with a $90 million price tag," followed by "Rush Hour 3" jumping into the stratosphere with over $140 million" to play with. That's a staggering amount of money for 2007 and an average blockbuster tentpole figure in today's overblown budget landscape. The first two films were considered successful because they at least recuperated their money back. "Rush Hour 3," however, didn't even recover half of their investment with its $258 million box office gross. I'm sure a large part of the inflation had to do with paydays, as Tucker received $25 million, while Chan took in $15 million (via Variety).

Receiving a higher budget for a sequel to a successful film is not uncommon, but Chan's got the right idea when it comes to spending too much money. Having less resources at your disposal often leads to finding creative solutions to work around what the film does have. Budget inflation usually leads to overthinking and thus, creates more problems than they accounted for. Had "Rush Hour 3" cost as much as the second film, it probably would have been considered a monetary success, at the very least. The issues for that third film, however, go beyond how much it costs.

After "Rush Hour 2" took the pair to Lee's home turf in Hong Kong, "Rush Hour 3" transports them to Paris to track down a collective of Chinese gangsters involved in a high profile assassination. With it being six years since the last film, you would think they'd take the time to make this one even better, but the film is such a boring mess with a lot of the franchise's laziest and most tasteless jokes. As someone who's mostly lukewarm on the "Rush Hour" franchise, yet respects the Chan/Tucker pairing, even I could feel that their collaboration was already running on fumes and the magic was pretty much gone.

I've avoided talking about Brett Ratner, despite him heralding all three "Rush Hour" movies, because he's become a toxic figure in the filmmaking community. At best, he's a mediocre filmmaker behind such memorable hits as "Tower Heist" and "Hercules," and, at worst, a man with numerous disturbing sexual assault allegations lobbied against him. It certainly puts a cloud over the "Rush Hour" movies.

On top of being directed by an industry creep, "Rush Hour 3" also features Roman Polanski in a deeply uncomfortable cameo as a French police officer who molests Lee and Carter upon their arrival in Paris. It's a truly cursed film through and through that's not even funny enough to ward off the double creep factor.

Following the third film's critical and box office disappointments, the "Rush Hour" franchise has largely been stagnant, with the only developments coming out in recent memory is the terrible short-lived CBS television series in 2015 and a rumored "Rush Hour 4" that seems unlikely to ever happen. It's probably for the best to leave Rattner behind, as well as a franchise that's never been better than the surprise first film.