‘Coming 2 America’ revisits Eddie Murphy classic
Photo courtesy of USA Today
After over 30 years, “Coming 2 America” serves as the long-awaited sequel to the 1988 comedy “Coming to America.” The film is centered around the African king, Akeem, who returns to America after discovering he has a long-lost son in the United States. Starring Eddie Murphy, the movie premiered on Friday, March 5 on Amazon Prime Video and is currently available to stream with a Prime subscription.
Director Craig Brewer felt that making a sequel was a “great opportunity,” even if it was over three decades later. “I was in high school when I saw ‘Coming to America,’” Brewer said. “I now have kids that are in high school. Eddie, who plays Akeem, is in his mid-20s and coming to America, but now Eddie Murphy has 10 kids. You know, he’s a different man.”
Brewer also explained how the mindset of the characters has changed over time and made the sequel different from the original. “When you get to be a parent and you get to have to deal with life some of the things that you were very idealistic about when you were younger, they tend to blunt and fade away because you’re trying to create like a protective bubble around everything that you love,” Brewer said. “That also happens with Akeem and Lisa in this movie and their bubble gets popped. And really, that’s kind of like what I felt was like the thing that we could bring that’s a little bit new.”
“So I hope that people feel that we love the original movie and that we’re trying to do things that people who loved and appreciated the first movie would recognize in this movie,” he continued. “But we’re hoping that what we can bring to the movie is something that the very audience core is maybe dealing with in their life and that we’ve been dealing with in the last couple of years, which is, you know, maybe it’s time for some of us old heads to, like, stop talking about the way it was and start listening to our kids and being okay with some change.”
The past year has seen widespread change in the arts and entertainment industry, with Black voices being amplified and championed in spaces that are historically not inclusive. Highlighting the experiences of Black people is a key theme throughout this film. “Eddie Murphy feels that the movie itself is the Black voice,” Brewer said. “... Back in 1988, there was never an all-Black cast in a movie that was a hit around the world. Now we’ve had Black Panther; we’ve had plenty of movies in the last couple of decades that have changed that. But back in the day, the movie itself was the statement and the movie itself did not make any statements about race.”
Making a movie at any time is a monumental task, but doing so during a pandemic presents a unique set of challenges.
“We had to edit the whole movie by Zoom,” Brewer said. “So, that was really difficult to not be in the room with my editor, to not be in the room while we’re doing the score, to not be in the room while we’re mixing. But little by little, we all started figuring it out.” He continued, “I would say that the hardest thing for this movie in particular was how to test it. It’s just a different experience with a comedy in an audience versus them seeing it on the laptop.”
However, this new adjustment became a learning experience as well, according to Brewer. “We’re coming out on Amazon Prime now, and a lot of people are just going to be watching this movie either by themselves or in their bubble of friends and family that they’re with,” he said. “And so, to some extent, it was a very difficult lesson in how perhaps movies are now consumed.”
