Denzel Washington Says Equalizer 4 and 5 Are On the Way
Denzel Washington isn’t leaving the vengeance trail yet. The Hollywood legend revealed to Esquire that he isn’t done with The Equalizer, his recent action series directed by Antoine Fuqua. Despite The Equalizer 3 being billed as the last installment, Washington says he’s going to be in at least two more of the revenge flicks that have been popular with audiences. The films are adaptations of the TV series from the 1980s starring Edward Woodward; Washington plays Robert McCall, a former Special Forces veteran who is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency. After helping a young Russian hooker he meets in a cafe, McCall becomes a sort of good Samaritan who uses his lethal skills to protect – or avenge – the innocent. Here’s what Denzel Washington had to say about more Equalizer movies:
“I told them I would do another Equalizer, and we’re doing four and five… More people are happy about that—people love those daggone Equalizers… But I’ve come to realize that the Equalizer films are for me, too, because they’re for the people. They want me to go get the bad guys. ‘We can’t get them, so you go get them.’ And I say, Okay, I’ll get them! Just wait right there. I’ll be right back!”
If you’re wondering why Denzel Washington is one of the last beloved actors still around, the way he describes the Equalizer movies is a good indication of it. He knows exactly what these films are and why people like them. They’re fantasies in which Denzel avenges the innocent against some truly evil bad guys, the kind of people who always get away in real life. The first and third have him going after organized crime – the Russian Mob in the first and the Italian Mafia in the third – but the second is particularly interesting in that regard: his nemeses are a group of his former comrades who are using their government positions and their intimate knowledge of justice department information to kill off witnesses or undercover agents for anyone who pays them enough. In other words, Denzel brings justice to corrupt government thugs who sell state secrets to enemies of America and victimize innocent people because they know nobody will stop them. In the first line of his review, Breitbart’s John Nolte summed it up as “Denzel Washington comes out of the shadows to hand the Deep State an overdue reckoning.” Who’s going to turn down a premise like that?
Nobody, and Denzel Washington gets that, as do director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk, and in each film in the Equalizer series, they set up some despicable bad guys you’re aching to see get what they deserve, then deliver catharsis via some immensely satisfying beatdowns and kills from Denzel. It’s the Tom Cruise philosophy of making the audience your first priority; it’s also the reason why Taken was so popular: some horrifically evil men finally messed with the wrong guy. It’s an old story that persists because it works, because it grabs people by their primal instincts. And they’re good moneymakers for Sony because they all cost around $70 million to produce, and each has grossed around $190 million. It’s crazy that more studios aren’t making movies like this, relatively cheap, satisfying action films that will turn a nice profit.
But part of what makes the Equalizer movies great is that Denzel’s Robert McCall is not just a two-dimensional avatar for our frustrations with the injustices of real life; he’s a human man who can do nigh-superhuman things. He’s got a code of ethics, and he genuinely cares about his fellow man, so he tries to better them and help his community. He gets drifting young men jobs or schooling opportunities so they don’t resort to drugs, and he paints and fixes up his apartment complex so it doesn’t succumb to urban blight. It all begins in the first Equalizer, where he’s lonely, detached, and grieving for his dead wife, occupying his time by reading a list of classic books she’d come up with. But he can’t keep his good nature down forever, and he eventually comes alive again by helping others. That’s why we love Robert McCall the man, and when the evildoers descend upon the innocent, we love him as the Angel of Death who raises his sword to defend the weak and downtrodden from the evil he’s about to vanquish. As long as the creative team is intact and they can make two more films that can stand next to the existing three, I’m perfectly happy with continuing the Equalizer series.
Let us know what you think of Denzel Washington making more Equalizer movies in the comments!
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Comments (2)
I’d love to see the return of the mid-range action movie and thriller. They were great in the 80s and 90s. Of course, mid-range in the 80s and 90s is super cheap today. I guess to be fair they are starting to make them again, they’re just usually from studios like Lionsgate. The Equalizer from Sony is kind of an outlier.
The financial angle is a great point. You’d think they’d have specialists in this kind of thing. Measuring best ROI for production cost and focus on ones that work for cheap.