The official trailer for Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon 4 arrived in 1998 and presented the franchise's most crowded and most commercially calculated entry. The addition of Chris Rock's Lee Butters and Jet Li's Wah Sing Ku gives the trailer two immediately compelling new presences, and the film's Chinese Triad premise gives the action sequences a physical intensity that the franchise's more domestically focused previous entries had not always achieved. The trailer signals a film that is aware of its own excess and has decided to embrace it fully, and it does so with enough energy and charm to feel genuinely inviting despite the franchise's evident creative strain.
First Impressions
The trailer is the franchise's most energetic and its most overtly commercial, with the Riggs-Murtaugh dynamic as polished as ever and the new additions introduced with enough confidence to suggest real new creative energy rather than mere ensemble expansion for commercial reasons. Jet Li's introduction is the trailer's most immediately striking element: a performer of such remarkable physical capability that his presence raises the action stakes of every scene he is in. Chris Rock's Lee Butters provides the film's most overtly comedic new presence, and his dynamic with the established ensemble is sketched with enough wit and generosity to suggest a genuine creative fit rather than a contractual obligation.
What the Trailer Reveals
The trailer establishes the Chinese Triad premise, introduces Butters and Wah Sing Ku, and glimpses the film's action sequences with enough detail to convey its physical scope. Jet Li's sequences are shown with enough clarity to establish his formidable physical capability, and the trailer puts his presence at the centre of its pitch as the film's most significant new creative element. The ensemble's expansion is handled with a warmth and charm that makes the film feel like a genuine creative event rather than a routine franchise conclusion, even if the film itself does not always sustain that impression.
Music and Sound
Michael Kamen's score provides its final contribution to the franchise's sonic legacy, with the familiar themes adapted to the film's more overtly spectacular register. The sound design on the action sequences is the franchise's most impressive, reflecting a film that has invested considerably in its physical set-pieces, and the trailer's overall sonic palette is the most kinetic in the franchise's marketing history. The score's warmth gives the trailer an emotional undercurrent that the more purely spectacular elements alone could not have provided.
Most Memorable Moment
Jet Li's first extended action sequence, demonstrating a physical capability and speed that the franchise's previous villains had not approached, is the trailer's most arresting passage. It is a display of physical cinema of such rare quality that it immediately establishes Li as the franchise's most formidable antagonist, and the trailer is wise enough to give it the space it deserves rather than cutting away before the sequence has made its full impression.
Trailer Verdict
An energetic and entertaining trailer for a film that delivers the franchise's pleasures with considerable craft and a sense of effort that occasionally shows. Lethal Weapon 4 is the series at its most crowded and most commercially calculated, but Jet Li's presence gives it a genuine new energy that this trailer showcases with real force. A fitting, if slightly breathless, send-off for one of action cinema's great partnerships.