Gerard Butler has more than established himself as one of the biggest names in B-level action over the last decade, largely due to his starring role as no-frills Secret Service agent Mike Banning in Olympus, London and Angel Has Fallen. The franchise doesn’t aim particularly high, and as a result, there’s plenty of fun to be had in the unashamedly old school movies that hark back to the genre’s preposterous one man army heyday of the 1980s.
Not exactly blockbusters but far from box office bombs, either, the series has so far raked in over half a billion dollars globally, and a fourth installment is already in the works with Angel‘s Ric Roman Waugh set to return. Reviews have been consistently middling, but fans know exactly what they’re going to get from these mid-budget shoot em’ ups.
Of course, the highlight of Angel Has Fallen was without a doubt Nick Nolte, who stole every scene he was in as Banning’s father Clay, as the veteran actor clearly had a great time working on the movie and never pitches his performance too seriously. In fact, in a recent interview, Waugh hinted that he’d love to see the franchise’s two elder statesmen share the screen in the fourth installment, saying:
“I’m all in on another …Has Fallen. We are talking about scripts and storylines right now. I want to see Mike Banning with his two dads. I mean, in Angel Has Fallen, you got to see him navigate with two dads, but you never saw the two dads in the same room. And I mean, what more fun can you have than to stick Nick Nolte and Morgan Freeman in the same room and just have them kick the crap out of Gerry Butler? That’d be fun. So yeah, I’m all in if that comes down the road.”
It would be foolish to bring acting royalty like Nick Nolte and Morgan Freeman into the same franchise and not have them share the screen. Not only do they boast a back catalogue of all-time classics and eight Academy Award nominations between them, but hearing the famously silky smooth tones of Freeman barking back and forth against Nolte, who sounds like he’s been using broken glass as mouthwash for the last three decades, would truly be something to experience in the Angel Has Fallen sequel.
